On the Jesus Prayer (Part 9)

Elder. Instructed by Holy Scripture and the writings of the holy Fathers, we believe and confess that Divine grace acts, now as before, in the Orthodox Church—despite finding few vessels worthy of it. It overshadows those ascetics of God whom it is pleased to overshadow. Those who affirm that it is now impossible for a Christian to become a partaker of the Holy Spirit contradict Holy Scripture and cause the greatest harm to their souls—as the Venerable Macarius the Great reasons so well about this.[1] Not supposing in Christianity any particularly lofty aim, not knowing of it, they do not strive for it and do not even think at all about attaining it; content with the external fulfilment of certain virtues, they deprive themselves of Christian perfection. What is worst of all—being satisfied with their condition and considering themselves, by reason of their outward conduct, to have ascended to the summit of spiritual life, they can not only have no humility, no spiritual poverty, and no contrition of heart, but fall into self-conceit, pride, self-delusion, and spiritual delusion, and henceforth take no care at all about true progress. On the contrary, those who have believed in the existence of Christian perfection strive toward it with all their zeal and enter into unwearying struggle to attain it. The conception of Christian perfection preserves them from pride: in bewilderment and in weeping they stand in prayer before the closed entry to this spiritual bridal chamber. Led by the Gospel into a correct self-knowledge, they think humbly and lowly of themselves: they acknowledge themselves as unprofitable servants who have not fulfilled the vocation purchased and appointed for them by the Redeemer for those whom He has redeemed.[2] The rejection of a life according to the commandments of the Gospel and the teaching of the holy Fathers—a life that is self-willed, founded on one’s own rationalism, however active or however outwardly decent it may appear—has the most harmful influence upon a correct understanding of Christianity, even upon the dogmatic Faith (1 Tim. 1:19). This has been demonstrated with complete clarity by the character of those absurd delusions and that depravity into which all apostates, all heretics and schismatics have cast themselves.

Together with this, again basing ourselves on the Divine Scripture and the Patristic writings, we affirm that the mind and heart, not cleansed from the passions by repentance, are incapable of becoming partakers of Divine grace—we affirm that those who compose for themselves gracious visions and gracious sensations, flattering and deceiving themselves by them, fall into self-delusion and demonic spiritual delusion. Believing without doubt in the existence of gracious action, we must equally without doubt believe in the unworthiness and incapacity of a person, in his passionate state, to receive Divine grace. By reason of this twofold conviction, let us plunge ourselves wholly and disinterestedly into the work of repentance, committing and entrusting ourselves entirely to the will and goodness of God. “There is no injustice with God”, the Venerable Macarius the Great instructs;[3] “God will not leave unfulfilled what He has set aside for Himself to fulfil, when we have fulfilled what we are obliged to fulfil.” A monk must not doubt about receiving the gift of Divine grace—says Saint Isaac the Syrian—just as a son does not doubt about receiving his inheritance from his father. The inheritance belongs to the son by the law of nature. At the same time Saint Isaac calls prayer’s petition for the sending down of the manifest action of grace an undertaking deserving censure, a petition prompted by pride and self-exaltation; he considers the desire and seeking of grace to be an incorrect disposition of soul, rejected by the Church of God, a malady of the soul. Those who have made such desire their own he considers to have made pride and the fall their own—that is, self-delusion and demonic spiritual delusion. Although the very aim of monasticism is the renewal by the Holy Spirit of the one who has taken monastic vows, yet Saint Isaac proposes to advance toward this aim through repentance and humility—to acquire weeping over oneself and the prayer of the publican, to disclose in oneself one’s sinfulness to such a degree that our conscience witnesses to us that we are unprofitable servants and stand in need of mercy. “What is of God”, says the saint, “comes of itself, at a time when we do not even think of it. Even so! But if the place is clean, and not defiled.”[4]

As for the beginner who was mentioned, from the very cases cited concerning him it is evident that he was not at all expecting such an action of prayer as suddenly opened within him—indeed he did not even understand that it existed. This is the ordering of the Divine providence, the comprehension of which is beyond us. That same Saint Isaac says: “The order of a particular dispensation—of the providence and judgment of God—differs from the common human order. Follow the common order;[5] and by the path along which all men have gone—according to the succession of precedent—ascend to the height of the spiritual tower.”

