Chapter 25
On the Warmth of the Heart and the Jesus Prayer
25.2.1 May the mercy of God be with you!
25.3.1 It is good that you have received the Holy Mysteries of Christ. May this be unto your salvation! If your heart grows warm when you read ordinary prayers, then kindle the warmth of your heart toward God in that same way. The Jesus Prayer, if you say it mechanically, gives nothing, just as any other prayer that is merely spoken with the tongue.
25.4.1 Try, when you say the Jesus Prayer, to think more vividly that the Lord Himself is near, and stands before your soul, and attends to what is happening within it. And in your soul awaken at the same time a thirst for salvation and the conviction that apart from the Lord we have nowhere else to look for our salvation. Then cry out to Him, mentally beholding Him before you: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!” Or: “Merciful Lord, save me by whatever means You know!” The whole matter is not in the words, but in the feelings toward the Lord.
25.5.1 Spiritual fervor of the heart toward the Lord is love for Him. It is kindled by the Lord’s touch upon the heart. Since He is entirely love, His touch upon the heart at once kindles love for Him. And from love comes the burning of the heart toward Him. This, then, is what you should seek. The practice of the Jesus Prayer is only an instrument for this, or rather, only a labor that shows the soul’s earnest desire to find the Lord.
25.6.1 On your tongue, let there be the Jesus Prayer; in your intellect, the vision of the Lord before you; in your heart, a thirst for God or communion with the Lord.[1] When all this is in place, and is constant, – then the Lord, seeing how you force yourself, grants what you ask.
25.7.1 Please consider all this and take it as guidance, and read it over more often so that you renew it in your memory—how you ought to act. And explain all this to N... My soul aches for her, desiring that she be more firmly established in the inner man. For then no waves can shake her, like a solid rock!
25.8.1 Be saved!
25.9.1 Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.
25.10.1