On Prayer: Article 1 (Part 1)

It is natural for the poor to beg, and it is natural for man, impoverished by the fall, to pray.

Prayer is the turning of fallen and repentant man toward God. Prayer is the weeping of fallen and repentant man before God. Prayer is the outpouring of the heartfelt desires, supplications, and sighs of fallen man—slain by sin—before God.

The first manifestation, the first movement of repentance is the weeping of the heart. This is the prayerful voice of the heart, preceding the prayer of the mind. And soon the mind, drawn along by the prayer of the heart, begins to bring forth prayerful thoughts.

God is the sole source of all true goods. Prayer is the mother and head of all the virtues, as the means and state of communion between man and God.[1] It draws the virtues from the source of all good—God—and imparts them to the person who strives through prayer to abide in communion with God.

The path to God is prayer. The measurement of the journey being traveled is the various states of prayer into which the one who prays rightly and persistently gradually enters.

Learn to pray to God rightly. Having learned to pray rightly, pray constantly—and you will readily inherit salvation. Salvation comes from God in His own time, with an undeniable inward assurance of itself, to one who prays rightly and persistently.

For prayer to be right, it must be offered from a heart filled with poverty of spirit—from a heart broken and humbled. All other states of the heart, until it is renewed by the Holy Spirit, recognize as what they truly are: unsuitable for a repentant sinner who beseeches God for the forgiveness of his sins and for liberation—as from a prison and chains—from enslavement to the passions.

By the Law of Moses, the Israelites were commanded to offer all their sacrifices only in the one place appointed by God. And by the spiritual law, one spiritual place has been appointed for Christians to offer all their sacrifices, and above all the sacrifice of sacrifices—prayer. That place is humility.[2]

God has no need of our prayers! He knows, even before we ask, what we require; He, the All-merciful, pours out abundant gifts even upon those who do not ask Him. We ourselves have need of prayer: it unites the person to God. Without prayer a person is a stranger to God, and the more he exercises himself in prayer, the more he draws near to God.

Prayer is a partaking of life. The abandonment of prayer 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 breathes this holy, mysterious air by means of prayer.

When you rise from sleep, let your first thought be of God; offer to God the very first fruits of your thoughts, not yet stamped with any vain impression. When you go to sleep, when you prepare to plunge into this image of death, let your last thoughts be of eternity and of the God who reigns over it.

An angel revealed to a certain holy monk the following order of thoughts in prayer, pleasing to God: “The beginning of prayer should consist in the glorification of God, in thanksgiving to God for His countless benefactions; then we should offer to God a sincere confession of our sins, in contrition of spirit;[3] and in conclusion we may—but with the greatest humility—present to the Lord our petitions concerning our needs of soul and body, leaving with reverence the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of these petitions to His will.”

The primary cause of prayer is faith: “I believed, and therefore I spoke” (Ps. 115:1)—prayed to the merciful God, who was pleased to command me to pray and who gave the promise to attend to it.

“Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you will receive it, and it will be granted to you” (Mk. 11:24), the Lord proclaimed. And therefore, casting aside all doubt and faint-heartedness, abide persistently in prayer before the Lord, who commanded us to “always pray and not lose heart” (Lk. 18:1)—that is, not to fall into despondency from the constraint of prayer, which is especially at first burdensome and intolerable for a mind accustomed to wandering everywhere.

Blessed is the soul that ceaselessly knocks through prayer at the doors of God’s mercy, and ceaselessly wearies the Unwearied with complaints against its “adversary” (Lk. 18:3[4])—against the sin that oppresses it: it will rejoice in due time over its purity and its freedom from passion.

Sometimes our petition is heard immediately; at other times, in the words of the Saviour, “God bears long with us” (Lk. 18:7)—that is, He does not quickly fulfill what we ask: He sees that it is necessary to delay this fulfillment for a time for our humility, that we must grow weary, must see our weakness, which always manifests itself very sharply when we are left to ourselves.

Prayer, as a conversation with God, is itself a lofty good—often far greater than what a person is asking for—and the merciful God, not granting the petition, leaves the petitioner with his prayer, so that he may not lose it, may not abandon this higher good when he receives the good he has asked for, which is far lesser.

Petitions whose fulfillment would be accompanied by harmful consequences, God does not grant; nor does He grant those petitions that are contrary to His holy will, contrary to His wise and incomprehensible judgments.

Against the decree of God, the great Moses the God-seer prayed to be given entry into the Promised Land, and was not heard (Deut. 3:26); holy David prayed, intensifying his prayer with fasting, ashes, and tears, for the preservation of the life of his ailing son—but was not heard (2 Sam. 12:16–17). And when your own petition is not fulfilled by God, bow with reverence to the will of the all-holy God, who for reasons unknown to us has left your petition unfulfilled.

