St. The­o­fan the Recluse

What gives the most power to church ser­vices is a prayer­ful spirit. Prayer is an all en­com­pass­ing oblig­a­tion, as well as an all-ef­fec­tive means. Through it the truths of the faith are also im­pressed in the mind and good morals into the will. But most of all it en­livens the heart in its feel­ings. The first two go well only when this one thing [prayer] is pre­sent. There­fore prayer should begin to be de­vel­oped be­fore any­thing else, and con­tinue steadily and tire­lessly until the Lord grants prayer to the one who prays.

The be­gin­nings of prayer are ap­plied at con­ver­sion it­self, for prayer is the yearn­ing of the mind and heart to­wards God, which is what hap­pens at con­ver­sion. But inat­ten­tive­ness or in­abil­ity can ex­tin­guish this spark. Then right away you should begin the form of ac­tiv­ity that we have al­ready dis­cussed, with the aim of kin­dling a prayer­ful spirit. Be­sides con­duct­ing ser­vices and par­tic­i­pat­ing in them, as we have de­scribed, the clos­est thing re­lated to this is per­sonal prayer, wher­ever and how­ever it is per­formed. There is only one rule for this - ac­cus­tom your­self to pray­ing. For this you must:

1. Choose a rule of prayer - evening, morn­ing and daily prayers.

2. Start with a short rule at first, so that your un­ac­cus­tomed spirit will not form an aver­sion to this labor.

3. Pray al­ways with fear, dili­gence and all at­ten­tion.

4. This re­quires: stand­ing, pros­tra­tions, kneel­ing, mak­ing the sign of the Cross, read­ing, and at times singing.

5. The more often you do such prayer the bet­ter. Some peo­ple pray a lit­tle every hour.

6. The prayers you should read are writ­ten in the prayer book. But it is good to get used to one or an­other, so that the spirit would ig­nite each time you begin it.

7. The rule of prayer is sim­ple: stand­ing at prayer, with fear and trem­bling say it as if you were speak­ing into God's ear, ac­com­pa­ny­ing it with the sign of the Cross, pros­tra­tions and falling down, cor­re­spond­ing to the move­ment of the spirit.

8. Once you have cho­sen a rule you should al­ways ful­fill it, but this does not pre­vent you from adding some­thing ac­cord­ing to the heart's de­sire.

9. Read­ing and singing out loud, in a whis­per, or silently is all the same, for the Lord is near. But some­times it is bet­ter to pray one way, other times an­other.

10. You should firmly keep in mind the lim­its of your prayers. It is a good prayer that ends with your falling down be­fore God with the feel­ing that Thou Who know­est the hearts, save me.

11. There are stages of prayer. The first stage is bod­ily prayer, with read­ing, stand­ing and pros­tra­tions. If the at­ten­tion wan­ders, the heart does not feel, and there is no ea­ger­ness; this means there is no pa­tience, toil or sweat. Re­gard­less of this, set your lim­its and pray. This is ac­tive prayer. The sec­ond stage is at­ten­tive prayer: the mind gets used to col­lect­ing it­self at the hour of prayer, and says all with aware­ness, with­out being stolen way. The at­ten­tion blends with the writ­ten words and re­peats them as its own. The third stage is prayer of the feel­ings - the at­ten­tion warms the heart, and what was thought with at­ten­tion be­comes feel­ing in the heart. In the mind was a com­punc­tion­ate word, in the heart it is com­punc­tion; in the mind - for­give­ness, in the heart - a feel­ing of its ne­ces­sity and im­por­tance. Who­ever has passed on to feel­ing prays with­out words, for God is a God of the heart. This, there­fore, is the sum­mit of prayer's de­vel­op­ment: while stand­ing in prayer, to go from feel­ing to feel­ing. Read­ing may stop at this, just as may thought; then there is only abid­ing in feel­ing with the known signs of prayer. Such prayer comes very lit­tle at first. The prayer­ful feel­ing comes over you in church or at home... This is the com­mon ad­vice of the saints - do not let this leave your at­ten­tion: when the feel­ing is pre­sent, cease all other ac­tiv­ity and stand in it. St. John of the Lad­der says: "An angel is pray­ing with you". At­ten­tion to this man­i­fes­ta­tion of prayer ripens the de­vel­op­ment of prayer, and inat­ten­tion dec­i­mates both the de­vel­op­ment and the prayer.

