Chapter 74

A Pure Conscience and Labor Are Needed

Why then do you whimper?! In your prayer order everything is in order: there is nothing to add. Keep it as it has been established and wait for God’s mercy. Deepened prayer, unceasing prayer and other manifestations of prayerful grace—all come from grace. Ours is labor—within our strength, but whole-hearted and constant. The sought-for prayer—is grace. The time will come and it will be given. You need only not neglect it, seek with all your heart and employ all that is possible. But the chief thing—a pure conscience. For the grace of prayer is the grace of sincere communion with God. With God, into communion nothing unclean can enter. Thus prepared and laboring as you labor, wait—and it will come. And when? When it comes, then it will come.

I suspect you don’t have Macarius the Great. Obtain it. It will be very helpful to you in clarifying the point that all comes from God, but according to our labors. Without labors, nothing will come. And labors alone—nothing. Both are needed. It’s the same as air and lungs. Set the lungs in motion, and air enters. Stop—and it won’t enter.

(Letter 775. Vol. 5, p. 35)