Chapter 84
On the Jesus Prayer and its True Practice
84.2.1 May the mercy of God be with you!
84.3.1 May God help you in your spiritual fatherhood!
84.4.1 Proceed with the sick and elderly residents of the almshouse in confession and Holy Communion just as you have been doing. Advise the residents of the almshouse and the sick to pray to the Lord with their intellect from the heart.
84.5.1 As for what you wrote about certain practitioners of the Jesus Prayer who place their hand on a table and gather their attention under their fingers—these are unseemly affectations.[1] It’s also a quirk that someone would strike the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right hand, and in this way gather his intellect and pray. You’re asking me to explain the work of prayer... But there’s nothing to explain here. Stand with your intellect in your heart before the face of the Lord and cry out to Him: ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’ This will be the labor of prayer. According to how diligently someone labors, the Lord, seeing the labor, will give him spiritual prayer, which is the fruit of the grace of the Holy Spirit. That’s all that should be said and understood about the Jesus Prayer. Everything else that’s invented has nothing to do with the work—it’s the enemy distracting from true prayer.
84.6.1 To the elder who hears noise and feels touches… there’s nothing more to say except what you’ve already said: pay no attention. Let him add the prayer each time: ‘Our Father…’; he can even pronounce a rebuke over the enemies in the name of the Lord with faith!
84.7.1 That his forehead was red—that’s surely because he’s banging it on the floor. Let him stop doing that… It’s good to make prostrations… All the prayer books advise doing that, but there’s no need to bang on the floor.
84.8.1 May the Lord bless you!
84.9.1 Be saved!
84.10.1 Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.
84.11.1