On the Jesus Prayer (Part 10)

The Elder. The initial fruits of prayer consist in attentiveness and compunction. These fruits appear before all others from every rightly performed prayer, and most particularly from the Jesus Prayer, whose practice surpasses psalmody and other forms of prayer308.[1] From attentiveness is born compunction, and from compunction attentiveness is intensified. They increase by giving birth to one another; they give prayer depth, gradually quickening the heart; they give it purity, removing distraction and fantasy. As true prayer itself, so too attentiveness and compunction are gifts of God. Just as we prove our desire to acquire prayer by compelling ourselves to it, so we prove our desire to acquire attentiveness and compunction by compelling ourselves to them. A further fruit of prayer is the gradually widening vision of one’s own sins and sinfulness, from which compunction intensifies and turns into weeping. Weeping is overflowing compunction joined with the suffering of a broken and humble heart, acting from the heart’s depths and encompassing the soul. Then there appear feelings of the presence of God, a vivid remembrance of death, the fear of judgment and condemnation. All these fruits of prayer are accompanied by weeping, and in due time are overshadowed by a subtle, holy, spiritual feeling of the fear of God. The fear of God cannot be compared to any feeling of the carnal, or even the soulful, person. The fear of God is an entirely new feeling. The fear of God is an action of the Holy Spirit. From the tasting of this wondrous action the passions begin to melt away—the mind and heart begin to be drawn toward unceasing exercise in prayer. After some advancement there comes the feeling of stillness, humility, love toward God and neighbor without distinction of good from evil, patience in sorrows as God’s permissions and healings, which our sinfulness is in absolute need of. The love toward God and neighbor that appears gradually out of the fear of God is wholly spiritual, ineffably holy, subtle, and humble; it differs with an infinite difference from human love in its ordinary state, and cannot be compared with any love that moves within fallen nature, however correct and sacred that natural love may be. The natural law acting in time is approved; but the eternal law, the spiritual law, is as far above it as the Holy Spirit of God is above the human spirit. I forbear to speak of the further fruits and consequences of praying with the most holy name of the Lord Jesus: let blessed experience teach them to both me and others. These consequences and fruits are described in detail in The Philokalia, that excellent, God-inspired guide to the teaching of mental prayer for advanced monks capable of entering the haven of sacred stillness and dispassion. Acknowledging both myself and you as novices in the spiritual struggle, I have primarily in view, in setting forth correct notions concerning the practice of the Jesus Prayer, the need of novices, the need of the majority. “Acquire weeping,” the Fathers have said, “and it will teach you everything”309.[2] Let us weep and constantly weep before God: what is of God cannot come otherwise than by God’s good pleasure—and it comes in a spiritual character, in a new character, in such a character as we cannot form any conception of in our present state, which is carnal, soulful, old, and passionate310.[3]

Worthy of particular notice is that opinion of oneself which is instilled by the rightly practiced Jesus Prayer in one who practices it. Hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov attained the greatest advancement in it. Once the superior sent to him a monk whom he had blessed to begin the life of a hermit, so that Father Seraphim might instruct this monk in the hermit’s life to the extent that he himself knew this most laborious form of monastic life. Father Seraphim, receiving the monk most cordially, replied: “I myself know nothing.” He then repeated to the monk the Saviour’s words concerning humility (Mt. 11:29) and their explanation by Saint John of the Ladder through the action of the heartfelt Jesus Prayer311.[4] The following was told to me of a certain practitioner of prayer. He had been invited by benefactors of the monastery to a provincial capital. When visiting them, the monk was constantly at a loss, finding nothing to say to them. Once he was at the house of a very devout Christian benefactor. This man asked the monk: “Why are there no possessed people nowadays?” — “What do you mean, there are none?” replied the monk, “there are many.” — “But where are they?” the benefactor objected. The monk answered: “First of all, here—I am.” “Come now! What are you saying!” exclaimed the host, looking at the monk with a wild smile in which both bewilderment and horror were expressed. “You may be sure…” the monk was about to continue. — “Come now, come now!” the host interrupted, and began speaking with others about other matters, while the monk fell silent. “The word of the cross” and self-denial “is foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:18) to those who do not understand their action and power. Who, not knowing the weeping of prayer and the mysteries it discloses, will understand words spoken from the depths of weeping? One who has attained self-vision through spiritual struggle sees himself bound by the passions, sees the rejected spirits acting within him and through him. A brother asked Pimen the Great: “How should a hermit conduct his life?” The Great One answered: “I see myself as a man sunken in mud up to his neck, with a burden on his neck, and crying out to God: have mercy on me”312. This saint, taught by weeping to the deepest, incomprehensible humble-mindedness, used to say to the brethren who lived with him: “Believe me—where they cast the devil, there they will cast me”313. With the remembrance of the perfect monk, Pimen the Great, let us conclude our discourse on the Jesus Prayer.[5][5]

The Disciple. My heart thirsts to hear more: say something further.