To the children of this world who ask God for earthly goods to satisfy their carnal desires, the holy Apostle James proclaims: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures” (Jas. 4:3).

When we desire to stand before an earthly king, we prepare for this with special care: we consider what disposition our heartfelt feelings should have in a conversation with him, lest we be carried away by some impulse of feeling into a word or gesture unpleasant to the king; we plan in advance what to say to him, so as to speak only what is pleasing and thereby incline him favorably toward us; we take care that even our outward appearance may attract his attention. How much more then must we make proper preparation when we desire to stand before the King of kings and to enter into conversation with Him through prayer.

“Man looks at the face, but God looks at the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7); yet in a person, the disposition of the heart corresponds most closely to the position of his face, his outward bearing. And so, give your body the most reverent posture in prayer. Stand as one condemned, with head bowed, not daring to look up at heaven, with hands lowered or clasped behind you, as if bound with ropes—as prisoners seized at the scene of a crime are usually bound. Let the sound of your voice be the plaintive sound of weeping, a groan of one struck by a mortal weapon or tormented by a severe illness.

“God looks at the heart.” He sees our most hidden, most subtle thoughts and feelings; He sees all our past and all our future. God is everywhere present. And so stand in your prayer as though you were standing before God Himself. Indeed you are standing before Him! You stand before your Judge and absolute Sovereign, upon whom your lot in time and in eternity depends. Make use of your standing before Him to arrange your own well-being; do not allow this standing, through your unworthiness, to become the cause of temporal and eternal punishment for you. Intending to offer prayer to God, cast away all earthly thoughts and cares. Do not occupy yourself with thoughts that may come to you then, however important, brilliant, or necessary they may seem. Give what is God’s to God, and what is needed for temporal life you will have time to attend to in due course. It is impossible at one and the same time to serve God through prayer and to occupy the mind with extraneous thoughts and cares.

Before prayer, burn in your heart the incense of the fear of God and holy reverence: reflect that you have angered God with countless transgressions, which are plainer to Him than they are to your own conscience; endeavor to propitiate the Judge with humility. Take care! Do not arouse His displeasure by negligence and boldness: He desires that even the angelic Powers nearest to Him, the most pure, should stand before Him with all reverence and most holy fear (Ps. 88:8).

The garment of your soul must shine with the whiteness of simplicity. There must be nothing complex here! There must be no admixture of crafty thoughts and feelings of vainglory, hypocrisy, pretense, people-pleasing, pride of mind, or sensuality—those dark and foul-smelling stains with which the soul-garment of praying Pharisees is usually bespattered.

Instead of pearls and diamonds, instead of gold and silver, adorn yourself with chastity, humble-mindedness, the tears of meekness and spiritual understanding—and, before you have received these tears, with the tears of repentance; adorn yourself with the childlike, angelic guilelessness. This is precious adornment! When the King of kings beholds this adornment upon the soul, His merciful gaze is turned toward it.

Forgiveness of all offenses—all of them, without exception, even the most grievous—is an indispensable condition for success in prayer. “When you stand praying”, the Saviour commands, “forgive whatever you have against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mk. 11:25–26).[5] “The prayers of the resentful are seeds sown on stone”, said the Venerable Isaac the Syrian.

Moderate, prudent, and constant abstinence from food and drink makes the body light, purifies the mind, gives it alertness, and therefore also serves as a preparation for prayer. Intemperance of the belly makes the body heavy and dense, hardens the heart, darkens the mind with the multitude of vapors and gases rising from the stomach to the brain. Scarcely does one who is overfull or overfed stand up for prayer when drowsiness and sloth assail him, a multitude of coarse fantasies are drawn in his imagination, and his heart is incapable of coming to compunction.

As harmful as intemperance is, so too—or even more so—is immoderate fasting.[6] The weakness of body arising from eating too little does not allow one to perform the appointed number of prayers with the requisite force.

The quantity of prayer is determined for each person by his manner of life and the measure of his strength, both of soul and body. The two mites of the widow, which she brought to the temple and which constituted all her substance, proved on the scales of the righteous God to be greater than the considerable offerings of the rich from their abundance. Judge prayer in the same way: appoint for yourself a quantity of prayer in keeping with your strength, and remember the wise instruction of the great teacher of ascetics: “If you compel a weak body to works that exceed its strength, you thereby introduce darkness into your soul and bring it confusion, not benefit.”[7]

From one who is healthy and strong in constitution, a corresponding prayer is required. “Every prayer, said the same great Father, at which the body does not labor and the heart does not come to compunction, is considered an unripe fruit—for such prayer is without soul.”[8]

If you are occupied with public duties—or, if you are a monk, with your obediences—and have no opportunity to devote as much time to prayer as you would wish, do not be troubled by this: service performed lawfully and in good conscience prepares a person for fervent prayer and makes up for quantity with quality. Nothing so contributes to progress in prayer as a conscience satisfied by a life pleasing to God. The fulfillment of the Gospel commandments attunes the mind and heart to pure prayer filled with compunction, while true prayer directs one to think, feel, and act in accordance with the teachings of the Gospel.