Disciple. I have had occasion to learn that certain elders who had made great progress in the Jesus Prayer imparted to beginners directly the mental prayer, and even the heartfelt prayer.

The Elder. I know this. Such particular cases must not be taken as a general rule, nor should one, relying on them, disregard the tradition of the Church—that is, the teaching of the holy Fathers which the Church has received as common guidance. The advanced elders you mentioned were led to depart from the general rule either by some exceptional aptitude for mental prayer that they had observed in their novices, or by their own inadequacy as satisfactory guides for others, despite their prayerful advancement. The latter does happen! In the Egyptian Scete, a certain novice monk sought instruction in one aspect of the monastic ascetic life from Abba Ivestion, an elder of a very exalted manner of life. Having received the instruction, the novice thought it advisable to verify it by consulting the Venerable Pimen the Great. The Great One set aside Abba Ivestion’s instruction as too exalted, unbearable for one who is a novice and still in the grip of the passions; he offered the monk a more accessible and practical approach, pronouncing on this occasion the following memorable saying: “Abba Ivestion and his practice are in heaven, with the Angels:[6] it has escaped him that you and I are on earth and in the passions”287.[7] The Venerable Gregory of Sinai rightly observes that those who are advanced in prayer teach prayer to others in accordance with the manner in which they themselves attained advancement in it288. From experience I have been able to ascertain that those who have received grace-given prayer, by a particular providence of God, swiftly and not by the common path, hasten—in accordance with what has taken place in themselves—to impart to novices such knowledge of prayer as novices can in no way understand rightly; they understand it in a distorted way, and are harmed by it. Those, by contrast, who have received the gift of prayer after a prolonged struggle with the passions, while cleansing themselves through repentance and forming their moral character through the evangelical commandments, impart prayer with great circumspection, gradualness, and correctness. The monks of the Moldavian Niamets Monastery told me that their renowned elder, Archimandrite Paisius Velichkovsky—who had received the heart-felt, grace-given prayer by a special providence of God rather than by the common course—for that very reason did not trust himself to teach it to the brethren:[8] he entrusted that teaching to other elders who had acquired the gift of prayer by the common course. Saint Macarius the Great says that, by the ineffable goodness of God condescending to human weakness, there are souls found who have become partakers of Divine grace, filled with heavenly consolation and enjoying the action of the Holy Spirit within them—yet, at the same time, by reason of a lack of practical experience, remaining in a kind of childhood, in a state most unsatisfactory in relation to that state which true asceticism demands and bestows289. I happened to see such a child-elder, abundantly overshadowed by Divine grace. A lady in the bloom of years and health, of distinguished name, leading an entirely worldly life, came to know this elder and, having formed a respect for him, rendered him certain services. The elder, moved by a feeling of gratitude and wishing to recompense a material service with a great spiritual benefit—and not perceiving that what this lady needed first of all was to give up the reading of novels and a life lived by novels—gave her the practice of the Jesus Prayer, mental and heartfelt, with the aid of those physical methods proposed by the holy Fathers for those living in stillness and described in the first and second parts of The Philokalia. The lady obeyed the holy elder, fell into an extremely difficult situation, and might have harmed herself irreparably, had not others guessed that the child-elder had given her some most unsuitable instruction, drawn from her the admission, and turned her away from following it.

A monk who knew the elder mentioned here well once said to him: “Father! Your interior constitution is like a two-story house whose upper floor has been excellently appointed, while the lower floor is still in the rough—so that access to the upper floor is very difficult.” In monasteries, the saying “holy but unskilled” is used of such advanced elders, and caution is observed in consultations with them—consultations which can sometimes be very profitable. The caution consists in this: not to entrust oneself hastily and frivolously to the instructions of such elders, but to verify their instructions by Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers290, as well as by conversation with other advanced and well-intentioned monks, should the opportunity to find them arise.[9] Blessed is the novice who in our time has found a trustworthy counselor! “Know,” exclaims the Venerable Symeon, the New Theologian, “that in our times many false teachers and deceivers have appeared!”291 Such was the condition of Christianity and monasticism eight centuries before us.[10] What then can be said of the condition of our own time? Hardly anything other than what the Venerable Ephrem the Syrian said of the condition of those who will seek the living word of God in the last times: “They will,” the Venerable one prophesies, “travel the earth from east to west and from north to south, seeking such a word—and will not find it”292.[11] Just as to the exhausted eyes of those lost in the steppes there appear tall buildings and long streets, by which the lost ones are drawn into an even greater, inescapable delusion—so to those seeking the living word of God in today’s moral wasteland there appear in abundance magnificent phantoms of God’s word and teaching, raised up from carnal reason, from an insufficient and false knowledge of the letter, from the disposition of the rejected spirits, the princes of this world. These phantoms, deceptively presenting themselves as a spiritual Eden abounding in food, light, and life, draw the soul away by their deceptive appearance from true food, from true light, from true life; they lead the wretched soul into impenetrable darkness, exhaust it with hunger, poison it with falsehood, and slay it with eternal death.

