On Brief Prayers, or Brief Prayerful Sighs to God

It has been said more than once that true prayer is inner prayer, offered not with words alone but also with mind and heart. Such prayer takes hold of all one’s attention and holds it within the heart; therefore interior abiding is an inseparable feature of true prayer and its principal condition. With interior abiding in the work of prayer goes inseparably the thought of God as present, seeing, and hearkening to prayer, with the repelling of every other thought—which is called sobriety or guarding of the heart. Therefore all the care of one laboring for progress in prayer must be directed primarily here, and indeed is directed thus: to remain always unfailingly at the heart, soberly guarding it from every thought except God alone, and whatever one has to do, to do it without diverting one’s attention from God, with awareness of His presence, as if in His sight. This is the highest practice in the labor of prayer. The way to it, and even to an awareness of the need and necessity of it, is paved by prayer-reading performed in the manner shown. It is prayer-reading that first teaches the mind to concentrate at the heart and to attend exclusively to God. Having come to know how beneficial this concentration is, the one who labors in prayer will naturally wish it to be the unchanging state of his spirit, for then there would be unceasing prayer within him; and having conceived this wish, he will naturally seek its satisfaction. All who have felt such a need have sought and seek this. All the instructions of the holy fathers on sobriety and guarding of the heart are directed toward this and were generated by nothing other than the successes in this labor.

If you too feel such a need, then you have an ever-present question: how to succeed in this unceasing interior abiding before God, with sober guarding of the heart? Prayer-reading paves the way to this and produces its beginnings, but does not give the thing itself, or does not bring it to the needed strength and completeness. Prayer-reading is complex. It contains and presents to the attention many subjects which, although all holy, may nonetheless remind one of other subjects—of everyday and social life, and through them of worldly, improper ones—by the usual laws of the association of thoughts and imaginings. This is indeed what happens. Even the most earnest prayer-reading does not pass without the mind turning aside elsewhere and wandering. Since prayer is thereby disturbed and rendered impure, there is no one who prays who does not resent this and does not wish to be freed from such an infirmity. Attention was turned to this from the very first days of ascetic life. What then was devised, beyond prayer-reading, to cure it? It was devised to pray with short prayers, which, keeping the mind before God’s face, would not give it occasion to turn aside elsewhere and would make it remain within unceasingly. St. Cassian testifies to this, affirming that in his time such a practice was universal throughout Egypt (Conference 10, ch. 10). From the instructions of other fathers we see that it was in use on Sinai, in Palestine, in Syria, and in all other places—throughout the Christian world. What else do the invocation “Lord, have mercy!” and other short prayers, with which all the orders of our divine services and our prayer-books are filled, signify but this? So here is my advice: choose for yourself a short prayer or several such prayers and, by repeating them frequently, arrive at the point where they repeat themselves on your tongue, holding your thought on one thing alone—the thought of God.

Which prayers to choose can be left to each person’s freedom. Read the Psalter. In every psalm you will find inspiring invocations to God. From these choose those that are most suited to your state and most pleasing to your soul; memorize them and repeat now one, now another, now a third; intersperse them through your prayer-reading, and let them be on your tongue at all times and in all activities from one prayer-reading to the next. You may also compose your own short prayers, expressing your need more specifically—on the model of St. John Chrysostom’s twenty-four short prayers, which you will find in your prayer book.

Do not, however, accumulate too many of them, so as not to burden the memory and cause the attention to scatter among them—which would be entirely contrary to the purpose for which they are assigned, namely to hold the attention gathered. St. John Chrysostom’s twenty-four short prayers are a measured number, and fewer will also do. It is good to have not just one but several, for variety and to revive the spiritual taste; in using them, however, one should not pass quickly from one to another, but having taken one that is closest to your spiritual need, call out to God with it until your taste for it is blunted. You may replace your entire prayer-reading, or a part of it, with these short prayers, resolving to repeat them a certain number of times—ten, fifty, or a hundred times—with small prostrations. But always keep one thing in view: to hold attention to God unwaveringly.

Let us call this practice brief prayerful sighs to God—to be made at every moment of the day and night in which you are not asleep.