Chapter 100

How to Establish Home Prayer

That despondency occurs—this comes from lack of habit. Distribute your hours so that there is not a moment without an urgent task. Reading with reflection, prayer with prostrations, and some simple handiwork—let these consume all your time, and you will have no opportunity to be bored or despondent. That church services are rare—this is a great deprivation. But God willing, home prayer will be established. Cultivate the habit of so acting that as soon as there is no task, you immediately take up the Jesus Prayer and begin to perform it with attention, walking, sitting, and—best of all—standing before the icons. You can designate special times for this. This will be better, and your habit in this prayer will take firmer root. The thought of moving to eternity is well suited to your circumstances, but it always has its own place amid all. Attach it to your mind and heart and look through it at all else.

It is desirable for you to unite your mind with the thought of the Lord. The best way for this is the habit of the Jesus Prayer, as written above. Assign yourself to stand before the icons three or four times a day to perform this prayer with reverence and with the vision of the Lord before you, and perform it each time 100, 200, 300 times, as you are able. Having appointed a time for this, do not change it. Your thought all day will keep seeing ahead: “There, there, it is time to stand.” And the Lord will be near.

(Letter 578. Vol. 4, pp. 51–52)