How to Sustain the Awakened Striving Toward a Good Life. Spiritual Reading and Reflection. Writing Down Good Thoughts. How to Avoid Wandering Thoughts During Reading and Prayer. Unceasing Remembrance of God and of Death. Self-reproach

Glory be to God! You write that you have a strong desire to draw near to God. God bless it! What other aim did I have for all my words but to kindle this very desire in you? Also stir up within yourself the fear of God. Know that when the fear of God is present, your spirit is alive and God’s grace is working in you. The first work of our spirit is the knowledge of God and the fear of God, and the foundational gift of God’s grace is the spirit of the fear of God. It is the beginning, the continuation, and the completion of the path of salvation. Whoever has the fear of God—living and active—has within himself an inexhaustible power that moves him toward all that is pleasing to God, and at the same time a vigilant guardian that protects him from the attacks of the enemy and from his own wanderings onto wrong paths. May the Lord help you to rekindle and thereafter always to preserve in full strength this spirit of the fear of God!

That you devote some time in the morning to reading spiritual books is very good. But who is it there among you that looks on this so unfavorably?! If it were arranged so that all one did was read and pray, that of course would be something out of the ordinary—but reading and thinking a little—what is so remarkable about that?! As far as I know, all devout and God-fearing people do this. I believe your parents follow the same rule. This reading, together with the prayer that precedes it, strengthens the soul and gives it power for the entire day. Physicians say: do not go out on an empty stomach. For the soul this is fulfilled by morning prayer and reading. The soul is nourished by them and goes out to the day’s tasks no longer empty.

Indeed, here is something that comes to mind to suggest to you. Get a notebook and write down in it the thoughts that arise during your reading of the Gospels and other books, in the following order: The Lord says in the Gospel such and such; from this it is clear that we must act in such and such a way; this is something I can fulfill in these and these circumstances; I will do so; help me, O Lord! The labor involved is small, yet how much benefit comes from it! Do this, then. Your thinking will grow sharper and more inspired. The Spirit, moving within the Scriptures, will pass into your heart and enliven it. And this is oil poured on wounds!

That thoughts wander during reading and prayer—what can one do? No one is free from this. But there is no sin in it, only an impropriety. It becomes a sin when someone willingly cultivates extraneous thoughts, but when they wander involuntarily, what blame is there? Blame also comes when a person, having noticed his mind’s wandering, continues to let it wander. But the right course is this: the moment you notice the mind’s straying, immediately bring it back to its proper place.

So that thoughts wander less during prayer, one must strive to pray with warm feeling, and for this, beforehand—before the prayer—one must warm the soul by meditation and prostrations. Practice praying in your own words. For example, the essence of evening prayer is to thank God for the day and for everything encountered throughout it, both pleasant and unpleasant; to repent of whatever wrong was done and ask forgiveness, promising to be better the following day; and to pray to God for protection during sleep. All of this—speak to God from your own thought and your own heart. The essence of morning prayer is to thank God for sleep and for renewed strength, and to ask Him to help you spend the whole day doing deeds for His glory. This too—speak to Him from your own thought and your own heart. Both in the morning and in the evening, lay before the Lord your deepest needs, above all those of the soul, and also the outward ones, saying to Him as a child: You see, Lord, my pain and weakness! Help and heal! All of this and the like can be spoken before God in your own words, without recourse to the prayer book. And perhaps it will be better this way. Try it; if it goes well, you may leave the prayer book aside entirely, but if it does not go well, you must pray with the prayer book, for otherwise you may end up with no prayer at all.

For the prayer-rule read from the prayer book to gather the thoughts and warm the heart, do this in your free time—apart from when you are actually at prayer: sit down and think through carefully all the content of the appointed prayers and feel them deeply. When you then read them aloud during morning and evening prayer, all those thoughts and feelings which you have drawn out through meditation will be renewed, will gather your attention, and will warm your heart. Never read the prayers in haste. And furthermore: take the trouble to learn the prayers by heart. This greatly helps toward undistracted prayer. One must learn to pray as one learns any other skill.

Practice thinking of God not only when you stand at prayer, but at every hour and minute, for He is everywhere. From this, peace will flow into the soul, strength for your tasks, and order in all your affairs. Your present desire to draw nearer to God will be fully realized through this means. Just as one who stands in the sun is warmed, so one who always has God in mind is warmed.

Add to the remembrance of God the remembrance of death and of eternity—blessed or very bitter. These two recollections will turn you away from everything bad, even in thought, and direct you toward everything good—not for show, but sincerely. People mistakenly think that the remembrance of death poisons life. It does not poison it; rather, it teaches one to be careful and to abstain from everything that does poison life. If people thought more about death, there would be less disorder in life, both private and public.

You reproach yourself for self-love. Good, good. Keep watch over its manifestations and cut them off at once. Self-love wants to do everything for itself, but you should do everything for the glory of God and the good of others, not keeping yourself in view, not sparing yourself. Even the self-loving, for the most part, outwardly do the same things as those who are not self-loving—only they give them a different direction and have different intentions in them. Our task is to correct those intentions, turning them from self-loving to self-sacrificing, and then to direct our deeds accordingly. This too must be learned. Learn, learn. God bless you!

You wish me to chide you without mercy. That will not be a problem. But so far you stand before me pure and bright. And all that remains for me is to wish that the Lord would keep you always as you appear to me; and if you are not such in reality, that He would be pleased to make you so.