On the Jesus Prayer (Part 8)

Many, having felt a disposition and zeal for spiritual struggle, approach this struggle rashly and light-mindedly. They surrender to it with all their fervour and excitement, with all their imprudence—not having understood that this fervour and excitement are above all sanguine and carnal, that they are full of impurity and admixture; not having understood that in the study of the science of sciences—prayer—the most reliable guidance is needed, the greatest prudence and caution are required. Alas! The right ways of God are hidden from us; they are hidden from us by reason of the blindness produced and maintained in us by the fall. We choose as our guides above all those teachers whom the world has proclaimed saints, and who are either deep in spiritual delusion or deep in ignorance. Books written by heterodox ascetics are chosen as guides—ascetics who were in the most terrible demonic delusion, in communion with demons. The writings of the holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church are chosen as guides—writings that set forth the lofty prayer struggle of advanced monks, a struggle inaccessible to the understanding of beginners, let alone to their following—and the fruit of spiritual struggle monstrously becomes mental disorder and perdition. “You have sown wheat but have reaped thorns” (Jer. 12:13), the Holy Spirit says in sorrow to people who pervert good into evil through the incorrect use of good. A sorrowful, truly sorrowful spectacle! On the most exalted work of the mind—the work that leads to God those who ascend by the established steps—there is acquired through incorrect practice a darkening and corruption of the mind, mental impairment, madness, subjugation to demons, perdition. This spectacle—a spectacle that has not infrequently been presented to my eyes—served as the cause of sorrow to my heart at your question. I would not wish to hear it either from you or from any other beginner.[1] “It is not profitable for you”, the Fathers said, “to learn what follows before you have acquired experiential knowledge of what precedes.” Such curiosity is a sign of an idle and puffed-up mind.[2] And I directed you to the prefaces of the schema-monk Basil as to a composition of a true practitioner of prayer, particularly beneficial for our time. That composition guides toward an infallible understanding of the Patristic writings on the prayer struggle—writings composed for advanced monks, and above all for hesychasts.

In order to fulfil your wish, I will repeat—only in other words—what I have already said. The practice of the Jesus Prayer has two principal subdivisions or periods, ending with pure prayer, which is crowned by dispassion or Christian perfection in those ascetics to whom it pleases God to grant it. Saint Isaac the Syrian says: “Not many have been counted worthy of pure prayer, but of a few; but the one who has attained the mystery accomplished after it, and has crossed to the other shore of the Jordan, is scarcely encountered—one in a generation—by the “grace and good pleasure” of God.” In the first period, the one who prays is left to pray by his own effort alone;[3] the grace of God undoubtedly assists one who prays with sincere intention, but it does not make its presence manifest. During this time the passions, hidden in the heart, are set in motion and raise the practitioner of prayer to a martyric struggle in which defeats and victories constantly replace one another, and in which the free will of man and his weakness are expressed with clarity. In the second period, the grace of God makes its presence and action sensorially felt, uniting the mind with the heart—granting the possibility of praying without soaring, or, which is the same thing, without distraction, with heartfelt weeping and warmth;[4][5] at the same time sinful thoughts lose their violent power over the mind. The holy Fathers point to these two states. Among them the Venerable Nil Sorsky, citing the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, says: “When the action of prayer comes, it holds the mind at itself, gladdens it, and frees it from soaring.” For those who have not yet acquired the gracious action, the Venerable considers the restraining of the mind from distraction and attentive prayer to be the most difficult, burdensome, and inconvenient struggle. In order to reach the second state, it is necessary to pass through the first;[6] it is necessary to demonstrate and prove the soundness of one’s will, and to “bring forth fruit in patience” (Lk. 8:15[7]). The first state of one who prays may be likened to bare trees in winter; the second—to the same trees covered with leaves and flowers from the action of the warmth of spring. The strength for producing leaves and flowers the trees accumulate in winter, when their state has every appearance of a passive state, of a state under the dominion of death. Let us not permit ourselves to tempt the Lord! Let us not permit ourselves to approach Him light-mindedly, without fear, with double-mindedness, with the disposition of doubting inquisitiveness—for which entry into the promised land is forbidden (Heb. 3:8–11, 18–19). Let us draw near as those who have perished, as those who have essential need of salvation—which is granted by God for true repentance. Repentance must be the soul and aim of prayer in both states. For repentance offered through one’s own effort alone, God grants in due time repentance that is gracious—and the “Spirit” of God, having dwelt within a person, “makes intercession” for him with “groanings that cannot be uttered”: He “makes intercession for the saints” in accordance with the will of God, which He alone knows (Rom. 8:26–27).

