Chapter 34
On Slothfulness in Prayer and Instruction in Noetic Prayer
34.2.1 May the mercy of God be with you!
34.3.1 In your letter of January 23rd you described what you read during your night rule. It seemed to me then that there was too much reading, and I intended to write to you asking you to reduce the reading and insert noetic prayer in the intervals—prayer arising mentally from your heart and offered to the Lord with petitions for your spiritual needs. But in your letter of January 26 you say that you refuse to read in the evening because of eye trouble. And you resolve to study noetic prayer and, so as not to doze off, you knit socks. It seems that you’re abandoning vocal prayer altogether. You can do that, but you must stop knitting socks. Instead, when drowsiness comes over you, walk about the room, or lift something heavy, or—much better yet—take some prayer beads, thick ones, and strike yourself on the shoulders.
34.4.1 When I wrote to you not to shorten your time of prayer, I did so because it seemed to me that you were growing lazy in your praying. That’s what you must chiefly avoid. Slothfulness means a weakening or cessation of spiritual movements—something deeply to be lamented. But since I see that your zeal for the work of prayer is alive, I think it right to leave to your discretion both the time and the rule of prayer—arrange both as you find best and most fitting for yourself. Only one thing keep as your constant concern: when you stand at prayer, let your prayer come from your heart with feelings toward God—feelings of praise, thanksgiving, and petition, with hope—and let no extraneous matter mingle with it. You wish to learn noetic prayer. You understand, of course, the Jesus Prayer. A good and most excellent work! But without the habit of concentrating in prayer, it’s hard to succeed in the Jesus Prayer. To acquire such concentration, here’s what you should do: gather for yourself from the psalms and other prayers short prayerful invocations that are closer to your interior disposition, memorise them, feel them deeply, and pray with them, repeating each one three, five, or ten times so as to fill the appointed time; and in the midst of them insert the Jesus Prayer, and after all of them add invocations of the Theotokos, the saints, and so on. and remembrance of your living and departed. You can also add the reading of printed prayers, for example: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me…’, ‘Praise the Lord, O my soul’, ‘Who at every season…’, and so on.[1]
34.5.1 For an example, take this: the twenty-four little prayers of Saint John Chrysostom that are found in the prayers before sleep.
34.6.1 Adapt the litany of supplication into little prayers as well… like this: ‘Grant me, O Lord, that the whole day may be holy, peaceful, and sinless…’ and the rest in the same way. Take Psalm 50 from the beginning up to ‘…Restore to me the joy of your salvation…’ In these verses all the feelings of repentance are brought together. Learn them by heart and pray with them.
34.7.1 In this way your whole prayer rule can be put together, and you won’t need books or candles for it.
34.8.1 Each little prayer will give you not just one spiritual contemplation, and these contemplations will produce or sustain spiritual feelings. So seek and you will find the prayer that will then flow like a river from your heart. May the Lord bless you!
34.9.1 Your devoted servant, Bishop Theophan.
34.10.1