12. How­ever, no mat­ter how per­fect one has be­come in prayer, the prayer rule should never be aban­doned but should al­ways be read as pre­scribed and al­ways begun with ac­tive prayer. Men­tal prayer should come with it, and then prayer of the heart. With­out the rule, prayer of the heart is lost, and the per­son will think that he is pray­ing, but in fact he is not.

13. When the prayer­ful feel­ing as­cends to cease­less­ness, then spir­i­tual prayer be­gins - a gift of the Spirit of God which prays for us. This is the last stage of at­tain­able prayer. But it is said that there is also prayer that is in­com­pre­hen­si­ble to the mind, or sur­passes the lim­its of aware­ness (as de­scribed by St. Isaac the Syr­ian).

14. The eas­i­est means for as­cend­ing to cease­less prayer is the habit of doing the Jesus Prayer and root­ing it in your­self. The most ex­pe­ri­enced men of spir­i­tual life who were en­light­ened by God found this to be the one sim­ple and all-ef­fec­tive means for con­firm­ing the spirit in all spir­i­tual ac­tiv­i­ties, as well as in all spir­i­tual as­cetic life; and they left de­tailed guide­lines for it in their in­struc­tions.

By la­bor­ing in as­ceti­cism we seek pu­rifi­ca­tion of the heart and re­newal of the spirit. There are two ways to find this: the first is the way of ac­tiv­ity, that is, per­form­ing those as­cetic labors that we have pre­vi­ously out­lined; and the sec­ond is that of the mind - turn­ing the mind to God. In the first way the soul is pu­ri­fied and re­ceives God; in the sec­ond God burns away all im­pu­rity and comes to abide in the pu­ri­fied soul. Con­sid­er­ing the lat­ter as be­long­ing to the Jesus Prayer alone, St. Gre­gory the Sinaite says: "We ac­quire God by ei­ther ac­tiv­ity, labor, or the art­ful call­ing on the Name of Jesus". He then sup­poses that the first way is longer than the sec­ond; the sec­ond is quicker and more ef­fec­tive. Oth­ers after him have given first place to the Jesus Prayer among pod­vigs. It il­lu­mi­nates, strength­ens, en­livens, con­quers all en­e­mies vis­i­ble and in­vis­i­ble, and leads us to God. That is how pow­er­ful and ef­fec­tive it is! The name of the Lord Jesus is the trea­sury of bless­ings, strength and life in the spirit.

From this it is ev­i­dent that any pen­i­tent, or any­one be­gin­ning to seek the Lord, can and should be taught com­plete in­struc­tions in doing the Jesus Prayer. From there he can be brought into all other prac­tices, be­cause through this he will be­come strong more quickly, ripen sooner spir­i­tu­ally and enter the in­te­rior world. Not know­ing this, other peo­ple, or at least a large part of them, stop with bod­ily ac­tiv­i­ties and those of the soul, and waste nearly all their labor and time.

This ac­tiv­ity is called an "art". It is very sim­ple. Stand­ing with aware­ness and at­ten­tion in the heart, pro­nounce cease­lessly: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me", with­out pic­tur­ing any sort of image or face, but with faith that the Lord will see you and at­tend to you.

In order to be­come strong in this, you should as­sign a time in the morn­ing or the evening - fif­teen min­utes, a half hour, or more - how­ever much you can, just for say­ing this prayer. It should be after morn­ing or evening prayers, stand­ing or sit­ting. This will place the be­gin­nings of a ha­bit­ual prac­tice.

Then dur­ing the day, force your­self minute-by-minute to say it, no mat­ter what you are doing.

It will be­come more and more ha­bit­ual, and then it will start work­ing as if by it­self dur­ing any work or oc­cu­pa­tion. The more res­olutely you take it up, the faster you will progress.

Your aware­ness should be kept un­fail­ingly in the heart, and dur­ing the prac­tice your breath should lighten as a re­sult of the ten­sion with which you prac­tice it. But the most im­por­tant con­di­tion is faith that God is near and hears us. Say the prayer into God's ear.

This ha­bit­ual prac­tice will draw warmth into the spirit, later en­light­en­ment, and then ec­stasy. But ac­quir­ing all of this some­times takes years.

