Chapter 39
On Prayer as a Witness to Spiritual Life
39.2.1 The mercy of God be with you!
39.3.1 I’m very glad that all is going well with you—not in the monastery, but in your soul! For when prayer is present, nothing better is needed. That’s why it’s been noted somewhere that the ancient monks, when they met one another—whether on mutual visits or elsewhere—would first of all ask how their prayer was going. In true prayer all our highest relationships with God are active and working, and they ensure that our spiritual life stands in its proper order at that time... Prayer is the witness to our spiritual being and the measure of it! Why be amazed when we read that one of the Saints stood in prayer and sometimes did not leave off the whole night and part of the day besides?
39.4.1 Prayer lifted him up to his native home, where the Father, Mother, brothers and sisters embrace him with full love, comfort him, and delight him. Grant you, Lord, never to lose the structure of prayer within![1]
39.5.1 You have so many cares for your sisters; it cannot be that not one of them enters into what you are offering. Some in their own measure do assimilate it. But do not cease to act upon them, to the extent you are able, praying unceasingly, so that the Lord, whose daughters they are, may visit them and enlighten their thoughts and hearts.
39.6.1 The fourth volume of the Philokalia contains the teachings of Saint Theodore the Studite, where a great many instructions are offered to those living in community, for all the situations that inevitably arise in this kind of ascetic struggle. There are instructions even for those working in the fields. You should look through them and read them to the sisters... or have the sisters themselves read them. This will be a ready means for the edification and guidance of the sisters. The Lord will instruct you and help you arrange everything; pray to Him more fervently. Your prayer should not be limited to yourselves... but more than for yourselves, you should importune God for the spiritual progress of the sisters.
39.7.1 May the Lord bless you!
39.8.1 Be saved!
39.9.1 Bishop Theophan.
39.10.1 .