About The Prayer Of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

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The order of attention to oneself for one living in the middle of the world 1

The soul of all exercises about the Lord is attention. Without attention all these exercises are fruitless, dead. Anyone who wants to be saved must arrange himself in such a way that he can maintain attention to himself not only in solitude, but also in the midst of absent-mindedness, into which he is sometimes drawn by circumstances against his will. Let the fear of God overcome all other sensations on the scales of the heart: then it will be convenient to maintain attention to yourself, both in the silence of your cell and amid the noise surrounding you on all sides.

Prudent moderation in food, reducing the heat of the blood, greatly promotes attention to oneself, and the heating of the blood, such as from excessive consumption of food, from increased body movement, from inflammation with anger, from the intoxication of vanity and from other reasons, gives rise to many thoughts and dreams, otherwise, absent-mindedness. The Holy Fathers prescribe to those who wish to take heed to themselves, firstly, moderate, uniform, constant abstinence in food2.

Having awakened – in the image of the awakening from the dead awaiting all people – direct your thoughts to God, sacrifice to God the beginnings of the thoughts of the mind, which has not yet accepted any vain impressions. With silence, very carefully, having completed everything necessary for the body for one who has risen from sleep, read the usual prayer rule, caring not so much about the quantity of prayer as about its quality, that is, that it be done with attention, and, because of attention, so that the heart is sanctified and enlivened by prayerful tenderness and consolation. After the prayer rule, again taking care of attention with all your might, read the New Testament, mainly the Gospel. During this reading, carefully note all the testaments and commandments of Christ, so that you can direct your activities, visible and invisible, according to them. The amount of reading is determined by a person’s strengths and circumstances. One should not burden the mind with excessive reading of prayers and Scripture, and one should not miss one’s responsibilities for immoderate exercise in prayer and reading. Just as excessive consumption of food upsets and weakens the stomach, so excessive consumption of spiritual food weakens the mind, produces in it an aversion to pious exercises, and makes it despondent. For the novice, the Holy Fathers offer frequent prayers, but short ones. When the mind grows in spiritual age, becomes stronger and matures, then it will be able to pray unceasingly. For Christians who have reached the age of perfection in the Lord, the words of the Holy Apostle Paul apply: “I would like men to say prayers in every place, lifting up their holy hands, without anger or reflection”(1 Tim. 2:8), that is, dispassionately and without any amusement or hesitation. What is characteristic of a husband is still unusual for a baby. Having been illuminated through prayer and reading by the Sun of Truth, our Lord Jesus Christ, let a person go out to the work of his daily work, listening to the fact that in all his deeds and words, in his entire being, the all-holy will of God, revealed and explained to people in the Gospel commandments, reigns and acts.

If you have free minutes during the day, use them to read with attention some selected prayers or some selected passages from Scripture, and with them again strengthen your spiritual strength, exhausted by activity in the midst of a busy world. If you don’t get these golden minutes, you should regret them as if you were losing a treasure. What is lost today should not be lost the next day, because our heart conveniently gives in to negligence and forgetfulness, from which a gloomy ignorance is born, which is so disastrous in the cause of God, in the cause of human salvation.

If you happen to say or do something contrary to the commandments of God, then immediately heal the sin with repentance, and through sincere repentance return to the path of God from which you deviated by violating the will of God. Do not stray outside the path of God! – Confront the sinful thoughts, dreams and sensations that come, with faith and humility, the gospel commandments, speaking with the holy Patriarch Joseph: “How can I create this evil verb, and sin before God?” (Gen. 39:9). He who pays attention to himself must abandon all daydreaming in general, no matter how tempting and plausible it may seem: all daydreaming is a wandering of the mind outside the truth, in the land of ghosts that do not exist and cannot come true, flattering the mind and deceiving it. Consequences of daydreaming: loss of attention to oneself, absent-mindedness and hardness of heart during prayer; hence the mental disorder.

In the evening, going to sleep, which in relation to the life of that day is death, consider your actions during the past day. For someone who leads a attentive life, such consideration is not difficult, because due to attention to oneself the forgetfulness that is so characteristic of a person who is entertained is destroyed. So, having remembered all your sins in deed, word, thought, feeling, bring repentance to God for them with disposition and a heartfelt guarantee of correction. Then, after reading the prayer rule, conclude the day begun with the Thought of God with the Thought of God.

Where do all the thoughts and feelings of a sleeping person go? What kind of mysterious state is this – a dream in which the soul and body are alive, and do not live together, alien to the consciousness of their life, as if dead? Sleep is as incomprehensible as death. During it, the soul rests, forgetting the most severe sorrows and disasters of the earth, in the image of its eternal peace; and the body!… if it rises from sleep, it will certainly rise from the dead. The great Agathon said: “It is impossible to succeed in virtue without intense attention to yourself.”4 Amen.

About prayer 5

It is natural for the poor to ask, and it is natural for a person impoverished by the Fall to pray. Prayer is the appeal of a fallen and repentant person to God. Prayer is the cry of a fallen and repentant person before God. Prayer is the outpouring of heartfelt desires, petitions, sighs of a fallen person killed by sin before God.

The first discovery, the first movement of repentance is the cry of the heart. This is the prayerful voice of the heart, preceding the prayer of the mind. And soon the mind, carried away by the prayer of the heart, begins to give birth to prayerful thoughts. God is the only source of all true blessings. Prayer is the mother and head of all virtues6, as a means and state of communication between a person and God. She borrows virtues from the source of blessings – God, and assimilates them to the person who, through prayer, tries to remain in communion with God. The path to God is prayer. The dimension of the journey taken is the various prayerful states into which the person praying gradually and correctly and constantly enters. Learn to pray to God correctly. Having learned to pray correctly, pray constantly – and you will comfortably inherit salvation. Salvation appears from God in due time, with an indisputable heartfelt message about oneself, who prays correctly and constantly.

For prayer to be correct, it must be offered from a heart filled with poverty of spirit, from a contrite and humble heart. All other states of the heart, until it is renewed by the Holy Spirit, recognize – what exactly they are – are unusual for a repentant sinner begging God for forgiveness of his sins and for liberation – both from prison and shackles – from enslavement to passions. The Mosaic Law ordered the Israelites to offer all their sacrifices in only one place, appointed by God. And the spiritual law has designated for Christians one spiritual place to offer all their sacrifices, especially the sacrifice of sacrifices – prayer. This place is humility 7. God does not need our prayers! He knows even before we ask what we need; He, the Most Merciful, pours out abundant bounties on those who do not ask Him. We need prayer: it assimilates a person to God. Without it, a person is a stranger to God, and the more he practices prayer, the closer he gets to God. Prayer is the communion of life. Leaving her brings invisible death to the soul. What air is to the life of the body, the Holy Spirit is to the life of the soul. The soul, through prayer, breathes this holy, mysterious air. When you arise from sleep, let your first thought be about God; Bring the very beginning of your thoughts, not yet imprinted by any vain impression, to God. When you go to sleep, when you are preparing to plunge into this image of death, let your last thoughts be about eternity and about the God reigning in it. The angel revealed to a certain holy monk the following order of thoughts in prayer, pleasing to God: the beginning of prayer should consist of glorifying God, of thanking God for His countless benefits; then we must bring to God a sincere confession of our sins in contrition of spirit; in conclusion, we can offer, however, with great humility, petitions to the Lord for our mental and physical needs, reverently leaving the fulfillment and non-fulfillment of these petitions to His will.

“Whenever you pray, if you ask, believe, as you receive, and it will be done for you” (Mark 11:24), declared the Lord. And therefore, having rejected all doubt and double-mindedness, persistently remain in prayer with the Lord, who commanded to “pray always and not be cold” (Luke 18:1), that is, not to become despondent from the closeness of prayer, which, especially at first, is painful and unbearable for the mind, accustomed to wandering everywhere. Blessed is the soul that with prayer incessantly knocks on the door of God’s mercy and with complaints against its “rival” (Luke 18:3) – the sin that rapes it – incessantly tires the Tireless9: it will rejoice in due time about its purity and its dispassion. Sometimes our request is immediately heard; sometimes, according to the Savior, God is patient with us (Lk. 18:7), that is, he does not quickly fulfill what we ask: He sees that we need to stop this fulfillment for a while for our humility, that we need to get tired, to see our weakness, which is always revealed very sharply when we are left to ourselves.

Prayer, as a conversation with God, is itself a high good, often much greater than what a person asks for, and the merciful God, not fulfilling the request, leaves the petitioner with his prayer, so that he does not lose it, does not abandon this highest good when he receives the requested good, much less.

God does not satisfy requests the fulfillment of which is associated with harmful consequences; He does not satisfy those requests that are contrary to His holy will, contrary to His wise, incomprehensible destinies.

Contrary to God’s determination, the great Moses the God-Seer asked that he be granted entry into the Promised Land, and was not heard (Deut. 3:26); Saint David prayed, strengthening his prayer with fasting, ashes and tears, for the preservation of the life of his sick son, but was not heard (2 Samuel 12:14-16). And you, when your request is not fulfilled by God, reverently submit to the will of the All-Holy God, Who, for unknown reasons, left your request unfulfilled.

The holy Apostle James proclaims to the sons of the world, asking God for earthly blessings to satisfy their carnal lusts: “Ask and do not receive; When we want to appear before the king of the earth, we prepare for this with special care: we study what the mood of our heartfelt feelings should be when talking with him, so that, on the impulse of some feeling, we do not get carried away into a word or movement that is unpleasant to the king; We figure out in advance what to say to him, so that we can say whatever pleases us and thereby win him over; We take care that our very outward appearance attracts his attention to us. Moreover, we must make decent preparations when we wish to appear before the King of kings and enter into conversation with Him through prayer. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7); but in a person the location of the heart is most consistent with the position of his face, his appearance.

And therefore, when praying, give the most reverent position to the body. Stand like a condemned man, with your head bowed, not daring to look up at the sky, with your hands hanging down or folded behind you, as if tied with ropes, as criminals caught at the scene of a crime are usually tied up. Let the sound of your voice be the pitiful sound of crying, the groan of one wounded by a deadly weapon or tormented by a cruel disease. “God looks at the heart”.

He sees our most intimate, most subtle thoughts and sensations; sees all our past and all our future. God is omnipresent. And therefore stand in your prayer as if you were standing before God Himself. Exactly – you are standing before Him! You stand before your Judge and sovereign Master, on Whom your fate in time and in eternity depends. Use your presence before Him to build your well-being; Do not allow this coming, due to its unworthiness, to serve as the cause of temporary and eternal executions for you. Intending to offer prayer to God, reject all earthly thoughts and concerns. Do not engage in thoughts that then come to you, no matter how important, brilliant, necessary they may seem. Give what is God to God, and you will have time to give what you need for temporary life in due time. It is impossible at the same time to work for God in prayer and occupy the mind with thoughts and concerns of extraneous things. Before prayer, incense in your heart the incense of the fear of God and holy reverence: think that you have angered God with countless sins, which are more obvious to Him than to your conscience itself; try to appease the Judge with humility. Beware! Do not arouse His indignation with negligence and insolence: He is pleased that even those closest to Him, the purest angelic powers, stand before Him with all reverence and the most holy fear (Ps. 89:8).

The robe of your soul should shine with the whiteness of simplicity. Nothing should be complicated here! Evil thoughts and feelings of vanity, hypocrisy, pretense, man-pleasing, arrogance, voluptuousness should not be mixed in – these dark and fetid stains with which the spiritual clothing of praying Pharisees can be spotted.

Instead of pearls and diamonds, instead of gold and silver, adorn yourself with chastity, humility, tears of meekness and spiritual understanding, and before you receive these tears, with tears of repentance; adorn yourself with infantile, angelic gentleness – these are precious utensils! When the King of Kings sees these utensils on the soul, His merciful gaze inclines towards the soul.

Forgiveness of everyone, all offenses without exception, even the most severe ones, is an indispensable condition for success in prayer. “As you stand praying,” the Savior commands, “forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in Heaven will forgive you your sins; if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in Heaven forgive you your sins” (Mark 11:25-26). “The prayers of the wicked are sowing on stone,” said St. Isaac of Syria 10.

Moderate, prudent, constant abstinence from food and drink makes the body light, cleanses the mind, gives it vigor and therefore also serves as preparation for prayer. Incontinence of the belly makes the body heavy, plump, hardens the heart, darkens the mind with a multitude of fumes and gases ascending from the stomach to the brain. As soon as a satiated or satiated person gets up to pray, drowsiness and laziness attack him, many crude dreams are depicted in his imagination, his heart is unable to come to tenderness.

As much as intemperance is harmful, so is immoderate fasting, or even more harmful. 11. The weakness of the body resulting from malnutrition does not allow prayers to be performed in the proper quantity and with the proper strength.

The amount of prayer is determined for each person by his lifestyle and the amount of mental and physical strength. The widow’s two mites, which she brought to the church and made up her entire estate, turned out to be greater on the scales of the just God than the significant offerings of the rich from their excesses. Judge your prayer in the same way: assign to yourself the amount of it according to your strengths, remember the wise instruction of the great mentor of ascetics: “If you force a weak body to do things that exceed its strength, then by doing so you put darkness into your soul and bring it confusion, not benefit.” 12. The appropriate prayer is sought from a healthy and strong constitution. “Every prayer,” said the same great father, “in which the body does not become tired, and the heart does not come into contrition, is recognized as unripe fruit, because such prayer is without a soul.” 13. Being busy with public duties, and if you are a monk, then with obediences, and not being able to devote as much time to prayer as you would like, do not be embarrassed by this: service performed legally and in conscience prepares a person for fervent prayer and replaces quality quantity. Nothing contributes more to success in prayer than a conscience satisfied with godly activities. Fulfillment of the Gospel commandments attunes the mind and heart to pure prayer filled with tenderness, and true prayer directs one to think, feel, and act according to the commandments of the Gospel. Mercy towards neighbors and humility before them, expressed by outward deeds and nourished in the soul, together with purity of heart, mainly from lustful thoughts and feelings, constitute the basis and strength of prayer 14. They are like its “wing” (Ps. 54:7), with which it flies to heaven. Without them, prayer cannot rise from the ground, that is, arise from carnal wisdom: it is held by it, like a net or a force; she is indignant, desecrated, destroyed by him. The soul of prayer is attention 15. Just as a body without a soul is dead, so prayer without attention is dead. A prayer pronounced without attention turns into idle talk, and the one praying is thus counted among those “who take the name of God in vain” (Deut. 5:11). Say the words of prayer slowly; do not allow the mind to wander everywhere, but close it in the words of prayer 16. This path is narrow and regrettable for the mind, accustomed to wandering freely throughout the universe, but this path leads to attention. Whoever tastes the great benefit of attention will love to oppress the mind on the path leading to blissful attention.

Attention is the initial gift of divine grace, sent down to the worker and patiently suffering in the feat of prayer 17. Graceful attention must be preceded by one’s own effort to pay attention – the latter must be an active evidence of a sincere desire to receive the first. One’s own attention is overwhelmed by thoughts and dreams, fluctuating from them; gracious – full of firmness.

Forbid yourself from distracted thoughts during prayer, hate daydreaming, reject worries with the power of faith, strike your heart with the fear of God – and you will comfortably learn to pay attention. The praying mind must be in a completely true state. A dream, no matter how tempting and plausible, being its own, arbitrary creation of the mind, takes the mind out of the state of divine truth, leads it into a state of self-delusion and deception, and therefore it is rejected in prayer.

During prayer, the mind must be kept, and with all care, formless, rejecting all images drawn in the imagination, because the mind in prayer stands before the invisible God, Who cannot be represented in any material way. Images, if the mind allows them in prayer, will become an impenetrable curtain, a wall between the mind and God. “Those who do not see anything in their prayers see God,” said the Monk Meletius the Confessor 18. If during your prayer the image of Christ, or an angel, or some saint was presented to you sensually or mentally, or some kind of saint – in a word, any image – do not accept this appearance as true, do not pay any attention to it, do not enter into conversation with him 19. Otherwise, you will certainly be subjected to deception and severe mental damage, which is what happened to many. A person, until he is renewed by the Holy Spirit, is incapable of communicating with holy spirits. He, as still in the realm of the fallen spirits, in captivity and slavery to them, is able to see only them, and they often, noticing in him a high opinion of himself and self-delusion, appear to him in the form of bright angels, in the form of Christ Himself, for the destruction of his soul. Holy icons were accepted by the Holy Church to excite pious memories and sensations, and not at all to excite reverie. Standing before the icon of the Savior, stand as if before the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, omnipresent in Divinity and present with His icon in the place where it is located; standing before the icon of the Mother of God, stand as if before the Most Holy Virgin Herself – but keep your mind formless: the greatest difference is to be in the presence of the Lord and stand before the Lord or imagine the Lord. The feeling of the presence of the Lord instills saving fear in the soul, introduces into it a saving feeling of reverence, and the imagination of the Lord and His saints imparts to the mind, as it were, materiality, leads it to a false, proud opinion about itself – the soul leads to a false state, a state of self-delusion 20.

A high state – a feeling of the presence of God! They keep the mind from conversing with alien thoughts that denigrate prayer; because of it, the insignificance of man is abundantly felt; because of this, there is special vigilance over oneself, protecting a person from sins, even the smallest ones. The feeling of God’s presence is brought about by attentive prayer. Standing reverently before holy icons also helps a lot in acquiring it. The words of prayer, animated by attention, penetrate deep into the soul, gore, pierce, so to speak, the heart and produce tenderness in it. The words of prayer, performed absent-mindedly, seem to touch only the surface of the soul, without making any impression on it. Attention and tenderness are recognized as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit can stop the waves of the mind scattering everywhere, said St. John Climacus 21. Another venerable father said: “When tenderness is with us, then God is with us” (hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov). He who has achieved constant attention and tenderness in his prayers has reached a state of beatitudes called in the Gospel “poverty of spirit” and “crying.” He has already broken many chains of passions, he has already smelled the stench of spiritual freedom, he already carries in his depths the guarantee of salvation. Do not leave the narrowness of the true prayer path – and you will achieve sacred peace, the mysterious Saturday: on Saturday no earthly work is performed, struggle and feat are eliminated; in blissful dispassion, without distraction, the soul comes before God with pure prayer and rests in Him with faith in His infinite goodness, devotion to His all-holy will.

In an ascetic of prayer, success in prayer first begins to manifest itself through a special action of attention: from time to time it unexpectedly embraces the mind, encloses it in the words of prayer. Then it will become much more constant and lasting: the mind, as it were, cleaves to the words of prayer, and is drawn by them to unite with the heart. Finally, tenderness suddenly combines with attention and makes a person a temple of prayer, a temple of God.

Bring quiet and humble prayers to God, not ardent and fiery ones. When you become a mysterious priest of prayer, then you will ascend into God’s tabernacle and from there fill the prayer censer with sacred fire. Unclean fire – blind, material heating of blood – is forbidden to be brought before the All-Holy God.

The sacred fire of prayer, borrowed from the tabernacle of God, is holy love, poured out into true Christians by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). He who tries to combine prayer with the fire of blood thinks, in his self-delusion, deceived by his opinion of himself, to serve God, but in reality he angers Him.

Do not look for pleasures in prayer: they are by no means characteristic of a sinner. The desire of a sinner to feel pleasure is already self-delusion. Seek for your dead, petrified heart to come to life, so that it opens up to the feeling of its sinfulness, its fall, its insignificance, so that it sees them, confesses to them with selflessness. Then the true fruit of prayer will appear in you – true repentance. You will groan before God and cry out to Him in prayer from the disastrous state of your soul that has suddenly been revealed to you; You will cry out as from a prison, as from a tomb, as from hell.

Repentance gives birth to prayer and is born in great quantity from his daughter.

Enjoyment in prayer is the exclusive destiny of God’s holy chosen ones, renewed by the Holy Spirit. Whoever, carried away by gusts of blood, carried away by vanity and voluptuousness, invents pleasures for himself, is in a woeful self-delusion. A soul darkened by living according to the flesh, a soul deceived and deceived by its pride, is very capable of such composition.

The sensations generated by prayer and repentance consist of relief of conscience, peace of mind, reconciliation with others and the circumstances of life, mercy and compassion for humanity, abstinence from passions, composure to the world, submission to God, and strength in the fight against sinful thoughts and inclinations. Be content with these sensations – in which, however, you taste the hope of salvation. Do not seek prematurely high spiritual states and prayerful delights. They are not at all what they appear to be in our imagination: the action of the Holy Spirit, from Whom high states of prayer arise, is incomprehensible to the carnal mind 22.

