4. The Move to St Basil and the Death of the Elder Ephrem
Any move is in itself not pleasant. But when it becomes essential or useful for the overall goal, then it is the preferred option and is carried through. This is what one finds in most of the Fathers. The prince of evil who schemes against our salvation leaves untried none of the means at his disposal in his war against us, in his efforts to impede our progress towards our spiritual goal. He makes use of locations, places, our limbs, people, things, the inner, the outer, things around us and whatever else you can think of – he turns it all against us so as to lessen our faith in God, to overturn our beliefs and disappoint our hopes. But it is with a particularly frenzied fury that he attacks those who are making progress in the work of the heart and spiritual intellect. Abba Isaac the Syrian refers to something of this sort in his discourses when he says, ‘When the devil sees that progress of this kind has begun, he will stir up some person or some occasion even from the other end of the world to create an obstacle, to prevent the intellect perceiving the experience of grace.’
