Chapter 109
On Sobriety, Noetic Prayer, and Patience
109.2.1 The mercy of God be with you,
109.3.1 Venerable Father,[1] Agapius!
109.4.1 I received both of your letters at once, and I give thanks for your remembrance and good wishes. I ask that you not forget me in your prayers. You said so many things against yourself in your letter that, unable to believe them, I found it best to understand them in the opposite sense – namely this: when you say you don’t have something, I take it to mean that you do have it, and I say, ‘Glory to God’...
109.5.1 All the weaknesses you wrote about, I have them too... I see them and try to overcome and heal them. Sometimes there’s success, but then the old pattern returns. I’ll tell you, though, how I go about it. My chief concern, which I share with you, is sobriety and noetic prayer; they go together, and one doesn’t exist without the other. Noetic prayer is very simple in form and seems very accessible. Here’s how: descend with your intellect into your heart and, standing there before the face of the Lord, cry out for what you seek. Cry out: ‘Lord, grant me prayer!’ If you seek sobriety, cry out: ‘Lord, grant me sobriety!’ If you seek patience, cry out: ‘Lord, grant me patience’… and so on, and all in the same way…
109.6.1 The best of all cries is: ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’ Do this, and you will have noetic prayer. But our trouble is that our thoughts scatter, attention follows them, and the intellect begins to wander outside and doesn’t know where it’s going. Prayer is cut off, even though we’re standing at prayer. So what’s to be done? I don’t see any instructions anywhere; Everyone says the same thing: when you come to yourself, return again to your heart and begin again to cry out from your heart. Cry out also that your intellect may not flee outward. Again your intellect will flee, again bring it back and again begin to cry out—and so on and on. What will come of it? Will there be an end to this fleeing? There ought to be, but with us it never quite comes together.[2] It seems to me that if we add to this struggle self-condemnation and a petition to the Lord for sobriety, then the Lord, seeing our patient seeking and sincere desire for sobriety, will grant it to us according to His mercy.
109.7.1 Sobriety is a gift of grace, and it is impossible to attain it by yourself alone. You must only labor in seeking it and ask the Lord for it, trusting in God’s visitation. How to seek it? Do you notice that when there is a feeling in the heart, attention doesn’t leave the heart? So I conclude that if you do it this way—that is, don’t begin noetic prayer until you’ve first stirred up some feeling in your heart—then attention won’t leave the heart; with attention, the intellect will be there too, and so will noetic prayer. Try it this way; maybe things will go well.
109.8.1 What kind of feeling? Any holy one. Doxology, thanksgiving, contrition, fear of God, self-abasement, and so on… After you’ve prayed this way, sit down and read something spiritual—best of all, something about sobriety and prayer. Then go for a walk and think about it, or else talk it over with someone about the same thing... But what about the wandering of thoughts? When there is feeling in the heart, they will not wander. When the tap on the samovar is turned, water flows unstoppably; but when you turn the tap shut, the water stops; so it is with thoughts: they all flow and flow, but turn the tap shut and they will stop. This turning of the tap shut is the awakening of holy feeling in the heart and holding it fast.
109.9.1 This will be all your seeking; the Lord will see it and give you what you seek. You must clothe yourself in the garment of humility and hold a deep feeling of your own nothingness and poverty in all things... When there is no such feeling, the Lord will not give the gift of sobriety. I don’t know what more to say about this.
109.10.1 You also complain about a lack of patience—patience simply won’t settle in you; if you don’t hold a deep feeling that everything you encounter comes to you by the will of God. So meet it with complete submission to the will of God, as if God were standing before you and commanding you to endure. Then humility will come, and poverty of spirit... and all your anxieties will cease.
109.11.1 Rushing through memorized prayers is certainly not good, but that’s within your power to change. When you notice this happening, stop and begin reading slowly.
109.12.1 The measure for reading prayers from a prayer book or from memory is this: have understanding and awareness of what you are reading. So read in such a way that everything you read is consciously understood. Let this determine your pace. Do you remember the twenty-four little prayers of Saint John Chrysostom? Read them often, add to them other psalms or church hymns and memorize those as well—and read them with corresponding thoughts and feelings. You could use them to replace your entire prayer rule, but you have no need for that.
109.13.1 You mentioned something about your relationship to the monastery. You have nothing to do with it—there is an abbot there, and there are enough other people in authority; they do as God instructs them. You simply pray:
109.14.1 Help them, Lord! Enlighten them, strengthen them!
109.15.1 Be saved!
109.16.1 Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.
109.17.1 A.D.