Chapter 207

Degrees of Prayer

You wish to hear something about prayer. What can I tell you that you do not already know? There is prayer that a human creates himself; and there is prayer that God gives to the one who prays. Who has not known the first? The latter should be known to you as well, at least in its beginnings. At first, when someone draws near to the Lord, the first work is prayer. He begins to attend church and pray at home from prayer books and without them. But thoughts scatter everywhere. He cannot manage them at all. Yet the more he labors in prayer, the more thoughts settle down and settle down, and prayer becomes purer. However, the atmosphere of the soul is not purified until a spiritual spark is kindled in the soul.

This spark is the work of God’s grace, but not a special grace—it is common to all. It appears as a result of a certain degree of purity in the entire moral structure of the person who seeks.

When this spark is kindled, or a constant warmth is formed in the heart, then the turbulence of thoughts ceases. The same thing happens to the soul as to the woman with the issue of blood: the flow of her blood stopped (Luke 8:44). In this state, prayer, more or less, approaches unceasing prayer. The Jesus Prayer serves as the intermediary for it. And this is the limit to which prayer created by the human himself can reach! I think all this is very clear to you.

Beyond this, in this state is given prayer that arrives—not created by the human himself. The prayer-spirit arrives and draws into the heart—just as if someone took another by the hand and forcibly drew him from one room into another. The soul is then bound by an alien force and remains willingly within it, as long as the arriving spirit is over it. I know two degrees of this arrival. In the first—the soul still sees all, is conscious of itself and its external state, and can reason and govern itself, can even break apart this state of itself if it wishes. And this should be clear to you.

The holy fathers, and especially Saint Isaac the Syrian, point to another degree of given, or arriving, prayer. Above the one shown stands in his teaching prayer which he called ecstasy or rapture. And here too the prayer-spirit arrives; but the soul drawn by it enters into such contemplations that it forgets its external state, does not reason but only contemplates, and cannot govern itself or break apart its state. Remember, in the Desert Fathers it is written that someone stood up to pray before his evening meal, and came to himself the next morning? That is prayer in rapture, or contemplative prayer. In some it was accompanied by the brightening of the face, light around it; in others by lifting from the earth. The holy Apostle Paul in this state was caught up into paradise (2 Cor. 12:2–4). And the holy prophets were in it when the Spirit took them up.

Marvel at what great mercy God shows toward us, sinners. Few labor, and what are they granted? To all who labor, one can boldly say: labor; there is good reason for it!

(Letter 747. Vol. 4, p. 240–241)