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| St. Symeon the Fool for Christ (Feast Day - July 21) |
Below are excerpts from the Life of Symeon the Fool by Leontios of Cyprus that concern topics of demonology. To read the entire text, see here.
The Battle Against Temptations
When they had stayed a few days, the Devil, the enemy of our souls, unable to bear the virtue of Christ’s servants, began to war against them: against John concerning his wife, and against Symeon concerning his great love for his mother. When one of them saw himself afflicted, immediately he said to the other, “Get up, brother. Let us pray.” And they prayed the prayer of the monk who prayed, “Grant them, O Lord, in their hearts the words of this prayer.” And immediately the two found that they knew it by heart. And they prayed it all the time in each temptation and in each of their requests to God. For it was the Devil who inflamed them, as the God-bearing Fool related, as he did when they ate meat and wine. And from the beginning, he suggested to them cowardice and despair concerning their asceticism, so that from time to time they sought to return from the desert to the monastery. And in their dreams, and sometimes in a delusion, the polymorphous snake made them see their own families weeping, driven mad, and many other things which it is not possible to narrate, unless someone has had the experience of such temptations. But as soon as they remembered the crowns which they had seen on one another and the teaching and tears of the old man (Nikon), their heart was soothed by them and encouraged, just as with holy oil.
