Chapter 58

On Prayer With Feeling

That you strive to understand each word when you pray and to pronounce the prayer with feeling—this is the essence of prayer, and keep forcing yourself to always do it this way. But when you pray with feeling, where else is your attention but in the heart? Feeling always draws attention to itself. In the head is a crowded marketplace. There one cannot pray to God.

That sometimes prayer goes well and flows by itself—this is a good sign. It means it has begun to take root in the heart. Guard your heart from attachments, try to remember God, holding Him before you and acting in His presence, help those in need and want—and your prayer will soon take wing. That it disappears and leaves coldness—grieve over this. Be contrite and pray to God and the Theotokos that they not allow warm prayer to depart.

True prayer is a gift of God! So pray about this. Cooling is preceded by the heart becoming attached to something, being troubled by something, becoming angry and judging, being discontent and indulging the flesh, selfindulgent pleasure, and scattering of thoughts! Guard yourself from this, and there will be fewer times of cooling. God bless your labors over yourself!

Heart! But where is life if not in the heart?

(Letter 602. Issue 4, p. 78–79)