Chapter 145

On the Same Subject (145)

You recalled the brief prayer… Well spoken, priest of God, that you should not forget this. Labor to not interrupt it, and it will establish itself so firmly that it will recite itself – and you will have a little brook babbling, as the elder Parphnius of the Kievan Caves expressed it. And from the ancients, someone said: “Just as when thieves approach a house intending to break in to steal, they hear someone speaking inside and do not dare to climb in – so, when our enemies creep up to the soul intending to rob it, and hear a little prayer babbling within, they go around it but are afraid to go inside.”19

To the one little prayer, you can add the 24 prayers that stand among the prayers before sleep, and having fixed them in your memory, often repeat them: they embrace the inner spiritual life in all its fullness. In our church services there are very many brief prayers scattered throughout. Notice them and memorize them. And you will always carry a prayer book within yourself, which you can read at any place under the dominion of the Lord.

(Letter 979. Vol. 6, pp. 105–106)