Testimony of St. Diadochos on the Jesus Prayer

¹ 49. But also the divine Diadochos: The intellect, says he, altogether demands of us, when we have stopped up all its passages by the remembrance of God, a work that fulfills its need for activity. We must, therefore, give it the “Lord Jesus Christ” as the whole business of its aim. For “no one,” it says, “calls Jesus Lord, except in the Holy Spirit.” For as many as meditate always, unceasingly, upon this holy and glorious name in the depth of the heart, these can also at some time see the light of their own intellect. For it consumes, with a perception that suffices, all the filth that floats upon the soul. For “our God,” it says, “is a consuming fire.” Whence the Lord thereafter calls the soul to a great love of his own glory. For that glorious and much-longed-for name, abiding through the remembrance of the intellect in the warmth of the heart, works in us a habit of loving his goodness with all our being. For this is the precious pearl, which a man, having sold all his substance, can find, and have unspeakable joy at the finding of it. And it would take long to recount the counsels and exhortations of the God-bearing Fathers concerning this. The monks, then, insisting that this prayer was from the beginning the delightful and divine meditation of the God-bearing minds, and at the same time wishing to string together in order whatever lies in the writings of the saints concerning it—such as is also the saying of him who by his discourses built the ladder of spiritual ascent: “Let the remembrance of Jesus be united to your breath, and then you will know the profit of stillness” —