Chapter 59

An Example of a Daily Rule With Unceasing Prayer

Throughout the whole time, from waking to sleep, walk in remembrance of God’s omnipresence, in the thought that the Lord sees you and counts all movements of your thought and heart. For this reason, pray ceaselessly with the Jesus Prayer, and, coming frequently to the icons, make a few prostrations according to the movement and need of your heart, so that all your daytime is frequently interrupted by a few prostrations and passes in unceasing meditation on God and the performance of the Jesus Prayer amid every kind of occupation. Your prayer rule—your cell prayer or domestic prayer—perform only before sleep. Less reading and more of your own prayer with prostrations… If these are the usual canons appointed for each day to the Lord Jesus, the Mother of God, your Guardian Angel, the saint of the day (of the week), then after reading all this, what more need you add? Perform this with reverence, without haste, attend to every word, and confine your daytime prayer-reading to this. The canons and acathists you have gathered, gradually learn to leave off and replace them with noetic prayer. (9, 166)