The Spirit of Prayer in the Beginner (Part 1)
Introduction.
Here is set forth the doctrine concerning the quality of prayer befitting one beginning to go to the Lord by the way of repentance. The principal thoughts are presented separately, with the aim that they may be read with greater attentiveness and retained in memory with greater ease. Reading them, nourishing the mind with truth and the heart with humility, can provide the soul with the proper direction in its prayerful struggle and serve as preparatory practice for it.
1. Prayer is the lifting up of our petitions to God.
2. The foundation of prayer lies in the fact that man is a fallen being. He strives to obtain that blessedness which he once possessed but has lost, and therefore he prays.
3. The refuge of prayer lies in the great mercy of God toward mankind. The Son of God, for our salvation, offered Himself to His Father as a propitiation and reconciliation offering: on this foundation, wishing to devote yourself to prayer, cast off doubt and double-mindedness (Jac 1:6–8). Do not say to yourself: “I am a sinner, will God truly hear me?” If you are a sinner, then to you apply the comforting words of the Saviour: “I did not come to call” the righteous, “but” sinners “to repentance” (Mt 9:13).
4. Preparation for prayer consists in: an unfilled belly, the cutting away of cares by the sword of faith, the forgetting from the depths of the heart of all injuries, thanksgiving to God for all the sorrowful events of life, the removal from oneself of distraction and fantasy, and reverent fear, which is so fitting for a creature to possess when it is permitted to converse with its Creator by the ineffable goodness of the Creator toward the creature.
5. The first words of the Saviour to fallen humanity were: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 4:17). Therefore, as long as you have not entered this kingdom, knock at 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 fulfil its purpose, then God does not accept it. He will not despise “a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart” (Ps 50:19).
7. The Saviour of the world calls blessed those poor in spirit, that is, those who hold of themselves the most humble understanding, who count themselves fallen beings, dwelling here on earth in exile, outside their true homeland, which is heaven. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, those praying with deep awareness of their poverty, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:3). “Blessed are those who mourn” in their prayers from the feeling of their poverty, “for they will be comforted” (Mt 5:4) with the gracious comfort of the Holy Spirit, which consists in the peace of Christ and in love in Christ toward all neighbours. Then none of the neighbours, not even the bitterest enemy, is excluded from the embrace of the love of one who prays; then the one praying is reconciled with all the most burdensome circumstances of earthly life.
8. The Lord, teaching us to pray, likens the praying soul to a widow wronged by an opponent, sitting before an impartial and incorruptible judge (Lk 18:1–8). Do not depart in the disposition of your soul during prayer from this likeness. Let your prayer be, so to speak, a constant complaint against the sin that oppresses you. Descend into yourself, lay open yourself to attentive prayer: you will see that you are indeed widowed in relation to Christ because of the sin living in you that is hostile to you, producing in you internal struggle and torment, making you estranged from God.
9. “All my days”, David says of himself, all the days of earthly life, “I went about grieving”, he passed through in blessed sorrow over his sins and shortcomings: “for my loins are full of mockery, and there is no healing in my flesh” (Ps 37:7, 8). The loins are named as the journey along the path of earthly life; flesh means the moral state of man. Every step of all people on this path is full of stumbling; their moral state cannot be healed by any means or efforts of their own. For our healing, the grace of God is necessary, which heals only those who acknowledge themselves to be sick. True acknowledgment of oneself as sick is demonstrated by careful and constant dwelling in repentance.
10. “Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice before Him with trembling” (Ps 2:11), says the Prophet, and another Prophet speaks from the face of God: “On whom will I look, except on the meek and quiet one who trembles at My words” (Is 66:2). The Lord “regards the prayer of the humble and does not despise their supplication” (Ps 101:18). He is “giving life”, that is, salvation, “to those of a broken heart” (Is 57:15).
11. Even if someone stood at the very height of virtue, if he does not pray as a sinner, his prayer is rejected by God88.[1]
12. “On the day in which I do not weep over myself”, said a certain blessed practitioner of true prayer, “I consider myself to be in self-delusion”89.[2]
13.[3] “Even if we undertake many of the highest ascetic struggles”, said the holy John of the Ladder, “they are not true and fruitless, if with them we do not have the painful feeling of repentance”90.
14. Sorrow of mind over sins is a honourable gift of God; one who carries it in his breast with proper care and reverence carries a sacred thing.[4] It takes the place of all bodily ascetic struggles when there is insufficient strength to accomplish them91.[5] On the other hand, from a strong body labour is required during prayer; without it the heart will not be broken, prayer will be powerless and untrue92.
15. The feeling of repentance guards the praying person from all the snares of the devil: the devil flees from ascetics who emit from themselves the fragrance of humility, which is born in the heart of the repentant93.[6]
16. Bring to the Lord in your prayers the infantile babbling, the simple childlike thought—not eloquence, not reasoning. “Unless you turn”—as if from paganism and Islam, from your complexity and duplicity—“and become”, the Lord said to us, “like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3)94.[7]
17. An infant expresses all its desires with weeping: let your prayer always be accompanied by weeping. Not only in the words of prayer, but also in prayerful silence, let your desire for repentance and reconciliation with God, your extreme need for God’s mercy, be expressed in weeping.