Learn to pray with all your thoughts, with all your soul, with all your strength. You ask: what does this mean? This cannot be known except by experience. Try to constantly engage in attentive prayer: attentive prayer will give you the resolution of the issue through a blissful experience. The feat of prayer seems painful, boring, and dry for a mind accustomed to being occupied only with perishable objects. It is difficult to acquire the skill of prayer; when this skill is acquired, then it becomes a source of constant spiritual consolation. Prayer, as mentioned above, is the mother of all virtues – acquire the mother! With her, her children will come to the house of your soul, making it a sanctuary of God. Before starting any business, bring a prayer to God; with it, attract God’s blessing to your deeds and judge your deeds with it: the thought of prayer stops you from deeds that are contrary to the commandments of God. Whoever, before every deed and word, turns to God in prayer for admonition, help and blessing, lives his life as if under the gaze of God, under His guidance. The habit of such behavior is convenient; There is nothing faster than the mind, said the great Barsanuphius, nothing is more convenient than raising the mind to God in every need encountered. 23. In difficult circumstances of life, increase your prayers to God. It is better to resort to prayers than to empty considerations of the weak human mind, considerations that for the most part turn out to be unrealizable. It is better to rely with faith and prayer on the almighty God than with shaky considerations and assumptions – on your weak mind.

Do not be reckless in your requests, so as not to anger God with your foolishness: he who asks the King of kings for something insignificant humiliates Him. The Israelites, ignoring the miracles of God performed for them in the desert, asked for the fulfillment of the desires of the womb – “I have yet to eat in their mouths, and the wrath of God has come upon her” (Ps. 77:30-31) 24. Bring to God petitions consistent with His greatness. Solomon asked Him for wisdom – he received it, and with it many other benefits, because he asked wisely. Elisha asked Him for the grace of the Holy Spirit, especially before his great teacher, and his request was accepted.

He who seeks in his prayer perishable earthly goods arouses the indignation of the Heavenly King against himself. Angels and archangels – these nobles of Him – look at you during your prayer, they look at what you ask from God. They are surprised and rejoice when they see an earthly person leaving his earth and making a petition to receive something heavenly; They grieve, on the contrary, for those who have ignored heavenly things and ask for their earth and corruption.

We are commanded to be children in malice and not in understanding (1 Cor. 14:20).

When praying, the mind of this world, verbose and arrogant, is rejected; It does not follow from this that it should be accepted; it requires feeblemindedness. It requires a perfect mind, a spiritual mind, filled with humility and simplicity, often expressed in prayer not in words, but in a prayerful silence that exceeds words. Prayerful silence then envelops the mind when new, spiritual concepts suddenly appear to it, inexpressible in the words of this world and age, when a particularly vivid sensation of the present God appears. Before the immense greatness of the Divine, His weak creature, man, falls silent.

Polyphony (Matt. 6:7-8), condemned by the Lord in the prayers of the pagans, consists in the numerous petitions for temporary blessings with which the prayers of the pagans are filled, in the florid presentation in which they are offered 25, as if rhetorical embellishments, material sonority and force of syllables could act on God in the same way as they act on the ears and nerves of carnal people. Condemning this verbosity, the Lord by no means condemned long prayers, as some heretics imagined: He Himself sanctified long prayer, remaining in prayer for a long time. “And through the night,” (that is, he remained all night), “in the prayer of God” (Luke 6:12), the Gospel tells about the Lord.

The duration of the prayers of God’s saints is not due to much verbiage, but due to the abundant spiritual sensations that appear in them during prayer. By the abundance and strength of these sensations, time is destroyed, so to speak, and is henceforth transformed into eternity for the saints of God.

When the worker of prayer achieves success in his blessed feat, then the variety of thoughts in the psalms and other prayers becomes inconsistent with his dispensation. The publican’s prayer and other shortest prayers more satisfactorily express the inexpressible, vast desire of the heart, and often the saints of God spent many hours, days and years in such prayer, not feeling the need for a variety of thoughts for their strong, concentrated prayer 26.

The prayers composed by heretics are very similar to the prayers of the pagans: they contain many words, they contain earthly beauty of words, they contain heated blood, they contain a lack of repentance, they contain a desire for the marriage of the Son of God directly from the fornication of passions, they contain self-delusion. They are alien to the Holy Spirit – the deadly infection of the dark spirit, the evil spirit, the spirit of lies and destruction emanates from them.

Great activity in prayer! The holy apostles, for prayer and to serve the word, renounced serving their neighbors in their bodily needs. “We do not want to eat,” they said, “leaving the word of God to serve tables… We… will continue in prayer and serving the word” (Acts 6:2-4), that is, in conversation with God through prayer and in conversation about God with our neighbors, proclaiming to them the Trinitarian God and the Word of God incarnate.

The practice of prayer is the highest occupation for the human mind; the state of purity, alien to entertainment, brought to the mind by prayer, is its highest natural state; His admiration to God, the initial reason for which is pure prayer, is a supernatural state 27. Only the holy saints of God ascend to the supernatural state, renewed by the Holy Spirit, having put off the old Adam, having put on the New, capable of with a “revealed face (of the soul) the glory of the Lord”, being transformed “into the same image… from glory to glory”by the work of the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). They receive most of Divine revelations during the exercise of prayer, as at a time in which the soul is especially prepared, especially purified, and tuned to communion with God 28. Thus, the holy Apostle Peter, during prayer, saw a significant shroud descending from heaven (Acts 10:11). Thus an angel appeared to Cornelius the centurion while he was praying (Acts 10:3). Thus, when the Apostle Paul was praying in the Temple of Jerusalem, the Lord appeared to him and commanded him to immediately leave Jerusalem. “Go, for I will send you into the nations far away” (Acts 22:17-21), He told him.

Prayer is commanded by the Lord, as is repentance. The end of prayer, just like repentance, is indicated by one thing: entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, into the Kingdom of God, which is within us. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is drawing near” (Matthew 4:17). “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; ask, and it will be opened to you: for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to the one who asks, it will be opened… The Father who is in heaven will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him”(Luke 11:9-10,13). “God… should he not take vengeance on His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night and complain about the violence inflicted on them by the sinful infection and demons? I tell you that their vengeance will be done quickly” (Luke 18:7-8). Entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, which is planted in the heart of every Christian through holy baptism, is the development of this Kingdom through the action of the Holy Spirit.

Hurry in prayer, soul thirsty for salvation, hurry after the Savior, accompanied by His countless disciples. Call after Him with prayer, like the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:22-28); do not be upset by His prolonged inattention; generously and humbly endure the sorrows and humiliations that He will allow you on your path of prayer. To be successful in prayer, you definitely need help from temptations. According to your faith, for your humility, for the persistence of your prayer, He will comfort you by healing your daughter who is enraged by the action of passions – by healing your thoughts and feelings, transforming them from passionate to passionless, from sinful to holy, from carnal to spiritual. Amen.

About the Jesus Prayer. Conversations between an elder and a disciple 29

Student. Is it possible for all the brothers in the monastery to practice the Jesus Prayer?

Elder. Not only is it possible, but it should be. When tonsured into monasticism, when the newly tonsured person is given a rosary, called the spiritual sword, he is entrusted with unceasing, nightly prayer of the Jesus Prayer 30. Therefore, practicing the Jesus Prayer is the vow of a monk. Fulfilling a vow is an obligation that cannot be renounced.

Old monks told me that at the beginning of this century in the Sarov Hermitage, and probably in other well-maintained Russian monasteries, everyone who entered the monastery was immediately taught the Jesus Prayer. The blessed elder Seraphim, who labored in this desert and achieved great success in prayer, constantly advised all monks to lead an attentive life and practice the Jesus Prayer31. A young man who had completed his studies at a theological seminary visited him and revealed to the elder his intention to enter monasticism. The elder gave the young man the most soul-saving instructions. Among them was a testament to learn the Jesus Prayer. Speaking about her, the elder added: “External prayer alone is not enough. God listens to the mind, and therefore those monks who do not combine external prayer with internal prayer are not monks.”32 The definition is very correct! A monk means solitary: whoever has not secluded himself in himself is not yet secluded, he is not yet a monk, even if he lived in the most secluded monastery. The mind of an ascetic who is not secluded and not enclosed in himself is, of necessity, surrounded by rumors and rebellion produced by countless thoughts, having always free access to it, and painfully, without any need or benefit, harmfully for himself, he wanders through the universe. The solitude of a person in himself cannot be accomplished otherwise than through attentive prayer, mainly through the attentive Jesus Prayer. …The Divine Scripture of the Old Testament lays down the law: “Guard your heart with all care: from these comes life” (Prov. 4:23). “Take heed to yourselves: let not the word of iniquity be hidden in your heart…” (Deut. 15:9) 33. Watching over the heart and cleansing it is especially commanded by the New Testament. All the commandments of the Lord are directed towards this. “Cleanse first,” says the Lord, “the inside of the glass and dish, so that the outside also may be clean” (Matt. 23:26). The Lord called people here vessels made of fragile glass and low-value clay. “What comes from a person defiles a person: from within from the heart of man come evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, murder, theft, extortion, insults, deceit, flattery, deceit, the evil eye, blasphemy, pride, madness. All this evil comes from within and defiles a person”(Mark 7:20-23). Saint Barsanuphius the Great says: “if internal work with God, that is, overshadowed by Divine grace, does not help a person, then he strives in vain with external, that is, bodily, asceticism” 34. Saint Isaac of Syria: “who does not have spiritual work, is deprived of spiritual gifts” 35.

…I remember: in my youth, some pious laymen, even from the nobility, who led a very simple life, were engaged in the Jesus Prayer. This precious custom, now, with the general weakening of Christianity and monasticism, has almost been lost. Praying in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ requires a sober, strictly moral life, the life of a wanderer, requires the abandonment of addictions, but we have become necessary for absent-mindedness, extensive acquaintance, satisfaction of our many whims, benefactors and benefactors, “Jesus turned away, the people are in the place” (John 5:13).

Student. The consequence of what has been said will not be the conclusion that without practicing the Jesus Prayer, salvation cannot be obtained?

Elder. Fathers don’t say this. On the contrary, the Venerable Nilus of Sora, referring to the Hieromartyr Peter of Damascus, asserts that many, having not achieved dispassion, were honored to receive remission of sins and salvation. 36. Saint Hesychius, having said that without sobriety there is no possibility of avoiding sin “in thoughts,” called blessed those who abstain from sin “in deed.” He called them rapists of the kingdom of heaven 37. Achieving dispassion, sanctification, or, what is the same, Christian perfection, without acquiring mental prayer is impossible, all the Fathers agree on this…

Student. The trend of modern monasticism, in which the exercise of the Jesus Prayer is very rare, can it serve as an excuse and justification for me if I do not practice it?

Elder. A duty remains a duty and an obligation an obligation, even if the number of those who do not fulfill it has increased even more. The vow is pronounced by everyone. Neither the multitude of vow-breakers nor the custom of breaking gives legitimacy to the breaking. Few are the flock to which the Heavenly Father was pleased to grant the kingdom (Luke 12:32). There are always few travelers on a narrow path, and many on a wide path. (Matt. 7:13–14). In the last times, almost everyone will abandon the narrow path, almost everyone will take the wide one. It does not follow from this that the wide will lose its ability to lead to destruction, that the narrow will become superfluous, unnecessary for salvation. Anyone who wants to be saved must certainly adhere to the narrow path positively bequeathed by the Savior.

Student. Why do you call the narrow path exercise the Jesus Prayer?

Elder. How is it not a narrow path? A narrow path, in the exact sense of the word! Anyone who wants to successfully engage in the Jesus Prayer must protect himself both externally and internally with the most prudent, most cautious behavior: our fallen nature is ready to betray us every hour, to betray us; fallen spirits, with particular fury and deceit, attack the exercise with the Jesus Prayer. Often, from an apparently insignificant carelessness, from the negligence and arrogance of the unnoticed, an important consequence arises that has an impact on the life, on the eternal fate of the ascetic – “and if the Lord had not helped me, my soul would have entered hell. …My foot is moved: Your mercy, O Lord, helps me”(Ps. 94:17-18).

The basis for practicing the Jesus Prayer is prudent and careful behavior. Firstly, you must eliminate from yourself effeminacy and carnal pleasures in all forms. One must be content with food and sleep that is always moderate, commensurate with one’s strength and health, so that food and sleep provide the body with proper reinforcement, without producing indecent movements, which come from excess, and without producing exhaustion, which comes from lack. Clothing, housing and all material accessories in general should be modest, in imitation of Christ, in imitation of His Apostles, in following their spirit, in communion with their spirit. The Holy Apostles and their true disciples did not make any sacrifices to vanity and vanity, according to the customs of the world, and did not enter into any communication with the spirit of the world. The correct, grace-filled action of the Jesus Prayer can only vegetate from the Spirit of Christ; it vegetates and grows exclusively on this soil alone. Sight, hearing and other senses must be strictly guarded so that through them, like through a gate, adversaries do not break into the soul. The mouth and tongue must be curbed, as if shackled in silence; idle talk, verbosity, especially ridicule, gossip and slander are the worst enemies of prayer… Curiosity and vain inquisitiveness must be resolutely abandoned, turning all curiosity and all research to research and study of the path of prayer. This path needs the most careful research and study: it is not only “a narrow path”, but also a path “lead into the belly” (Matthew 7:14); He is the science of the sciences, and the art of the arts. That is what the Fathers call him 38.

The path of true prayer becomes incomparably closer when the ascetic enters upon it through the activity of the inner man. When will he enter these gorges and feel the correctness, the saving power, the necessity of such a situation; when labor in the inner cage becomes desirable for him, then the tightness of outer living will also become desirable, as serving as an abode and repository for internal activity. “He who has entered into the feat of prayer with his mind must renounce, and constantly renounce, both all thoughts and sensations of fallen nature, and all thoughts and sensations brought by fallen spirits, no matter how plausible those and other thoughts and sensations may be; he must constantly walk the narrow path of attentive prayer, not deviating either to the left or to the right. By deviation to the left I mean abandoning prayer with the mind to converse with vain and sinful thoughts; I call deviation to the right the abandonment of prayer by the mind for conversation with thoughts, apparently good.

Four kinds of thoughts and sensations act on the person praying: some vegetate from the grace of God, planted in every Orthodox Christian through holy baptism, others are offered by the Guardian Angel, others arise from fallen nature; finally, others are caused by fallen spirits. The first two types of thoughts, or rather, memories and sensations contribute to prayer, enliven it, increase attention and the feeling of repentance, produce tenderness, crying of the heart, tears, expose before the eyes of the praying person the vastness of his sinfulness and the depth of human fall, announce death that is inevitable by anyone, the unknown of its hour, the impartial and terrible judgment of God, eternal torment, according to its cruelty beyond human comprehension. In the thoughts and sensations of a fallen nature, good is mixed with evil, and in demonic ones, evil is often hidden behind good, although sometimes acting as open evil. Of the last two kinds, thoughts and sensations act together, due to the connection and communication of fallen spirits with fallen human nature, and the first fruit of their action is arrogance, and in prayer – absent-mindedness. Demons, bringing supposedly spiritual and high understandings, distract them from prayer, produce vain joy, pleasure, self-satisfaction, as if from the discovery of the most mysterious Christian teaching. Following demonic theology and philosophy, vain and passionate thoughts and dreams invade the soul, plunder, destroy prayer, and destroy the good order of the soul. According to the fruits, thoughts and feelings that are truly good are distinguished from thoughts and feelings that are supposedly good.

Oh, how rightly the Fathers call the exercise the Jesus Prayer and the narrow path, and self-denial, and renunciation of the world!39. These virtues belong to any attentive and reverent prayer, especially to the Jesus Prayer, which is alien to the diversity in form and the multiplicity of thoughts that belong to psalmody and other prayers40.

Student. What words does the Jesus Prayer consist of?

Elder. It consists of the following words: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Some Fathers41 divide the prayer, for beginners, into two halves, and command from the morning until about lunchtime to say: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” and after lunch: “Son of God, have mercy on me.” This is an ancient legend. But it is better to get used, if possible, to pronouncing a complete prayer. The division was allowed out of condescension for the weakness of the weak and beginners.

Student. Is the Jesus Prayer mentioned in Holy Scripture?

Elder. It is spoken about in the Holy Gospel. Do not think that it is a human institution: it is a Divine institution. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself established and commanded the most sacred Jesus Prayer. After the Last Supper, at which the greatest of the Christian sacraments was created – the Holy Eucharist, the Lord, in a farewell conversation with His disciples, before going to terrible suffering and death on the cross for the redemption of lost humanity, taught the most sublime teaching and the most important, final commandments. Between these commandments, He gave permission and commandment to pray in His name42. “Amen, amen I say to you,” He said to the Apostles, “whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He will give it to you” (John 16:23). “Whatever you ask from the Father in My name, that I will do; may the Father be glorified in the Son. And whatever you ask in My name, I will do it” (John 14:13–14). “Until now, do not ask for anything in My name: ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be filled” (John 16:24). The greatness of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ was foretold by the Prophets. Pointing to the redemption of men by the God-man that is about to be accomplished, Isaiah cries: “Behold my God, my Savior!… Draw up water with joy from the fountain of salvation! And he said on the day: Praise the Lord, sing praises to His name: … remember that His name is exalted; Praise the name of the Lord, for you have done great things” (Is. 12:2-5.). “The way of the Lord is judgment: trust in Your name, and remembrance, which is what our soul desires” (Is. 26:8). In accordance with Isaiah, David predicts: “We will rejoice in Your salvation, and in the name of the Lord our God we will be magnified… We will call on the name of the Lord our God”(Ps. 19:6, 8). “Blessed are the people who lead the cry, who have adopted the mental prayer: Lord, in the light of Your countenance they will walk, and in Your name they will rejoice all day long, and in Your righteousness they will be exalted” (Ps. 89:16-17).

Student. What is the power of the Jesus Prayer?

Elder. In the Divine name of the God-man, our Lord and God, Jesus Christ. The Apostles, as we see from the book of Acts and from the Gospel, performed great miracles in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ: they healed ailments that were incurable by human means, raised the dead, commanded demons, cast them out from people possessed by them…

Student. Some argue that practicing the Jesus Prayer will always, or almost always, result in delusion, and they strongly forbid practicing this prayer.

Elder. In the assimilation of such a thought and in such a prohibition lies terrible blasphemy, lies a deplorable charm. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, is the only source of our salvation, the only means of our salvation; His human name borrowed from His Divinity the unlimited, all-holy power to save us; how can this power that acts for salvation, this only power that bestows salvation, be perverted and act in destruction? This makes no sense! This is a sad, blasphemous, soul-destroying absurdity! Those who have adopted such a way of thinking are definitely in demonic delusion, deceived by a false mind that came from Satan. Satan has insidiously rebelled against the all-holy and magnificent name of our Lord Jesus Christ, uses human blindness and ignorance as his weapon, and slandered the name, “more than any name.” In the name of Jesus every knee will bow, those in heaven and on earth and under the earth”(Phil. 2:9-10). Those who prohibit praying the Jesus Prayer can respond with the words of the apostles Peter and John to a similar prohibition made by the Jewish Sanhedrin: “Whether it is righteous before God, you must listen rather than judge God”(Acts 4:19). The Lord Jesus commanded to pray in His all-holy name, He gave us a priceless gift; What significance can a human teaching have that contradicts the teaching of God, a human prohibition that tends to eliminate and destroy the command of God, to take away a priceless gift? It is dangerous, very dangerous, to preach a doctrine contrary to the doctrine preached in the Gospel. Such an undertaking is an arbitrary separation of oneself from the grace of God, according to the testimony of the Apostle (Gal. 1:8)…

Student. However, the Holy Fathers greatly warn those who practice the Jesus Prayer against delusion.

Elder. Yes, they warn. They warn against delusion both those who are in obedience, and those who are silent, and those who fast – in a word, anyone who practices any kind of virtue. The source of delusion, like all evil, is the devil, and not any virtue. “One must observe with all caution,” says St. Macarius the Great, “the intrigues, deceptions and evil actions perpetrated by the enemy (the devil) on all sides. Just as the Holy Spirit through Paul serves everyone for everyone (1 Cor. 9:22), so the evil spirit evilly tries to be everything to everyone in order to bring everyone down to destruction. With those who pray, he pretends to be praying, so as to make him arrogant about prayer; He fasts with those who are fasting in order to seduce them with self-conceit and drive them into a frenzy; with those knowledgeable in the Holy Scriptures, and he rushes into the study of Scripture, apparently seeking knowledge, but in essence trying to lead them to a false understanding of Scripture; having been worthy of the illumination of light, he too is seen to have this gift, as Paul says:
“Satan is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14), so that he can be seduced by the apparition of a kind of light to attract him to himself. It’s easy to say: he takes on all kinds of appearances for everyone, so that by an action similar to the action of good, he can enslave the ascetic for himself, and, covering himself with appearances, overthrow him into destruction 43. I happened to see elders who were exclusively engaged in intense physical feats, and who came from it into the greatest conceit, the greatest self-delusion. Their spiritual passions – anger, pride, deceit, disobedience – received extraordinary development. Selfishness and selfishness completely prevailed in them. They decisively and bitterly rejected all the most soul-saving advice and warnings of confessors, abbots, even saints: they, trampling on the rules of not only humility, but also modesty, decency itself, did not stop expressing disdain for these persons in the most arrogant way.