At first this prayer is only ac­tive prayer, just like any other ac­tiv­ity. Then it be­comes men­tal prayer, and fi­nally it takes root in the heart.

Some have gone astray from the right path through this prayer. There­fore it should be learned from some­one who knows it. De­cep­tion comes mostly from plac­ing the at­ten­tion on the head rather than the chest.

Who­ever has the at­ten­tion cen­tered in the heart is safe. Even safer is the one who falls down be­fore God every hour in con­tri­tion, with the prayer that he be de­liv­ered from de­cep­tion.

The Holy Fa­thers gave de­tailed in­struc­tions on this ac­tiv­ity. There­fore, who­ever takes up this work should read these in­struc­tions and throw out all else. The best in­struc­tions are by St. Hesy­chius, St. Gre­gory the Sinaite, St. Philotheus of Sinai, St. The­olep­tus, St. Symeon the New The­olo­gian, St. Nilus of Sora, Hi­eromonk Dorotheus, in the pro­logue to Elder Barsanuphius, and in the life of St. Pai­sius.

Who­ever be­comes prac­ticed in this, hav­ing gone through every­thing set forth above, is a prac­ti­tioner of Chris­t­ian life. He will quickly ripen in his pu­rifi­ca­tion and in Chris­t­ian per­fec­tion, and will ac­quire his de­sired peace in being with God.

This is the ac­tiv­ity for the pow­ers of the soul, which are adapt­able to the move­ment of the spirit. Here we see how every one of them is adapted to the life of the spirit, or to spir­i­tual feel­ing. But they also lead to the for­ti­fi­ca­tion of the pri­mary con­di­tions for being within, namely: men­tal ac­tiv­ity - the con­cen­tra­tion of at­ten­tion; ac­tiv­ity of the will - vig­i­lance; ac­tiv­ity of the heart - sober­ness. Prayer cov­ers them all and en­com­passes them all. Even the pro­duc­tion of it is noth­ing other than the in­te­rior work we have pre­vi­ously de­scribed.

All of these ac­tiv­i­ties are as­signed for the de­vel­op­ment of the pow­ers of the soul in the spirit of a new life. This is the same as in­fus­ing the soul with spirit, or el­e­vat­ing it to the spirit and blend­ing with it. In fal­l­en­ness they are united to a con­trary pur­pose. At con­ver­sion the spirit is re­newed, but in the soul there still re­mains a cruel streak of un­sub­mis­sive­ness and an aver­sion to the spirit and every­thing spir­i­tual. These ac­tiv­i­ties, pen­e­trated with spir­i­tual el­e­ments, cause the soul to grow into the spirit and blend with it. It is clear from this how es­sen­tial these ac­tiv­i­ties are and what a dis­ser­vice those peo­ple do to them­selves who aban­don them. They them­selves are the rea­son that their labors are fruit­less. They sweat but see no fruit; they soon grow cold, and then every­thing comes to an end.

But we must re­mem­ber that all the fruits of these labors come from the spirit of zeal and quest. It con­ducts the re­new­ing power of grace through these ac­tiv­i­ties and brings down life into the soul. With­out it, all these ac­tiv­i­ties are empty, cold, life­less, and dry. Read­ing, pros­tra­tions, ser­vices and every­thing else are un­fruit­ful when there is no inner spirit. They can teach vain­glory and phar­i­saism, which be­come its sole sup­port. This is why some­one who has no spirit falls away when he meets with any op­po­si­tion. Why, they them­selves are a tor­ture. For the spirit trans­fers power to the soul, which makes the soul so well dis­posed to these ac­tiv­i­ties that it can not get enough of them and wants to have re­course to them al­ways.

Thus it is ex­tremely nec­es­sary when doing these ac­tiv­i­ties to al­ways bear in mind that the spirit of life must burn within, and we must in hu­mil­ity and pain of heart fall down be­fore God our Sav­ior. This state is fed and pre­served best of all by prayer and prayer­ful ac­tiv­ity. We must watch that we not stop with the ac­tiv­i­ties alone just be­cause they also nour­ish the soul. This might cause us to re­main with them in soul at the cost of the spirit. This hap­pens per­haps most often with read­ing, and gen­er­ally any study and in­te­gra­tion of the truth.