The Venerable Cassian the Roman relates that in the Egyptian monasteries of his day, where monasticism especially flourished and the traditions of the Spirit-bearing Fathers were preserved with particular care and precision, no monk who had not been rightly formed in monasticism through obedience was ever permitted to take on the duty of guide and superior—even if that monk was of a very exalted manner of life and even adorned with the gifts of grace. The Egyptian Fathers regarded the gift of guiding brethren to salvation as the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit. One who has not been rightly taught the science of monasticism, they maintained, cannot rightly teach it either293.[12] Some have been caught up by Divine grace from the land of the passions and carried over into the land of dispassion—thereby spared the heavy labor and tribulations endured by all who must sail across the stormy, vast, and deep sea that separates one land from the other. Such persons can describe in detail and with accuracy the land of dispassion, but cannot give a proper account of the voyage across the sea—of that voyage which they never experienced for themselves. The great teacher of monastics, Saint Isaac the Syrian, having explained that some receive Divine grace and sanctification quickly by a special providence of God, ventured to add that, in his opinion, one who has not formed himself through the keeping of the commandments and has not walked the path by which the Apostles walked is “not worthy to be called holy”294.[13] “He who has conquered the passions through the keeping of the commandments and a laborious life in virtuous struggle—let him know that he has acquired health of soul lawfully”295.[10] “The order of the tradition is this: patience, compelling itself, struggles against the passions in order to acquire purity. If the passions are conquered, the soul acquires purity. True purity gives the mind boldness in time of prayer”296.[10] In the letter to the Venerable Symeon the Wonderworker, Saint Isaac says: “You write that purity of heart has been conceived in you, and that the remembrance of God”—mental prayer, the Jesus Prayer—“has blazed up greatly in your heart, warming and kindling it. If this is true, it is great; but I would not have wished you to write this to me—for here there is no order whatever”297. “If you wish your heart to become a vessel of the mysteries of the new age, first enrich yourself with bodily struggle:[10] fasting, vigil, service to the brethren, obedience, patience, the casting down of thoughts, and the like. Bind your mind to the reading and study of the Scriptures; set the commandments before your eyes, and pay the debt to the passions—being overcome and overcoming; accustom yourself to unceasing prayer and supplication, and by constant exercise in them uproot from the heart every image and every likeness with which sin has sealed you in your former life”298.[13] “You know that evil entered into us through the transgression of the commandments: from this it is evident that health is restored by the keeping of the commandments. Without the practice of the commandments, we ought not even to desire the cleansing of the soul, nor to hope to receive it, when we are not walking the path that leads to the cleansing of the soul. Do not say that God can, even without the practice of the commandments, grant the cleansing of the soul by grace: these are the judgments of God, and the Church forbids asking that such a miracle be wrought in us. The Jews, returning from Babylon to Jerusalem, went by the ordinary road and within the time appointed for such a journey; having completed the journey, they reached their holy city and saw the wonders of the Lord. But the prophet Ezekiel was supernaturally caught up by a spiritual action and set down in Jerusalem, and by Divine revelation became a beholder of the future renewal. In the same manner it is with regard to purity of soul. Some enter into purity of soul by the path laid out for all—the lawful path: by the keeping of the commandments in a laborious life, shedding their blood. Others are granted purity as a gift of grace. The remarkable thing is that what is granted to us by grace is not permitted to be sought in prayer when one has abandoned the active life according to the commandments”299.[10] “For the weak one who needs to be nourished on the milk of the commandments, life among many is profitable—so that he may both be instructed and be bridled, so that he may be chastened by many temptations, may fall and rise again, and may acquire health of soul. There is no infant who has not been nourished on milk—and one cannot be a true monk who has not been raised on the milk of the commandments, keeping them with effort, conquering the passions, and in this way being granted purity”300.[10]

