8 Suggestions by Saint Theophan the Recluse on How to Pray
1. How one can enter the praying state of mind.
Being a soul’s breath, a
prayer is most important in the life of a Christian. The presence of prayer in
someone’s life means that the person is spiritually alive, without a prayer a
person is dead.
A prayer, which is an
appeal of our heart to God, should be invoked and strengthened; a spirit of
intercession should be brought up within us.
The first way to do it is
to pray through reading or listening to prayers written in prayer-books. Read
the prayer-book or listen to it very attentively and you will certainly incite
and strengthen your heart in its ascension to God, which means you would enter
the prayerful spirit. In the prayers of holy fathers (printed in prayer books
and other church books), a great prayer power is in motion. Who is diligently
attending them will through the force of interaction enjoy that power, as the
state of mind of a praying person comes closer to the essence of those prayers.
In order to turn your intercessions into an effective way of nourishing a
prayer, one must do it so that both your mind and heart would perceive the content
of the prayers being read.
Here are the three
simplest ways to achieve it:
·
Do not start a prayer without preparing yourself to it properly.
·
Say prayers with feeling and attention, but not casually.
·
After completing your prayer do not hasten to go back to your everyday
cares.
Preparation to praying: Before you start a prayer, no matter where it is taking place, stand or
sit for a short time and try to sober your mind relieving it of all irrelevant
work and cares. Then give thought to Who is the One you are turning to in
prayer, and who you are in praying to Him; invoke the appropriate attitude of
humility and reverential awe to God. That is the beginning of a prayer, and a
good beginning is half the success.
The praying itself: Having prepared yourself, stand in front of the icons, make a sign of
cross, bow and begin the usual praying. Say the prayer without haste discerning
every word and taking it close to your heart. In other word you should
understand what you are reading and feel what you understood. Make signs of
cross and bows while praying. This is the essence of reading prayers that are
fruitful and God pleasing. For example, reading "Cleanse me from every
impurity" you should feel how impure you are, desire the cleansing and
hopefully ask the Lord for it. Saying "Thy will be done" commend your
destiny to the Lord completely and wholeheartedly, with readiness to accept
gladly whatever He sends you. While reading "And forgive us our debts as
we forgive our debtors," your soul should forgive everyone who offended
you.
Doing that with every
phrase of the prayer makes it the right prayer indeed. Also take care of the
following
·
First, set a certain praying rule for yourself, it should not be too
lengthy, so you could fulfill it without haste amongst all your daily routine.
·
Second, in your spare time read through the prayers of your set of
prayers (prayer rule) attentively, understanding and perceiving every word so
that you can prepare yourself beforehand and learn what feeling and thoughts
you need to evoke in your soul to understand and perceive everything easily
during your prayers.
·
Third, if your volatile thought would get distracted by other things
during your prayer, exert yourself to focus your attention keeping you mind
concentrated on the subject of your prayer. Bring your mind back to it every
time it wanders away. Read the prayer again and again until every word of the
prayer is said with awareness and feeling. That will rule out your
absent-mindedness during prayers.
·
Fourth, if some word in the prayer touches your soul in a special way,
do not proceed with the prayer, but focus on that word or phrase, nourishing
your soul with the attention, feeling and thoughts evoked by the word, stick to
that state of mind until it fades away. This is a sign of the prayerful spirit
beginning to enter you. That state of mind and soul is the most reliable way to
cherish and strengthen the prayerful spirit in a person.
What to do after the prayer. After finishing your prayer do not hasten
to take up your usual chores, but slow down and think at least for a little
while about what you felt and to what it obliges you. Try to keep in your mind
what impressed you most of all. The nature of the prayer itself is such that
after a really good prayer one would not want to switch over to one’s usual
things, as those who relished in something sweet do not want anything bitter.
Enjoying the sweetness of the praying is in fact the goal of saying prayers,
which brings up the prayerful spirit.
Following those simple
rules will soon bring results. Any prayerful invocation makes a good impact on
the soul, if you stick to those rules, and it deepens the impact, and patience
in praying will generate the prayerful mood.
Those are the first steps
in bringing up a prayerful spirit in oneself! It is for this purpose that the
praying practice is set. Yet, it is not the aim in itself, but just the
beginning of gaining mastery in prayer. We have to go on.
2. Further progress in praying.
After your mind and heart
get accustomed to turn to God through prayer books, you should try to do it in
your own way. Your aim is to make your soul capable of entering, so to say, a
conversation with the Lord, lifting up your mind and heart and opening up in
confession to Him, telling what there is in your soul and what it needs. We
must teach our souls to do so.
