Chapter 201

On External Methods of Performing the Jesus Prayer

I reviewed the letter of the elders and their reply to your question. Did you reply to their answer? If not, respond like this: “Since you could not justify your prayer method by patristic teachings, I am declining to follow you, fearing I might fall into a false path: innovations are destructive. Through them the enemy digs us a pit.”

Tell that young brother, to whom you transmitted the elder’s method, to discard it. Let him stir up in himself a spirit of contrition and humility and with these feelings pray to the Lord, standing with attention in his heart and always walking in the presence of God and in the remembrance of death. Let him seek and pray for what Maximus Capsokalivia sought and found. That is the straight path. In it, you see no special methods, only a thirst for the good he eventually received. That good is a spiritual fire and warmth. But completely different from those so-called “goods” that arise from the elders’ methods or other devices. When the Lord gives that gift, then everything will proceed differently, and the Jesus Prayer will sound different.

(Letter 800. Vol. 5, pp. 170–171)