Destroy temptation and struggle with thoughts and there wouldn’t be one saint. The one who runs away from temptation is also running away from eternal life. One of the Saints states: "Who provided the holy martyrs with their crowns , if not their own torturers? Who granted the first martyr, Stephen, such great glory if not those that stoned him to death?" With this, he also quoted pronouncements of another Saint: "I do not blame those that denounce me but quite the opposite, I regard and call them my benefactors; and I do not reject the Physician of souls that has given my vain soul some medicine of piety, because I fear that He may say to it what was said before: "We ministered to Babylon, but it would not be cured".
Saint Zosima