A certain Egyptian monk at the beginning of the 4th century became a victim of the most terrible demonic delusion. Initially, he fell into arrogance, then, due to arrogance, he came under the special influence of an evil spirit. The devil, based on the arbitrary arrogance of the monk, took care to develop this ailment in him, so that, through his matured and strengthened arrogance, he could finally subjugate the monk to himself and involve him in the destruction of his soul. Helped by the demon, the monk achieved such disastrous success that he stood with his bare feet on hot coals, and, standing on them, read the entire Lord’s Prayer “Our Father”.

Of course, people who did not have spiritual reasoning saw in this action a miracle of God, the extraordinary holiness of the monk, the power of the Lord’s Prayer, and glorified the monk with praise, developing pride in him and helping him to destroy himself. There was neither a miracle of God nor the holiness of the monk here; the power of the Lord’s Prayer did not operate here, Satan acted here, based on man’s self-delusion, on his falsely directed will, here demonic delusion acted…

Student. What is it in a person, what condition in himself, that makes him capable of delusion?

Elder. St. Gregory of Sinaite says: “In general, one cause of delusion is pride.” 44. In human pride, which is self-deception, the devil finds a convenient refuge for himself, and adds his seduction to human self-deception. Every person is more or less prone to prelest: because “the purest human nature has something proud in itself” 45.

The warnings of the fathers are sound! You must be very careful, you must protect yourself very much from self-delusion and charm. In our time, with the complete impoverishment of God-inspired mentors, we need special caution, special vigilance over ourselves. They are needed for all monastic feats; they are most needed during the feat of prayer, which of all feats is the most sublime, the most soul-saving, and the most maligned by enemies46. “Live with fear” (1 Peter 1:17), bequeaths the Apostle. The exercise of the Jesus Prayer has its own beginning, its own gradualness, and its own endless end. It is necessary to begin the exercise from the beginning, and not from the middle and not from the end, His Holiness Callistus, Patriarch of Constantinople, depicting the spiritual fruits of this prayer, says: “let none of those who have not been taught the mysteries or those who demand milk, having heard the lofty teaching about the grace-filled effect of prayer, dare to touch it. Such an untimely attempt is forbidden. Those who encroach on it and seek prematurely what comes in due time, those who are trying to ascend to the haven of dispassion in a dispensation that does not correspond to it, the Fathers recognize them as being in a state of insanity. It is impossible for someone who has not learned to read and write to read books.”47

Student. What does it mean to start an exercise with the Jesus Prayer from the middle and the end, and what does it mean to start this exercise from the beginning?

Elder. Those beginners begin in the middle, who, having read in the Fathers’ writings the instructions for practicing the Jesus Prayer, given by the Fathers to the silent ones, that is, to monks who have already been very successful in monastic feats, thoughtlessly accept this instruction as the guide for their activities. Those who, without any preliminary preparation, begin with their minds to ascend into the temple of the heart and from there send up prayer begin from the middle. Those who seek to immediately reveal within themselves the gracious sweetness of prayer and its other grace-filled effects begin at the end. One must begin from the beginning, that is, perform prayer with “attention” and “reverence”, with the goal of “repentance”, taking care only that these three qualities are constantly present in prayer. So Saint John Climacus, this great worker of heartfelt prayer with grace, prescribes attentive prayer to those who are in obedience, and heartfelt prayer to those who are ripe for silence. For the former, he recognizes prayer that is alien to absent-mindedness as impossible, and from the latter he demands such prayer 48. In human society one must pray with one’s mind, and in private – both with one’s mind and lips, somewhat aloud to oneself 49. Special care, the most careful care, must be taken for the improvement of morality in accordance with the teachings of the Gospel. Experience will not be slow to reveal to the mind of the person praying the closest connection between the commandments of the Gospel and the Jesus Prayer. These commandments serve for this prayer what oil serves for a burning lamp; without oil the lamp cannot be lit; when the oil becomes depleted, it cannot burn: it goes out, spreading stinking smoke around itself… True silence consists in the Jesus Prayer internalized to the heart – and some of the Holy Fathers accomplished the great feat of heartfelt silence and seclusion, surrounded by human rumor50. Only on morality brought into order by the Gospel commandments, only on this solid stone of the Gospel, can a majestic, sacred, immaterial temple of God-pleasing prayer be erected. The work of one who builds on the arctic fox is in vain: on an easy, wavering morality (Matthew 7:26). Morality, brought into a harmonious, splendid order, strengthened by skill in fulfilling the Gospel commandments, can be likened to an indestructible silver or golden vessel, which alone is capable of worthily receiving and safely preserving within itself the priceless, spiritual myrrh: prayer.

Saint Simeon the New Theologian, speaking about the occasional failure of prayer asceticism and the tares of delusion that arise from it, attributes the cause of both failure and delusion to the failure to maintain correctness and gradualism in the ascetic endeavor. “Those who want to ascend,” says the Theologian, “to the heights of prayerful success, should not begin to go from top to bottom, but should ascend from bottom to top, first to the first step of the ladder, then to the second, then to the third, finally to the fourth. In this way, anyone can rise from the earth and ascend to heaven. Firstly, he must strive to tame and diminish passions. Secondly, he must practice psalmody, that is, in oral prayer; when the passions diminish, then prayer, naturally bringing joy and sweetness to the tongue, is considered pleasing to God. Thirdly, he must engage in mental prayer.” Here, of course, is prayer performed with the mind in the heart; the attentive prayer of beginners, with the sympathy of the heart. The Fathers rarely honor the name mental prayer, classifying it more as oral. Fourth, it must go back to vision. The first belongs to beginners; the second – those who grow in prosperity; the third – those who have reached the extreme prosperity; fourth, perfect.” Further, the Theologian says that those who struggle to reduce passions must learn to guard their hearts and to attentively pray the Jesus Prayer, which corresponds to their disposition51. In the dormitories of Pachomius the Great, which produced the most exalted practitioners of mental prayer, each new entrant into the monastery was, firstly, occupied with bodily labor under the guidance of an elder for three years. Through bodily labors, frequent instructions from the elder, daily confession of external and internal activities, and cutting off the will, passions were powerfully and quickly curbed, and significant purity was brought to the mind and heart. While practicing the labors, the novice was taught how to perform prayer in accordance with his dispensation. After three years, beginners were required to study by heart the entire Gospel and the Psalter, and for capable students, the entire Holy Scripture, which unusually develops oral, attentive prayer. After this, the secret teaching of mental prayer began; it was explained abundantly by both the New and Old Testaments 52. In this way, the monks were introduced to the correct understanding of mental prayer and the correct exercise of it. From the strength of the foundation and from the correctness of the exercise, the success was marvelous 53.

Student. Is there any sure way to protect oneself from delusion in general, during all monastic endeavors, and, in particular, when practicing the Jesus Prayer?

Elder. Just as pride is generally the cause of delusion, so humility – a virtue directly opposite to pride – serves as a sure warning and protection from delusion. Saint John Climacus called humility “the destruction of passions”54. Obviously, in someone in whom passions do not operate, in whom passions are curbed, delusion cannot operate, because “delusion is a passionate or biased deviation of the soul towards lies on the basis of pride.”

When practicing the Jesus Prayer, and prayer in general, the form of humility called “crying” completely and faithfully protects. Crying is a heartfelt feeling of repentance, saving sadness over the sinfulness and varied, numerous weaknesses of man. Crying is “a broken spirit, a contrite and humble heart, which God will not despise” (Ps. 50:19), that is, it will not give over to the power and reproach of the demons, as a proud heart, filled with conceit, arrogance, and vanity, gives over to them. Crying is the only sacrifice that God accepts from the fallen human spirit, until the renewal of the human spirit by the Holy Spirit of God. May our prayer be imbued with a feeling of repentance, may it be coupled with crying, and may delusion never affect us. Saint Gregory of Sinaite in the last article of his work55, in which he set out prayers for ascetics to warn against soul-destroying delusion, says: “It is no small work to achieve the exact truth and become pure from everything that is opposed to grace, because it is usual for the devil to show, especially before beginners, his charm in the image of the truth, giving the evil one the appearance of the spiritual. For this reason, the one who strives in silence to achieve pure prayer, must walk the mental path of prayer with much trembling and weeping, asking for instruction from the skilled, always weeping over one’s sins, grieving and fearing, lest one be subjected to torment or fall away from God, be separated from Him in this or the next century. If the devil sees that the ascetic lives deplorably, he does not stay with him, not tolerating the humility that comes from crying… A great weapon is to have weeping when praying. Unpretentious prayer consists of warmth with the Jesus Prayer, which (the Jesus Prayer) puts fire into the earth of our hearts, in warmth, burning passion like thorns, producing joy and tranquility in the soul. This warmth does not come from the right or left side, and not from above, but vegetates in the very heart, like a source of water from the Life-giving Spirit 56. Love to find and acquire it alone in your heart, keeping your mind ever-undreamy, alien to understandings and thoughts, and do not be afraid. He who said: “Be of good cheer, I am, do not be afraid” (Matthew 14:27), He is with us. He is the One we are looking for. He will always protect us – and we should not be afraid or sigh when calling on God. If some have gone astray, having undergone mental damage, then know that they were subjected to this out of self-indulgence and arrogance.” Nowadays, due to the complete impoverishment of spirit-bearing mentors, the ascetic of prayer is forced to be exclusively guided by the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers 57. This is much more difficult. A new reason for extreme weeping!

Spirit of Novice Prayer

Introduction

Here we offer a teaching about the quality of prayer characteristic of someone who begins to go to the Lord through repentance. The main ideas are presented separately, each with the purpose that they can be read with greater attention and retained in memory with greater convenience. Reading them, feeding the mind with truth and the heart with humility, can provide the soul with the proper direction in its prayerful feat and serve as a preparatory exercise for it.

1. Prayer is the offering of our petitions to God.

2. The basis of prayer is that man is a fallen creature. He strives to receive the bliss that he had but lost, and therefore he prays.

3. The refuge of prayer is in God’s great mercy towards the human race. The Son of God, to save us, offered Himself to His Father as a propitiatory, reconciling sacrifice – on this basis, wanting to engage in prayer, reject doubt and double-mindedness (James 1: 6-8). Don’t say to yourself: “I am a sinner; will God really hear me? If you are a sinner, then the consoling words of the Savior apply to you: “I have not come… call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13).

4. The preparation for prayer is: an unsatiated belly, cutting off cares with the sword of faith, forgiveness from the sincerity of the heart of all offenses, thanksgiving to God for all sorrowful incidents of life, removing from oneself absent-mindedness and daydreaming, reverent fear, which is so characteristic of a creature when it is allowed to have a conversation with its Creator due to the ineffable goodness of the Creator to the creature.

5. The Savior’s first words to fallen humanity were: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is drawing near” (Matthew 4:17). Therefore, until you enter this Kingdom, knock on its gates with repentance and prayer.

6. True prayer is the voice of true repentance. When prayer is not animated by repentance, then it does not fulfill its purpose, then God is not pleased with it. He will not despise “a broken spirit, a contrite and humble heart” (Ps. 50:19).

7. The Savior of the world calls blessed “the poor in spirit”, that is, those who have the most humble concept of themselves, considering themselves fallen creatures, located here on earth, in exile, outside their true fatherland, which is Heaven. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, who pray with a deep consciousness of their poverty, “for these are the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). “Blessed are those who weep” in their prayers from the feeling of their poverty, “for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4) with the gracious consolation of the Holy Spirit, which consists in the peace of Christ and in the love of Christ for all neighbors. Then none of the neighbors, and the worst enemy, is excluded from the embrace of love of the one praying; then the one who prays is reconciled with all the most difficult circumstances of earthly life.

8. The Lord, teaching us to pray, likens a praying soul to a widow, offended by a rival, sitting persistently before an impartial and impartial judge (Luke 18:1-8). When praying, do not move away from this likeness in your soul. Let your prayer be, so to speak, a constant complaint against the sin that oppresses you. Go deep into yourself, open yourself with attentive prayer – you will see that you are definitely a widow in relation to Christ because of the sin living in you, hostile to you, causing internal struggle and torment in you, making you alien to God.

9. “All day,” David says about himself, “I walked all day of my earthly life mourning” (Ps. 37:7), I passed in blissful sorrow about my sins and shortcomings: “For my life is filled with reproach, and there is no healing in my flesh” (Ps. 37:8). The procession along the path of earthly life is called lyadvia, and the moral state of a person is called flesh. All steps of all people on this path are filled with stumbling blocks; their moral state cannot be healed by any of their own means and efforts. For our healing, the grace of God is necessary, healing only those who recognize themselves as sick. True recognition of oneself as sick is proven by thorough and constant repentance.

10. “Work for the Lord with fear and rejoice in Him with trembling”, says the prophet (Ps. 2:11), and another prophet speaks on behalf of God: “On whom will I look, only to the meek and silent and trembling at My words” (Is. 66:2). The Lord “look upon the prayer of the humble, and do not despise their prayers” (Ps. 101:18). He is “give life”, that is, salvation, “to the brokenhearted” (Is. 57:15).

11. Even if someone stands at the very height of virtues, if he does not pray as a sinner, his prayer is rejected by God 58.

12. On that day on which I do not cry for myself, said a certain blessed worker of true prayer, I consider myself to be in self-delusion (These words were spoken by Hieroschemamonk Athanasius, who was silent in the tower of the Svensky Monastery of the Oryol diocese, to a certain wanderer who visited him in 1829).

13. Even though we undergo many sublime feats, said Saint John Climacus, they are untrue and fruitless if we do not have a painful feeling of repentance during them 59.

14. The sadness of thinking about sins is an honest gift of God; he who wears it in his chest wears the shrine with due care and reverence. It replaces all bodily feats with a lack of strength to perform them 60. On the contrary, prayer requires labor from a strong body; Without it, the heart will not be broken, prayer will be powerless and untrue 61.

15. The feeling of repentance protects a praying person from all the wiles of the devil: the devil flees from ascetics who exude from themselves the fragrance of humility, which is born in the heart of the repentant 62.

16. Bring to the Lord in your prayers the babbling of a child, a simple childish thought – not eloquence, not reason. “Unless you are converted”, – as if from paganism and Mohammedanism, from your complexity and duplicity “ and you,” the Lord told us, “ like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matt. 18:3) 63.

17. A baby expresses all its desires by crying – and let your prayer always be accompanied by crying. Not only with the words of prayer, but also with prayerful silence, let your desire for repentance and reconciliation with God, your extreme need for God’s mercy, be expressed through crying.

18. The dignity of prayer lies solely in quality, and not in quantity. Then quantity is commendable when it leads to quality. Quality always leads to quantity; quantity leads to quality when the worshiper prays carefully 64.

19. The quality of true prayer is when the mind is attentive during prayer, and the heart sympathizes with the mind.

20. Enclose your mind in the spoken words of prayer – and you will keep it in attention 65. Keep your eyes on your lips or closed 66 – this will contribute to the connection of the mind with the heart. Pronounce the words with extreme leisurely – and you will be more comfortable enclosing your mind in the words of prayer: not a single word of your prayer will be uttered without being animated by attention.

21. The mind, enclosed in the words of prayer, attracts the heart to compassion for itself. This sympathy from the heart to the mind is expressed by tenderness, which is a pious feeling that combines sadness with quiet, meek consolation 67.

22. Necessary accessories of prayer – “waiting” 68. When you feel dryness, bitterness, do not give up prayer: for your waiting and feat against heartfelt insensibility, God’s mercy will descend to you, consisting of tenderness. Tenderness is a gift of God, sent down to those who remain and endure in prayer (Rom. 12:12; Col. 4:2), constantly growing in them, guiding them to spiritual perfection.

23. The mind, standing in attentive prayer before the invisible God, must itself be invisible, like the image of the invisible Divinity, that is, the mind must not imagine any form either in itself, or from itself, or in front of itself – it must be completely formless. Otherwise: the mind must be completely alien to daydreaming, no matter how immaculate and holy this dream may seem 69.

24. During prayer, do not seek delight, do not set your nerves in motion, do not get your blood hot. On the contrary, keep your heart in deep calm, into which it is brought by a feeling of repentance: material fire, the fire of fallen nature, is rejected by God. Your heart needs to be cleansed by crying repentance and prayer of repentance; when it is cleansed, then God Himself will send down into it His all-holy spiritual fire 70.

25. Attention during prayer calms the nerves and blood, helps the heart to plunge into repentance and remain in it. Divine fire does not disturb the silence of the heart if it descends into the chamber of the heart, when the disciples of Christ are gathered in it – thoughts and feelings borrowed from the Gospel. This fire does not scorch or heat the heart, on the contrary, it irrigates, cools it, reconciles a person with all people and with all circumstances, draws the heart into ineffable love for God and for neighbors 71.

26. Absent-mindedness robs prayer. The one who has prayed absent-mindedly feels a vague emptiness and dryness within himself. One who constantly prays absent-mindedly is deprived of all the spiritual fruits that are usually born from attentive prayer, and acquires a state of dryness and emptiness. From this state is born coldness towards God, despondency, clouding of the mind, weakening of faith and from them deadness in relation to eternal, spiritual life. Yet, taken together, this is a clear sign that such prayer is not accepted by God.

27. Daydreaming in prayer is even more harmful than absent-mindedness. Absent-mindedness makes prayer fruitless, and daydreaming causes false fruits: self-delusion and what the holy fathers call demonic delusion. Images of objects of the visible world and images of the invisible world, composed by daydreaming, are imprinted and slowed down in the mind, making it seem material, transferring it from the divine land of spirit and truth to the land of matter and lies. In this country, the heart begins to sympathize with the mind not with a spiritual feeling of repentance and humility, but with a carnal feeling, a bloody and nervous feeling, a timeless and disorderly feeling of pleasure, so unusual for sinners, a wrong and false feeling of imaginary love for God. Criminal and abominable love seems unskillful in the spiritual experiences of a saint, but in fact it is only a disordered sensation of a heart uncleaned from passions, enjoying vanity and voluptuousness set in motion by daydreaming. This state is a state of self-delusion. If a person sharpens it, then the images that appear to him acquire extreme vividness and attractiveness. When they appear, the heart begins to heat up and enjoy lawlessly, or, as the Holy Scripture defines it, to commit adultery (Ps. 73:27). The mind recognizes such a state as blessed, divine. Then the transition to obvious demonic delusion is close, in which a person loses autocracy and becomes a plaything and a laughing stock of the evil spirit. God turns away with anger from dreamy prayer that brings a person into this state. And the sentence of Scripture comes true over the one who prays such prayer: “let his prayer become sin” (Ps. 109:7) 72.

28. Reject apparently good thoughts and apparently bright understandings that come to you during prayer, distracting you from prayer73. They leave the realm of the false mind and sit, like riders on horses, on vanity. Their gloomy faces are covered so that the mind of the person praying cannot recognize their enemies in them. But precisely because they are hostile to prayer, distract the mind from it, lead it into captivity and painful enslavement, expose and empty the soul – precisely because they are recognized as enemies, and from the realm of the ruler of the world. Spiritual mind, the mind of God, promotes prayer, concentrates a person in himself, immerses him in attention and tenderness, brings to mind reverent silence, fear and surprise, born from the feeling of the presence and greatness of God. This feeling in due time can become very intensified and make a prayer for the one praying to the Terrible Judgment Seat of God 74.

29. Attentive prayer, free from distraction and daydreaming, is a vision of the invisible God, drawing to Himself the vision of the mind and the desire of the heart. Then the mind sees without form and completely satisfies itself with non-seeing, which surpasses all vision. The reason for this blissful invisibility is the infinite subtlety and incomprehensibility of the Object to which vision is directed. The invisible Sun of Truth – God also emits rays that are invisible, but cognizable by the clear sensation of the soul: they fill the heart with wonderful calmness, faith, courage, meekness, mercy, love for neighbors and God. By these actions, visible in the inner heart cell, a person undoubtedly recognizes that his prayer is accepted by God, begins to believe with living faith and firmly trust in the Lover and Beloved. This is the beginning of the revival of the soul for God and a blessed eternity 75.

30. The fruits of true prayer: holy peace of the soul, combined with quiet, silent joy, alien to daydreaming, conceit and heated impulses and movements; love for neighbors, which does not distinguish between good and evil, worthy and unworthy, but intercedes for everyone before God as for itself, as for its own members. From such love for others, the purest love for God shines forth.

31. These fruits are a gift from God. They are attracted to the soul by its attention and humility, and are preserved by its faithfulness to God.

32. The soul then remains faithful to God when it withdraws from every word, deed and thought of sin, when it immediately repents of those sins into which it is drawn due to its weakness.

33. We prove that we want to acquire the gift of prayer by patiently sitting down in prayer at the door of prayer. For patience and constancy we receive the gift of prayer. “Lord,” says the Scripture, “give prayer, with grace to the one who prays” (1 Samuel 2:9) patiently with one’s own effort.

