Chapter 71
On Beginning Spiritual Prayer and the Contrite Spirit
71.2.1 The mercy of God be with you!
71.3.1 Spiritual prayer does not depend on any bodily strain—for instance, pressing your attention toward the heart or constricting your breathing, and the like. It is accomplished by a noetic path. You should begin it by placing yourself in the presence of the Lord, and then, having given yourself wholly to the Lord in faith and hope, turn your prayer to him simply, like a child. Whatever feelings God sends, be content with those. Spiritual practice is not about rapture: its finest expression is a contrite spirit, a heart contrite and humble. As you wrote, when you represent the Lord as present, it goes better—so always do this.
71.4.1 There is nothing sinful in your hearing the confession of the novices. In the document given to priests at their ordination, it is stated that they are granted the power to hear confession and to absolve penitents, as well as to perform all other church services. This power has been given to you as well at your ordination. But its use in the monastery is subject to the monastic rule. In our monastery, anyone may confess to anyone they wish, though there is an appointed spiritual father. Wouldn’t it be better to ask the abbot quietly?
71.5.1 May the Lord bless you!
71.6.1 Be saved!
71.7.1 Your well-wisher.
71.8.1
71.9.1 (Question. When I mentally go through the Creed, images unwillingly form in my intellect, and since despite all my effort I cannot free myself from them, I become troubled and afraid that I might fall into spiritual delusion in this way.[1] How am I to understand all that is written about prayer in Symeon the New Theologian in Discourses Eight and Nine?”)