The Elder. It is very profitable for one practicing prayer to have in his cell icons of the Saviour and of the Mother of God, of fairly considerable size. At times one may turn during prayer toward the icons, as if to the Lord and the Mother of God themselves who are present there. The sense of God’s presence in the cell can become habitual. With such a constant sense we shall abide in the cell with the fear of God, as though constantly under the gaze of God. Indeed: we are always in the presence of God, for He is everywhere present—we are always under the gaze of God, for He sees all things and everywhere. Glory to the all-merciful Lord, who sees our sinfulness and our sins, who with long-suffering awaits our repentance, who has granted us not only permission but even the commandment to beseech Him for mercy.

Let us avail ourselves of God’s ineffable mercy toward us! Let us receive it with the greatest reverence, with the greatest gratitude! Let us cultivate it for our salvation with the greatest zeal, with the greatest diligence! Mercy is granted by God in fullest abundance; but to receive it or to reject it, to receive it with the whole soul or halfheartedly, is left to the free will of each person. “My child, from your youth choose discipline, and even to old age you will find wisdom. As one who plows and sows, draw near to her, and await her good fruits: for in laboring at her you will toil but a little, and soon you will eat of her fruits” (Sir. 6:18–20). “In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening do not let your hand be idle” (Eccl. 11:6[6])314. “Give thanks to the Lord and call upon His name… Seek the Lord and be strengthened; seek His face always” (Ps. 104:1, 4). By these words Holy Scripture teaches us that the struggle of serving God—the struggle of prayer—must be performed with the whole soul, constantly and without interruption. The external and internal sorrows that are bound to be encountered on the course of this struggle are to be overcome with faith, courage, humility, patience, and long-suffering, healing deviations and waywardness through repentance. Both the abandonment of the prayerful struggle and intervals in it are extremely dangerous. Better not to begin this struggle than, having begun, to abandon it. The soul of an ascetic who has abandoned the practice of the Jesus Prayer he had undertaken may be compared to land that has been tilled and enriched with compost but afterward left desolate: on such land weeds grow with extraordinary force, put down deep roots, and acquire a particular coarseness. Into the soul that has renounced the blessed union with prayer, abandoned prayer and been abandoned by prayer, the passions pour in as a rushing torrent and flood it. The passions acquire a particular power over such a soul, a particular firmness and permanence; they are sealed with the hardening and deadness of the heart, with unbelief. The demons expelled by prayer return to the soul; enraged by their previous expulsion, they return with greater frenzy and in greater numbers. “The last state of that man becomes worse than the first” (Mt. 12:45), according to the declaration of the Gospel: the condition of one who has fallen under the dominion of the passions and demons after being delivered from them through true prayer is incomparably more wretched than the condition of one who never attempted to cast off the yoke of sin, who never drew the sword of prayer from its sheath. The harm from intervals or from the periodic abandonment of the prayerful struggle is similar to the harm arising from complete abandonment; this harm is the greater, the longer the interval. During the “sleep” of the ascetics—that is, during their negligence regarding prayer—“the enemy comes”, unseen by bodily eyes, unnoticed by ascetics who have allowed themselves to be carried away and distracted, “and sows tares among the wheat” (Mt. 13:25). The sower of tares is very experienced, cunning, and filled with malice: it is easy for him to sow a tare of the most malignant kind—trivial in appearance and at its beginning, but afterward entangling and intertwining the whole soul with its numerous offshoots. “He who is not with Me”, said the Saviour, “is against Me: and he who does not gather with Me, scatters” (Lk. 11:23). Prayer does not entrust itself to double-minded, inconstant practitioners; “to the undisciplined she is very crooked, and the foolish cannot abide with her: she will weigh upon him like a stone of testing, and he will not delay in casting her away. Hear, my child, and receive my counsel, and do not reject my advice: and bring your feet into her fetters and your neck into her collar. Bow your shoulder and bear her, and do not be averse to her bonds. With all your soul draw near to her and with all your might guard her ways. Search and seek, and she shall be made known to you; and once you have taken hold of her, do not let her go. For in the end you will find rest in her, and she will be turned to joy for you. And her fetters will be to you a strength of repose, and her collar a garment of glory” (Sir. 6:21–22, 24–30). Amen.