The passions aren’t emotions. They’re disordered desires that have gotten out of hand and taken control of your soul.
Think of it this way. You were made to desire God above all things. But after the Fall, those desires got twisted. Now they attach themselves to created things instead of the Creator. Food becomes gluttony. Natural attraction becomes lust. Healthy self-regard becomes pride. The passions are what happens when good impulses go rogue and start running the show.
This is different from sin itself. A passion is the underlying habit or inclination. Sin is what happens when you act on it. You might struggle with the passion of anger for years, and that’s a spiritual disease you need healing for. But you commit the sin of anger when you actually lash out at your coworker in the break room at the refinery. The passion was there first, lurking. The sin followed.
Saint Maximos the Confessor said passions emerge when we’re spiritually negligent and the demons exploit that weakness. They take the natural faculties God gave us and twist them toward ourselves instead of toward Him. We inherit this vulnerability. We’re born into a world where the passions are already at work, and they get their hooks in us early.
The Church Fathers identified eight main passions, though sometimes you’ll see seven. Here’s the traditional list: gluttony, lust, love of money (avarice), anger, sadness or despondency, vainglory, and pride. Some lists add self-love as the root of all the others. These aren’t separate problems. They’re linked like a chain. Give in to one and you’ll find the others waiting.
Some passions attach to the body. Gluttony and lust are obvious examples. Others attach to the soul. Pride is the big one here, the passion that brought down Lucifer himself. Saint Athanasius called pride satanic and humility Christ-like, and he wasn’t being dramatic. Pride really is the devil’s specialty.
Now here’s what trips up people coming from Protestant backgrounds. You might be used to thinking about sin as individual bad choices you make, and if you just try harder or recommit your life, you can stop. But Orthodoxy sees the passions as diseases that need healing, not just behaviors that need better willpower. You can white-knuckle your way through not eating that third donut, but you haven’t healed the passion of gluttony. It’s still there, waiting.
The healing happens through the Church’s liturgical and sacramental life. Confession. The Eucharist. Fasting. Prayer. These aren’t just religious activities you do because you’re supposed to. They’re medicine. They work on the passions at the root level, in your thoughts, before those thoughts become actions.
Saint John Climacus wrote about this in The Ladder of Divine Ascent. He said you have to cut off the passions at their first appearance, when they’re still just thoughts. There’s a progression: first the thought assaults you (that’s not sin, that’s just temptation), then you entertain it, then you’re captivated by it, then finally you’re enslaved to it. That last stage is when it’s become a full-blown passion. But you can stop it earlier if you’re paying attention.
The goal isn’t to become some kind of emotionless robot. The Greek word is apatheia, which gets translated as dispassion, and people misunderstand it all the time. It doesn’t mean you stop feeling things. It means you’re free from being controlled by disordered desires. Your impulses start obeying reason again instead of dragging you around by the nose. You can feel anger without being ruled by it. You can enjoy food without being enslaved to it.
This is part of theosis, that process of becoming united with God. The passions keep you turned inward, obsessed with yourself and your own gratification. As they’re healed, you’re freed up to love God and other people the way you were meant to. Your desires get redirected. You start wanting what God wants instead of what your ego wants.
It takes time. If you’re a catechumen right now, don’t expect to conquer the passions before your baptism or even in your first year as Orthodox. Some of the greatest saints struggled with passions their whole lives. But they struggled, and that’s the point. You’re not supposed to just accept that you’re a slave to anger or lust or pride. You’re supposed to fight, with the Church’s help and God’s grace. The passions are healable. That’s the good news. You’re not stuck the way you are.