So what can we do to
succeed in that mastering this knowledge? The first way is to pray by the book
with awe, attention and deep emotion. For it is from the heart filled with
devout feelings and prayers that your own prayer will begin to emanate and be
addressed to God. But there are also other ways leading to the desired result
in prayers.
The first way to teach
your soul to recourse frequently to God is meditation, or devout contemplation
over divine ways and deeds: thinking about God’s mercy, justice, wisdom,
creation and Providence, about granting us salvation through Christ, about the
Grace and the Word of God, about sacred mysteries and Heavens. Those thoughts
will unfailingly fill your soul with devout awe towards God, which directly
turns the whole of the being of a man to God and is hence the direct way to
teach your soul to be lifted up to God. Having finished your praying,
especially in the morning, sit down and begin thinking about that or this God’s
way or deed and trying to tune your soul respectively. Join Holy Saint Dimity
of Rostov saying, "Visit me, sacred Godly thinking, and we will be
absorbed in contemplating great acts of God," - this will touch your heart
and your soul will start pouring itself in a prayer. With little effort you
will be able to achieve a lot. You must just have a will and persistence to do
it. For example, beginning to think of God’s Grace will show you that both your
spiritual and bodily being is endowed with God’s mercies, and you will fall
down before Him overwhelmed with gratitude. Start thinking about God’s
omnipresence and you will understand that wherever you are, you are facing God
and God is facing you. Then you will be filled with devout awe. Think of the
Truth of God and you will get convinced that no bad deed goes without
punishment. Then you will certainly decide to cleanse out all your sins through
your hearty repentance and humbleness. Begin thinking of God’s all-knowing and
you will understand that everything in you is open to God’s eye. Then you will
definitely become strict to yourself in everything, so that you would not in
any way offend God who sees everything.
The second way to teach
your soul to turn to God is based on devoting every deed, big or small, to the
glory of God. For, if according to the commandment of the Apostle (1 Cor.
10:31), we make it a rule for ourselves to do everything, even eat and drink,
to the glory of God, then no matter what we are doing we will certainly
remember God, and not just remember, but fear to do something that could anger
God. That would make us turn to God with fear and ask Him prayerfully to grant
us help and enlightenment. And since we are always doing something, we will
constantly turn to Him in prayer and thus almost always we will learn the skill
of addressing God in prayer. This way we will learn in practice to turn to God
more often during the day.
The third way to teach our
souls to pray is to appeal frequently to God from our hearts during the day
saying short petitions concerning the needs of our souls and the things we are
doing at the moment. When beginning to do something, say: "Bless me, O
Lord!" Finishing the work, say: "Glory to Thee, O Lord!" If a
passion inflames you, fall down before God in your heart saying the following:
"Save me, O Lord, I am perishing!" When overcome with disconcerting
thoughts call out: "Lead me your way, O Lord," or "Do not let my
feet go astray." If you are downcast by sin getting despondent, exclaim
like the tax collector did: "O, God be merciful to me a sinner!" And
that way you should act in all situations. Or you can just repeat: "Lord
have mercy!," "Holy Lady Theotokos, save me!," "Angel of
God, my holy guardian, protect me!" Or you can say some other similar
words calling God’s name, you should do it often and try to make words come out
of your heart as if they are squeezed out of it. When we do that, we will have
often the lifting up of our hearts to God, frequent addressing God, frequent
prayers and that would translate into the ability to converse intelligently
with God.
Thus, there are three more
ways, besides setting a praying practice for yourself, that will lead us to the
prayerful spirit. They are:
·
to devote some time in the morning to Godly thinking
·
to do everything devoting it to the glory of God
·
and to appeal to God more often with short invocations.
After we thoroughly ponder
over spiritual ideas in the morning, sacred thoughts tune us to remember God
all day long. Those thoughts in their turn would direct all our actions, both
external and internal, to the glory of God. Through this procedure our soul
would become predisposed to send up its short prayerful invocations to God.
Those three things - Godly thinking, doing everything to the glory of God and
frequent appeals to Him — are the most effective ways to learn an intelligent
and hearty prayer. Those who practice this will soon master the skill of
ascending to God in their hearts. Thus, a soul will begin entering the sphere
of the Sublime so inherent to it — through heart and thoughts in this life and
actually will be admitted to appear before God in the other life.
3. On a Prayer Rule
To succeed in that we
should:
·
First: never pray hastily, we should rather do it slowly as if singing. In
old times when all the prayers had been taken from psalms, they were sung, not
read.
·
Second: perceive every word, not only understanding the idea
conscientiously, but involving the appropriate emotion.