From this it is evident with full clarity that for the beginner the seeking of the place of the heart—that is, the seeking to open in oneself prematurely and before the proper time the manifest action of grace—is the most mistaken of undertakings, one that overturns the order and system of the science. Such an undertaking is an undertaking of pride and foolishness! Equally unsuited to the beginner is the use of the mechanisms proposed by the holy Fathers for advanced monks and hesychasts. Beginners in their practice of prayer must hold to one alone: the most reverent attentiveness, the sole enclosure of the mind within the words of prayer—pronouncing the words very unhurriedly so that the mind may have time to be enclosed within them—and producing their breathing quietly but freely. Some have thought that in the very act of breathing there is something especially important, and, not understanding that unhurried and quiet breathing was enjoined by the Fathers for the restraining of the mind from distraction, began to restrain their breath immoderately and thereby disordered their bodily health—which is so helpful in the prayer struggle.[8] “Restrain”, says the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, “also the breathing—that is, the movement of the mind—closing the lips somewhat at the time of performing the prayer; and not the breathing of the nostrils—that is, the sensory breathing—as ignorant people do, to avoid harming themselves by puffing themselves up.” Not only in the process of breathing but in all movements of the body one must observe calm, quiet, and modesty. All this greatly assists in restraining the mind from distraction. The mind that prays attentively will without fail draw the heart into sympathy with itself, into the feeling of repentance. Between the sympathy of the heart with the mind and the union of the mind with the heart—or the descent of the mind into the heart—there is the greatest difference.[9] Saint John of the Ladder considers it significant progress in prayer when the mind abides within its words.[10] This great teacher of monks affirms that the prayer of one who prays constantly and zealously, with the mind enclosed within the words of prayer, from a feeling of repentance and weeping, will without fail be overshadowed by Divine grace. When prayer is overshadowed by Divine grace, then not only will the place of the heart be opened, but the entire soul will be drawn to God by an incomprehensible spiritual power—drawing the body along with it. The prayer of those advanced in it is pronounced from the entirety of their being. The whole person becomes, as it were, one pair of lips. Not only the “heart” of the renewed person, not only the “soul”, but also the “flesh” is filled with spiritual consolation and delight, with joy in “God the living” (Ps. 83:3)—in God who acts sensorially and powerfully through His grace. “All my bones” of the true man of prayer “shall say: Lord, who is like to You, delivering the poor from the hand of those stronger than he, and the poor and needy from those who plunder” his prayer and hope—from the thoughts and sensations rising from fallen nature and stirred by demons (Ps. 34:10). All Christians should strive toward advancement in the prayer of repentance; the holy Fathers invite all Christians to the practice of the prayer of repentance and to advancement in it. On the contrary, they strictly forbid the premature effort to ascend with the mind into the sanctuary of the heart for gracious prayer, when that prayer has not yet been given by God. The prohibition is accompanied by a terrible threat. “Mental prayer”, says the Venerable Nil Sorsky, repeating the words of the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, “is above all works and is the head of the virtues, as the love of God.[11] One who shamelessly and boldly wishes to enter to God, and to converse with Him in purity, forcing himself to acquire Him within himself, is easily slain by the demons.”