Mental and heartfelt prayer can indeed be imparted even to a novice or a young person, if he is capable of it and has been prepared for it. Such persons were very rare even in earlier times, prior to the era of general moral corruption. I was a witness to the fact that an elder who had acquired grace-given prayer and spiritual discernment imparted counsel concerning mental and heartfelt prayer to a certain novice who had preserved his virginity, had been prepared from childhood to receive the mystical teaching on prayer through the study of Christianity and monasticism, and had already felt the action of prayer within himself. The elder explained the arising of prayerful action in the young man by his virginity. Quite different rules apply to young people, as well as to men of mature years who, before entering the monastery, had led a distracted life with sparse and superficial notions of Christianity, who have acquired various attachments and especially those who have defiled their chastity through fornication. The sin of fornication has this property, that it unites two bodies, even if unlawfully, into one body (1 Cor. 6:16): for this reason, although it is forgiven immediately after repentance and confession—on the indispensable condition that the penitent has forsaken it—yet the cleansing and sobering of body and soul from the sin of fornication requires a prolonged time, so that the bond and union which have been established between bodies, which have taken root in the heart and infected the soul, may wither and be annihilated. For the annihilation of this unhappy attachment, the Church assigns to those who have fallen into fornication and adultery very substantial periods of repentance, after which she admits them to Communion of the most holy Body and Blood of Christ. In the same way, for all who have led a distracted life, for those sealed with various attachments—especially for those who have plunged into the abyss of carnal falls and acquired a habit of them—time and more time is needed: to be pre-purified by repentance, to erase from themselves the impressions of the world and its temptations, to become sober from sin, to form their moral character by the commandments of the Gospel, and in this way to make themselves capable of grace-given, mental, and heartfelt prayer.[14] “Let each one examine his own soul,” says the Venerable Macarius the Great, “searching and investigating carefully to what it feels attached; and if he perceives that the heart is at variance with the laws of God, let him strive with all his might to guard both body and soul from corruption, rejecting fellowship with impure thoughts—if he wishes to lead the soul into the dwelling and ranks of the pure virgins, according to the vow given”—at baptism and at entering upon monastic life—“for God has promised His indwelling and walking only in souls that are perfectly pure and confirmed in righteous love”301. “The diligent farmer first breaks up the soil and uproots the tares from it, and only then sows it with seed:[10] so too he who expects God to sow the seed of grace in his soul must first cleanse the field of the soul, so that the seed which the Holy Spirit will afterward cast upon it may bring forth perfect and abundant fruit. If this is not done first, and if a man does not cleanse himself from all defilement of flesh and spirit, he will remain flesh and blood, and far removed from life in God”302. “He who compels himself exclusively and with all his might to prayer, but does not labor to acquire humility, love, meekness, and the whole choir of the remaining virtues—not forcing himself to implant them in himself—can attain only to this: that sometimes, in answer to his petition, Divine grace touches him, since God by His natural goodness graciously grants to those who ask what they desire. If, however, the one who has received does not accustom himself to the remaining virtues we have mentioned, and does not acquire a habit in them, then either he is deprived of the grace received, or, having been exalted, he falls into pride, or, remaining on the lower step to which he has ascended, he advances no further and does not grow.[15] The throne and resting-place, so to speak, of the Holy Spirit are humility, love, meekness, and, in succession, all the holy commandments of Christ. Therefore, whoever would wish—joining together and gathering within himself all the virtues equally and without exception—to attain perfection through their careful increase, let him first compel himself, as we have said, and, constantly overcoming his stubborn heart, let him strive to present it submissive and pleasing to God. Having first exercised such compulsion over himself, and having returned all that within the soul resists God—as if taming a wild beast—to submission to the commandments of God, to obedience to the direction of the true and holy teaching, having thus ordered his soul, if he will pray to God and ask God to grant progress to his endeavors, he will receive all that he asks for together;[16] the most loving God will grant him all in full abundance, so that the gift of prayer in him may grow and flourish, sweetened by the Holy Spirit”303. “Know, however, that in much labor and in the sweat of your brow you will receive your lost treasure—for the effortless acquisition of good is not in keeping with your benefit. That which you received without labor you lost, and surrendered to the enemy the inheritance that was yours”304.