·
Third: to curb your wish to read quickly, make it a rule for yourself
that praying is not just reading this or that number of prayers, but giving
some definite time to a prayer, say, a quarter or half of an hour...for as long
as you are accustomed to pray. Do not worry about the number of prayers, but
when the set time is up and you do not want to go on praying, just stop there.
·
Fourth: having tuned yourself thus do not look at the clock, but take a
stand as if you will stand there forever, then your will not rush ahead....
·
Fifth: in order to help the movement of prayerful feelings, reread and
ponder over all the prayers of your prayer rule in your spare time with due
feelings so that when you are praying you would know beforehand what feeling
should be born in your heart.
·
Sixth: never read all the prayers one after another, but always
intersperse them with your own prayers and bows. When you feel something
suddenly coming into your heart you should stop your prayer and make bows. This
last rule is the most important and necessary for bring up the prayerful
spirit... If you are overcome by some very strong feeling, retain it and make
bows to the end of the set time without reading prayers.
Pray not only in the
morning and evening, but if you have chance — at any time of the day, bowing
several times.
When you are too busy to
fulfill your prayer rule, make it shorter, but do not pray hastily. God is
everywhere. After getting up in the morning give thanks to Him and ask Him to
bless the work of your coming day in your own words, then make some bows and
that is enough! Never turn to God nonchalantly, but always with great
reverence. He does not need either our bows or long prayers... A short, but
strong cry of your heart —that is what reaches Him! And you are always able to
do that.
You can compile your own
prayer rule, too. Memorize the prayers printed in prayer books and read them by
heart with understanding and feeling. While doing it insert your own prayer.
The less you would depend on the book, the better. Learn some psalms and when
you are going somewhere or doing something while your head is not occupied with
it, read them... That is your conversation with God. The prayer rule is a
guidance, not something to fulfill with an obedience of a slave. You should by
all means avoid mechanical and formal reading. It should always be the result
of thoughtful free-will decision, performed with conscience and feeling, not
neglectfully. You should be able to shorten you pray rule when necessary.
Family life is full of such instances. For instance, in the morning and in the
evening you can read the memorized due prayers. You can even omit some of them.
Or you can even skip reading prayers at all, just making several bows with a
prayer coming truly from your heart. You should be the master of your prayer
rule, not its slave. It is to God only that we are servants, the ones who must
devote every minute of their lives to Him.
The prayer rule is a
safety shell of a prayer. A prayer is an internal matter, while the rule is
just an external thing. But like a person without a body is incomplete, so is a
prayer without a prayer rule. We have to have both and fulfill it as much we
can. The indispensable law: to pray within yourself always and everywhere.
Reading a prayer though cannot be done without allocating a definite time,
place and measure to it. It is a combination of those three elements that makes
up the prayer rule.
So one must be guided by
reason while deciding when, where and how long one should stand praying as well
as what prayers to say. One can choose that according to one’s circumstance:
whether one can spend more time for prayer, reduce it or postpone the time and
change the place of praying... The main effort should be directed to the
properly said internal prayer. It is the internal prayer that must be said
incessantly.
What does an incessant
prayer mean? To be constantly in the prayerful spirit means to turn one’s
thoughts and feelings to God. Thinking of God means keeping always in mind His
omnipresence, omnipotence and ability to see everything. Feelings towards God
are fear of God, love for Him, ardent wish to please Him only and to avoid all
that displeases Him. The main thing is to commend oneself obediently to His
will and to accept everything that happens to us as something sent directly by
Him. One can have that feeling to God at any time, doing anything and under any
circumstances, if that feeling is still not being sought, but had already been
established in one’s heart.
Our thought can be
distracted to various subjects, but even in that one can attain a skill to
stick to God while doing something else and feel the presence of God. One must
be totally concerned with those two things: thoughts and feelings to God. When
they are there, there is a prayer even though without words. The morning saying
of prayers was established exactly for setting our mind and heart on those two
things, so that later in the day we could take up our work with these. If in
the morning your soul is filled with these, then your praying was successful,
even though you have not read all the written prayers.
Supposing you started your
daily work that way in the morning. The very first things you begin doing would
distract you from God. What is to be done then? You have to refresh your
thoughts and feelings to God through your internal appeals to Him. And for that
you must get accustomed to your little short prayer and to repeat it as often
as possible. Any short prayer leads to that. The best prayer of all is:
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!" You have to get
used to it and never quit saying it. When set in you, that prayer will become
the driving force and appeal to God with your thought and feeling. This is all
the schedule of your praying business.
Beginners should first of
all learn how to pray appropriately according to written prayers, so that they
would memorize thoughts, feelings and prayer phrases. It is important because
the words with which we turn to God must be good and beautiful. When the
beginner succeeds in that, he can start both with established and his own
prayers.