Mercy toward one’s neighbors and humility before them, expressed in outward deeds and nourished within the soul, together with purity of heart—especially from thoughts and feelings of fornication—constitute the foundation and strength of prayer.[9] They are, as it were, the “wings” (Ps. 54:7) by which it soars to heaven. Without them, prayer cannot rise from the earth—that is, cannot emerge from carnal thinking: it is held back by that thinking as by a net or snare; it is troubled, defiled, and annihilated by it.

The soul of prayer is attentiveness.[10] As a body without a soul is dead, so prayer without attentiveness is dead. Prayer spoken without attentiveness becomes idle talk, and the one who prays thus is numbered among those who take the “name of God in vain.”

Speak the words of prayer without haste; do not allow the mind to wander everywhere, but confine it within the words of prayer.[11] This way is narrow and grievous for a mind accustomed to roaming freely through the universe; but this way leads to attentiveness. Whoever tastes the great good of attentiveness will love to constrain the mind on the path that leads to the blessed state of attentiveness.

Attentiveness is the initial gift of Divine grace, sent down to one who labors and patiently endures in the ascetic struggle of prayer.[12]

Grace-given attentiveness must be preceded by one’s own effort toward attentiveness: the latter must be an active witness to the sincere desire to receive the former. One’s own attentiveness is assailed by thoughts and fantasies, shaken by them; grace-given attentiveness is filled with firmness.

Forbid yourself the scattering of thoughts in prayer; learn to hate fantasizing; reject cares by the force of faith; strike the heart with the fear of God—and you will readily accustom yourself to attentiveness.

The mind that prays must be in a state that is entirely true. Fantasy—however enticing and seemly it may appear—being the mind’s own arbitrary composition, draws the mind out of the state of Divine truth and introduces it into a state of self-delusion and deceit; for this reason it is rejected in prayer.

During prayer the mind must be kept—and preserved with all diligence—free from images, rejecting all forms drawn in the faculty of imagination; for the mind in prayer stands before the invisible God, whom it is impossible to represent by any material image. Images, if the mind admits them in prayer, will become an impenetrable veil, a wall between the mind and God. “Those who in their prayers see nothing, see God”, said the Venerable Meletius the Confessor.[13]

If during your prayer there should appear to you in a sensory way, or take shape within you mentally, the form of Christ, or of an Angel, or of some Saint—in a word, any kind of image whatsoever—by no means accept this apparition as genuine, pay no attention to it, and do not enter into conversation with it.[14] Otherwise you will inevitably fall into delusion and the most grievous damage to the soul, as has befallen many. Man, before he has been renewed by the Holy Spirit, is incapable of communion with holy spirits. Being still in the domain of the fallen spirits, in captivity and servitude to them, he is capable of seeing only them—and they not infrequently, having noticed in him a high opinion of himself and self-delusion, appear to him in the guise of radiant Angels, even of Christ Himself, for the ruin of his soul.

Holy icons are received by the holy Church for the arousal of devout remembrances and feelings, and by no means for the arousal of fantasizing. Standing before the icon of the Saviour, stand as though before the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who is everywhere present in His Divinity and present through His icon in the place where it is situated. Standing before the icon of the Mother of God, stand as though before the Most Holy Virgin Herself; but keep your mind free from images: there is a world of difference between being in the presence of the Lord and standing before the Lord, or imagining the Lord. The sense of the Lord’s presence brings upon the soul a saving fear, introduces into it a saving feeling of reverence;[15] whereas imagining the Lord and His saints gives the mind a kind of materiality, leads it to a false and proud opinion of itself—and brings the soul into a false state, the state of self-delusion.

A lofty state—the sense of God’s presence! It keeps the mind from conversing with extraneous thoughts that assail prayer; because of it, the nothingness of man is abundantly felt; because of it, a special vigilance over oneself appears, which preserves a person from sins, even the most minute. The sense of God’s presence is acquired by attentive prayer. Reverent standing before holy icons also greatly contributes to its attainment.

The words of prayer, animated by attentiveness, penetrate deep into the soul, pierce and, so to speak, transfix the heart, and produce compunction in it. The words of prayer offered with distraction merely touch, as it were, the surface of the soul, producing no impression upon it.