Chapter 83

On the Writings of Hierarch Ignatius and Spiritual Delusion in Prayer

^83.2.1 May the mercy of God be with you!

^83.3.1 You write that you’ve acquired a little book: “The soul and the angel are not body, but spirit.” Good! Read it, and share it with others or encourage them to get a copy. Here the truth is set forth plainly; but there are people who hold to the opposite falsehood—and it’s not harmless. For if the soul is body, why should we abstain from bodily things? Eat, drink, and be merry.

^83.4.1 But you would be wrong if you thought badly of all the writings of Bishop Ignatius. They set forth the straight truth about the spiritual life, and all in the words of the Fathers, though it isn’t indicated everywhere where the thoughts are taken from. So you should read him without turning up your nose.

^83.5.1 Placing a wet towel on the chest... someone among those now engaged in ascesis does this. And he wrote to me. This doesn’t concern the practice of prayer itself, but rather those cases when the blood of the heart becomes heated through artificial practice of prayer—in order to diminish the heat of the blood. This heat is not a spiritual manifestation, but a physical one, and it arises from immoderate use of artificial techniques in the Jesus Prayer. Hidden in this is also the fact that they regard the artificial practice of the Jesus Prayer as the principal work, and the physical warmth of the heart in this as genuine spiritual prayer of Jesus. Whoever thinks this way is in spiritual delusion.

^83.6.1 That you’ve been released from the roster means you’ve been numbered among the elders. Yet this is not done in order to indulge laziness, but so that you might devote yourselves more earnestly to spiritual practices and to noetic sacred action before God in the heart. Your sorrow that you serve rarely is groundless, because it was not chosen by you, and the brothers are wrong to reproach you for not fulfilling your turn at the services. Tell them: my friends, not my will; for the very reason that I humbly submit to the arrangements of our fathers, I should not be reproached. It is better not to think about solitude. If it is necessary for you, God will arrange it for you when the time comes. It must be preceded by a strong inner longing.

^83.7.1 May the Lord bless you!

^83.8.1 I ask for your prayers.

^83.9.1 Be saved!

^83.10.1 Your well-wisher.[1]

^83.11.1 July 5, 1891.