Examples of short prayers
are provided in the 24 little prayers of the venerable John Chrysostom at the
end of the evening prayers. You can also choose other short prayer from psalms,
church prayers and even compile them yourself.
4. The prayer of John Chrysostom.
O Lord, accept me in repentance.
O Lord, forsake me not. O Lord, lead me not into temptation. O Lord, grant me
good thoughts. O Lord, grant me tears, remembrance of death, and compunction. O
Lord, grant me the thought of confessing my sins. O Lord, grant me humility,
chastity, and obedience. O Lord, grant me patience, courage, and meekness. O
Lord, implant in me the root of good, Thy fear in my heart. O Lord, vouchsafe
me to love Thee with all my soul and mind, and in all things to do Thy will. O
Lord, protect me from evil men, demons, and passions, and from every other
unseemly thing. O Lord, I know that Thou doest as Thou wilt: Thy will be done
also in me a sinner; for blessed art Thou unto the ages. Amen.
5. A Prayer given by God.
And yet, the atmosphere of
a soul will not be cleansed until it is ignited with a small light of
spirituality. That light is a token of God’s grace, but it is granted to all,
not only to the chosen. That light appears as a result of a certain state of
purity in the whole moral system of a seeking person. When that light is
started, and the heart harbors constant warmth, it stops the turmoil of
thoughts. The soul experiences what happened to the woman with a flow of blood:
"...and immediately her bleeding stopped" (Luke 8:44). In that state
a prayer turns more or less into a ceaseless prayer. The prayer of Jesus serves
as a mediator to that ceaseless prayer. And that is a borderline to which a
prayer made by the person himself can go.
The next stage of that
state is a prayer overcoming a person, and not created by him. The prayerful
spirit captivates a person and carries him along into his heart, as if somebody
would take him by his hand and make him go from one room to another. The soul
is bound there by some external force and stays willingly inside while it is
overcome by the Spirit that captivated it. I know two degrees of that
captivation. In the first one the soul can see everything, it perceives itself
and its external position consciously, it can reason and control itself and
even destroy that state, if it wishes.
Holy Fathers, especially
St. Isaac of Syria, described also another stage of the prayer given from above
or overcoming a person. At that stage the soul is also overcome by the
prayerful spirit, but it is carried to such a contemplative spheres that it
forgets its external position, it does not have the power to reason, control or
destroy that state, but only to reflect. Such a state is mentioned in the
"Otechnik" where a case is described of a person who began praying
before dinner and came to himself only in the morning. This is exactly what we
call a prayer in rapture, or a reflective/contemplative prayer. In such a state
some people would be surrounded by light or their faces would be lighted, some
would be lifted from the ground. Holy Apostle Paul was taken into heavens in
that state.
6. Clarification of some difficult points.
You wrote, "My
praying by the book degraded." — This is not a loss: even if you never pick
up the prayer book again. A prayer book is something like a phrase book of
French for instance. You memorize dialogues until you can fluently express
yourself, and after learning to speak you forget those phrases. In the same
manner we need a prayer book until the time when the soul itself begins to
pray, after which we can lay the prayer book aside. Although when your own
prayer is not going out freely, it would be good to stir it up with praying by
the book.
You should be afraid of
fascination. It happens to those who gets proud thinking that since they feel
the warmth in their hearts, it means they achieved the utmost perfection. But
this is just the beginning and an unstable beginning it is, as the warmth and
the appeasement of the heart can also be of natural origin as the result of the
heartfelt mindfulness. But one must work and work, wait and wait until the
natural is replaced with the granted through God’s grace. One should never
consider oneself to have achieved something, but we must see ourselves as poor,
naked blind and good for nothing.
You complain of your
prayer being meager. — But you can pray not only standing in front of icons,
since any ascension of your mind and heart to God is a true prayer. And if you
do that while doing something else, it means you are praying. Holy Basil the
Great treats the issue of the Apostles’ being in their unceasing prayer the
following way: no matter what they were doing, they were thinking about God and
living in permanent devotion to Him. That state of their spirituality was in
fact their unceasing prayer. Here is an example. As I have earlier written to
you, different demands are put forward to working people and to those who stay
idly at home. The main concern of busy people is not to allow wrong feelings
while they are doing their job and to try to devote all their feelings to God.
This devotion will then turn into a prayer. We read that Abel’s blood cries out
to God. In the same way everything we, in devotion to God, cries out to Him.