34. For beginners, short and frequent prayers are more useful than long ones, separated from one another by a significant amount of time 76.

35. Prayer is the highest exercise for the mind.

36. Prayer is the head, source, mother of all virtues 77.

37. Be wise in your prayer. Do not ask for anything perishable or vain in it, remembering the Savior’s commandment: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all this”, that is, all the needs for temporary life, “will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33) 78.

38. When intending to do something or wanting something, also in the difficult circumstances of life, cast your thoughts in prayer before God: ask for what you consider necessary and useful, but leave the fulfillment and non-fulfillment of your request to the will of God in faith and trust in the omnipotence, wisdom and goodness of the will of God. This excellent image of prayer was given to us by the One who prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane – “let the cup appointed for Him pass by…. “Either way it is not My will,” He concluded His prayer to the Father, “but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

39. Bring to God a humble prayer for the virtues and pious deeds you perform; cleanse and perfect them through prayer and repentance. Speak about them in your prayer what righteous Job said in his daily prayer about his children: “When my sons sinned and in their thoughts they thought evilly against God” (Job 1:5). Evil malice imperceptibly mixes with virtue, defiles, poisons it.

40. Renounce everything in order to inherit prayer, and raised from the earth on the cross of self-denial, commend your spirit, soul and body to God, and from Him receive holy prayer, which, according to the teaching of the Apostle and the Universal Church, is the action of the Holy Spirit in a person, when the Spirit dwells in a person 79.

Conclusion

Whoever neglects to practice attentive prayer, dissolved in repentance, is alien to spiritual success, alien to spiritual fruits, and is in the darkness of diverse self-delusion. Humility is the only altar on which people are allowed to offer prayer sacrifices to God – the only altar from which prayer sacrifices are accepted by God 80; prayer is the mother of all true, divine virtues. It is impossible, impossible, for one who has rejected humility and who has not bothered to enter into a sacred union with prayer. The exercise of prayer is the testament of the apostle: “pray without ceasing”, the apostle tells us (1 Thessalonians 5:17). The exercise of prayer is a commandment of the Lord Himself, a commandment combined with a promise. “Ask…,” the Lord invites us, the Lord commands us, “and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; press, and the opening will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). “He will not sleep, he will fall asleep” (Ps. 121:4) prayer, until he shows the one who loves it and constantly practices in it the palace of eternal pleasures, until he leads him into Heaven. There she will be transformed into a constant sacrifice of praise. This praise will be unceasingly brought, will be proclaimed unceasingly by God’s chosen ones from the unceasing feeling of bliss in eternity, vegetated here on earth and in time, from the seeds of repentance sown by attentive and diligent prayer. Amen.

A word on the cell prayer rule

“Go into your closet and, having shut your doors, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you in reality”(Matthew 6:6). This is the Lord Himself’s establishment of solitary cell prayer.

The Lord, who commanded solitary prayer, very often Himself during His earthly wanderings, as the Gospel narrates, remained in it. He had no place to lay His head, and therefore for Him the silent, calm cell was often replaced by silent mountain peaks and shady hilltops.

Before His descent into suffering, which was to purchase the salvation of the human race, the Lord prayed in the secluded garden of Gethsemane. During prayer, the God-man knelt; from the intense prayerful feat, copious sweat rolled from His face in bloody drops to the ground. The Garden of Gethsemane consisted of centuries-old olive trees. And during the day, in the light of the sun’s rays, a thick shadow lay in it, and then the dark night of Palestine lay on it. No one shared His prayers with the Lord: His disciples were sleeping in the distance, and sleeping nature was all around. A traitor came here with torches and an armed crowd: the traitor knew the favorite place and time of Jesus’ prayers.

The darkness of the night covers objects from prying eyes, the silence of silence does not entertain the ear. In silence and at night you can pray more attentively. The Lord chose primarily solitude and the night for His prayer; He chose them so that we would not only obey His commandment about prayer, but also follow His example. Did the Lord, for Himself, need prayer? While He was with us on earth as a man, He, together as God, was inseparable from the Father and the Spirit, and had one Divine will and Divine power with Them.

“Go into your closet and, having shut your doors, pray to your Father who is in secret.”. Let none of your “shit” know about your prayer! Neither your friend, nor your relative, nor the vanity itself that cohabits your heart and incites you to tell someone about your feat of prayer, to hint about it.

Shut the doors of your cell from people who come to talk idle talk and steal your prayers; close the doors of your mind from extraneous thoughts that appear to distract you from prayer; close the doors of your heart from sinful sensations that will try to confuse and defile you – “and pray”.

Do not dare to bring to God multi-verbal and eloquent prayers composed by you, no matter how strong and touching they may seem to you: they are the product of a fallen mind and, being a desecrated victim, cannot be accepted on the spiritual altar of God. And you, admiring the elegant expressions of the prayers you have composed and recognizing the refined effect of vanity and voluptuousness as a consolation of conscience and even grace, will be carried away far from prayer. You will be carried away far from prayer at the very time when it seems to you that you are praying abundantly and have already achieved a certain degree of pleasing God.

The soul that begins the path of God is immersed in deep ignorance of everything divine and spiritual, even if it were rich in the wisdom of this world. Because of this ignorance, she does not know how and how much she should pray. To help the infant soul, the Holy Church established prayer “rules.” A prayer rule is a collection of several prayers composed by the divinely inspired holy fathers, adapted to a certain circumstance and time.

The purpose of the rule is to provide the soul with the amount of prayerful thoughts and feelings it lacks, moreover, thoughts and feelings that are correct, holy, and truly pleasing to God. The grace-filled prayers of the holy fathers are filled with such thoughts and feelings.

For the prayer exercise in the morning there is a special collection of prayers called “morning prayers” or “morning rule”; for night prayer before going to bed – another collection of prayers, called “prayers for bedtime” or “evening rule”. A special collection of prayers is read by those preparing for communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ and is called the “rule for holy communion.” Those who have devoted a large part of their time to pious exercises read a special collection of prayers, called the “daily” or “monastic rule,” at about the 3rd hour in the afternoon. Others read several kathismas 81 every day, several chapters from the New Testament, make several bows – all this is called the “rule”.

Rule! What a precise name, borrowed from the very effect produced on a person by prayers called the rule! The prayer rule guides the soul correctly and holy, teaches it to worship God “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23), while the soul, being left to itself, could not follow the correct path of prayer. Due to her damage and darkening by sin, she would constantly turn to the sides, often into the abyss: now into absent-mindedness, now into daydreaming, now into various empty and deceptive ghosts of high prayerful states, created by her vanity and self-love.

Prayer rules keep the person praying in a saving disposition of humility and repentance, teaching him constant self-condemnation, feeding him with tenderness, strengthening him with hope in the all-good and all-merciful God, delighting him with the peace of Christ, love for God and his neighbors.

How sublime and deep are the “prayers for holy communion!” What excellent preparation they provide to those approaching the Holy Mysteries of Christ! They clean and decorate the house of the soul with wonderful thoughts and sensations that are so pleasing to the Lord. The greatest of the Christian sacraments is majestically depicted and explained in these prayers; In contrast to this height, man’s shortcomings are vividly and accurately calculated, his weakness and unworthiness are shown. From these prayers, the incomprehensible goodness of God shines like the sun from the sky, because of which He deigns to unite closely with man, despite the insignificance of man.

Morning prayers breathe with cheerfulness, the freshness of the morning: he who has seen the light of the sensual sun and the light of the earthly day learns to desire the vision of the highest, spiritual light and the endless day produced by the Sun of truth – Christ.

The brief calm of sleep during the night is an image of a long sleep in the darkness of the grave. And they remind us of “prayers for the future” of our transition into eternity, review all our activities during the day, teach us to bring God confession of our sins and repentance for them.

The prayerful reading of the akathist to Sweetest Jesus, in addition to its own dignity, serves as an excellent preparation for the exercise of the Jesus Prayer, which reads like this:

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This prayer is almost the only exercise of successful ascetics who have achieved simplicity and purity, for whom all much thinking and verbosity serves as a burdensome distraction. The Akathist shows what thoughts can be accompanied by the Jesus Prayer, which seems extremely dry for beginners. Throughout its entire space, it depicts one sinner’s petition for mercy by the Lord Jesus Christ, but this petition is given various forms, in accordance with the infancy of the minds of the beginners. This is how babies are given food that has been previously softened.

In the akathist to the Mother of God, the incarnation of God the Word and the greatness of the Mother of God are glorified, who, for the birth of the God incarnate by Her, is blessed by all the kinsmen (Luke 1:48). As if in a vast picture, the great mystery of the incarnation of God the Word is depicted in the akathist with countless wondrous features, colors, and shades. Successful lighting enlivens every picture – and the akathist to the Mother of God is illuminated with the extraordinary light of grace. This light acts purely: it enlightens the mind, from it the heart is filled with joy and information. The incomprehensible is accepted, as if completely comprehended, by the wonderful effect it has on the mind and heart.

Many reverent Christians, especially monks, perform a very long evening rule, taking advantage of the silence and darkness of the night. To their bedtime prayers they add reading kathismas, reading the Gospel, the Apostle, reading akathists and bowing with the Jesus Prayer. In those hours in which the blind world indulges in riotous and noisy amusements, the servants of Christ weep in the silence of their cells, pouring out fervent prayers before the Lord. Having spent the night in a mad vigil, the sons of the world meet the coming day in gloom and despondency of spirit; in joy and good spirits, in the consciousness and feeling of an extraordinary ability for the thought of God and for all good deeds, the servants of God greet the day for which they spent the previous night in a feat of prayer.

The Lord knelt down during His prayer – and you should not neglect kneeling if you have enough strength to perform it. By worshiping to the face of the earth, according to the explanation of the fathers, our fall is depicted, and by rising from the earth our redemption 82. Before starting the evening rule, it is especially useful to make a feasible number of bows: from them the body will become somewhat tired and warm, and a feeling of pious sadness will be communicated to the heart; Both will be prepared to read the rule diligently and attentively.

When performing the rules and bows, there should be no rush; must perform both the rules and bows with as much leisure and attention as possible. It is better to read fewer prayers and bow less, but with attention, than a lot without attention.

Choose for yourself a rule that corresponds to your strengths. What the Lord said about the Sabbath, that it is for man, and not man for it (Mark 2:27), can and should be applied to all pious deeds, and between them to the prayer rule. A prayer rule is for a person, not a person for the rule: it should help a person achieve spiritual success, and not serve as an unbearable burden, crushing bodily strength and confusing the soul. Moreover, it should not serve as a reason for proud and harmful conceit, for harmful condemnation and humiliation of others.

A prudently chosen prayer rule, according to one’s strengths and type of life, serves as a great aid for one striving for his salvation. Performing it at the prescribed hours turns into a skill, a necessary natural need. The one who has acquired this blessed skill is barely approaching the usual place of performing the rules, when his soul is already filled with a prayerful mood: he has not yet had time to utter a single word of the prayers he reads, and already tenderness flows from his heart and his mind has gone completely deep into the inner cage.

“I prefer,” said some great father 83, “a short rule, but constantly followed, to a long one, but soon abandoned.” And prayer rules that are disproportionate to their strength always have this fate: at the first impulse of ardor, the ascetic performs them for some time, of course paying more attention to quantity than to quality; then the exhaustion produced by a feat that exceeds his strength gradually forces him to reduce and reduce the rules.

And often ascetics, who have foolishly set a burdensome rule for themselves, move from the difficult rule straight to abandoning all rules. After leaving the rule and even shortening it, embarrassment will certainly attack the ascetic. From embarrassment, he begins to feel mental distress. From frustration comes despondency. Having intensified, it produces relaxation and frenzy, and from their action the reckless ascetic indulges in an idle, absent-minded life, and with indifference falls into the grossest sins.

Having chosen for yourself a prayer rule commensurate with your strengths and spiritual needs, try to fulfill it carefully and without fail: this is necessary to maintain the moral strength of your soul, just as sufficient consumption of healthy food at certain times of the day is necessary to maintain bodily strength.

“God will not condemn us on the day of His judgment for abandoning the psalms,” says Saint Isaac of Syria, “not for abandoning prayer, but for the subsequent abandonment of them, the entry of demons into us. Demons, when they find a place, will enter and close the doors of our eyes – then they will fulfill with us, their tools, violently and uncleanly, with the most cruel vengeance, everything forbidden by God. And because of the abandonment of small (rules), for which the intercession of Christ is honored, we become subject (to demons), as it is written by some wise men: “He who does not submit his will to God will submit to his opponent.” These (rules), which seem small to you, will become walls for you against those who try to captivate us. The implementation of these (rules) inside the cell was wisely established by the founders of the church charter by revelation from above, for the preservation of our belly” 84.

The great fathers, who remained in constant prayer from the abundant action of God’s grace, did not abandon their rules, which they were accustomed to perform at certain hours of the night. We see many proofs of this in their lives: Anthony the Great, following the rules of the ninth hour – the church ninth hour corresponds to the third hour in the afternoon – was honored with Divine revelation; When the Monk Sergius of Radonezh was engaged in prayerful reading of the akathist to the Mother of God, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to him, accompanied by the apostles Peter and John.

Dearest brother! Submit your freedom to the rule: it, having deprived you of your destructive freedom, will bind you only in order to give you spiritual freedom, freedom in Christ. The chains will at first seem burdensome, then they will become precious to those bound by them. All the saints of God took upon themselves and bore the good yoke of the prayer rule – by imitation of them, you too should follow in this case our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, having become man and showing us the way of behavior, acted as His Father acted (John 5:19), said what the Father commanded Him (John 12:49), and had the goal of fulfilling the will of the Father in everything (John 5:30). The will of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is one. In relation to people, it consists in saving people.

All-Holy Trinity, our God! Glory to You. Amen.

A word about church prayer

Without any doubt, the most excellent in dignity of all earthly buildings is the “temple” or “house” of God, the “church”; these words are identical 85. Although God is present everywhere, in the church His presence is manifested in a special way – the most tangible and most useful for man. Then only the manifestation of God is even more useful and even more tangible for man, when man himself becomes the temple of God, having become the abode of the Holy Spirit, like the apostles and other greatest saints. But very few Christians achieve such a state. And therefore, leaving until another time the conversation about the miraculous, God-created, verbal temple of God – man and about the worship that should be performed in it, let us now talk about the material temple of God, created by human hands, about the prayers celebrated in it, about the duty of a Christian to carefully visit the temple of God, about the benefits of such a visit.

God’s temple is earthly Heaven. “In the temple of Thy glory, O Lord, stand, stand in Heaven,” sings the Holy Church86. The temple is a place of communication between God and people: all Christian sacraments are performed in it. The Divine Liturgy and consecration cannot be performed anywhere but in the church. And other sacraments must also be performed in the temple; if absolutely necessary, it is allowed to perform them, especially confession and blessing of oil, in homes. Day and night the temple of God resounds with the praise of God; there is no place in it for the words of this world. Everything in the temple of God is holy: the very walls, the platform, and the air. The angel of God constantly guards him; the angels of God and the saints of the triumphant Church descend into it. Presence in such a sacred building constitutes the greatest happiness for an earthly wanderer. The holy prophet David, although he was a king, although he had vast and magnificent chambers, although he possessed all the means of earthly pleasure and amusement, but, as if having examined everything and assessed everything properly, he said: “I have asked one thing of the Lord, this I will require: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may behold the beauty of the Lord and visit His holy temple”(Ps. 26:4). This was spoken by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David. Whoever, during his earthly life, visits the temple of God as often as possible, as if living in it, will, having been separated from his body, very conveniently move for eternal celebration to the heavenly temple not made by hands, whose creator is God. In the temple we pray, and are edified, and are cleansed of sins, and communicate with God.

The Savior showed us the example of visiting the temple of God (John 7:14), as did the holy apostles (Acts 3:1). Christians of all times have recognized careful attendance at the temple of God as an urgent duty. Saint Demetrius of Rostov likens visiting a temple, during all the prayers celebrated there, to a royal tribute, which everyone must pay daily87. If presence at every divine service performed in the church is recognized by the holy shepherd as an indispensable duty of every pious Christian, then all the more such presence is the sacred duty of a monk. The poor are excused from tribute due to their poverty, and the sick, held by illness in their cells, are dismissed from constantly going to church. The king’s dignitaries are free from tribute – and successful monks who practice mental feats and reap from them abundant fruit, which should be hidden from people, are free from constant going to church. Soldiers and all those in royal and state service are free from tribute; monks who are engaged in obediences during divine services are free from constant going to church. Take care that, under the pretext of obedience, or private practice of mental feats, or even imaginary weakness, the machinations of the devil, who hates prayer as the mother of virtues and as a sword that crushes evil spirits, does not work secretly and with justification, who uses all efforts and all means, giving these means all kinds of plausibility, in order to distract a person from prayer, disarm, destroy the disarmed person, or hurt88.

There are seven church prayers, but they are grouped into three sections:

1) Vespers, 2) Compline, 3) Midnight Office, 4) Matins with the first hour, 5) third hour, 6) sixth hour and 7) ninth hour. “Vespers”, with which the service of each day begins, is sent together with “Compline” and the “ninth hour”; The “ninth hour” is read before the “vespers.” “Matins” departs with the “first hour” and “midnight office”; “Midnight Office” is read before Matins, “the first hour” after “Matins”. The “third” and “sixth hours” are read along with the “figurative” ones, which are read after the hours. When “matins” is combined with “vespers” or Great Compline, then the prayer is called all-night vigil. It is sent before the great holidays, in honor of the holidays. The effect of the all-night vigil on the ascetic is that he who spends a significant part of the night in prayer with due reverence and attention feels the next day a special lightness, freshness, purity of mind, and the ability to think about God. That is why Saint Isaac of Syria said: “The sweetness bestowed on ascetics during the day flows from the light of nightly prayers (nightly activities) onto a pure mind.” 89. The Divine Liturgy is not counted among the seven prayers; it is beyond their number, as a special, most sacred prayer, which surrounds the bloodless Divine sacrifice 90.

We see a saving image of visiting the temple of God in the visit to the temple by a tax collector presented to us in the Gospel (Luke 18:10-14). The publican stood in the depths of the temple, did not consider it permissible to raise his eyes to heaven, but struck his chest, saying: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” The publican left the church, attracting the goodness of God to himself. And when you come to church, if you do not have any obedience in it, stand behind, in a modest corner or behind a pillar, so that you yourself do not have fun and so that your reverence is not exposed to shame by others; direct the eye of your mind to your heart, and your bodily eye to the ground, and pray to God in contrition of spirit, not recognizing any dignity, no virtue, admitting yourself guilty of countless sins, known and unknown to you. We sin a lot both in ignorance, and because of our limitations, and because of the damage to our nature by sin. Divine Scripture says: “God will not despise a broken and humble heart” (Ps. 50:19). And if you pray with the consciousness of your sinfulness and poverty, then God will hear your “voice from His holy temple” and your prayer “cry” your “before Him will pierce His ears” (Ps. 17:7) – He will shed His rich mercy on you. If you have any duty at the temple, then perform it with the greatest reverence and caution, as one serving God and not men.

Together with the mentioned publican, the Gospel narrates, a Pharisee went into the church to pray. As a person of significance, the Pharisee stood in a prominent place. He probably had an idea – it is common to all Pharisees – to bring edification to the people present by his decent standing and prayer. He considered vanity harmless to himself, as someone who had succeeded in virtue, and some hypocrisy as excusable in the form of general benefit. What was the Pharisee’s prayer? First, he glorified God. It’s a good start. But after that he began to count not God’s blessings, but his own merits and virtues, so that according to such a calculation it should have started to be different. The Pharisee would have started more correctly if he had started directly by glorifying himself, and not God. God is glorified only pro forma, for some cover of pride. This pride manifested itself in the condemnation and humiliation of his neighbor, whose conscience was unknown to the Pharisee, whose consciousness of sin attracted the mercy of God. The Pharisee, hypocritically glorifying God, said: “I am not, like other men, predatory, unrighteous, adulterous, or like this publican. I fast twice on Saturday, I give tithes as much as I can get.” What is obvious here is the lack of consciousness of one’s sinfulness, the consciousness of one’s dignity, the pride flowing from them, expressed by condemnation and humiliation of one’s neighbor. The Pharisee’s prayer was not accepted by the Lord, who at the conclusion of this parable story said: “Everyone who exalts himself will humble himself, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14). From this it is clear that everyone who wants his prayer to be accepted by God must bring it out of consciousness of his sinfulness and extreme insufficiency in relation to virtue; must offer it, rejecting the consciousness of his own merits, as if insignificant before the incomprehensible dignity of God; must bring it from a heart that has humbled itself before all its neighbors, from a heart that has loved all its neighbors, from a heart that has forgiven its neighbors all insults and insults. “But I,” the prophet says prayerfully to God, “through the multitude of Your mercy I will go into Your house, I will worship Your holy temple in Your passion” (Ps. 5:8).