The Disciple. When I pray, a multitude of fantasies and thoughts presents itself to my mind and does not allow me to pray purely. Can spiritual delusion or some other harm arise for me from this?

The Elder. A multitude of thoughts and fantasies naturally arises from fallen nature. It is even characteristic of prayer to reveal in fallen nature the hidden marks of its fall and the impressions wrought by voluntary sins305.[17] Likewise the devil, knowing what a great good prayer is, strives during prayer to trouble the ascetic with sinful and vain thoughts and fantasies, so as to turn him away from prayer or to render prayer fruitless306.[18] From the midst of sinful thoughts, fantasies, and feelings—from the midst of this enslavement and our brickmaking—let us cry out with all the more fervor, and let us continue to cry out in prayer to the Lord, like the Israelites who “groaned… from their labors and cried out. And their cry”, says Scripture, “‘went up to God from their labors. And God heard their groaning’ (Ex. 2:23–24).

The general rule of the struggle against sinful beginnings is to reject sin at its very first appearance—to slay the mysterious Babylonians while they are still infants (Ps. 136:9). “He who fights intelligently,” said the Venerable Nil Sorsky, “repels the mother of the evil mental multitude—that is, the first contact of evil thoughts with his mind.[19] He who has repelled this first contact has repelled at once the whole throng that follows it”307. If, however, sin forces itself upon us by reason of prior enslavement to it and habituation to it, then even in that case we must not lose heart, fall into despondency, and despair; we must heal the invisible defeats through repentance, and persist in the struggle with firmness, courage, and constancy. Sinful and vain thoughts, fantasies, and feelings can assuredly harm us only when we do not struggle against them, when we take pleasure in them and implant them in ourselves. From voluntary fellowship with sin and from voluntary communion with the rejected spirits, the passions are born and grow strong; spiritual delusion can steal unnoticed into the soul. But when we resist sinful thoughts, fantasies, and feelings, the very struggle with them will bring us advancement and enrich us with practical knowledge. A certain elder advanced in mental prayer asked another monk who likewise practiced it: “Who taught you prayer?” The monk answered: “The demons.” The elder smiled and said: “What a scandal you have uttered for those who do not know the matter! — yet tell me, in what way did the demons teach you prayer?” The monk answered: “I was afflicted with a heavy and prolonged warfare from fierce thoughts, fantasies, and feelings that gave me no rest by day or by night. I was exhausted and grew incredibly thin from the burden of this unnatural condition. Pressed hard by the assault of the spirits, I would have recourse to the Jesus Prayer. The warfare reached such a pitch that apparitions began to flash visibly before my bodily eyes in the air. I constantly felt as though my throat were bound tight as by a rope. Then, in the very midst of the warfare, I began to feel that prayer was intensifying and hope was renewing itself in my heart. And when the warfare, growing lighter and lighter, at last fell completely silent—suddenly prayer appeared in my heart of itself.”

Let us pray constantly, patiently, persistently. God will, in His own time, give grace-given, pure prayer to one who prays without laziness and constantly by his own impure prayer—to one who does not faint-heartedly abandon the ascetic struggle of prayer when prayer long resists him. We see in the Gospel an example of the success of the persistent Jesus Prayer. When the Lord was leaving Jericho accompanied by his disciples and a great multitude, the blind man Bartimaeus, who sat by the roadside begging, hearing that the Lord was passing by, began to cry out: “Son of David, Jesus, have mercy on me.” He was told to be silent, but he cried out all the more. The consequence of his unceasing cry was the healing of the blind man by the Lord (Mk. 10:46–52). So let us too cry out, notwithstanding the sinful thoughts, fantasies, and feelings that arise from fallen nature and are brought by the devil to hinder our prayerful cry—and we shall without doubt receive mercy.

The Disciple. What are the true fruits of the Jesus Prayer, by which a novice might know that he is praying rightly?”