I entreat, I entreat you to give all due attention to the dread prohibition of the Fathers. I know that certain well-intentioned people, who yet actually fall into fornication and who, by unhappy habit, cannot refrain from falling, venture upon the practice of heartfelt prayer. Can there be anything more imprudent, more ignorant, more presumptuous than such an undertaking? The prayer of repentance is given to all without exception—it is given also to those held by passions, and to those who fall under violent compulsion. They have every right to cry out to the Lord for salvation; but entry into the heart for the sacred act of prayer is forbidden to them: it is reserved exclusively for the mysterious hierarch, lawfully ordained by Divine grace. Understand, understand, that this entry is opened only by the finger of God; it is opened when a person has not only ceased from active sin but has also received from the right hand of God the power to resist passionate thoughts—not to be carried away by them and not to take pleasure in them. Purity of heart is built up little by little: to purity God appears “gradually” and “spiritually”. Gradually! — because both the passions diminish and the virtues increase not all at once; both require considerable time.

Here then is my testament to you: do not seek the place of the heart. Do not struggle vainly to explain to yourself what the place of the heart signifies: it is satisfactorily explained only by experience. If it is God’s pleasure to grant you knowledge of it, He will grant it in due time—and will grant it in a manner that even a carnal person cannot imagine. Occupy yourself exclusively and with all diligence with the prayer of repentance; endeavour through prayer to bring forth repentance: you will be assured of success in the struggle when you sense in yourself poverty of spirit, compunction, and weeping. Such progress in prayer I desire for both myself and you. The attainment of supernatural gracious states has always been rare. Pimen the Great, a monk of the Egyptian Skete—that Skete renowned for the high attainments of its monks—who lived in the fifth century, when monasticism especially flourished, used to say: “Of perfection many among us speak, but in truth one or two have attained it.” Saint John of the Ladder, an ascetic writer of the sixth century, testifies that in his time the vessels of Divine grace had greatly diminished in comparison with the preceding time;[12] the saint sees the cause of this in the change of spirit in human society, which had lost its simplicity and been infected with cunning.[13] Saint Gregory of Sinai, a writer of the fourteenth century, ventured to say that in his time there were no gracious men at all, so rare had they become; the cause of this Gregory of Sinai points to the extraordinary development of vices arising from the multiplication of temptations.[14] All the more in our own time is the greatest caution necessary for the practitioner of prayer. God-inspired teachers we have none! Chastity, simplicity, and evangelical love have withdrawn from the face of the earth. Temptations and vices have multiplied without end! The world is engulfed in depravity! Criminal love in its manifold forms reigns over human society like an absolute tyrant! It is enough—more than enough—if we are counted worthy to offer to God the one work essentially necessary for our salvation: repentance.

Disciple. Is life in a monastery, amidst a more or less numerous brotherhood and the bustle unavoidable in a populous community, suitable for learning the Jesus Prayer? Is life in stillness not more convenient for this?

