The answer
Whoever meditates on God is shielded from thinking evil, for “What communion has light with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14). St. Philoxenus of Mabbug says, “Therefore, surround yourself with a wall, O discerning one, of the fear of God, and evil things will not dare to enter into the city of your soul. Give reverence to God secretly and see, your soul has been guarded in its purity. Stir the fear of [God] in yourself at all times, and see, you have been preserved from the sins of thoughts. May his constant memory dwell in you, and the memory of vices will not reside with it. As long as you are mindful of God, you will not be able to be mindful of vices, because light and darkness do not reside in the eye together, and the memory of God and the memory of vices do not coincide in the soul … The memory of vices is error, and the memory of God is true knowledge. Error is darkness, but knowledge is light.”384
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
384 St. Philoxenus of Mabbug, The Discourses of Philoxenus of Mabbug: A New Translation and Introduction, trans., Robert A. Kitchen (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2013) 6.24 (176): p. 139.