The great mercy of God towards man is the establishment of public prayer services in God’s holy churches. These prayer books were established by the apostles, their holy disciples and the holy fathers of the first centuries of Christianity by revelation from above 91. Every Christian can take part in these prayer books; and the illiterate assimilates to himself the knowledge, eloquence, poetry of the spiritual, holy vitas and scribes of Christianity. With these prayers, anyone who wishes can very conveniently learn mental prayer: quantity of prayer leads to quality, the fathers said, and therefore long monastic prayers greatly help the ascetic move from verbal prayer to mental and heartfelt prayer. Church prayers contain extensive Christian dogmatic and moral theology – one who regularly attends church and carefully listens to its reading and chanting can clearly study everything necessary for an Orthodox Christian in the field of faith.

Blessed is the monk who always lives near the temple of God! He lives near Heaven, near paradise, near salvation. Let us not reject salvation, which by the mercy of God has been placed in our hands, so to speak. Especially a new monk should attend church without fail. In the years of old age and exhaustion, when both years and illness imprison the monk almost endlessly in his cell, he will feed on the spiritual supply that he collected during his youth and strength, hovering in the house of God. I call mental and heartfelt prayer a spiritual supply. May the merciful Lord grant us to use our monasticism as we should and, before leaving earthly life, to move our minds and hearts to Heaven. Prayer can take us there when Divine grace overshadows it and prayer in man becomes no longer the prayer of man, but the prayer of the Holy Spirit, interceding for man “with groanings that cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26). Amen.

A Word on Oral and Public Prayer

No one who wants to succeed in prayer dares to think lightly and judge prayer, pronounced with the lips and voice with the attention of the mind, as an insignificant act that does not deserve respect. If the holy fathers speak about the futility of oral and public prayer, not combined with attention, then it should not be concluded from this that they reject or disparage oral prayer itself. No! They just demand attention from her. Attentive oral and vocal prayer is the beginning and reason for smart prayer. Attentive oral and public prayer are also mental prayer. Let us first learn to pray attentively, verbally and publicly, and then we will conveniently learn to pray with our mind alone in the silence of our inner cage.

Oral and public prayer is indicated to us by the Holy Scriptures; The example of both this and public singing was set by the Savior Himself, and it was set by the holy apostles by succession from the Lord. “And having sung at the end of the Last Supper,” the holy evangelist Matthew narrates about the Lord and His apostles, “went out to the Mount of Olives” (Matthew 26:30). The Lord prayed in the hearing of all before the resurrection of the four-day-old Lazarus (John 11:41–42). Imprisoned in prison, the saints Apostle Paul and his companion Silas prayed and sang to God at the midnight hour; the other prisoners listened to them. Suddenly, at the voice of their psalmody, “he was a great coward, because he shook the foundations of the prison: and all the doors were opened, and the bonds of all were loosened” (Acts 16:26). The prayer of Saint Anna, the mother of the prophet Samuel, often cited by the holy fathers as a model of prayer, was not the only intelligent one. “She,” says the Scripture, “speaks in her heart, but her mouth moves, but her voice is not heard” (1 Samuel 1:13). Although this prayer was not public, it was also heartfelt and oral. The Holy Apostle Paul called oral prayer “the fruit of the lips”; commands to bring “a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of the lips of those who confess His name” (Heb. 13:15); commands the verb “to oneself in psalms and songs and spiritual songs”, together with vocal and oral prayer and hymns “making melody and singing in the hearts… of the Lord” (Eph. 5:19). He condemns inattentiveness in verbal and public prayer. “If unknown (unknown, incomprehensible) the trumpet will give a voice,” he says, “who will prepare for battle? So, even if the word is not prudent (that is, not understood), will you give it with your tongue, so that the verb can be understood? You will be speaking into the air” (1 Cor. 14:8-9). Although the apostle said these words specifically about those who pray and proclaim the promptings of the Holy Spirit in foreign languages, the holy fathers with justice apply them to those who pray without attention. A person who prays without attention and therefore does not understand the words he pronounces is what else to himself if not a foreigner?

Based on this, the Monk Nil of Sorsky says that he who prays with his voice and lips without attention prays to the air, and not to God. 92. “It’s strange that you want God to hear you, when you can’t hear yourself!” – says Saint Demetrius of Rostov, 93 borrowing words from the holy martyr Cyprian of Carthage. And this definitely happens with praying lips and voices without attention: they do not hear themselves so much, they allow themselves to be entertained so much, their thoughts wander so far from prayer into foreign objects that it often happens to them to suddenly stop, forgetting what they read; or they begin to say words from other prayers instead of the words of the prayer being read, although the open book is before their eyes. How can the holy fathers not condemn such inattentive prayer, damaged and destroyed by absent-mindedness! “Attention,” says Saint Simeon the New Theologian, “should be as connected and inseparable with prayer as the body is connected with the soul, which cannot be separated, cannot be one without the other. Attention must anticipate and guard enemies, like some kind of guard; Let it be the first to struggle against sin, and resist the evil thoughts that come to the heart; Let attention be followed by prayer, immediately destroying and killing all the evil thoughts with which attention first began to fight, for it alone cannot kill them. The life and death of the soul depends on this struggle, produced by attention and prayer. If we keep prayer pure through attention, we will succeed. If we do not try to keep it pure, but leave it unregulated, then it is desecrated by evil thoughts – we become indecent, we are deprived of prosperity.”

Oral, public prayer, like any other, must certainly be accompanied by attention. With attention, the benefits of verbal prayer are innumerable. The ascetic must begin with it. First of all, the Holy Church teaches it to her children. “The root of monastic life is psalmody,” said Saint Isaac of Syria 94. “The Church,” says Saint Peter of Damascus, “with a good and godly purpose, accepted songs and various troparia because of the weakness of our mind, so that we, foolish, attracted by the sweetness of psalmody, would, as if against our will, sing to God. Those who can understand and consider the words they pronounce become moved, and thus, like on a ladder, we ascend into good thoughts. To the extent that we succeed in acquiring the habit of divine thoughts, a divine desire appears in us and attracts us to achieve understanding the worship of the Father in spirit and truth according to the commandment of the Lord.” 95. The lips and tongue, often exercising in prayer and reading the word of God, acquire sanctification and become incapable of idle talk, laughter, and the utterance of humorous, shameful and rotten words.

Do you want to succeed in mental and heartfelt prayer? Learn to pay attention verbally and vocally – attentive oral prayer automatically turns into mental and heartfelt prayer. Do you want to learn to quickly and forcefully drive away the thoughts planted by the common enemy of humanity? Drive them away when you are alone in your cell, with a loud, attentive prayer, pronouncing its words slowly, with tenderness. The air is filled with attentive oral and vocal prayer – and the awe of the princes of the air embraces them, their muscles relax, their nets decay and collapse! The air is filled with attentive oral and vocal prayer – and the holy angels approach those praying and singing, stand in their faces, participate in their spiritual chants, as some saints of God were honored to witness this, and among others, our contemporary, the blessed elder Seraphim of Sarov.

Many great fathers throughout their lives practiced oral and public prayer and, at the same time, abounded in the gifts of the Spirit. The reason for their success was that their mind, heart, whole soul and whole body were connected to their voice and lips; they said the prayer with all their souls, with all their strength, with all their being, with all their being. Thus, the Monk Simeon of Divnogorets read the entire Psalter 96 during the night. St. Isaac of Syria mentions a certain blessed old man who was engaged in the prayerful reading of psalms, who was allowed to feel the reading only during one “glory,” after which Divine consolation took possession of him with such force that he remained for whole days in a sacred frenzy, not feeling any time beneath him 97. The Monk Sergius of Radonezh, during the reading of the akathist, was visited by the Mother of God, accompanied by the apostles Peter and John 98. They tell about the Monk Hilarion of Suzdal: when he read the akathist in the church, the words flew out of his mouth as if on fire, with inexplicable power and effect on those who were to come 99. The oral prayer of the saints was animated by attention and Divine grace, which united the powers of man divided by sin into one, is why it breathed such supernatural power and made such a wonderful impression on the listeners. The saints sang praises to God “in confession of the heart” 100; they sang and confessed to God “unshakably” 101, that is, without distraction; they sang to God “reasonably” (Ps. 46:8).

It should be noted that the venerable monks of the first times and all those who wanted to succeed in prayer did not at all, or did very little, engage in actual singing, and by the name of psalmody, which is mentioned in their lives and writings, one should understand the extremely unhurried, drawn-out reading of psalms and other prayers. Long reading is necessary to maintain strict attention and avoid distraction. Due to its length and similarity to singing, such reading is called psalmody. It was done by heart; monks of those times had a rule of studying the Psalter by heart: reading psalms by heart especially promotes attention. Such reading – no longer reading, as if done not from a book, but in the full sense of psalmody – can be done in a dark cell, with the eyes closed, which protects everything from distraction; meanwhile, the bright cell necessary for reading from a book, and the very look at the book, scatters and rejects the mind from the heart to the outside. “They sing,” says Saint Simeon the New Theologian, “that is to say, their lips pray.” 102. “Those who do not sing at all,” says the Monk Gregory of Sinaite, “also do good, if the essence is in prosperity: these do not require the speaking of psalms, but silence and unceasing prayer” 103. Actually, the fathers call reading the reading of the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the holy fathers, and prayer they call primarily the Jesus Prayer, also the prayer of the publican and other very short prayers, abundantly replacing psalmody, which is incomprehensible to beginners and cannot be explained to them satisfactorily, as exceeding spiritual reason and explained only by blessed experience.

Brethren! Let us be attentive in our verbal and public prayers, which we say during church services and in the solitude of our cells. We will not make our labors and life in the monastery fruitless by our inattention and negligence in the work of God. Negligence in prayer is harmful! “Cursed be,” says the Scripture, “do the work of the Lord with negligence” (Jer. 48:10). The effect of this oath is obvious: complete infertility and failure, despite many years of monasticism. Let us base the prayer feat, the main and most essential among the monastic feats, for which all other feats, attentive oral and public prayer, for which the merciful Lord in due time grants to the constant, patient, humble ascetic mental, heartfelt, grace-filled prayer. Amen.

About prayer and repentance. Teaching for the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee

The Gospel being read today depicts the prayer of a publican, which attracted God’s mercy to him. This prayer consisted of the following few words: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). It is worthy of attention that such a short prayer was heard by God, and that it was said in church, during public worship, during the reading and singing of psalms and other prayers. This prayer is approved by the Gospel, set forth as a model of prayer—pious consideration of it becomes our sacred duty.

Why did the publican not choose any majestic and touching psalm to pour out his heart before God, but turned to such a short prayer and repeated it alone during the entire service? We answer, borrowing the answer from the holy fathers104. When true repentance festers in the soul, when humility and contrition of spirit appear in it due to the sinfulness that has been revealed to its eyes, then verbosity becomes unusual and impossible for it. Concentrating within herself, directing all her attention to her plight, she begins to cry out to God with some brief prayer.

The spectacle of sinfulness is vast when it is presented to man by God; it is indescribable in eloquence and verbosity; more accurately depicts his sighing and groaning of the soul, clothed in the shortest and simplest words. Anyone who wants to reveal a deep feeling of repentance in himself uses a short prayer as a tool to achieve such a state, pronouncing it with all possible attention and reverence. Abandoning many words, even though they are holy, helps the mind to completely free itself from entertainment and strive with all its strength towards self-perception. “In your prayer, do not allow yourself to talk too much,” said Saint John Climacus, “so that your mind does not deviate to considering words. One word of the tax collector appeased God, and one correct saying saved the thief. Verbosity in prayer often leads the mind to distraction and daydreaming, while shortness of words tends to collect it.”105

Due to the greatest benefit delivered by short, attentive, concentrated prayer, the Holy Church instructs her children to become accustomed to some short prayer in good time. He who has accustomed himself to such prayer has a ready prayer in every place and at every time. And while traveling, and sitting at a meal, and doing handicrafts, and being in human society, he can cry out to God. If it is impossible to pray with your lips, it is possible to pray with your mind. In this regard, the convenience of a short prayer is obvious: when practicing, it is very easy to lose the meaning and sequence of a long prayer, but a short prayer is always preserved intact. After leaving it for a while, you can return to it again without any difficulty. Even during divine services, it is useful to repeat a short prayer in the spiritual cell: it not only does not interfere with attention to the prayers read and sung in the temple of God, but also promotes especially careful attention to them, keeping the mind from being distracted. If the mind is not kept in self-contemplation by a short prayer that fills the soul with a feeling of repentance, then it will easily succumb to distraction; During the service, leaving church reading and singing unattended, he will deviate into empty thoughts and dreams. This happened to the Pharisee mentioned today: the Pharisee superficially listened to the divine service and was carried away by sinful thoughts. Sinful thoughts not only deprived his prayer, which was already weak, of all dignity, but also turned it into a reason for condemning the one who prayed. The Pharisee’s prayer was rejected by God – the Pharisee left the temple sealed with the seal of God’s wrath, not understanding or feeling his spiritual distress for the reason that his heart, being dead to repentance, was filled with self-righteousness and self-delusion. When praying with a short prayer turns into a habit from frequent and constant use, then it becomes as if natural to a person. When listening attentively to something that particularly interests us, we make various exclamations that not only do not interfere with attention, but also aggravate it – in the same way, having acquired the skill of short prayer, we express through it our sympathy and attention to the prayers and psalmody we hear.

Throughout the entire Holy Pentecost, during all services, the prayer is often repeated publicly for all those present in the church: “God! cleanse me, a sinner.” Why is this such frequent repetition of the same prayer? So that we learn to repeat it often. For the same purpose, another short prayer is often repeated: “Lord, have mercy.”

The Savior of the world, who approved the prayer of the publican, subsequently allowed and granted us to pray in His all-holy name. Prayer in the name of the Lord Jesus, both by His name and as established by Him, is called the Jesus Prayer. Under the reign of the Old Testament, man turned to God, whom he did not yet know definitely; with the onset of another dominion, in the New Testament, in addition to the previous appeal, man is given the opportunity to turn to the God-man, as the Intercessor between God and men, as such an Intercessor in Whom the Divinity is united with humanity, as such an Intercessor, Who explained God to people with the detail and completeness possible for human comprehension, Who “God… confession” (Jn. 1, 18). The Old Testament prayer “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” is equivalent to the New Testament prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The Old Testament servants of God used the first prayer; The New Testament, using the first, most use the second, because it pleased the God-man to combine with His human name a special miraculous spiritual power. For constant prayer, the prayer “Lord, have mercy” is also used. It is an abbreviated Jesus Prayer and replaces it in those cases when pronouncing the whole Jesus Prayer becomes difficult, such as: during fright, during unexpected joy, during a serious illness, during a spiritual vision. In the latter case, the cry “Lord, have mercy” serves as an echo for the mind to those gracious understandings that appear to him after his purification, exceed his comprehension and cannot be expressed in words106.

What is the meaning of the verb “have mercy” or “be merciful” in all these prayers? This is a person’s consciousness of his destruction; this is a feeling of that mercy, that self-pity that the Lord commanded us to feel for ourselves and which is felt by very few; it is a denial of one’s own dignity; this is a request for God’s mercy, without which there is no hope of salvation for the lost. “The mercy of God is nothing other than the grace of the All-Holy Spirit; we sinners must constantly, relentlessly ask God for it. Have mercy, my Lord, over my disastrous state, into which I have fallen, having lost Your grace, and again restore Your grace to me. “By the Sovereign Spirit” (Ps. 50:14), strengthen me with the Spirit of Your power, so that I can resist temptations inflicted by the devil, and temptations arising from my fallen nature. Send me the spirit of chastity, so that I may emerge from the state of insanity in which I am, and correct my moral steps. Grant me the spirit of Thy fear, so that I may fear You, as befits the weakest creature to fear the great God, its Creator, so that, because of my reverence for You, I may sacredly keep Your commandments. Plant love for You in my heart, so that I will no longer be separated from You, so that I will not be carried away by an irresistible attraction to vile sin. Grant me Thy peace, so that it may keep my soul in unshakable peace, and will not allow my thoughts to wander around the universe unnecessarily, to my detriment, to my confusion, so that it will concentrate them in self-contemplation and from there lift them up to Thy throne. Grant me the spirit of meekness, so that I may refrain from anger and malice, and be constantly filled with kindness towards my brethren. Grant me the spirit of humility, so that I do not become arrogant, do not dream about myself, do not seek human praise and glory, but remember that I am earth and ashes, a fallen being, cast down to the earth because of my unworthiness, destined to be removed from the body and this world by death, destined to be presented to Thy terrible and impartial judgment.”107 “God, be merciful to me, a sinner! Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me! Lord, have mercy!”

Many say these short prayers with the greatest haste, caring only about fulfilling the prescribed number of them. In this way, they do not allow prayer to penetrate the heart and produce its characteristic effect, which consists in tenderness. The holy fathers rightly note that those who pray in this way pray to the air, and not to God108. Why are we bored in the temple of God? Because they did not feel the effect of prayer. Why do we rush to a full table? Because we know from experience the meaning of material food. Why don’t we rush to the temple of God, but try to come to it later, when a significant part of the service has already been performed? Because we do not know experimentally the meaning of prayer, which serves as food for the soul, which imparts spiritual strength to the soul. We do not know experimentally the meaning of prayer because we pray hastily, superficially, without attention. The effect on the soul of prolonged but inattentive prayer is similar to the effect of heavy rain on an iron roof, from which all the water runs off, no matter how much it spills, without producing any effect on the roof. On the contrary, attentive prayer can be likened to beneficial rain, irrigating a sown field, giving nourishment to the plants and preparing a rich harvest. Correcting an important error, which deprives the ascetic of prayer of all the fruit of his deed, students and confidantes of holy prayer, the holy fathers command to pronounce the words of both short prayers and all prayers in general with particular unhurriedness, with careful attention to the words of the prayer109. When reading prayers slowly, such attention is possible; when reading hastily, there is no room for attention. Prayer devoid of attention is devoid of its essence, devoid of life. Then it becomes like a body abandoned by the soul: it is not fragrant with humility, it does not ascend to God; struck and killed by absent-mindedness, she crawls in earthly decay and stench, communicating them to the prayer casually and coldly. The attention of the mind during prayer is reflected in the heart by blessed sadness for sins, which is repentance commanded by God. When the heart is filled with a feeling of repentance, then it in turn attracts the mind to special attention. Following attention and tenderness, all the gifts of the Holy Spirit enter the soul, making it the temple of God.

Let us give our prayer two properties: attention and repentance. With them, like two wings, may she fly to Heaven, may she appear before the face of God, may she grant us mercy. The prayer of the blessed publican had these two properties. Imbued with the consciousness of his sinfulness, he did not find in his deeds any hope of receiving salvation; he saw this hope in the sole mercy of God, calling all sinners to repentance and granting salvation for one repentance. As a sinner who has no good of his own, the publican took the last place in the temple; as a sinner unworthy of Heaven, he did not dare to raise his eyes to heaven. He directed them to the ground and, striking with repentance in the heart, from the depths of the heart, with all his soul he uttered a prayer combined with confession: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”.

The prayer was so effective and powerful that the sinner left the temple of God justified. The Lord, the Savior of men, who knew the heart, witnessed this, and the prophecy of the prophet came true over the repentant sinner: “The Lord of Zion” will build the human soul, destroyed by the fall, “and will appear in His glory. Consider the prayer of the humble, and do not despise their prayers. May this be written for the benefit of all mankind, may it be written for the benefit of all Christian tribes and descendants! “And the people who live” through repentance and attentive prayer, having felt their renewal by Divine grace, “they will praise the Lord” (Ps. 101:17-19), who was pleased to accept humanity and save people with His wondrous vision and His wondrous teaching. Amen.

Explanation of the mysterious meaning of the Gospel story. Lesson for the Thirty-First Week

The holy fathers give a mysterious interpretation to the event that the Gospel now tells us about. They see in the blind man, who attracted to himself the attention and mercy of the God-man intensified by his request and cry, the image of a praying sinner, praying relentlessly and with tears, receiving through such prayer forgiveness of sins and renewal of the soul by Divine grace110. We are all sinners, we are all in dire need of God’s mercy. Sinners! Let us consider with attention how a sinner receives God’s mercy through prayer.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Gospel narrates, left the city of Jericho. His disciples and a multitude of people followed him. A blind man was sitting on the way, asking passers-by for alms. Hearing the noise of a large crowd, he became curious about the reason for the public meeting. They answered him that Jesus was walking, that this multitude was attracted by His presence. Then the blind man began to shout in a loud voice: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Those who walked ahead of the Lord stopped the blind man, ordering him to remain silent, but he shouted even more loudly: “Son of David, have mercy on me.” The Lord stopped and ordered him to be brought to Himself. The blind man was called. He threw off his outer clothing and appeared before the Lord. The Lord asked him: “What do you want from Me?” The blind man answered: “Lord! I want You to give me sight.” The Lord said: “see clearly: your faith will save you”. The blind man immediately received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God (Luke 18:35-43; Mark 10:46-52).

