Chapter 54
On Prayer Made and Given
54.2.1 Give thanks to God for all things; and give thanks even for sickness. It’s easy for me to speak this way from the outside; But for you in practice it may not be easy to feel this way. In any case, when I speak of patience, I pray that the Lord will grant you to bear your illness with equanimity and to learn something from it.[1] Why the Lord has bound you—who can say? But this much is certain: that this too has been permitted to you for the sake of furthering the aims of the life you have chosen and in which you are striving, however imperfectly, to hold fast. From this perspective, there’s no need to inquire further into the cause of your illness. For courage in patient endurance, when your sufferings grow heavy, seek it—besides what has been said—in remembering the patience of all the Saints, and especially the martyrs.[2] How much and in what ways they endured! It’s hard even to imagine. And for everyone alike – through many afflictions we must enter the Kingdom of God. And what the Lord has promised is called a crown. Why is that? Because one cannot enter there without suffering. There is only one road there—the cross, whether chosen or unchosen. May your Guardian Angel bring you comfort and equanimity!
54.3.1 Don’t be troubled that the noise in your head keeps you from holding your thoughts steady. God judges the soul by what depends on the soul itself, not by what lies beyond its power. Keep the intention in your heart not to depart from the Lord, and He will accept this as your deed. Now you must set aside your fasting rule. After you break the fast, if God is willing He will raise you up; but now, while you are ill, you may eat anything as medicine, according to your doctor’s advice. You wish to hear something about prayer. What can I tell you that you don’t already know? There is prayer that a person says himself; and there is prayer that God gives to the one who prays. Who doesn’t know the first? You ought to know the last one too, at least in its beginnings. At first, when someone approaches the Lord, the first thing is prayer. He begins to go to church and to pray at home, using prayer books and without them. But his thoughts scatter in all directions. He can’t manage them at all. The more one labors in prayer, the more thoughts settle down and settle down, and prayer becomes purer. Yet the soul’s atmosphere is not cleansed until a spiritual flame is kindled in the soul. This flame is the work of the grace of God, but not a special grace—rather, the common grace given to all. It appears as a result of a certain measure of purity in the entire moral character of the person who seeks. When this flame is kindled, or when a constant warmth of the heart is formed, then the turmoil of thoughts is stilled. What happens to the soul is like what happened to the woman with the issue of blood: the flow of her blood stopped. In this state, prayer—whether more or less—approaches unceasing prayer. The Jesus Prayer serves as the means by which it does so. And this is the limit to which prayer made by the human being himself can reach! I think all this is very clear to you.
54.4.1 Beyond this point, in this state, prayer comes to us—not made by the human being himself, but given. The spirit of prayer comes upon you and draws you inward into the heart—it’s as if someone took you by the hand and forcibly drew you from one room into another. The soul is bound here by an external power and willingly remains within, as long as the spirit that has come upon it is present. I know two degrees of this visitation. In the first, the soul sees everything, is aware of itself and its outward condition, and can reason and govern itself; it can even destroy this state of its own, if it wishes. This should be clear to you.
54.5.1 Among the holy Fathers, and especially in Saint Isaac the Syrian, there is indicated another degree of prayer that is given, or that comes upon us.[3] Above the prayer shown before stands, in his teaching, a prayer which he called ecstasy, or rapture. And there too the spirit of prayer finds its place; but the soul, drawn by it, enters into such contemplations that it forgets its outward condition, does not reason, but only contemplates, and has no power to govern itself or break free from its state. Remember, it’s written in the Paterikon that someone stood in prayer before his evening meal, and came to himself only in the morning. That is what prayer in rapture, or contemplative prayer, is. In some it was accompanied by a brightening of the face, with light all around; in others by being lifted from the ground. The holy apostle Paul in this state was caught up into paradise. And the holy prophets were in this state when their spirit was taken up.
54.6.1 Marvel at what great mercy of God is shown to us sinners. How few will labor, and what do they receive? To all who labor you can boldly say: labor on; there is reason enough! Recover as quickly as you can, and set your sights on the distant path ahead!