Chapter 8

Not All Who Have Familiarity With the Jesus Prayer Taste its Fruit

Great is the power of this prayer, according to the depiction of the holy fathers; yet in practice we see that not all who have familiarity with it partake of this power, not all taste its fruit. Why is this? Because they themselves wish to take into their own possession what belongs to God’s gift and is the work of the Lord’s grace. To begin to repeat this prayer in the morning, in the evening, while walking and lying down, during work and at leisure—this is our work: it requires no special help from God. Working always in the same way, one can come on one’s own to the point where the tongue repeats this prayer even without our consciousness. There may follow from this a certain stilling of thoughts, and even a kind of heart-warmth: but all this will be, as the monk Nikephoras notes in the Philokalia, the work and fruit of our efforts. To stop at this is the same as being satisfied with the ability of a parrot to pronounce certain words, even such as “Lord, have mercy.” The fruit from this is: you will think you have something, when in fact you have nothing at all. This happens to those in whom, during their practice of this prayer, inasmuch as it depends on us, awareness of its essence does not open up. (15, 167)