Chapter 32
On Feeling Toward God in Prayer
32.2.1 May the mercy of God be with you!
32.3.1 Dear M...
32.4.1 The prayer you are performing—interior, from the soul, from yourself, according to the feeling of your spiritual needs above all others—is true prayer. And please continue to labor in this kind of prayer above every other. The heart of prayer is a feeling toward God that comes from the heart. The words of prayer will come as they may.[1] A feeling toward God, even without words, is prayer. Words sustain the feeling and sometimes deepen it. The prayer rule for church services must be observed as it is. As for the home prayer rule, it has no fixed form but may be changed in timing, length, and content—the one thing to keep in mind is that everything be done not to indulge slothfulness, but so that prayer comes from the soul. The prayer rule you have is a good one. You can add to it and make changes. The little prayers of Saint Chrysostom are excellent—twelve for the night and twelve for the day. You can select from the psalms those verses that move the heart most deeply. Act in complete freedom in all things. Sometimes you can spend the entire time of prayer praying your own prayers according to your present need; or insert such a prayer into your rule, at the beginning, middle, and end, or without words, only holding the feeling toward God... with the cry: ‘God, be merciful,’ or: ‘By the judgements You know, save me.’ But there is, mother, unceasing prayer, which goes unceasingly to God from the heart. This is a gift of grace. Saint Macarius the Great says: pray and exhaust yourself in prayer, and God, seeing how earnestly you desire to pray, will give you prayer. In the Slavonic Philokalia, the elder Maximus Kapsokalyvis says of himself that he prayed for two years to the Mother of God, that She would give or obtain for him prayer. Once, he says, as I, having prayed, venerated the icon of the Theotokos, – instantly a sweet little flame dropped into my heart and since then it glows there; That’s the gift of prayer! Seek it yourself as well, and express it in prayer with words, keeping in mind that prayer of which Maximus speaks. Sometimes it happens that this little flame descends during the priestly absolution at confession, sometimes at Holy Communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Seek it in every way. But keep the labor of prayer as it is... doing everything you can to warm up your feeling toward God.
32.5.1 It’s as though you don’t read anything; If there’s anything, read everything about prayer. I have some books to distribute. I’m sending them to you—read them little by little. I wish you every spiritual progress in drawing near to God.
32.6.1 You can stop going out altogether, using your many duties as an excuse...
32.7.1 Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.
32.8.1