05/22/2026
Remembering Bishop Basil Rodzianko (May 22, 1915 - Sept. 17, 1999), who served at St. Nicholas Cathedral for many years. Here is an excerpt from his 1998 talk in Washington, DC, reflecting on the words of the Lord’s Prayer:
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
“…St. Maximus the Confessor, in his interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer, the ‘Our Father,’ when he comes to the petition: ‘and lead us not into temptation,’ says that we must not understand this in isolation. ‘And lead us not into temptation’ is a continuation of what came before it: ‘And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’
If a person does not possess this moral sensitivity within himself, this disposition of the human will — that one must forgive everything to another person, especially if one desires God’s forgiveness — then he has already prepared himself for demonic temptation. The devil will immediately take advantage of his free will, which has in fact ceased to be free because it has subjected itself to the passion of enmity and revenge against the one he considers his adversary. He does not forgive the sins of another person against him; he asks God to forgive his own sins, yet he does not forgive his fellow man, his debtor.
And if this is absent in him, then of course he cannot possess a pure and sufficiently free will capable of being liberated from demonic temptation. For the passion that has taken hold of him and of his will in relation to his neighbor is already a violation of freedom of will, and he already stands tempted by the devil.
Then there is little point in asking the Lord, ‘lead me not into temptation,’ because the Lord either allows a person to enter into demonic temptation or frees him from it not arbitrarily, but according to the state of the person’s soul: whether he follows the path of his passions, as Maximus the Confessor says, or whether he possesses enough truly human moral freedom to resist these passions and ask forgiveness for himself while at the same time saying: just as I forgive him, the other person, my neighbor.
Only then can he say: ‘and lead us not into temptation,’ because then there is no need to test this person through temptation, which, by God’s providence, is permitted to the devil so that the devil may bring about this temptation — because the passions have taken hold of the person, and it remains to be seen where the person will go. He must be tested.
…In order to free oneself from the power of the prince of this world, one must first of all free oneself from one’s own passions, from one’s own separation from the Divine will into a corrupted human will that does not forgive one’s neighbor, one’s debtor. Such is the reasoning of Maximus the Confessor.
And here he speaks quite explicitly. He says: this is what is corrupted in man, this is the sin we inherit — passion. The passion that nests where? In the human will. In the conscious choice of that which nourishes this passionate nature. But if one purifies one’s will, making this will one with the Divine will, as in Christ the Savior, then it becomes clear that human nature itself is not corrupted in any way.
For nature, as it was created, was pure, holy, blameless, and whole. Freedom was given not to nature, but to the human will. Therefore, when a person, through his will, frees himself from passions, forgives his neighbor, and therefore is not led into temptation and is delivered from the evil one, then he returns to that nature which was originally created — says Maximus the Confessor — because creation was so in the beginning. And in that original creation there was created the nature — mine, yours, his, all of ours — and this nature is pure, blameless, and holy; and it has never been corrupted in any way!”