Spiritually, all sinners must be considered blind, and they certainly are. The Holy Scripture calls them blind (Matthew 15:14); the very fact proves their blindness. The vision of sinners is so distorted and damaged by sin that in all fairness it must be recognized and called blindness. This blindness is the blindness of the spirit. This blindness is all the more dangerous because it most recognizes and preaches itself as having the most satisfactory, most excellent vision. The blind sinner does not see either God, or eternity, or himself, or the purpose for which man was created, or the death that awaits him and all people, which is inevitable neither for him nor for any of the people. Unhappy! He acts out of his blindness, he acts to destroy himself, he acts for the vain and temporary, he chases only ghosts. And death, forgotten by him, comes, tears him away from the field of his activity, presents him to the judgment of God, about which he never thought, for which he was not at all prepared. The beginning of the return to sight for a blind sinner is the consciousness and confession of blindness, the abandonment of activities performed under the guidance of this blindness.

Jericho was located in a valley cut through by the Jordan River. The terrain occupied by other Israeli cities is generally mountainous. The low position of Jericho depicts our state of decline. A mysterious blind man came out of Jericho. He stopped participating in the affairs that the inhabitants of the city were engaged in – he stopped committing obvious sins through the body; he sat down along the path along which the Savior and salvation walked, began to ask for alms from those passing by, to feed meagerly, by alms. Those who pass by are living vessels of the Holy Spirit, whom God sent into the world to guide the world to salvation throughout the entire life of the world111. Those who pass by are the instructions of the shepherds of the Church and ascetics of piety, temporarily wandering on earth like all people – they guide the sinner at the beginning of his conversion, they feed his smooth soul with knowledge delivered by faith from the ear (Rom. 10:17).

Although the blind man left the city, he could not go far from it because of his blindness. He sat near the city gates, the city’s rumor reached his ears, disturbed his heart, and confused his mind. Likewise, a blind sinner, when he leaves gross sins, cannot sever his connection with sin, both living inside him and acting on him from the outside. And after his conversion, he remains close to sin and in sin: sinful thoughts, dreams, sensations do not cease to disturb his mind and heart. Those accompanying and cooperating with Christ – the prophets, apostles and holy fathers – proclaim to the blind man about the closeness of the Savior to him, because the blind man in his darkness cannot imagine that God is near him. God seems to him to be distant, as if he did not exist at all. A blind man, instructed by the word of God that the omnipresent God is closer to him than all objects of the visible and invisible world, is encouraged and begins the feat of prayer. He has entered into the ascetic endeavor, but his mind is sealed with carnal wisdom and, being material due to the assimilation of material impressions, cannot pray spiritually; his heart, infected with various addictions, is constantly distracted by these addictions from prayer. The prayer of a blind man is dumb, material, mixed with carnal and sinful thoughts and dreams, desecrated by them, cannot rise from the ground, crawls on the ground, is cast down to the ground, he only makes an effort to rise from the ground. The blind man does not have a satisfactory concept of God: this concept is not characteristic of the carnal state; The prayer feat of a blind man is also a physical feat. “Blind,” said the Monk Mark the Ascetic, “is the one who cries out and says: “Son of David, have mercy on me.”. He still prays physically, he has not yet acquired spiritual intelligence.” He sits, alone, at the gates of Jericho.

In the field of prayer, the ascetic encounters many and varied obstacles. Actions and their strength are based on the blindness of the ascetic. While the blind man was busy begging for alms from those passing by, his position was that of a sitting person. And during his initial cries, he remained in a sitting position. There is still no true spiritual progress, no spiritual movement in those who study the word of God letter by letter and through physical prayer. He continues to remain under the influence of sinful thoughts and feelings, under the influence of carnal wisdom; he continues to remain on earth; the procession to Heaven is impossible for him, unnatural. He strives in the feat of prayer as if in a feat that is alien to him, he forces himself to the feat by force, he drags himself towards this feat, as if towards his worst enemy, an merciless killer. This feeling, this pledge of the carnal man to prayer is characteristic of him: it kills, it slaughters our old man; and the old man is afraid of the slaughter, wants to avoid it, resists it with all his might. The ascetic is surrounded by fallen spirits: they did not leave him because he did not receive liberation from them, having submitted to them by his former sinful life that preceded turning to God. They try to keep him enslaved; they forbid him to pray; they threaten him, embarrass him, take all measures to force him into silence. They bring him unbelief, suggesting that his prayer will not be heard. They bring him hopelessness, remembering the many sins he has committed, vividly presenting them to the imagination and feelings, arousing pleasure in them in the soul and body. They plunder and destroy his prayer, bringing to mind various concerns, presenting the need for immediate attention to them. They produce dryness and despondency in the soul, so that the ascetic, seeing the futility of his efforts, leaves him. They mock the feat, mock it as fruitless and futile, because they tremble at its consequences. An ascetic of prayer, who has devoted himself to the feat of prayer far from the activities of human society, will hear the hellish chatter of demons. He will see his captivity, his chains and prison. “Thou hast placed us,” says the great worker of prayer, “to be reproached by our neighbors, to be imitated and desecrated by those around us… All day long my shame is before me, and the coldness of my face covers me, from the voice of reproach… from the face of the enemy and the one who drives him out” (Ps. 43:14,16-17).

This requires faith. “Your faith will save you”, the Lord said to the blind man after healing him. Faith is needed for constancy in the feat of prayer, constancy, patience and long-suffering are needed, rejection of false shame and perseverance are needed for the feat to bear its wonderful fruit. Initially, an intensified physical feat is needed: kneeling is needed, tiring the body, humbling the soul; long standing and all-night vigils are needed; We need oral and public prayer, prayer combined with crying and screaming, when we are alone, in a cell seclusion, and we can cry and groan freely; We need an unspoken prayer with an unspoken cry of the heart when we are in the company of people. They forbade the blind man to cry out – and he cried out even more; They commanded the blind man to be silent – and he cried out even louder. This is what we must do: we must overcome and trample upon all obstacles to prayer; we must ignore all obstacles and pray all the more zealously and diligently. If during your morning rule your prayer was plundered by thoughts and dreams and you did not belong to yourself due to the violence of the passions that overwhelmed you, then do not weaken, do not fall into despondency. With renewed zeal, stand up for the evening rule, intensifying your attention to your prayers and gathering your scattered thoughts, like the leader of Israel, who said to his soldiers: Let us take courage and be strong for our people and for the cities of our God, and the Lord will do what is good before His eyes (2 Samuel 10:12). In the feat of prayer, it is necessary to renounce oneself, to submit our success to the will of our God, who gives, at a time known to Him, grace-filled prayer to those who, by their own deed, actively prove their will to have it (1 Sam. 2:9). Not “Imam honoring my soul” (Acts 20:24), says the apostle; deceived by pride and conceit, they consider themselves worthy of grace. If during the year our success in prayer, despite constant exercise in it, turned out to be meager and insignificant, next year we will use the efforts within our control so that our success will be fruitful. If ten years have passed, if dozens of years have passed and we have not yet seen the desired fruit, we will try to remain faithful to the feat in the remaining days of our life. The treasure obtained by feat is eternal; it is of immeasurable value – it is not at all strange that God’s providence allows us work that would at least somewhat correspond to the acquisition that crowns it.

The main condition for success in prayer is that prayer is always performed with the greatest reverence and attention. This requires not only abandonment of a sinful life, but also removal out of town, which primarily depicts the rejection of all worries and concerns during prayer. We achieve this when we cast everything that concerns us on the Lord. The Holy Church invites us to such devotion to God; She often recalls this devotion, saying: “We will give ourselves and each other, and our whole life to Christ our God” (third petition in the small litany). Attentive prayer will be aided by remembering the omnipresence and omniscience of God. If God is present in every place, then He is also present in the place of our prayer. If He sees everything, then He also sees the disposition of our heart, the mood of our mind. Standing in prayer, we stand before the face of God, at the judgment of God – we have the opportunity to appease God with our prayerful cry and groaning. Remembering the uncertainty of the hour of death also stimulates fervent, warm prayers. We will not sin at all if every time we pray, we pray as if at the last hour of our life, as if at the hour of our death. When the mind pays attention to prayer, the heart also listens to it, expressing and proving its attention with a feeling of repentance. To more easily achieve a state of attention, the holy fathers advise praying slowly, as if enclosing the mind in the words of prayer, so that not a single word escapes attention. An escaped word is a lost word! A prayer that escapes attention is a lost prayer!

A mind that has not acquired the habit of attention has difficulty accustoming itself to it. This should not dishearten and embarrass the ascetic of prayer. “Inconsistency,” says Saint John Climacus, “is characteristic of the mind”112 of fallen man, a mind corrupted by sin. “When your mind,” the great John continues to instruct the ascetic of prayer, “is drawn away from attention due to its infancy, you again introduce it into the words of prayer. Master this invisible feat and remain constantly in it. If you do this, then the One who sets the boundaries of the sea will come to you and command your mind: “you will come to this” in your prayer “and you will not pass away, but your waves will be broken in you” (Job 38:11) – let your thoughts be concentrated in you. Constant work in acquiring attention is active evidence before God of our sincere desire to have attention. But it is impossible for a person to bind his spirit through his own efforts: this requires the command of the Supreme Spirit, that Spirit who is the Lord and Creator of our spirit113.

And the Spirit of God does this work. This is the Sent One who is sent by the Son of God to the blind man sitting and crying, who calls the blind man to Jesus. The Spirit of God proclaims the Son of God (John 16:7-14). The Spirit, having overshadowed the servant of Christ, instructs him “into all truth” (John 16:13), and instructs him in attentive prayer. The attention of the mind during prayer is its complete striving towards the truth, it is its correct state and action; absent-mindedness, on the contrary, is a state of self-delusion, is a sign that the mind is carried away by the teaching of lies – thoughts and dreams that are brought to it by demons and arise from a nature sickened by sin. The state of deep, constant attention during prayer comes from the touch of Divine grace on our spirit. The granting of grace-filled attention to the one praying is the original spiritual gift of God114.

The blind man, having heard the invitation, is animated, delighted by this invitation, gets up, takes off his outer clothing, and goes to appear before the Lord. “When the mind, through graceful attention,” says the fathers, “unites with the soul, then it is filled with indescribable sweetness and joy”115. Then the spiritual advancement of the ascetic of prayer begins; then with the power and purity of prayer he rushes with his whole being to God; then all extraneous thoughts and dreams retreat, disappear, as Saint David said: “Depart from me, all you who do iniquity, for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping, the Lord has heard my prayer, the Lord has accepted my prayer. Let all my enemies—the rejected spirits—be ashamed and dismayed; let them return and be ashamed” (Ps. 6:9-11). The removal of outer clothing signifies the abandonment of many and various external images of prayer – they are replaced by prayer in the spiritual cage, which embraces and combines all private deeds. Being an extensive work, it absorbs and combines in itself the entire life of the ascetic. “There are many types of virtue,” said the Monk Nilus of Sora, “but they are private; Heartfelt prayer is the source of all blessings: the soul is watered with it, like a garden with abundant waters” (Homily 2). Pure prayer is coming before the face of God. He who comes before God asks for insight and receives the grace-filled enlightenment of his mind and heart. He enters into true knowledge of God and worship – he no longer returns to his former position of immobility, at the gates of the city, but, joining the other disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, he follows Him. He has all the opportunity and the necessary ability to follow such a path. “Whoever prays with his lips,” says Saint Simeon the New Theologian, “but has not yet acquired spiritual intelligence and cannot pray with his mind, is like a blind man who cried out: “Son of David! have mercy on me.” But the one who has acquired spiritual intelligence and prays with a mind whose spiritual eyes have been opened is like the same blind man when the Lord healed him, when his sight was restored, and he, seeing the Lord, no longer called Him the Son of David, but confessed Him to be the Son of God and gave Him the worship due to God.”116

Faith is the basis of prayer. Whoever believes in God, as he should believe, will certainly turn to God in prayer and will not deviate from prayer until he receives the promises of God, until he assimilates to God and unites with God. “Faith,” said Saint John Climacus, “is a state of the soul alien to doubt, unshaken by any opposition. A believer is one who not only confesses God as omnipotent, but also believes that he will receive everything from Him. Faith is the mother of silence”117, both in private and in the heart. He who believes that God is constantly looking after him, places all his trust in Him, calms his heart with hope, with the help of hope removes all worries from himself and devotes himself with all his soul to the study of the will of God, revealed to humanity in the Holy Scriptures, revealed even more abundantly by the feat of prayer. By faith in God, the ascetic endures and overcomes all obstacles arising from fallen nature and erected by spirits of malice, obstacles that intensify to confuse his prayer and take away from him the means of communication with God. “You have been with me in multitudes since my youth… On my back the deeds of sinners have continued their iniquity”(Ps. 129:2-3). But I, strengthened and guided by faith, constantly “to You, my Lord, lifted my eyes, my mind and heart. Behold, as the eyes of a servant are in the hand of his masters, as the eyes of a slave are in the hand of her mistress, so are our eyes towards the Lord our God, until he will show mercy to us”(Ps. 122:1,2). Amen.

About prayer. Sermon on Saturday of the thirty-second week

Beloved brothers! In order to succeed in the feat of prayer, so that in due time, by the ineffable mercy of God, to taste the sweetest fruit of prayer, which consists in the renewal of the whole person by the Holy Spirit, one must pray constantly, one must courageously endure the difficulties and sorrows with which the feat of prayer is associated. The Lord commanded us to do this, as we heard today in the Gospel. “It is proper to always pray, and not to become cold” (Luke 18:1), that is, not to lose heart. People usually become discouraged when they have failures – therefore, the Lord commands us not to become discouraged if, after being engaged in prayer for a long time, we do not notice the desired success; if our mind, instead of praying attentively, is plundered by various vain thoughts and dreams; if our heart, instead of being filled with tenderness, which is almost always accompanied by consoling tears, is cold and hard; if during prayer obscene and violent passions suddenly flare up in us, vicious memories are brought; if our prayer is denounced by circumstances and people; if our prayer is slandered by the worst enemies of prayer – demons. All obstacles encountered in the field of prayer are overcome by constancy in prayer.

The Lord deigned to clothe the teaching about the benefits and fruit of constant prayer, like many of His other teachings, in a parable. The parable is especially conveniently imprinted in the memory, and with it the teaching embodied in the parable is imprinted in the memory.

“There was a certain judge in a certain city,” said the Lord, explaining the need for constant and patient prayer, “not fearing God, and not putting man to shame. A certain widow was in that city: and she came to him, saying: take revenge on me, that is, protect me from my rival. And you don’t want too much time. Follow this speech within yourself: even if I do not fear God, and I do not put man to shame: but this widow does my toil, I will take revenge on her: but not to the end, that is, continually and endlessly, those who come will stand against me” (Luke 18:2-5). In appearance, here is a ruler who has reached the extreme degree of sinfulness. Many people who lead wicked lives have lost the fear of God; but they, sinning fearlessly before the all-seeing God, who seems to them, in their blindness and bitterness, not seeing anything and even non-existent, are ashamed to sin openly before people, trying in every possible way to hide their iniquities from them, trying to instill in them the kindest opinion of themselves. The ruler lost both the fear of God and human shame – nothing any longer bound him in his actions, he could be guided by arbitrariness alone. At first superficial glance, the judge appears to be such a desperate sinner, but upon deeper examination it turns out that, in a mysterious sense, many of the traits attributed to the judge relate to God118. God cannot fear Himself, and He does not accept the face of man: all people are equal before Him, all are creations, all are His servants, all equally need His mercy, are in His complete power.

He is called unjust, that is, unjust, because “He did not create food for us because of our iniquities, nor did He reward us with food because of our sins. As He knew our creation, I will remember him, as the dust of Esma” (Ps. 102:10,14). In spiritual delight from contemplating the ineffable love of God, Saint Isaac of Syria exclaims: “Do not dare to call God just, because His justice is not visible to you. Although the prophet calls Him righteous and upright, His Son declared that He is more good and merciful: He is good to the ungrateful and evil (Luke 6:35). How can we call Him just if we read the parable about the payment of workers? “My friend! I do not offend you, but I want to give this last one (who has barely touched the work) the same price that I agreed with you (who bore the burden of a whole hot day). Am I not powerful in My own? Is your eye envious because I am good? (Matt. 20:1-15). Again, how can you call God just if you read the story of the prodigal son who squandered all his wealth in debauchery? Because of one emotion expressed by the son, the father ran out to meet him, embraced him and gave him his former dignity. The Son of God Himself – no one else – testified this about God; there is no room for doubt about this. Where is the justice of God when Christ died for us while we were His enemies?” (Word 90).

In the parable, a widow is called a human soul, separated by sin from God, aware and feeling this separation. The world is called a city, as a creation of God. Very few in this city profess their spiritual widowhood; the majority remains outside the memory of death and the judgment of God, and remains completely immersed in temporary worries and pleasures. There are so few who think about eternity and prepare for it that one such person is remembered throughout the city. The state of widowhood is a state of loneliness, helplessness, a state inseparable from sadness, a state of incessant lamentation. Those who have felt their spiritual widowhood, who have lost communion with the Holy Spirit through sin, who thirst and strengthen to renew this communion through repentance, who are dead to God because of broken communion with Him, who are dead to the world because of their lack of sympathy for the world, come to this state, bring themselves, are brought by God. This state of soul is necessary for success in the feat of prayer: God listens to the prayers of some widows, that is, some poor in spirit, filled with the consciousness of their sinfulness, their weakness, their fall, alien to conceit, which consists in recognizing one’s merits, virtues, and righteousness.

Conceit is self-delusion. Those who recognize their merits, virtues, and righteousness are called “rich” in the Holy Scriptures. Those who get rich are those who actually do not have any wealth, but, deceiving themselves, think they have it and try to present themselves as rich before people. Vain, proud concepts, from which conceit is made, destroy in a person that spiritual throne on which the Holy Spirit usually sits, destroy the only condition that attracts the mercy of God to a person. On the contrary, from the concepts of the humble, the throne for the Holy Spirit in man is built, the condition, the guarantee for receiving God’s mercy are formed. Conceit itself destroys the possibility of success in prayer, which is why Scripture says: “Spend the proud thoughts of their hearts. Destroy the mighty from their thrones and lift up the humble. Fill those who hunger with good things, and those who are rich let go of their vain” (Luke 1:51-53). The prayer of the proud is destroyed by absent-mindedness. They are deprived of power over themselves: neither their thoughts nor their feelings obey them. Their mind cannot concentrate in self-conception, from which a feeling of repentance and tenderness is born in the soul. He who sows his seeds on a stone does not reap any fruit; so he who prays without tenderness, who prays coldly and superficially, after completing his prayer, leaves alien to the spiritual fruit, not allowed to communicate with God. God accepts only the humble into fellowship with Him.

The feat of prayer appears completely different for those who only dream about it, being content with the most meager exercise in it, than for those who have carefully engaged in the feat of prayer and have experienced it. The first recognize this feat as the easiest, completely dependent on the will of a person, becoming his property at any time, whenever he decides to take possession of this property. They believe that as soon as they leave care and enter into silence, they will be greeted there by the most abundant spiritual pleasure. “We will constantly talk with God,” they think and say! And they already create for themselves various high spiritual states, such as: the state of clairvoyance, prophecy, working miracles and healing ailments. This is how ignorance dreams and wanders, guided by the incomprehensible passion of vanity. Experience shows and proves something completely different.

One who has entered into a true feat of prayer is guided in it by God Himself, with wisdom incomprehensible to those who are not initiated into its mysteries. “Prayer,” said Saint John Climacus, “contains within itself a teacher, God, who teaches man to understand (prayer), “who gives prayer to the one who prays and blesses the righteous year”119 (1 Sam. 2:9). According to the distribution of Divine wisdom, those who have entered into the feat of prayer are initially given the opportunity to taste the consolation of prayer120. Thus, a successfully chosen medicine for any long-standing disease, touching its surface, immediately at the first doses brings relief. The same medicine, with further use, begins to penetrate the body, disturbs the disease and, gradually expelling it, intensifies the pain, sometimes leading the patient into a painful state. With such phenomena, an inexperienced patient can easily doubt the beneficialness of the medicine, but skilled doctors see its beneficialness in these very phenomena. Exactly the same thing happens during prayer. When a Christian constantly and carefully engages in it, then little by little it will begin to reveal in him his passions, the existence of which he had not previously known in himself. She will reveal to him in a striking picture the fall of human nature and its captivity.

