Chapter 59

One Must Develop Prayer of the Heart

Prayer of the heart is never premature. It is the beginning of the matter. By establishing it in the heart, God’s work ripens. You must develop it, sparing no labor. God, seeing the labor, gives what is sought. True prayer does not make itself: it is a gift of God. Ask, and you will receive (Matt. 7:7).

That you have not used an artistic method of instilling prayer—this is no loss. That method is not necessary: without it one can manage. The position of the body is not the main thing, but the inner structure. Everything is this: to stand with attention in the heart and to look to God or cry out to Him. I have never yet met anyone who approves of that artistic method. Metropolitan Ignatius and Father Makarius of Optina do not approve of it either.

That you have repentant feelings in prayer and tears—this is genuine work. Without repentant feelings—prayer is not prayer. Write it off as if it did not happen. Prayer without these feelings is like a dead miscarriage. So say the holy fathers. And tears—stoke them. Train yourself to wail over yourself as over a dead one—and with the proper words. For the chief thought, or the place where you should mentally hold yourself, is the hour of judgment, or that moment when God is ready to say: ‘Come’ or ‘Depart!’ O Lord, save us! And how not to weep, unable to say with certainty that He will not say: ‘Depart’?

(Letter 256. Issue 2, p. 93–94)