(Philokalia Vol. III, G.E.H Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware)
The mortification of passions, the title of this chapter, is difficult for secular people to grasp. We read about the dessert fathers exhorting other monks to refrain from any pleasure of material things and cannot envision the value of a joyless life.
By means of these the soul in its anguish renounces the joys of this world and even the food we eat.
Let’s dig deeper into the text for the true meaning of mortification that applies to both laity and monks, the present and the past.
Peter is not asking us to abandon a joyful and peaceful state of mind and capriciously torture ourselves. Being led by passions means a life of anguish, marked by unfulfilled longing, loneliness, jealousy, stress, torturous ambitions, anger, self-pity, obsessive thoughts of revenge, desires to control, etc.
It is in this state of anguish that the soul is willing to abandon all that may trigger a state of turmoil.
When our hearts and minds are cluttered with passions, there is no room for God’s presence, no time or desire to do “good things.”
When this happens, the soul will not be interested in any good work, but will struggle to fulfil the desires of the body and of its own indwelling passions, piling darkness upon darkness, and gladly accepting to live always in utter ignorance.
For St. Peter and other desert fathers, however, there is a difference between pleasure and joy.
The temporary pleasure we receive from succumbing to an impulse for quick pleasure and comfort is not equivalent to true joy.
“Detachment is mortification,” we are told, are “not of the intellect, but of the body’s initial impulses towards pleasure and comfort.”
The quest for comfort and pleasure dominates our worldview in our time yet, cliché though it may be, they do not contribute to lasting joy and peace.
Lasting joy, we are told, is derived from the presence of God in you and your union with him. The road from detachment to theosis is one from anguish to joy.
Likewise, the sense of emptiness experienced when our life’s pursuit is aimed only at material things on the surface, is the opposite of the stillness achieved when we are free from obsessions and at peace. This is when we free to contemplate, not only the visible and immediate but the things that matter most:
“Not of created beings in this present life, but of the awesome things that take place before and after death.”
This is when true joy sets in:
When a man has been sufficiently illumined, however, to perceive his own faults, he never ceases mourning for himself and for all men, seeing God’s great forbearance and what sins we in our wretchedness have committed and still persist in committing. As a result of this he becomes full of gratitude, not daring to condemn anyone, shamed by the profusion of God’s blessings and the multitude of our sins.
Readings in Philokalia 
God be with you
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