Chapter 67
Establishment in Noetic Prayer and the Struggle Against Distraction
67.2.1 May the mercy of God be with you!
67.3.1 I’ve fallen behind in answering your letters. Please forgive me. I’m setting out to make up for this omission.
67.4.1 I don’t remember whether I answered your letter in which you mentioned the elder of the monastic community of P... – But I’ll write a reply to it. Let it be a repetition, then. The letter of August 9.
67.5.1 First you describe how you pray noetically and with what feelings, and you ask whether this is acceptable? I answer: it is acceptable. May the Lord bless you to always pray this way, if you remember what you wrote. Then you add: ‘I grieve that I rarely pray with such prayer... the prayer departs, and again I become scattered...’ It is very necessary to grieve over this. But you shouldn’t blame anyone else: it’s your own fault. To become established in such prayer, first, pray to the Lord, the Giver of every good gift, that He may grant you to pray this way, and second, approach such prayer more often. The habit will come, by the grace of God. ‘I’m scattered’... Who’s to blame? Do not scatter your thoughts. And as soon as you notice that your thoughts have begun to wander, immediately turn them back again.[1] Accustom yourself to abide in the remembrance of God and the remembrance of death. There will be contrition, and it will not allow your thoughts to scatter. After this you ask: ‘Should I continue such prayer, or should I descend with the intellect into the heart?’ – But what you’ve just described, where does it happen? It can’t happen anywhere but within. You stand before the Lord, without images, in the presence of the Lord... and you experience good feelings. What more do you need? That’s everything. Unless you’re doing this only in your head?! No, you must stand in the heart. But not to remember the heart—only to behold the Lord.[2] You can put it this way: ‘Stand in the heart with your intellect before the Lord and pray.’
67.6.1 The question—‘When I stand in the heart, must I form any images there: the Trinity or something else?’—answers itself. If you stand before the Lord without His image, what other images could be fitting there? They cannot appear at all: God the Trinity has no image. It is neither possible nor right to represent Her in an image. The Lord Saviour, according to the incarnate divine economy, has a human form; but we must stand before Him without an image, in the consciousness of His presence alone. The monk from the monastic community of P... does well to labor in the Jesus Prayer. But doesn’t he forget that the point is not in the words and not in the quantity of Jesus Prayers, but in the habit of always being in the memory of the Lord. It’s good to maintain a set quantity so as not to grow lazy, but the main thing is that one’s thoughts and feelings should be holy. The fruit of prayer—the principal fruit—is not warmth and sweetness, but fear of God and contrition. You must kindle them constantly and live with them, and breathe them.[3]
67.7.1 This monk sees the Holy Trinity in image in his heart. The Holy Trinity, God, is invisible and hidden, and has no image. You must stand in the awareness of God’s omnipresence, and you should not construct images.[4] He says he found this thought among the Fathers. Ask him—which ones? I don’t recall any of them mentioning this. Those who construct their thoughts about spiritual matters in order to give them weight appeal to the fathers. Without verification, one cannot accept such words as truth.
67.8.1 This brother said that he doesn’t even understand what reverence and fear of God are. That’s very bad. Who can stand before a king without fear?! How much more so before God?! In Kiev, in the Lavra, there was a brother who used to say: “Look, don’t be disrespectful with God.”[5] Isn’t that the very trouble with that brother? It’s no wonder that the fruit of his prayer is determined only by warmth and sweetness. That is spiritual self-indulgence. The main thing is the fear of God and a contrite spirit... Warmth and sweetness are good in spiritual work; but we shouldn’t measure the value of spiritual practices by them.
67.9.1 You say that sometimes you forget the count of prayers on the prayer rope. It’s no great trouble. When there is a falling down before the Lord as one present, with fear and hope, this is better than any completion of a number of prayers.
67.10.1 Can you sometimes fulfill the prayer rule of Saint Pachomius? – And it’s very possible. I have nothing more useful to tell you, as you ask. «Seek always to be with the Lord, and you will find Him».
67.11.1 The letter of September 9 speaks again of Brother P..., who sees the Holy Trinity in his heart in images. – Proofs from the fathers have been cited in his support. The first is from Abba Dorotheus in Russian. He is not a father, and his book is forbidden. It contains much that is edifying, but it also has objectionable thoughts, among which is the idea that the Holy Trinity does not dwell in a person all at once, but over the course of years: in the first year the Holy Spirit dwells, in the second year the Son of God, in the third year God the Father. There are other things as well. Toward the end of the book he lists unlucky days, which is empty superstition... But he doesn’t speak about the image of the Most Holy Trinity, only that the persons of the Holy Trinity dwell one after another, year by year. His error consists in the fact that he divides the persons of the Holy Trinity, whereas they are confessed to be indivisible. The same is true in Barsanuphius, answer one hundred twenty-one: it doesn’t speak about the image, but only that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwell in a pure heart—indivisibly. So it turns out your brother doesn’t prove his opinion with anything – he just imagines it arbitrarily. Remind him that he’s angering God.
67.12.1 On prayer, read the collection ‘On Sobriety and Prayer’: everything the Fathers said about this is gathered there. It’s not a bad idea to look through those chapters in the book on spiritual warfare that speak about prayer... And that’s quite enough. It’s better to labor in the practice of prayer than to theorise about it and read theories. The matter is very simple...
67.13.1 May the Lord bless you!
67.14.1 Your well-wisher.
67.15.1
67.16.1 (A question. Until now I understood the fathers’ saying that the intellect must stand in the heart to mean that during prayer one must remember only the heart, and I was puzzled about what external object one must give to the intellect in this case.[6] Now I explain it to myself this way: when I stand with my intellect before the Lord, without any images, but only in the awareness of His presence, then my intellect is in my heart. – And so, when I turn all my attention to being in the feeling of God’s omnipresence and, immersing myself in the thought of David’s words: Where shall I go from Your Spirit; and from Your face, where shall I flee? ... and: I have set the Lord always before me – to stand noetically before Him, I feel a certain special liveliness of spirit, in contrast to that deadness which possessed me when I tried to remember only the heart and bring the intellect into such a position that it would be, in the expression of the fathers, above or over the heart, thinking that this alone constituted true prayer. I ask you, please explain to me whether my understanding is correct and whether I am praying rightly?”)