Chapter 90
On the Prayer Rule and Unceasing Prayer
90.2.1 May the mercy of God be with you!
90.3.1 Here I myself have offended you by my slow reply.[1]
90.4.1 I ask your forgiveness.
90.5.1 What you wrote about yourself regarding the deceptive image of self-denial is good.[2] The most sensible way to conduct yourself toward others is not to resist, so that everything goes smoothly.[3] There’s no avoiding struggle, because our self gets in the way and, like a hedgehog, bristles up with its quills. These quills are what we have to trim or pull out.
90.6.1 How you’ve decided to approach prayer is good. Take care to arrange things this way and to grow accustomed to it. The prayer rule is a safe boundary for prayer... Prayer is an inner work, while the prayer rule is external.
90.7.1 But just as a person without a body is not a complete person, so prayer without a prayer rule is not complete. You need to have both and to fulfil them according to your strength. The unbreakable law is to pray inwardly, and to pray always and everywhere. But the prayer rule cannot exist without a definite time, place, and measure. Defining these three things constitutes the prayer rule. And here the guide is prudence: when, where, how long to stand in prayer and what prayers to use... everyone can determine according to their circumstances—to increase, decrease, shift the time and place... all directed toward ensuring that interior prayer is performed as it should be. As for interior prayer, there is one rule: pray unceasingly.
90.8.1 What does it mean to pray unceasingly? —To be unceasingly in a prayerful disposition. A prayerful disposition is thought of God and feeling toward God together. A thought of God—a thought of His omnipresence, that He is everywhere, sees all things, and sustains all things. A feeling toward God—fear of God, love of God, zealous desire to please Him alone, with the same desire to avoid all that displeases Him, and above all, the surrender of yourself to His holy will without resistance and the acceptance of all that happens as coming directly from His hand. A feeling toward God can be present in all our works, occupations, and circumstances, if it is not merely sought after, but is already established in the heart.
90.9.1 The thought can be drawn away by various objects; but even then it is possible to develop the habit of not departing from God, and to engage in all things in the light of remembrance of God. So your whole concern should be with these two—with thought of God and feeling toward God. When these are present, there is prayer, even though there are no words of prayer. The morning prayer rule is appointed precisely to establish these two things in the consciousness and heart... And then with them to go out to one’s work and labor. If you raise this up in your soul in the morning, then you have prayed as you should, even if you don’t read all the prayers...
90.10.1 Let’s say that in the morning you’ve set yourself in this disposition and have gone out to your work. From the first step, impressions from affairs and things and people will begin, pulling the soul away from God... What’s to be done? You must renew the thought and feeling... by an interior turning of the intellect and heart to God. And to make this easier – you need to get used to some little prayer and repeat it as often as possible. Any little prayer will do for this. But the most fitting of all is the prayer to the Lord Saviour: ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!’ Labor to get used to it, and don’t give up until you’ve mastered it... Once it takes root, it will be a constant mover both of standing before God in thought and of feeling toward Him. There you have the whole program of the work of prayer! In the book ‘What is the spiritual life?...’ all this is described. You do well to read through it. Everything written there was written to a beautiful soul, and depicts the work of the spiritual life as it really is. Look carefully there at what is spiritual, soulish, and bodily, or animal.
90.11.1 It’s good that you’ve decided to drive away morning drowsiness... By giving yourself alertness at this hour, it will be easier for you to keep yourself alert the whole day.
90.12.1 For times when you can’t read all the prayers in the morning or evening, choose from among the prayers those that are more substantial in content... and read them... but most importantly, take greater care to establish in your intellect and heart the thought of God with the corresponding feeling.
90.13.1 The spiritual coldness you speak of comes either from weariness of soul, or from the fact that the soul has been overfed with what is soulish (see the book ‘What Is the Spiritual Life?’ on this), or from giving the body too much rest and every kind of comfort, or from self-conceit and other passions that have agitated and occupied the soul. All such things are contrary to the spiritual life, in which prayer is queen; they clog and block the wellspring of prayer. But it also happens by God’s permission, and by the withdrawal of grace. When your soul burns with zeal, this is the action of grace, God’s touch upon the soul. It happens that when this continues for a long time, the soul begins to think what a master it is at prayer, forgetting that the liveliness of the prayerful movement is not its own doing, but the work of the grace of God dwelling in us. For such thinking grace withdraws and leaves the soul alone... and the soul by itself is immobile toward spiritual things... so there you have spiritual coldness and slothfulness... So what’s to be done? The main thing is to try to remove the causes of such a state. And then act as you are acting – fulfil your rule, despite the slothfulness, trying both to gather your thoughts and to reproduce feelings toward God. For patience and humility grace will return... and will immediately dispel slothfulness, as wind disperses fog.
90.14.1 Memorising the Psalter is a good thing. Fill yourselves with prayerful thoughts and feelings... The Holy Fathers urged this on everyone. And they advised reading the psalms not only during your prayer rule, but at other times too. You can read them even in the midst of tasks, and especially when you’re moving from one place to another. But for maintaining thoughts of God and feeling toward Him between tasks, it’s best of all to become accustomed to a short little prayer.
90.15.1 You can serve the Lord with everything you happen to do, think, and experience from waking up until your eyes close again in sleep… This happens – by doing everything in accordance with the commandments and for the glory of God, in obedience to God, and by keeping your thoughts and feelings in check so that nothing displeasing to God breaks through into them.
90.16.1 That you love to listen to the singing in church – there’s nothing blameworthy in that, unless you limit yourself to mere delight and forget about God and all things divine. It’s not the delight that’s blameworthy, but the fact that God and divine things are forgotten in the process. If you follow in your mind everything that is sung and read in church, you won’t grow weary – on the contrary, you’ll feel when the Liturgy ends… how quickly the service has passed.
90.17.1 Reading the Gospel and so on. – good and very good… When doing this – whatever verse or thought lodges in your soul, dwell on it longer, and during the day remember it more often… and expand those thoughts.
90.18.1 What is ‘a mercy of peace’? Listen to what the deacon proclaims! ‘Let us stand aright... Let us offer the holy oblation in peace...’ This is an invitation to offer the bloodless sacrifice. The priest performs the sacrifice. Those present must have feelings corresponding to it... fear of God, undistracted thought, peace with God and with all, praise and thanksgiving to God... These are spiritual sacrifices... this is what the words ‘a mercy of peace’ mean... The deacon invites them to offer the sacrifice... Those present respond: yes, we are ready... and we offer ‘a mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise.’ When they sing ‘It is meet and right...’, the priest recalls all God’s blessings – in creation, providence, especially in redemption, and in the very permission to offer the sacrifice... All those present should remember this too.
90.19.1 The phrase ‘mercy of peace’ in Greek is ‘oil of peace’. Peace is indeed oil for the soul and the greatest mercy, which we show one another mutually and which God grants to us.
90.20.1 Be saved!
90.21.1 May the Lord bless you!
90.22.1 Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.
90.23.1 .