A Prayer Rule for One Standing on the Path of a God-pleasing Life. Memorizing Psalms. Substituting Short Prayers for Long Services. The Prayer Rope

You are asking about the prayer rule. Yes, one must have a prayer rule—because of our infirmity—so that on the one hand laziness is not given free rein, and on the other hand zeal is kept within its proper measure. Even the greatest men of prayer had a prayer rule and kept to it. Each time they began prayer with the appointed prayers, and then, if during those prayers a self-moving prayer arose, they would leave off the appointed ones and pray with that prayer. If they did so, how much more must we follow the same practice. Without appointed prayers we simply do not know how to pray. Without them, we would be left entirely without prayer.

However, one must not pile up too many prayers. A small number of prayers properly fulfilled is better than many prayers recited hastily—and it is difficult to avoid that haste when more are accumulated than is fitting, in the heat of prayerful zeal.

For you, I consider it entirely sufficient to fulfill the morning and evening prayers found in the prayer-book. Only strive each time to fulfill them with full attention and with the corresponding feelings. In order to do this more successfully, take the trouble in your free time to read them all through separately, to reflect upon and feel into them, so that when you come to read them during your prayer rule, the holy thoughts and feelings they contain will already be familiar to you. Prayer does not mean merely reading through the prayers, but reproducing their content within oneself and uttering them as though they were proceeding from our own mind and from our own heart.

Then, having thought through and felt into the prayers, take the trouble to learn them by heart, so that when the time for prayer comes you need not fuss about the prayer-book or the light, and so that during prayer you are not distracted by what the eye sees, and can more easily maintain mental turning toward God. You will see for yourself how helpful this is. And the fact that in this way your prayer-book is always with you, at any time and in any place, is itself very significant.

Prepared in this way, when you stand at prayer, take care to restrain the mind from wandering and the feelings from coldness and indifference, straining in every way both to preserve attention and to kindle warmth of feeling. After each prayer you read, make as many prostrations as you judge fitting, with your own prayerful word about a felt need, or with the habitual brief little prayer. By this means the prayer will be somewhat prolonged, but its power will increase. After the completion of the prayers especially, pray longer on your own, asking forgiveness for the involuntary wanderings of the mind and committing yourself into the hands of God for the whole day.

During the day too one must maintain prayerful attentiveness to God. For this purpose, as has been said more than once, the remembrance of God—and for that, a brief prayer. It is good—very good—to memorize several psalms and to read them during work or between tasks, sometimes in place of the brief little prayer, with reflection. This is the most ancient custom of Christians, observed and incorporated into the Typikon by St. Pachomius and St. Anthony.

Having spent the day in this way, pray in the evening with greater fervor and recollection, increase your prostrations and your personal turnings to God, and again committing yourself into the hands of God, go to sleep with a brief prayer on your lips, and fall asleep with it or while reading some psalm.

Which psalms to memorize? Memorize whichever ones fall upon your heart when you read them. Different psalms act more powerfully upon different people. Begin with ”Have mercy on me, O God…” (Ps. 50), then ”Bless the Lord, O my soul…” (Ps. 102) and ”Praise the Lord, O my soul…” (Ps. 145)—the antiphonal psalms of the Liturgy; then the opening psalms in the rule before Holy Communion: ”The Lord is my shepherd…” (Ps. 22), ”The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof…” (Ps. 23), ”I believed, therefore I spoke…” (Ps. 115); the first psalm of Compline, ”O God, come to my assistance…” (Ps. 69). The psalms of the Hours… and the like. Read the Psalter—and make your selection.

Having memorized all of this, you will always be fully armed for prayer. When some troubling thought comes, hasten either to fall before the Lord with a brief prayer or to read some psalm—especially ”O God, come to my assistance…” (Ps. 69)—and the whole cloud of disturbance will immediately disperse.

So that is all about the prayer rule. But I will repeat once more: remember that all of these are aids; the main thing is the mind’s standing before God in the heart with reverence, and the contrite falling down before Him.

It has occurred to me to say one more thing to you! The entire prayer rule may be limited to prostrations alone with a brief little prayer and one’s own prayerful words. Stand and make prostrations, saying: “Lord, have mercy!” or some other prayer, expressing your need or rendering praise and thanksgiving to God. So that laziness does not creep in here, one must either determine the number of prayers, or the length of time the prayer is to last, or both together.

This is necessary because there is a certain inexplicable peculiarity in us. When, for instance, we are occupied with something external, hours pass as if they were a single minute. But when we stand at prayer, barely a minute will have passed and it already seems as though we have been praying for a very, very long time. This impression causes no harm when one prays according to an established rule, but when one prays only by making prostrations with a brief prayer, it presents a great temptation and can cut off prayer almost before it has begun, leaving the deceptive assurance that the prayer has been properly completed. And so devout people of prayer, in order not to fall into this self-deception, devised the prayer-rope, which is offered for use to those who choose to pray not with the prayers of the prayer-book but from themselves. It is used in this way. One says: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner”—and moves one bead between the fingers; one says it again—and moves another, and so on; with each prayer one makes a prostration—from the waist or to the ground, as one wishes, or with the smaller beads a waist-bow, and with the larger beads a full prostration. The whole rule in this case consists of a set number of prayers with prostrations, into which other prayers spoken in one’s own words are also inserted. In order not to deceive oneself here through the hasty recitation of prayers and making of prostrations, when setting the number of prostrations and prayers one also sets the length of time the prayer is to last—so as to cut off haste, and if haste does creep in, to make it up by adding more prostrations.

How many prostrations are to be made for each form of prayer is set down for us in the Psalter with the Follows, at the end, in two proportions: for the zealous and for the lazy or occupied. The elders who even now live in our sketes or private cells—on Valaam and the Solovetsky Islands, for example—fulfill all the services in this manner. If you wish, or if you should ever wish, you too can fulfill your rule in this way. But first take the trouble to learn to fulfill it in the way prescribed. Perhaps this new arrangement of the rule will not be needed. In any case, however, I am sending you a prayer-rope. Do as follows. Note how much time you spend on your morning and evening prayer; then sit down and repeat your brief prayer on the beads, and see how many times you go through the rope in the course of the time you ordinarily spend on prayer. Let that number be the measure of your rule. You will do this not during prayer but apart from it—though with the same attentiveness. The prayer rule by this method you will then perform standing and making prostrations.

Having read this, do not think that I am driving you into a monastery. I myself first heard about praying with a rope from a layman, not a monk. And many laymen and laywomen pray in this way. It will be useful to you as well. When the recitation of memorized prayers becomes mechanical and ceases to stir anything in you, you can pray in this way for a day or two, and then return to the memorized prayers. And so—alternating between the two.

And I will repeat once more: the essence of prayer is the lifting of the mind and heart to God; these small rules are aids. We cannot do without them, being as infirm as we are. May the Lord bless you!