Chapter 42
On Overcoming Slothfulness Toward Prayer
42.2.1 May the mercy of God be with you!
42.3.1 I have greatly wronged you, and since my fault is so great, I do not ask for forgiveness, but only say: I am guilty.[1] You were resting at the dacha. I have greatly desired that you be strengthened and refreshed. If only my desire could be fulfilled! Your companions or hangers-on (lacking patience and meekness, full of pride, irritability, vanity, idle talk, slander, lack of self-control in speech and food, and above all slothfulness toward prayer) certainly cannot be praised; but it is good that their faults are noticed, and not only noticed but exposed—which these ladies cannot bear.[2] Every evening you report on them to the Lord when, having reviewed all that has broken out during the day, you say: ‘Lord! You see all things! Forgive them, and grant me the wisdom not to stumble in this matter.’[3]
42.4.1 If you do this, they’ll forget your door one after another. But one of them you must kill right now, burn it, and scatter its ashes to the wind... That’s slothfulness toward prayer. Get angry at it and destroy it immediately, so that not even its spirit remains.
42.5.1 If it breaks through but is driven away every time, that’s nothing, and there’s no need to talk about it. But if you indulge it, then the mistress of the house is entirely to blame... for not protecting her own good... From frequent self-indulgence, prayer will grow completely weak, and the prayer rule will turn into a lifeless form, and the spiritual life will die. But I think you’re being a bit too hard on yourself here.
42.6.1 God has given you a willing heart, which is and remains in you a source of the active life according to the commandments in relation to your neighbours. Make it your rule: to dedicate every task to God at its very inception, to turn it toward God while you’re carrying it out, and to ask God for strength to complete it; then, when you’ve finished, to give thanks to Him for it... repenting if anything slipped through that distorted the work, or that presents it before God’s eyes as in some way deficient.[4] Acting in this way, you will finally reach by this laborious path what the desert-dwellers who renounce everything reach. But if you don’t, you’ll remain at the same level as the Jews—not the present-day ones, but the ancient ones who lived according to the norm prescribed for them.
42.7.1 Please keep this in mind. The obedience you laid on me to pray for N. N. I fulfil. Only I don’t pray: take this and give that, but rather: do with him, Lord, what is saving for him. Otherwise prayer will look like giving orders to God... which is completely unseemly.
42.8.1 May the Lord bless you!
42.9.1 Be saved!
42.10.1 Bishop Theophan.
42.11.1