When a Christian intends to emerge from the fall and free himself from captivity, then those spirits who have enslaved us to themselves will come and stubbornly rebel against prayer, which is intensifying to bring spiritual freedom to the Christian. This serves as proof of the reality of prayer, as the same great teacher of monks said: “We conclude the benefits of prayer by the opposition from demons that we encounter when performing it, and we conclude its fruit by our defeat of the enemy.”121 In the involuntary contemplation of our fall and in the struggle against our passions and spirits of malice, Divine Providence very often keeps ascetics for a very long time for their significant benefit. Seeing the passions constantly arising in himself, seeing the constant predominance over himself of sinful thoughts and dreams brought by spirits, the ascetic acquires the poverty of spirit commanded by the Gospel, is mortified for the world, becomes a true widow in spiritual terms, and from the strongest feeling of widowhood, orphanhood, loneliness, homelessness, he begins to pray with special carelessness, with special persistence, in prayer, combined with weeping, the Judge, who does not fear God and man is not put to shame, to tire the Tireless One. “Although this Judge, being God, does not fear God, but “does his work” for the soul, which, due to sin and fall, has become a widow in relation to Him, He “will take vengeance on her rival” on her body and on her adversaries – spirits”122. How is this vengeance, this defense accomplished? The gift of the Holy Spirit to the ascetic, exhausted by the feat of prayer: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; press, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives it, and he who seeks finds it, and it will be opened to him who interprets… The Father who is in heaven will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Luke 11:9–10,13) – this is how the Lord assures us. But in order to receive the gift, it is commanded to ask, seek, and knock relentlessly on the spiritual doors of God’s mercy.

The quick and easy acquisition of spiritual wealth123 is not useful for us, even harmful: having easily received it, we will not be able to preserve it; it can serve as a reason for us to vanity, to contempt and condemnation of our neighbors, which leads the ascetic to grave falls, which usually follow pride and serve as punishment and admonition for those carried away by the most destructive passion that cast fallen angels from Heaven. For this reason, God leaves devotees of prayer to languish for a long time in an unresolved struggle with passions and spirits, in the midst of hope and hopelessness, in the midst of frequent victories and defeats. “In reproof of iniquity you punished man,” says the great worker of prayer, “and you melted away his soul like a spider” (Ps. 38:12). During this difficult time, ascetics thoroughly study the experimental knowledge of various passions and demonic intrigues, thoroughly study the Gospel commandments, which become their property through prolonged and careful study. In this difficult time, ascetics thoroughly prepare to receive and preserve Divine grace. “God… should not,” the Gospel parable concludes with these words, “exact vengeance on His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night, and be patient for them; I tell you that he will take their vengeance quickly” (Luke 18:7-8). The long-suffering of God here refers to the duration of the struggle against sin, which is allowed to God’s chosen ones by none other than God Himself. Vengeance, or protection, is said to be given quickly, because even during the struggle God constantly supports His chosen ones; after the struggle has passed and after a person has been renewed by the Holy Spirit, such bliss pours into him that he immediately forgets all the languor of the struggle, it seems to him as if it had been in effect for the shortest possible time. “We are filled with Thy mercy in the morning, O Lord, and we rejoice and rejoice” – this is how those who made sure that their prayer was heard confessed to the Lord, who saw in their souls the appearance of the spiritual morning after the darkness of the night – “all our days we rejoiced, for the days in which you humbled us, “Nyazhe vidhem evil”(Ps. 89:14-15).

But the struggle is so difficult that the prayer cry of the elect constantly intensifies because of it, because of it it does not stop day or night, the distance between prayers is destroyed, and the servants of God begin to chill God with incessant prayer and crying, produced by that humble concept of oneself, which appears from the sight of one’s sinfulness. “I walked lamenting all day long,” says the holy prophet David, “for my body is filled with reproaches, and there is no healing in my flesh. I was embittered by my passions and the spirits of malice and became utterly humbled” (Ps. 37:7-9). “How long, Lord, will you forget me completely? How long do you turn your face away from me?How long will you endure? How long will You not exact Your vengeance on my adversaries? “How long will I put, because of my bewilderment, much and fruitless advice in my soul, illness in my heart day and night? How long will my enemy be exalted against me” (Ps. 12:2-3). “Defeat my soul, you possessed me!” Having embraced me like a lion ready to catch, and like a skiman who dwells in the secret. Rise up, O Lord, before me, and stifle them, deliver my soul from the wicked” (Ps. 16:9,12-13). “My God, I have trusted in You, let me never be ashamed; let my enemies laugh at me, for all those who endure You will not be ashamed”(Ps. 24:1-2).

When the Lord ended the parable with the promise: “will take vengeance… soon on those who will cry out to Him day and night in prayer”, then He said: “Before the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). Why are these words said? They were said, according to the interpretation of the fathers124, for the following reason. The Lord, having counted the signs that will precede His second coming, pronounced a teaching on prayer, which is especially necessary in these difficult and calamitous times, as on another occasion on the same occasion He said: “Be vigilant for those who pray at all times, so that you may be deemed worthy to flee all those who wish to be, and stand before the Son of Man”(Luke 21:36). “Besides, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” This means: will He find true believers who prove faith by deeds, especially by true and real prayer, the feat of which is both based on faith, and is accomplished, constantly relying on faith? Such a turn, according to its use in Scripture, is equivalent to the following125: The Son of God, having come to earth, will find almost no one or will find very, very few who would have true faith and the success that depends on it, demonstrating its prayerful success. And then this success is especially needed! “The end is drawing near,” says the holy Apostle Peter, “become wise and sober in your prayers” (1 Pet. 4:7). There will be no success in prayer, no true practice of prayer: all people will be engaged in material development, will be engaged in turning the earth doomed to burning into their paradise, in self-delusion will consider temporary life eternal, they will reject and ridicule concerns about preparing themselves for eternity. For those whose thoughts are entirely directed towards the earth and are occupied with the earth, there is no God. He who ascends to God through pure and frequent prayer acquires a living faith in God, sees Him with it and flies like a winged one through all the vicissitudes and disasters of earthly life. He will see his “vengeance from his rival” and will rejoice not only in the forgiveness of his sins, but also in his cleansing from sinful passions. The holy fathers call this state holiness, blissful dispassion, Christian perfection. In this state, he will be worthy to “flee all disasters that will be, and stand before the Son of Man”, when he will be demanded before Him both by death and by that trumpet that will gather the living and the dead for judgment before the Son of God. Amen.

Offering to modern monasticism126
About preparation for prayer

According to the importance of prayer, before practicing it, you need to prepare yourself for it. “Before even praying, prepare for yourself, and do not become like a man tempting the Lord” (Sir. 18:23). “When we go to appear before the King and God and speak with Him,” says Saint John Climacus, “let us not do this without preparation, so that He does not see from afar that we do not have the weapons and clothes necessary to stand before the King, and He does not command His servants and servants to tie us up and drive us somewhere far from His face, and to tear up our petitions and throw them at us. face”127. The first preparation is to reject the memory of malice and condemnation of neighbors. This preparation is commanded by the Lord Himself: “As you stand praying,” He commands, “forgive whatever you have against anyone, so that your Father who is in Heaven will forgive you your sins; if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in Heaven forgive you your sins” (Mk. 11, 25–26). Further preparation is the rejection of care by the power of faith in God, the power of obedience and devotion to the will of God, the consciousness of one’s sinfulness and the contrition and humility of spirit flowing from this consciousness. One sacrifice accepted by God from fallen human nature is contrition of the spirit. “If you had desired sacrifice, you would have given”, His prophet says to God on behalf of every person who has fallen and remains in his fall; but You do not favor not only any private sacrifice, physical or mental, but also a complete burnt offering. The sacrifice to God is a broken spirit: God will not despise a contrite and humble heart”(Ps. 50:18-19). Saint Isaac of Syria repeats the following saying of another holy father: “If anyone does not recognize himself as a sinner, his prayer is not favorable to the Lord” (Homily 55).

Stand in your prayer before the invisible God as if you saw Him and with the confidence that He sees you and looks at you attentively; stand before the invisible God, as a criminal stands, convicted of countless atrocities, sentenced to death, before a formidable, impartial judge. Indeed, you stand before your sovereign Lord and Judge; you stand before such a Judge, before Whom “no one living will be justified” (Ps. 142:2), Who always wins, “always judge” Him (Ps. 50:6), Who only does not condemn when, out of His ineffable love for mankind, having forgiven a person his sins, He will not enter into judgment with His servant” (Ps. 143:2). Having felt the fear of God, having felt the presence of God from the action of the fear of God during your prayer, you will see the sightless, spiritually Invisible One, you will know that prayer is a presence at the Last Judgment of God128.

Stand in prayer with your head bowed, your eyes directed to the ground, on both legs equally and motionless; Accelerate prayer with tears of the heart, sighs from the depths of the soul, and abundant tears. External reverent standing in prayer is very necessary and very useful for everyone who struggles in the feat of prayer, especially for the novice, in whom the disposition of the soul is most consistent with the position of the body. The Apostle commands thanksgiving during prayer; “endure in prayer,” he says, “keep watch in it with thanksgiving” (Col. 4:2; cf. Phil. 4:6). The Apostle testifies that thanksgiving is commanded by God Himself: “Pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus in you” (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18). What does thanksgiving mean? This is the praise of God for His countless blessings poured out on all humanity and on every person. With such thanksgiving a wonderful calmness is introduced into the soul; joy is introduced, despite the fact that sorrow surrounds you from everywhere; a living faith is introduced, due to which a person rejects all concerns about himself, tramples upon human and demonic fear, and surrenders himself entirely to the will of God. This disposition of the soul is an excellent preparatory disposition for prayer. “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord,” says the apostle, “so walk in Him (live), being rooted and built up in Him and known by faith, as you have learned, abounding in it with thanksgiving”, that is, through thanksgiving, acquiring an abundance of faith. “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say: rejoice… The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Col. 2:6-7; Phil. 4:4-6). The importance of mental achievement—thanksgiving—is set out in particular detail in the “Guide to Spiritual Life…” by the Venerable Fathers Barsanuphius the Great and John the Prophet.

About bows

Bows are divided into ground and waist bows; They usually rely on the evening rule, before repose to sleep. It is best to bow before reading the evening prayers, that is, to begin the rule with bows. From bowing, the body will become somewhat tired and warm, and the heart will come into a state of contrition – from such a state the ascetic will pray more fervently, warmly, and more attentively. You will feel a completely different taste in prayers when they are read after bowing. Bows must be made very slowly, animated by this bodily feat with the cry of the heart and the prayerful cry of the mind. If you want to begin kneeling, give your body the most reverent position that a servant and creation of God should have in the presence of the Lord his God. Then collect your thoughts from wandering everywhere and with extreme leisurely, aloud only to yourself, enclosing your mind in words, say from a contrite and humble heart the prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Having said your prayer, slowly bow to the ground, with reverence and fear of God, without heat, with the feeling of a sinner repenting and begging for forgiveness, as if at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Do not imagine in your mind an image or image of the Lord, but have conviction in His presence; have the conviction that He is looking at you, at your mind and heart, and that His reward is in His hand; the first is an impermissible dream leading to disastrous self-delusion, and conviction in the presence of the omnipresent God is conviction in the all-holy truth. Having bowed to the ground, again bring your body into reverence and calmness and again slowly say the above prayer; Having said it, bow again in the above manner. Do not worry about the number of bows, pay all attention to the quality of the prayer performed with kneeling. Not to mention the effect on the spirit, a small number of bows performed in the above manner will have a much stronger effect on the body itself than a large number performed hastily, without attention, for the sake of counting. Experience will not be slow to prove this.

Having tired yourself from kneeling, move on to bowing from the waist. The measure of the bow is determined by when, during performance, his lowered hand touches the ground or floor. Having made it an indispensable duty when performing prostrations to perform abundant spiritual activity, consisting of attentiveness, slowness, reverence, and the intention to bring repentance to God, the ascetic will see within a short time how many prostrations his physique can bear. Having excluded from this number a few bows in the form of his weakness and self-indulgence, from the remaining number of bows he can establish a daily rule for himself and, having asked for the blessing of his confessor or abbot, or one of the monks to whom he has power of attorney and with whom he consults, he can apply such a rule daily.

For the edification of our beloved brothers, let us not remain silent about the following: bows performed for the sake of numbers, not inspired by correct mental and heartfelt deeds, are more harmful than beneficial. The ascetic, having fulfilled them, begins to rejoice. Behold, he says to himself, like the Pharisee mentioned in the Gospel, today God has vouchsafed to make (approximately) three hundred bows! God bless! Is it easy? In modern times, three hundred bows! Who now bears such a rule? And so on. It must be remembered that bowing warms the blood, and warmed blood greatly contributes to the stimulation of mental activity; Having come to such a disposition, the poor ascetic, for the sole reason that he has no concept of true spiritual activity, indulges in soul-harmful mental activity, indulges in vain thoughts and dreams based on his feat, through which he thinks to succeed. The ascetic delights in these thoughts and dreams, cannot get enough of them, internalizes them, implants in himself the destructive passion of conceit. Conceit soon begins to manifest itself in secret condemnation of neighbors and in an obvious disposition to lecture them. Obviously, such an attitude is a sign of pride and self-delusion: if the monk had not considered himself superior to his neighbor, he would not have dared to teach him. This is the fruit of any bodily feat, unless it is animated by the intention of repentance and does not have the goal of repentance alone, if the feat in itself is given a price.

True monastic success lies in the fact that the monk sees himself as the most sinful of all people. “The brother said to the Monk Sisoes the Great: “I see that my thought is constantly with God.” The monk answered: “It is not great that your thought is constantly with God; It is great when a monk sees himself under every creature.”129 This was the way of thinking of the true servants of God, the true monks; it was formed in them from correct spiritual activity. With correct spiritual activity, physical feat is of great importance, being an expression of repentance and humility through the actions of the body. “See my humility and my labor, and forgive all my sins” (Ps. 24:18), Saint David prayerfully cries out to God, combining physical labor with deep repentance and deep humility in his pious deed. The Holy Fathers say: “Never accept if you saw anything sensual or mental outside or inside you: be it the sight of Christ, or an angel, or some saint, or a dreamy image of light in the mind. Continue not believing it and not being pleased about it. Constantly keep your mind unimaginable, unimpressed by anything through the imagination, formless, listening only to the words of prayer.” – Philokalia, part 2, Callista and Ignatius Xanthopoulov on silence and prayer, ch. 75.

On the special opposition of fallen spirits to prayer

Fallen spirits fiercely oppose all the gospel commandments, especially prayer, as the mother of virtues. The holy prophet Zechariah saw in his vision Jesus, the great priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and the devil standing at His right hand, opposing Him” (Zech. 3:1) – and so now the devil relentlessly confronts every servant of God with the intention of stealing, desecrating his spiritual sacrifices, preventing him from sacrificing, stopping and destroying him. Fallen spirits are tormented by envy of us, said St. Anthony the Great, and do not cease to set in motion all evil, so that we do not inherit their former thrones in Heaven130. In particular, “the demon is very jealous,” said St. Neil of Sinai, “of a person praying and uses all kinds of intrigues to frustrate his work”131. The demon uses every effort to hinder prayer or to make it powerless and invalid. This spirit, cast out from Heaven for pride and indignation against God, infected with incurable envy and hatred of the human race, infected with a thirst for the destruction of people, vigilantly, day and night, concerned about the destruction of people, it is unbearable to see that a weak and sinful person separates himself through prayer from everything earthly, enters into a conversation with God Himself and comes out of this conversation sealed by the grace of God, with the hope of inheriting Heaven, with the hope of seeing even one’s mortal body transformed into a spiritual one. This sight is unbearable for the spirit, which is forever condemned to grovel, as if in mud and stench, in thoughts and sensations exclusively carnal, material, sinful, which, finally, must forever be overthrown and imprisoned in hellish prisons. He rages, goes into a frenzy, deceives, hypocrites, commits villains.

We must be attentive and careful: only when absolutely necessary, especially at the request of assigned obedience, can you give the time designated for prayer to another activity. Do not leave your prayers without the most important reason, beloved brother! He who abandons prayer abandons his salvation; he who neglects prayer neglects his salvation; he who abandons prayer abandons his salvation. A monk must behave very carefully, because the enemy is trying to surround him on all sides with his machinations, to deceive, seduce, outrage, seduce him from the path prescribed by the Gospel commandments, and destroy him in time and eternity. Such a fierce, malicious and cunning persecution of the enemy is soon discerned by an attentive life; We will soon notice that at the very time when it is necessary to engage in prayer, he prepares other activities, presents them as both of utmost importance and urgent, just in order to deprive the monk of prayer. The machinations of the enemy turn in favor of the meticulous ascetic: constantly seeing a murderer nearby with a drawn dagger raised to strike, the helpless, powerless, poor in spirit monk continually cries out with tears to the omnipotent God for help and receives it.

The rejected spirit, when it cannot take away the time designated for prayer, then tries to steal and desecrate the prayer while it is being performed. For this purpose, he acts with thoughts and dreams. He dresses his thoughts in the guise of truth in order to give them more strength and conviction, and presents his dreams in the most seductive painting. Prayer is stolen and destroyed when, during its performance, the mind does not heed the words of the prayer, but is occupied with empty thoughts and dreams. Prayer is desecrated when, during prayer, the mind, distracted from prayer, turns its attention to sinful thoughts and dreams represented by the enemy. When sinful thoughts and dreams appear to you, do not pay any attention to them. As soon as you see them in your mind, the more intensely close your mind in the words of prayer and beg God with the warmest and most attentive prayer to drive away your murderers from you. The evil spirit arranges its shelves with special skill. Ahead of him are thoughts clothed in all kinds of truth, and dreams that an inexperienced ascetic can mistake not only for innocent phenomena, but also for inspiration, for holy and heavenly visions. When the mind accepts them and, having submitted to their influence, loses its freedom, then the leader of the foreign army puts forward clearly sinful thoughts and dreams for the fight. “Dispassionate thoughts,” said the Monk Nilus of Sora, referring to the former great fathers, “will be followed by passionate ones: the allowed entrance of the first is the reason for the forced entry of the second” (Homily 2). The mind, as if it had arbitrarily lost its freedom in a collision with advanced forces, disarmed, weakened, captive, is in no way able to resist the main forces: it is immediately defeated by them, subordinated, enslaved by them. During prayer, it is necessary to enclose the mind in the words of prayer, indiscriminately rejecting every thought: both obviously sinful and righteous in appearance. Every thought, no matter what his attire and armor, if it distracts him from prayer, thereby proves that he belongs to a foreign regiment and came, uncircumcised, to “reproach Israel” (1 Sam. 17:25).

The fallen angel bases his invisible warfare (struggle) with man with his own sinful thoughts and dreams on the mutual affinity of sins among themselves. This warfare does not cease either day or night, but it acts with special tension and fury when we stand up for prayer. Then, according to the expression of the holy fathers, the devil collects the most absurd thoughts from everywhere and pours them out on our soul132. Firstly, he reminds us of all those who have offended us; he tries to represent the insults and insults inflicted on us in vivid painting; retribution for them and resistance to them is presented as a requirement of justice, common sense, public benefit, self-preservation, necessity. It is obvious that the enemy is trying to shake the very foundation of the prayerful feat – gentleness and meekness – so that the building erected on this foundation collapses by itself. This is what happens, because someone who is malicious and has not forgiven his neighbor for his sins cannot concentrate during his prayer and come to the point of tenderness. Angry thoughts scatter prayer, they scatter it to the sides, like a gusty wind scatters the seeds thrown by a sower into his field – and the field of the heart remains unsown, and the intense work of the ascetic is in vain. It is known that forgiveness of insults and insults, replacing condemnation of neighbors with a merciful apology for them, and blaming oneself serve as the basis for successful prayer.

Very often the enemy, at the very beginning of prayer, brings thoughts and dreams about earthly prosperity: then in a seductive picture he presents human glory as a fair or happy tribute to virtue, as if recognized and finally recognized by people who now come under its leadership; then in an equally seductive picture it presents an abundance of earthly means, on the basis of which Christian virtue should flourish and strengthen. Both of these pictures are false! They are depicted in opposition to the teachings of Christ, causing terrible harm to the spiritual eye that looks at them and to the soul itself, which commits adultery from its Lord through sympathy for demonic painting. Outside the cross of Christ there is no Christian prosperity. The Lord said: “I do not accept glory from men… As much as you can believe, you accept glory from one another, and do not seek glory other than the one God” (John 5:41,44). When doing all your good deeds, “do not become like hypocrites” (Matt. 6:16), doing good for human glory, receiving human glory as a reward for their virtue and depriving themselves of the right to an eternal reward (Matt. 6:1-18). “Do not let your fool know”, that is, your own vanity, “what your right hand does”, that is, your will, directed according to the Gospel commandments, “and your Father, who sees in secret… will reward you in reality” with the gift of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 6:3-4). The Lord also said: “No one can work for two masters: either he will love one and hate the other: or he holds on to one, but begins to be careless about his friends: you cannot work for God and mammon,” that is, for property, wealth (Matthew 6:24). “If he does not renounce all his possessions, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).