18. The excellence of prayer consists solely in quality, not in quantity: then is quantity praiseworthy, when it leads to quality. Quality always leads to quantity; quantity leads to quality when the one who prays does so carefully95.[8]
19. The quality of true prayer consists in this: that the mind during prayer remains attentive, and the heart sympathizes with the mind.
20. Enclose your mind in the words being spoken in prayer and you will keep it in attentiveness96.[9] Keep your eyes on your lips, or closed97:[10] by this you will assist the union of mind with heart. Pronounce the words with extreme slowness and you will be better able to enclose your mind in the words of prayer: not a single word of your prayer will be spoken without being animated by attentiveness.
21. The mind, enclosing itself in the words of prayer, draws the heart to sympathize with itself. This sympathy of the heart with the mind is expressed as compunction, which is a pious feeling, uniting in itself sorrow with quiet, gentle comfort98.[11] The necessary attendant of prayer is endurance99.[12] When you feel dryness, hardness, do not abandon prayer: for your endurance and struggle against heartfelt insensitivity, God’s mercy will descend upon you, consisting in compunction. Compunction is a gift of God, sent down to those who persist and persevere in prayers (Rom 12:12; Col 4:2), constantly growing in them, guiding them toward spiritual perfection.
22. The mind, standing before the invisible God in attentive prayer, should itself be invisible, as the image of the invisible Godhead; that is, the mind should not form within itself, from itself, nor before itself any image, but should be entirely formless. Otherwise:[13] the mind should be completely free from fantasy, however much such fantasy might seem pure and holy100.
24. During prayer do not seek raptures, do not set your nerves in motion, do not heat your blood. On the contrary—keep your heart in deep peace, into which it is brought by the feeling of repentance: material fire, the fire of fallen nature, is rejected by God. Your heart needs purification through the weeping of repentance and the prayer of repentance; when it is purified, then God Himself will send into it His most holy spiritual fire101.[14]
25. Attentiveness during prayer brings the nerves and blood into calm, assists the heart to plunge into repentance and remain in it. The Divine fire does not disturb the peace of the heart if it descends into the chamber of the heart, when in it will be gathered the disciples of Christ—thoughts and feelings drawn from the Gospel. This fire does not scorch, does not heat the heart;[15] on the contrary, it refreshes and cools it, reconciles man with all people and with all circumstances, draws the heart into unspeakable love for God and for the neighbours102.
26. Distraction robs prayer. One who prays with distraction feels within himself a vague emptiness and dryness. One who prays constantly with distraction is deprived of all the spiritual fruits that normally are born from attentive prayer, acquires for himself a state of dryness and emptiness; from this state are born coldness toward God, despondency, obscuring of the mind, weakening of faith, and from these, deadness with respect to eternal, spiritual life. All of this, taken together, serves as a clear sign that such prayer is not accepted by God.
27. Fantasy in prayer is even more harmful than distraction. Distraction makes prayer barren, but fantasy serves as the cause of 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 fashioned by fantasy, imprinting themselves and lingering in the mind, make it, as it were, material, translate it from the Divine country of Spirit and Truth into the country of matter and falsehood. In this country the heart begins to sympathize with the mind not with the spiritual feeling of repentance and humility, but with carnal feeling, a feeling of blood and nerves, an untimely and disorderly feeling of pleasure, so unfitting for sinners, a feeling that is incorrect and false, a pretended love for God. A criminal and abominable love appears to those inexperienced in spiritual matters to be holy, but in reality it is merely a disordered sensation of a heart not cleansed from passions, enjoying in vainglory and sensuality, set in motion by fantasy. Such a state is a state of self-delusion. If a man persist in it, then the images appearing to him acquire extraordinary vividness and attractiveness. The heart at their appearance begins to heat up and to enjoy illicitly, or, according to the definition of Holy Scripture, to commit adultery (Ps 72:27). The mind recognizes such a state as gracious, divine: then is the transition near to manifest demonic delusion, in which man loses self-mastery and becomes the plaything and mockery of the evil spirit. From fantasy-based prayer, which brings man into this state, God turns away in anger. And over the one praying such a prayer is fulfilled the judgment of Scripture: “Let his prayer be accounted as sin” (Ps 108:7)103.[16]
28. Reject good, seemingly, thoughts and bright, seemingly, understandings that come to you during prayer, drawing you away from prayer104.[17] They issue from the realm of falsely-called reasoning, they sit, as if riders on horses, on vainglory. Their dark faces are hidden, so that the mind of the one praying might not be able to recognize enemies in them. But precisely because they are hostile to prayer, distract the mind from it, lead it into captivity and grievous enslavement, lay bare and empty the soul, are they recognized as enemies and from the realm of the prince of this world. Spiritual reasoning, God’s reasoning, aids prayer, concentrates a man in himself, plunges him into attentiveness and compunction, brings upon the mind reverent silence, fear and wonder, arising from the feeling of the presence and greatness of God. This feeling, in its time, can greatly intensify and make prayer for the one praying a dreadful tribunal of God105.[18]
29. Attentive prayer, free from distraction and fantasy, is a seeing of the invisible God, drawing to Himself the sight of the mind and the desire of the heart. Then the mind sees without form, and is fully satisfied by this unseeing that surpasses all seeing. The cause of this blissful unseeing is the infinite subtlety and incomprehensibility of the Object toward which the sight is directed. The invisible Sun of righteousness—God—sends forth invisible rays, yet known by the clear perception of the soul: they fill the heart with wondrous peace, faith, courage, gentleness, mercy, love for the neighbours and for God. By these actions, visible in the inner chamber of the heart, man recognizes with certainty that his prayer has been accepted by God, begins to believe with living faith and firmly trusts in the Beloved and the Beloved One. This is the beginning of the reviving of the soul for God and for blessed eternity106.[19]
30. The fruits of true prayer: the holy peace of the soul, joined with quiet, silent joy, free from fantasy, self-conceit and heated impulses and movements; love for the neighbours, not distinguishing for the sake of love the good from the evil, the worthy from the unworthy, but interceding before God for all as for itself, as for its own members. From such love for the neighbours shines forth the purest love for God.