Elder. Life in a monastery—especially a coenobitic one—assists the beginner in successful and lasting training in prayer, if only he lives there rightly. One who lives rightly in a community is constantly presented with occasions for obedience and humility, and these virtues—more than all others—prepare and attune the soul for true prayer. “From obedience comes humility”, the Fathers have said.[15] Humility is born from obedience and sustained by obedience, just as the burning of a lamp is sustained by the oil poured into it. Through humility, “the peace of God” (Phil. 4:7) is introduced into the soul. The peace of God is the spiritual dwelling place of God (Ps. 75:3), the spiritual heaven;[16] those who have entered this heaven become equal to the angels and, like the angels, sing without ceasing in their hearts a spiritual song to God (Eph. 5:19)—that is, they offer pure and holy prayer which, in the advanced, is truly a song and the Song of Songs. For this reason obedience—by which is obtained the priceless treasure of humility—is unanimously recognised by the Fathers as the fundamental monastic virtue, as the door that leads lawfully and rightly into mental and heartfelt prayer, or, which is the same thing, into true sacred stillness. Saint Symeon the New Theologian says concerning attentive prayer: “As I think, this good flows to us from obedience.[17] Obedience shown to the spiritual father makes everyone free from care. By what temporal thing can such a person be overcome or enslaved? What sorrow and what care can such a man have?” Cares and attachments, constantly drawing thought toward themselves, serve as a cause of distraction in prayer; pride serves as a cause of hardness of heart; anger and rancour—which are grounded in pride—serve as a cause of disturbance of heart. Obedience serves as the initial cause that eliminates the distraction from which prayer is fruitless; it serves as the cause of humility—humility eliminates the hardness of heart in which prayer is dead;[18][7] it drives away the disturbance in which prayer is unprofitable; it anoints the heart with compunction—from which prayer comes alive, takes wing, and ascends to God.[19] Consequently obedience not only acts against distraction but also guards the heart from hardness and disturbance, holds it constantly meek and gentle, constantly capable of compunction, constantly ready to pour itself out before God in prayer and weeping—so sincere that they may with full justice be called both an “confession” of the soul before God and a spiritual “appearing” of God to the soul.[20] If a monk conducts himself in the monastery as a stranger—not cultivating acquaintances either outside or inside the monastery, not visiting the cells of the brethren and not receiving the brethren in his own cell, not acquiring any superfluities in his cell, not fulfilling his own wishes, labouring in monastic obediences with humility and conscientiousness, resorting frequently to the confession of his sins, obeying the abbot and the other monastic authorities without murmuring, in simplicity of heart—then without doubt he will make progress in the Jesus Prayer; that is, he will receive the gift of occupying himself with it attentively and of shedding tears of repentance during it. “I have seen”, says Saint John of the Ladder, “those who had progressed in obedience and had not neglected, to the best of their ability, the remembrance of God worked by the mind—how they, having suddenly stood up in prayer, quickly overcame their minds and shed tears in torrents:[21] this happened with them because they had been prepared beforehand by holy obedience.” Saints Symeon the New Theologian, the Venerable Nikita Stithatos, and many other Fathers learned the Jesus Prayer and occupied themselves with it in monasteries situated in the capital of the Eastern Empire—in the vast and populous Constantinople.[22][23] The most holy patriarch Photius learned it already in the rank of patriarch, amidst his many other occupations connected with that rank.[24] The most holy patriarch Callistus learned it while serving in the obedience of cook in the lavra of the Venerable Athanasius of Athos on the Holy Mountain.[25] The Venerables Dorotheus and Dositheus learned it in the community of Saint Seridos—the first while bearing the obedience of head of the infirmary, the second while serving as an attendant in it.[26] In the Alexandrian community described by Saint John of the Ladder, all the brethren practised mental prayer. That saint, as well as Barsanuphius the Great, enjoins upon those assailed by the passion of fornication a particularly intensified invocation of the Name of the Lord Jesus. The blessed elder Seraphim of Sarov testified, instructed by his own experience, that the Jesus Prayer is a scourge against the flesh and carnal lusts. The flame of these lusts withers from its action. When it acts within a person, the carnal lusts, through its action, lose their freedom of operation. Just as a predatory beast placed on a chain—retaining the capacity to kill and devour people and animals—loses the ability to act according to its capacity.

Saints Symeon and Andrew, fools for Christ, were in a most particular progress in prayer, having been raised to it by their complete self-denial and deepest humility. Nothing grants such free access to God as resolute self-denial, the trampling of one’s pride and one’s “self”. The abundant action of the heartfelt prayer of Saint Andrew is described by his intimate companion Nikephoros, a priest of the great church of the royal city of Constantinople. This action, by reason of its particularity, is worthy of being noted. “He”, says Nikephoros, “received such a gift of prayer in the secret temple of his heart that the whisper of his lips rang out from afar. Like a cauldron of water set in violent boiling, which emits steam from itself: so too steam came from his lips from the action of the Holy Spirit. Some of those who saw him said that a demon dwelt in him, and that was why steam came from him; others said: no! His heart, tormented by the hostile spirit, produces such breathing. Neither opinion was correct: in this phenomenon was reflected the unceasing, God-pleasing prayer—and those unfamiliar with the spiritual struggle formed about the great Andrew a conception similar to that formed long ago at the sudden opening of the gift of knowledge of foreign languages.” It is clear that the servant of God produced his prayer from his entire being, combining mental and heartfelt prayer with vocal prayer.[27] When Saint Andrew was caught up into paradise, then—as he told the priest—the abundant grace of God filling paradise produced in him that spiritual action which is ordinarily produced by mental prayer in the advanced: it brought his mind and heart into union, in which a person comes into a state of spiritual intoxication and a certain self-forgetfulness. This intoxication and self-forgetfulness is at the same time a sensation of new life.[28] Saint Symeon told his intimate companion, the deacon John, that in the midst of the most powerful temptations his mind remained entirely directed toward God, and the temptations remained without their usual effect. In those who have been granted gracious overshadowing, the soul is constantly caught up from amidst sinful and vain thoughts and sensations by mental prayer—as if by a mysterious invisible hand—and is borne aloft:[29] the action of sin and of the world remains powerless and fruitless.[30]