It is worthy of note that the devil, tempting the God-man, offered Him the vainglorious thought of being glorified by a public miracle and the dream of the most developed and powerful position. The Lord rejected both (Matthew 4 and Luke 4): He leads us to the highest success along the narrow path of self-sacrifice and humility, and He Himself paved this saving path. We must follow the example and teaching of the Lord: reject thoughts of earthly glory, earthly prosperity, earthly abundance; to reject the joy brought by such dreams and reflections, which destroys in us contrition of spirit, concentration and attention during prayer, introducing conceit and absent-mindedness. If we agree with vain, proud, selfish and peace-loving thoughts and dreams, do not reject them, but abide in them and enjoy them, then we enter into communication with Satan, and the power of God, which protects us, will retreat from us. The enemy, seeing the retreat of God’s help from us, directs two heaviest battles at us: warfare with thoughts and dreams of fornication and warfare with despondency133. Defeated by the advanced battle, deprived of the intercession of God, we do not resist the second battle. This is what the fathers said, that God allows Satan to trample on us until we humble ourselves.

It is obvious that thoughts of remembrance, condemnation, earthly glory and earthly prosperity are based on pride. Rejection of these thoughts is rejection of pride. The rejection of pride is accomplished by the establishment of humility in the soul. Humility is Christ’s way of thinking and that heartfelt guarantee that comes from this way of thinking, by which all passions are mortified in the heart and erupted from it134. The invasion of prodigal passion and the passion of despondency will be followed by an invasion of thoughts and feelings of sadness, unbelief, hopelessness, bitterness, darkness, blasphemy and despair. The pleasure of carnal lusts makes a particularly grave impression on us. The Fathers call them desecrators of the spiritual temple of God135. If we delight in them, then the grace of God will retreat from us for a long time and all sinful thoughts and dreams will receive the strongest power over us. They will continue to torment and torment us until we again attract grace to ourselves through sincere repentance and abstinence from enjoying the enemy’s excuses. Experience will not fail to teach an attentive monk all this.

Having learned the order, the rank and regulations that the enemy follows when fighting us, we can organize appropriate resistance. Let us not judge or condemn our neighbor under any pretext; we will forgive our neighbors all the gravest insults inflicted on us by our neighbors. Whenever a thought of malicious malice appears against a neighbor, we will immediately turn to God in prayer for that neighbor, asking him for God’s mercy in time and in eternity. Let us renounce our souls, that is, the search for human glory, the search for an overly comfortable earthly position, the search for all earthly advantages, and let us surrender ourselves entirely to the will of God, thanking and glorifying God for our past and present, placing our future on Him. Let this behavior and direction be our preparation for our prayer, the basis for our prayer. Before starting prayer, let us humble ourselves before our neighbors, accuse ourselves as having seduced and are tempting them with our sins, begin our prayer by praying for our enemies, unite ourselves in prayer with all humanity and beg God to have mercy on us together with all people, not because we are worthy to pray for humanity, but to fulfill the commandment of love, which lays down the law: “pray for one another” (James 5:16). Although a true servant of God is allowed to struggle with the various causes of sin brought by Satan and arising from our nature damaged by the fall, the right hand of God constantly supports and guides him. The struggle itself brings the greatest benefit, providing the ascetic with monastic experience, a clear and detailed understanding of the damage to human nature, about sin, about the fallen angel, leading the ascetic to contrition of spirit, to weeping for himself and for all humanity. The Monk Pimen the Great told about the Monk John Kolov, a father filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, that he begged God and the struggle in him caused by the ailments of a fallen nature, or passions, ceased. He went and announced this to a certain elder who had succeeded in spiritual reasoning, saying: “I see myself in indestructible calm, without any warfare.” The prudent elder answered John: “Go and pray to God that the battle will return, because because of the battle the soul comes to prosperity, and when the battle comes, do not pray that it will be taken away, but that the Lord will grant patience in the battle.”136 Let us surrender ourselves entirely to the will of God, let us surrender ourselves entirely to fulfilling the will of God; Through unceasing prayer we will ask God for the gift of fulfilling the will of God and for that gift so that the will of God will always be done to us. Whoever surrenders to the will of God, God is inseparably with him. Every ascetic of Christ, laboring legally, struggling under the guidance of the Gospel, will feel this and testify to the truth of this.

From letters

Others, who consider themselves gifted in spiritual reasoning and are revered by many as such, are afraid of this prayer, like some kind of infection, citing “charm” as the reason – as if an indispensable companion to the exercise of the Jesus Prayer – they themselves move away from it and teach others to move away. The inventor of such a teaching, in my opinion, is the devil, who hates the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, as it crushes all his power; he trembles at this omnipotent name and therefore slandered Him before many Christians, so that they would reject the fiery weapon, terrible for their enemy – saving for themselves.

Others, while practicing the Jesus Prayer, want to immediately feel its spiritual effect, want to enjoy it, not understanding that the pleasure that God alone gives must be preceded by true repentance. One must cry long and bitterly before a spiritual action appears in the soul, which is grace, which, I repeat, is given by God alone at a time known to Him. We must first prove our loyalty to God by constancy and patience in the feat of prayer, discretion and cutting off all passions in the most petty actions and branches of them.

…The book “The Life and Writings of the Moldavian Elder Paisius Velichkovsky” shows a charming way of practicing the Jesus Prayer, consisting of quietly pronouncing it with the lips or with the mind, certainly with attention and with a feeling of repentance. The devil does not tolerate the stench of repentance; from the soul that emits this stench from itself, it runs away with its charms. The Jesus Prayer, practiced in this way, is an excellent weapon against all passions, an excellent occupation for the mind during handicrafts, travel, and in other cases when it is impossible to engage in reading and psalmody. Such an exercise with the Jesus Prayer befits all Christians in general, both those living in monasteries and those living in the middle of the world.

The desire to discover the spiritual action of the heart befits most, almost exclusively, monks, and then those who have known in detail the struggle with passions, with the conveniences provided by the place and other circumstances. If anyone, driven, in the words of St. John Climacus, by proud zeal, seeks to receive prematurely spiritual sweetness, or heartfelt prayerful action, or any other spiritual gift befitting a renewed nature, he will inevitably fall into delusion, no matter what form of prayer he engages in, whether psalmody or the Jesus Prayer. I was able to see this from experience. Mentioned in the life of Pachomius the Great, the seduced elder, standing on hot coals with bare feet due to the effects of delusion, said the Lord’s Prayer “Our Father.” The reason for delusion is not prayer, not psalms, not canons and akathists, not the Jesus Prayer – no! Save, God, everyone from such blasphemy! Pride and lies are the causes of delusion! Pride and lies, the culprit of which is the devil. And he, in order to shift the blame from himself, impudently and blasphemously slandered the Jesus Prayer – he himself stood aside, as if guilty of nothing. Nowadays, many are anxious, wary, and warn others against the Jesus Prayer, claiming that they should move away from it as something that causes delusion, but not a word is said about the devil, the real culprit of delusion—they have completely forgotten. Ah, what an obvious trick of the devil! How skillfully he hides.

…It is characteristic of mental prayer to reveal the passions hiding and secretly living in the human heart! She both opens them and tames them.

It is characteristic of mental prayer to reveal the captivity in which we find ourselves among fallen spirits. She opens this captivity and frees us from it.

Consequently, one should not be embarrassed and perplexed when passions arise from fallen nature or when they are aroused by spirits.

And just as passions are tamed by prayer, then when they arise, one should slowly and very quietly say the Jesus Prayer with the mind, which will little by little calm down the rising passions. Sometimes the revolt of passions and the invasion of enemy thoughts is so strong that it leads to a great spiritual feat. This is the time of invisible martyrdom. We must confess the Lord in the face of passions and demons with long prayer, which will certainly bring victory…

When praying, you need to deny yourself, that is, not recognize yourself as worthy of any success, but resolutely rely on God. One should not even think about success, but take care that the prayer is performed with attention. Subsequently, you will see that all your aspirations for success were nothing more than hobbies – due to material fervor, without which it is impossible for anyone starting a new prayer feat, in which they focus and for which all other feats are undertaken as serving him. Conceit is always associated with passion. From self-sacrifice, which is explained above, comes true humility of spirit, poverty of spirit, and such humility attracts the mercy of God to a person.

When a person is privileged to feel something spiritual, that is, a feeling from God, then he will understand that all his own spiritual sensations are insignificant and are associated with self-delusion. To get to the promised land you have to go through the desert. Walking through this desert, you need to know that it is a desert, and not a promised land, so as not to mistake any desert oasis with luxurious and rich nature for the promised land and for this reason not to lose the promised land. Oases are those consolations and especially clear self-views that are given from time to time to a beginner in the feat of prayer. You shouldn’t pay special attention to them. The first spiritual gift is grace-filled attention during prayer, which is impossible to have with one’s own effort.

In church, do not read any special prayers, but listen to the divine service. It is good to get used to the publican’s prayer, which is approved by the Lord and which the publican, as can be seen from the Gospel, said while in church. This prayer reads like this: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13), or: “God, cleanse me, a sinner.” This prayer is equivalent to the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” or “Lord, have mercy.” Read from these prayers the one that you find most convenient for yourself. But be sure to read slowly and with attention. I advise you to stick to the second (that is, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”). The first two prayers are identical, the third is an abbreviation of the second. In church, sometimes listen to the divine service, and sometimes say a prayer with your mind, without ceasing to listen to the divine service. You can pray together with your mind and listen to church prayer. The first promotes the second, and the second – the first.

A church service when you stay at home can be replaced by reading one of the akathists: an akathist to the Lord Jesus or an akathist to the Mother of God.

In church, do not kneel and in general do not distinguish yourself from others in appearance by any peculiarities, but maintain both internal and external reverence. Bow as little as possible. There are only two bows to the ground during the liturgy – at the end of it, when the cup with the Holy Mysteries is brought out twice. Resist yourself from getting excited and from all the impulses that are so contrary to humility. Demand silence and attention from yourself both when praying, and when reading, and in all your actions. This behavior brings humility to the spirit. Humility is overshadowed by the mercy of God.

Do not bind yourself to any trifles and do not condemn yourself because of petty errors and misdeeds. Both serve as sources of confusion and despondency. Petty mistakes, into which every person falls hourly, are healed by hourly repentance before God, repentance consisting of a few words with a heart that sympathizes with them. It is often possible to pronounce words of repentance only with the mind – and this is enough, as long as they are spoken with attention. In church, when you find it necessary to sit down, sit down, because God listens not to the one who sits or stands, but to the one whose mind is directed towards Him with due reverence. Striving for God, reverence for God and the fear of God are acquired by attention to oneself… When you find it necessary to add or subtract something from your prayers and readings on the occasion of weakness or other activities encountered independently of you, do it without doubt or embarrassment. Be free! Don’t bind yourself to any scrupulousness. The rules are for the man, not the man for the rules. The opposite of this understanding produces only bewilderment and frustration.

* * *

Notes

Written out of a desire to lead an attentive life in the midst of the world for some pious worldly person.

Dobrotoll., part II, chapters of St. Philotheus of Sinai.

Isaac of Syria. Word 71.

Patericon of Skitsky.

Presented in abbreviation. – Approx. ed.

Ladder, word title 28; Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 3, ch. 1.

According to the explanation of St. Pimen the Great. – Alphabetical patericon.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 7.

Ladder. Word 7, ch. 11.

Word 89

Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 85.

Reverend Cassian. A word about reasoning. – Philokalia, part 4.

Word 11

Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 56 and 57.

Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. A word about three types of prayer. – Philokalia, part 1.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 17.

Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos. – Philokalia, part 4, ch. 24.

The essay “On Prayer” by this saint of God is published in the book “Classes” published by Optina Hermitage.

Venerable Gregory of Sinai. Oh my goodness, the chapters are extremely useful. – Philokalia, part 1.

The word of St. Simeon on three types of prayer.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 17.

Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 55.

answer 216

This article and the two that follow it are borrowed from the 5th word of St. Isaac of Syria.

According to the explanation of Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria.

Hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov, a monk who was especially successful in prayer, spent a thousand days and a thousand nights standing on a stone and crying to the Lord: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (The Legend of the Life and Deeds of Father Seraphim. M., 1884).

Ladder. Word 28.

Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 16.

In monasteries, a monk who guides and instructs other monks is called an elder.

Preface by Schemamonk Vasily Polyanomerulsky on the chapters of Blessed Philotheus of Sinai. Life and writings of the Moldavian Elder, Paisius Velichkovsky, edition of Optina Hermitage. Moscow. 1847

Instruction 32. Edition of 1844, Moscow. Elder Seraphim was born in 1759, joined the brotherhood of the Sarov Hermitage in 1778, and died in 1833 on January 2.

This information was received from the most consulted person, now Archimandrite Nikon, abbot of the first-class St. George Balaklava Monastery (1866).

According to the explanation of St. Hesychius. A word on sobriety, ch. II.

Reply from CCX.

Word LVI.

The monastery charter. Word I.

Saint Hesychius’s Word on Temperance, ch. СХ, coll. from ch. CIX.

Venerable Cassian the Roman. Interview 2. About reasoning. Blessed Nikephoros of Athos. Philokalia, part 2, and many other Fathers.

Rev. Neil of Sinai on prayer, chapters 17, 18, 142. Philokalia, part 4.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 10.

Reverend Abba Dorotheos. Life of St. Dosifei. Venerable Gregory of Sinai. Philokalia, part 1.

On the silence of prayer by Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos, ch. 10. Philokalia, part 2.

Homily VII, chapter 9.

Chapter 131. Philokalia, part 1.

Venerable Macarius the Great. Conversation 7, ch. 4.

Venerable Macarius the Great. Word 3, ch. 2.

Chapters on prayer, ch. 8. Philokalia, part 2.

Ladder. Word 4, ch. 93 and Word 27, ch. 6, 46, 60, 61, 62.

His Holiness Callistus “On Prayer in Brief.” Philokalia, part 4.

These were: Alexy the Man of God (March 17), Saint John Kushchnik (January 15), Venerable Vitaly the monk and others. – Ladder. Word 4, ch. 36.

A word about three types of attention and prayer, in the article about the third image, at the end of the article. – Ladder. Word 27, ch. 33.

This is clear from the writings of St. Cassian the Roman, St. Orsisius, St. Isaiah the Hermit and other holy monks who received monastic education in Egyptian monasteries.

Borrowed from the stories of St. Cassian the Roman. 15.

Ladder, title of the 25th Word.

Philokalia, part 1.

Spiritual warmth is the property of very successful monks who labor in silence, for whom the entire book of St. Gregory of Sinaite was written, and is by no means the property of novices. Beginners should be content if they pray with attention and tenderness. For warmth, see “The Word on the Jesus Prayer.” Ascetic Experiences, volume 2.

Venerable Nil of Sorsky, preface to the legend.

Venerable Isaac of Syria. Word 55.

Ladder. Word 7, ch. 64, according to the publication of the Moscow Theological Academy in 1851.

Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 89.

It’s him. Word 11.

Venerable Gregory of Sinai. About charm, idea and many other pretexts. – Philokalia, part 1. “Whenever the devil sees someone,” says Saint Gregory, “living in tears, he does not remain there, fearing the coming humility from crying.”

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 9.

Venerable Meletios, who labored in the Galician mountain. Poem about prayer; Ladder. Word 28, ch. 21.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 17.

Advice from Elder Hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov. The fact that it is useful to pray with closed eyes is also said in his 11th instruction, on prayer. Edition 1844, Moscow.

Venerable Mark the Ascetic. About those who think that they will be justified by works, ch. 34. – Philokalia, part 1.

Venerable Gregory of Sinai. About what it is appropriate for a silent person to sit and say a prayer. – Philokalia, part 1.

Reverends Callistus and Ignatius. About silence and prayer. Word 73. – Philokalia, part 2. Ladder. Word 28, ch. 42.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 45.

Rev. Maxim Kapsokalivit. Interview with St. Gregory of Sinaite. – Philokalia, part 1.

Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. On the first image of prayer among the Venerable Sinaite, l. 131. – Philokalia, part 1.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 59.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 1.

The above-mentioned poem by St. Meletius; A Word about the Hidden Work of Theoliptus, Metropolitan of Philadelphia. – Philokalia, part 2.

Saint Demetrius of Rostov. Works, part 1. The inner man, ch. 4.

Venerable Macarius the Great. Word 3, ch. 1; Ladder. Word 28, title. Other fathers also teach according to this.

Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 5.

Rome. 8, 26. Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 21. “Whoever has achieved unceasing prayer has reached the edge of virtues and has become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit,” said Saint Isaac.

Opinion of the Venerable Pimen the Great. – Alphabetical patericon.

Psalms of the Prophet and King David, divided and supplemented by Orthodox prayers.

Word of Saint Theoliptus. – Philokalia, part 2.

Reverend Matoi. – Alphabetical patericon of the monastery, letter “M”.

Word 71

New Tablet, ch. 1.

Follow-up of Matins, troparion of doxology.

works of the saint, part 1. Inner Man

Venerable Macarius the Great. Word 1, chapter 3, and Word 3, chapters 2 and 3.

Word 40

About the seven services, see “New Tablet”, part 1, chapter 13.

See the life of Saint Ignatius the God-Bearer (December 20th day); of Saint Isaac of Syria Sermon 71.

Preface from the writings of the holy fathers about mental work, heartfelt and mental storage, and so on.

The inner man, ch. 3

Word 40

About the third vision. – Philokalia, part 3.

His life. – Chetya Menaion, May on the 24th day.

Word 31

See the life of this saint.

Handwritten life of St. Hilarion of Suzdal.

the first of the morning prayers: “Rising from sleep, I thank Thee, Holy Trinity” and so on

sixth of the morning prayers: “We bless you, Most High God” and so on

A word about three types of prayer. – Philokalia, part 1.

Fifteen chapters on silence, ch. 8. – Philokalia, part 1.

Saint Tikhon of Voronezh, vol. 14, letter 4.

Ladder. Word 28.

Saint Peter of Damascus. About the seven mental visions, article “Dividing the prayer of all minds”, book. 1. – Philokalia, part 3.

Borrowed from the interpretation of the prayer “Lord, have mercy” by Elder Paisius Nyametsky. – Writings of Elder Paisius. Ed. Optina Pustyn, 1847.

Venerable Nil of Sorsky. Preface to the legend.

“Wait a little (silently), until all your feelings calm down. Then make the beginning not quickly, without laziness, with tenderness and a contrite heart. These words are: “Blessed is the man…” and so on quietly and rationally, with attention, and not struggling (slowly), as the verb is understood with the mind.” – Instructions before reading the Psalter. The Psalter is a separate book.

Venerable Mark the Ascetic. On the spiritual law, ch. 13, 14. Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. A word about faith. – Philokalia, part 1.

Imams, the most famous prophetic word, heeding it like a shining light in a dark place, do good until the day dawns and the morning star shines in your hearts (2 Pet. 1:19).

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 17.

Borrowed from Word 28 of the Ladders.

Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos, ch. 24. – Philokalia, part 2.

Nikifor the Monastic. A word about sobriety and guarding the heart. – Philokalia, part 2.

A word about faith. – Philokalia, part 1.

Ladder. Word 27.

Interpretation of Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria; Ladder. Word 28 and so on.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 64.

A Word about Abba Philemon. – Philokalia, part 4.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 61.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 28.

Venerable Macarius the Great. Word 4, ch. 19.

Interpretation of Blessed Theophylact.

According to Blessed Theophylact.

Presented in abbreviation. – Approx. ed.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 4.

Ladder. Word 28, ch. 1.

Alphabetical patericon.

Vita Beati Antonii Abbatis. Patrologiae Tom. LXXIII, caput XV, and the Chetii Menaion.

On prayer, ch. 47.– Philokalia, part 4.

The art and rule of Saints Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos. – Philokalia, part 2, chapter. 29.

Venerable Gregory of Sinaite ch. 110.– Philokalia, part 1.

Title of the 25th Word “Ladders”.

Saint John of Carpathia. Comforting chapters 55. – Philokalia, part 4.

Alphabetical patericon, letter “I”.

Pray

Contents

The order of attention to oneself for one living in the middle of the world 1

About prayer 5

About the Jesus Prayer. Conversations between an elder and a disciple 29

Spirit of Novice Prayer

A word on the cell prayer rule

A word about church prayer

A Word on Oral and Public Prayer

About prayer and repentance. Teaching for the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee

Explanation of the mysterious meaning of the Gospel story. Lesson for the Thirty-First Week

About prayer. Sermon on Saturday of the thirty-second week

Offering to modern monasticism126
About preparation for prayer

About bows

On the special opposition of fallen spirits to prayer

From letters

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About the prayer of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

Contents

The order of attention to oneself for one living in the middle of the world 1

About prayer 5

About the Jesus Prayer. Conversations between an elder and a disciple 29

Spirit of Novice Prayer

A word on the cell prayer rule

A word about church prayer

A Word on Oral and Public Prayer

About prayer and repentance. Teaching for the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee

Explanation of the mysterious meaning of the Gospel story. Lesson for the Thirty-First Week

About prayer. Sermon on Saturday of the thirty-second week

Offering to modern monasticism126 About preparation for prayer

About bows

On the special opposition of fallen spirits to prayer

From letters

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Offering to modern monasticism126
About preparation for prayer