31. These fruits are a gift of God. They are drawn into the soul by its attentiveness and humility, kept by its faithfulness to God.
32. The soul then remains in faithfulness to God when it removes itself from every sinful word, deed and thought, when it immediately repents of those sins into which it is drawn by its weakness.
33. That we desire to acquire the gift of prayer we demonstrate by patient sitting in prayer at the door of prayer. For patience and perseverance we receive the gift of prayer. “The Lord”, says Scripture, “gives gracious prayer” to the one “praying” (1Sam 2:9) patiently with one’s own effort.
34. For beginners, brief and frequent prayers are more beneficial than prolonged ones, separated from one another by considerable spans of time107.[20]
35. Prayer is the highest exercise for the mind.
36. Prayer is the head, source and mother of all virtues108.[21]
37. Be wise in your prayer. Do not ask in it for anything perishable and vain, remembering the Saviour’s commandment: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these”, that is, all things needed for temporal life, “will be given to you” (Mt 6:33)109.[22]
38. When intending to do something, or desiring something, and also in the difficult circumstances of life, lay your thought before God in prayer: ask for that which you consider necessary and useful to yourself; but entrust the granting or not granting of your petition to God’s will in faith and trust in the omnipotence, wisdom and goodness of God’s will. This excellent form of prayer was given to us by Him who prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, that the cup appointed for Him might “pass. But not My will”—He concluded His prayer to the Father: “but Yours be done” (Lk 22:42).
39. Bring to God a humble prayer concerning the virtues and pious struggles you perform: purify and perfect them by prayer and repentance. Say of them in your prayer what the righteous Job said in his daily prayer concerning his children: “Lest at any time my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts” (Job 1:5). Wicked malice is subtle: it mixes imperceptibly with virtue, defiles and poisons it.
40. Deny yourself of all things, so that you might inherit prayer, and, lifted up from the earth on the cross of self-denial, commit to God your spirit, soul and body, and from Him receive holy prayer, which according to the teaching of the Apostle and the Ecumenical Church is the action in man of the Holy Spirit, when the Spirit dwells in man (Rom 8:26)110.[23] “Whoever has attained (ceaseless prayer) has attained the height of virtue and has become the dwelling of the Holy Spirit”, said St. Isaac.
Conclusion
Whoever neglects the practice of attentive prayer, saturated with repentance, is estranged from spiritual progress, estranged from spiritual fruits, dwells in the darkness of manifold self-delusion. Humility is the one and only altar on which men are permitted to offer prayers as sacrifices to God—the one and only altar from which prayer sacrifices are accepted by God111;[24] prayer is the mother of all true, divine virtues. It is impossible, absolutely impossible to have any spiritual progress for one who has rejected humility, who has not taken care to enter into the sacred union with prayer. The practice of prayer is the testament of the Apostle: “pray without ceasing”, the Apostle tells us (1Thes 5:17). The practice of prayer is the commandment of the Lord Himself, a commandment joined with a promise: “ask”, the Lord invites us, commands us the Lord, “and it will be given to you: seek and you will find: knock, and the door will be opened to you” (Mt 7:7). “It does not slumber, nor does it sleep” (Ps 120:4) prayer, until it shows to those who love it and constantly practice it the chamber of eternal delights, until it brings them into heaven. There it will be transformed into unceasing sacrifice of praise. This praise will continually be offered, will be proclaimed without ceasing by God’s chosen ones from the constant feeling of blessedness in eternity, sprouted here on earth and in time, from the seeds of repentance sown by attentive and fervent prayer. Amen.