In the days of my early monastic life, a certain elder told me in candid conversation: “In secular life, through the simplicity of former times and the devout disposition that then prevailed, I learned of the Jesus Prayer, occupied myself with it, and at times sensed an extraordinary change in myself and consolation. Upon entering the monastery, I continued to occupy myself with it, guided by the reading of Patristic books and the instructions of certain monks who, it seemed, had some understanding of it. With them I saw the low stool mentioned by the Venerable Gregory of Sinai—made in the style of those stools used in Moldavia. At the end of the past century and the beginning of the present one, the mental work flourished in various monasteries of Moldavia, especially in the Niamets Monastery. At first I was in the obedience of the refectory; while occupied with the obedience, I occupied myself also with prayer, joining it with the humble thoughts that assist it, according to the instruction of the Fathers.[31] Once I was placing a dish of food on the last table, at which the novices sat, and was saying inwardly: receive from me, servants of God, this poor service. Suddenly such consolation fell into my breast that I even swayed; the consolation continued for many days—about a month. Another time it happened that I went into the prosphora bakery; I know not why—by some impulse—I bowed very low to the brethren working in the bakery;[32] and suddenly prayer so acted within me that I hastened to go to my cell and lay down on my bed because of the weakness produced throughout my whole body by the action of prayer.”

In the account of the repose of Saint Dimitri of Rostov it is narrated that he was found at rest in prayer. Some hours before his repose, his beloved singer had been with him; in parting from the singer, the Saint bowed to him almost to the ground. From one and the same disposition of heart flowed humility and prayer. The coenobitic monastic life, as I have already said, serves as the greatest assistance for learning the Jesus Prayer in its first degrees, providing the beginner with constant occasions for humility. Each monk can readily test upon himself, can soon see, the effect of obedience and humility upon prayer. Daily confession of one’s thoughts to a spiritual father or elder, the renunciation of activity according to one’s own reason and one’s own will—will begin in a short time to act against distraction, to eliminate it, to hold the mind within the words of prayer. Humility before the elder and before all the brethren will immediately begin to bring the heart into compunction and to hold it in compunction. On the contrary, activity according to one’s own will and one’s own reason will immediately produce anxiety about oneself; various calculations, suppositions, fears, and fantasies will present themselves to the mind and will destroy attentive prayer. The abandonment of humility for the preservation of one’s dignity in relation to a neighbour will deprive the heart of compunction, harden the heart, kill prayer—robbing it of its essential properties, attentiveness and compunction. Every act contrary to humility is an adversary and destroyer of prayer. Let prayer be built upon obedience and humility! These virtues are the only firm foundation of the prayer struggle.

Stillness is beneficial for those who have advanced—who have understood the inner warfare, who have been strengthened in evangelical morality by a thorough habituation to it, who have put away attachments:[33] all this must be acquired beforehand in community life. For those who enter into stillness without adequate prior training in a monastery, stillness brings the greatest harm: it deprives them of progress, intensifies the passions, becomes a cause of pride, self-delusion, and demonic spiritual delusion.[34][35][36] “Those without experience”—those untrained experientially in the mysteries of monastic life—“are destroyed by stillness”, said Saint John of the Ladder.[37] “Those capable of true stillness”, observes that same saint, “are few: those who have acquired Divine consolation as encouragement for their labours and Divine assistance in help against battles.”[38]

Disciple. You said before that one not cleansed from the passions is incapable of tasting Divine grace, yet you have just mentioned gracious consolation in prayer in a layman and a novice in his first obediences. Here it seems to me there is a contradiction.