Chapter 2
On the Prayer Rule and Attention
2.2.1 The mercy of God be with you!
2.3.1 Your prayer rule is very good. And continue to fulfill it as you have grown accustomed. But remember that the matter lies not in words and prostrations, but in lifting your intellect and heart to God. You could recite everything written in your rule and perform all the prescribed prostrations, yet not remember God at all, or remember Him carelessly, with a scattered thought and a wandering intellect. And consequently, without praying, you would have fulfilled your prayer rule. The result is that your prayer becomes sin before God.[1] Deliver me, Lord! With fear and trembling you must accomplish the work of God—keep this in mind. Do everything you can so that wherever there is a word, your intellect is also there—or, as Saint John of the Ladder says, enclose your intellect within the words of prayer.[2] When you approach your prayer rule, you must establish yourself in attention before God and not depart from Him.
2.4.1 Reading prayers from a book scatters your attention greatly. It’s better to memorize them. Likewise, flipping through pages to find this or that ikos and kontakion must also scatter attention. Try doing this: learn the morning prayers and evening prayers by heart, with understanding of them and a feeling for what is said in them. Then read them as though they were coming from the heart. From the Psalter, too, choose which psalms are understandable and closer to the heart, and learn them by heart... And read these, too, in prayer from memory in order. Read them also as you go somewhere and do something... Read the daily Gospel after prayer, with reflection and drawing out what you need for yourself. Compose a commemoration list following the model of the printed one (in the Psalter with Appended Offices) according to your own needs and circumstances, and say it from memory.
2.5.1 Turn all the akathists into prostrations… don’t read from the book, but mentally turn to those to whom you have appointed them… and make prostrations… Because you won’t be reading the words, add an extra prostration or two. Everything else is good.
2.6.1 The less you need the prayer book, the better. Learn above all to be in the remembrance of God and the remembrance of death. The sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit. Then consider that you have prayed well when you leave prayer with contrition and complete self-abasement. And during the day, instead of counting beads, strive to stand noetically before God with the Jesus Prayer. As angels always stand before the face of God, so we too must strive. They offer a sacrifice of praise, and we—contrition.
2.7.1 That you came to marry above your station is not pride. God gave it. But to take pride in it—that’s possible. So if you are proud, stop being proud. No one else can see this except you and God. Pray to God that He give you a contrite spirit and humility, and He will give it. Meanwhile, gather such thoughts yourself and hold them in your soul—thoughts that humble you.[3] Pride is the most destructive passion, and all the more destructive because it appears pure on the surface.[4] What the elders told you about pride when you were a child means that God wants you to humble yourself, and He is ready to give you humility if you seek it. But the fact that you are now in a higher position and wealthier is not a violation of the elder’s words. Pride is in one’s feelings, not in one’s outward position. Even great kings can be the most humble... Saint David—a shepherd who became king—said: But I am a worm and not a man, the reproach of men and despised by the people....
2.8.1 Fasting on Wednesday and Friday is sufficient. There’s no need to add anything more to this. Focus more on ordering your thoughts and feelings. It is enough to keep the body in self-control. Fasting for children is not obligatory if their health does not permit it. But it is a great pity that, having grown accustomed to it from childhood, they will not afterwards take up the fast.[5] The salvation of the soul is what matters most. But it is the Saviour who saves souls, not we ourselves. We only bear witness to our faith and our submission to Him, and He, according to the measure of our cleaving to Him, grants us all that is needful for salvation.[6] Don’t think you can earn anything by labor; you earn it by faith, by contrition, and by devotion to God. Do more good; help those in need.
2.9.1 I still owe you a reply to your husband. I’ll write to him right away, assuming you share the same household.[7]
2.10.1 Christ is in our midst, servant of God!
2.11.1 That the Lord has turned you to faith is a great mercy. So then, He expects that you, having received the gift of faith, will remain faithful to the faith. Faithfulness to the faith is life in the spirit of faith.
2.12.1 Faith in God!.. But even deists believe in God and in Providence... and go no further... they’ve stopped halfway. God created us and honored us with His image, so that we might live in God—be in living union with Him. In paradise it was so. The fall of the forefathers severed this union. But God had mercy on us and did not want us to remain outside Him, separated in our fall; instead He was pleased to devise a way of reunion, which consists in this: the Son of God and God came to earth and became incarnate, and in His person united humanity with divinity, and through this gave us all the possibility of being united through Him with God. Those who believe are baptized and others receive sacraments, and are vitally united with the Saviour, and through Him with God. And in this is salvation! Our goal is life in God, but there is no other way to God for us except through the Lord Jesus Christ. There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus. This is how you must believe in Christ the Saviour, receive the holy mysteries, keep the commandments, and do all that the Holy Church contains and prescribes. The Lord is with those who are with the Church. Be free from empty wisdom, and you will be on the path of salvation.[8]
2.13.1 Because the Lord has called you to faith, nothing special is required of you except to be genuinely faithful to the faith. And be grateful that the Lord has called you out of darkness into light. Above all, help those in need. Whoever comes to you with tears, don’t send them away without drying those tears. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.... Through the hand of the one in need, always see the outstretched hand of the Lord Himself, who has turned to you. He Himself said: «What you do for them—the poor—you do for Me».... Those who have means shouldn’t think they are masters, but rather stewards of God. And what is the law for stewards? Measure out to each what is needed... See the inscription above you: “To you the poor is left; you be a helper to the orphan”.
2.14.1 To clarify your religious understanding, read Saint Tikhon, Saint Dimitry of Rostov, the hierarchs John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, and so on. I can’t tell you a prayer rule, not knowing how you pray now. I’ll say one thing: stand and pray to the Lord as your soul requires, telling Him what is on your soul. God is everywhere and hears everything... You only need to speak clearly. Speech to God is not uttered by the tongue, but by the feelings of the heart. If you do this, it will be true prayer.
2.15.1 Concern about possessions? But how am I to manage? I have to settle my children. No one is without cares. But there is a measure to our cares, and moreover, cares coupled with complete hope in God. Hold this care as an obedience, like the obedience laid upon each person in monasteries. Saint Symeon the New Theologian has a rule: keep your conscience pure before God, people, and things... So there is a price of conscience even toward them... Moscow!.. Pray, and God will preserve you. Don’t become acquainted with the frivolous, but with the God-fearing, of whom there are plenty in Moscow. There are many people of spiritual life there. They will support you. But most important—may the Lord be your support.
2.16.1 Be well and cheerful, both of you. Finally, Solomon concluded his Ecclesiastes with this: Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
2.17.1 Pray to God for me, a sinner.
2.18.1 Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.
2.19.1 .