Chapter 176

How to Fulfill the Prayer Lesson

You desire to acquire the habit of the Jesus Prayer according to the pattern described in that book. (A manuscript from Mount Athos: “Seeker of Unceasing Prayer.” There is also a printed book.) Good! God will bless it!

You must perform the prayer lesson all at once. Begin with a smaller number. For example: for two or three days do 1,000, then for two or three days 2,000, then for a week or more 3,000. You can stay longer at three thousand. After that, add 1,000 more, if time permits and other services allow it.

The Wanderer (this is a pilgrim – a seeker of unceasing prayer, indicated in that manuscript) was occupied with nothing and did not attend services (he would pray from 6 to 12 thousand Jesus Prayers a day).

It is better to pray standing, as is done when one fulfills one’s rule. If your legs grow tired, you can kneel. You can also arrange it so that you fulfill the appointed number of prayers sometimes standing and sometimes on your knees.

Pray the whole prayer, or the first half, or the second: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner,” “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Only do not change too quickly, but determine, either a hundred for each, or some other number, but not less than ten.

Keep your attention in the chest, a little below the hollow beneath the throat. The reason is that your heart is likely tightening. When you do this, it will not. Then warmth will respond in the heart without tightening. Speak the prayer words slowly, as if chanting. Make prostrations at this time as you will. If the work goes better without them, it is better not to make them or to make them rarely.

In performing this prayer, directed to the Lord Savior, do not let slip from your awareness that he is one from the Most Holy Trinity, indivisible from the Father and the Holy Spirit. Therefore with those words, in some way bring into consciousness: the good pleasure of the Father and the grace of the Spirit. You can do this on a prayer rope.

Do not limit yourself to words alone, but at the same time refresh your contemplation of God, as omnipresent, all-sustaining, caring for all things, and so forth. It is best of all to perform this lesson at night.

The fruit of prayer is the concentration of attention in the heart and warmth. This is natural action. Everyone can achieve this. And pray this prayer everyone, not monks alone, but also lay people.

This is not some lofty work, but a simple one. And the Jesus Prayer by itself is not wonder-working, but, like any other brief prayer, verbal and consequently outer. But it can transform into noetic and prayer of the heart – all by natural means. What comes from grace, that you must await; you cannot obtain it by any such method.

What you’ve been told—that you must first purify the passions—applies to the lofty contemplative prayer; but this is simple prayer, which however can lead to that higher prayer.

For this practice to go well, you must each time, before beginning, set everything aside so that the heart is free from everything entirely, so that in your attention nothing sticks out: neither a person’s face, nor a task, nor a thing. You must drive everything out during this time. After completing your rule, you should not leave off this prayer at any other time either; whenever you have freedom, do it at once.

During church services, you must attend to the service, standing with your attention in the same place where the Jesus Prayer is prayed. And when something is unclear in the reading or singing, then pray this little prayer.

The external methods (described in volume 5 of the Philokalia)—sitting on a chair, bending your head, restricting your breathing—you can set aside. Direct all your effort to concentrating attention in the place we’ve mentioned.

Fear of God you must always have. Just as even the closest people are not so bold before a king, how much more we sinners before the Lord. If you take God for granted, that’s bad—it goes nowhere. You must pray with reverence, and God will give it.

(Letter 320. Volume 2, pp. 192–194)