When somebody sent a dish of food to an elder, he said, "It smells so
bad!." The food though was very good and fresh. They asked him, "How
come?." He explained that it was not sent by a good person and was not
sent with good feelings. The people whose feelings are refined feel it. So it
appears that like a good smell comes forth from good flowers, so do good things
done with a good disposition issue aroma, which rises like incense during
church services.
You are writing about a
spiritual dullness of senses in prayer. — That is a great loss! Give yourself
the trouble of waking your feelings up. Our chores excuse only shorter time
allocated for the prayer, not impoverishment of the internal prayer — the
latter is unpardonable. You can please God with little, but that little should
come from your heart. Lift up your mind to Him and say with repentance, "O
Lord, have mercy on me! O Lord, bless me! O Lord, help me!" — this is a
prayerful cry. And if the feeling to God is revived and established in your
heart, then that will be an unceasing prayer without words and without standing
and reading prayers in front of the icons.
Is your conscience worried
because of saying prayers in haste? — That is fair! Why do you listen to the
Enemy? It is him who spurs you up: "Make haste, hurry up..." That is
why you do not feel any fruitfulness of your prayer. Make it rule for yourself
to take your time and to say every word of the prayer with understanding and if
possible, with feeling. Assume this task as resolutely as a commander-in-chief
who would not stand any objection. The Enemy would suggest: you need to do this
and that, and you should just say to yourself, "I know it without your
enticing, off with you...." And then you will see how successful your
praying will be. Otherwise you have only the prayer rule, but not the prayer
itself. It is only a prayer, which nourishes your soul.
You should check by the
clock the length of time devoted to the prayer said slowly and you will see
that you spent only several minutes. While a hasty prayer brings a lot of harm.
When suddenly a bad
thought occurs to you — it is an arrow shot by the Enemy. He shoots it trying
to distract you from the prayer and to occupy your mind with some worldly
things. If you start concentrating on that thought, the Enemy will begin
contriving various stories in your mind so that to smear your soul and to
incite in a person some bad passionate feelings. That is why there one ruling
guide here: cast that thought away quickly and return your attention to the
prayer.
Do all our prayers reach
God? — A prayer is never wasted regardless of whether the Lord grants us what
we are asking or not. Because of our ignorance we are often asking for
something that would bring us harm, not benefit. Not fulfilling that plea the
Lord would grant us something else for our work of prayer, and He would do it
inconspicuously. That is why there is no sense in a phrase like, "You are
praying to God, but what did you get for it?." A praying person is asking
God for a certain thing. If God knows that the fulfillment of the supplication
would eventually be to the detriment of the person, He does not grant the wish
and thus does us good; for if He had fulfilled that supplication, it would have
done much harm to that person. Beware of snares among which you are walking in
this deceitful world!
7. On the Jesus Prayer.
There were surely some
other similar short prayers. With time the Jesus prayer got established and
became widely used by everyone, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy
on me a sinner." The aim of this prayer is the same as of the others: to
keep one’s mind turned to God. At the same time one has to remember that saying
the Jesus prayer is just a tool or work showing a strong desire to find the
Lord.
Everyone will benefit from
saying the Jesus prayer. Those in the monastic orders must repeat it all the
time. So there is no danger in the prayer itself, if one says it reverently.
Yet, what is dangerous is the "artistry" (i.e. some artificial
tricks) invented to accompany that prayer. For example, while saying the Jesus
prayer some people put their hand on the table and concentrate their attention
under the fingers — it is an inconsistent oddity. Or here is another whim: to
strike the finger of your right hand against the palm of left one and thus try
to concentrate the mind on the prayer.
The first person to write
about the "artistic" performance of the Jesus prayer was Gregory of
Sinai in the 13th century... It was those tricks that plunged some people into
a dreamy state of enchantment, while others strange as it sounds — into a constant
lustful state. That is why those tricks should be disapproved and condemned
resolutely. And we must urge everybody and teach everyone to hail the sweetest
name of the Lord in a simple heartfelt way.
The essence of a prayer is
easy to explain. Make your heart and mind stand up in front of the Lord and
appeal to Him, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a
sinner." That will be your prayer work. The Lord will see who prays
devotedly and will grant the praying person a spiritual prayer according to his
zeal. That spiritual prayer is in fact the fruit of the grace of the Holy
Spirit. This is all we must say about the Jesus prayer. All the rest that was
invented, has nothing to do with it: it is the Enemy that is trying to distract
us from the prayer.
Conclusion.
So, the essence of the
prayer consists in attentively addressing God and appealing to Him with a warm
heartfelt feeling —whether you are expressing your gratitude, repentance or
something else in your prayer. If there is no such feeling, then there is no
real prayer.
In order to learn praying,
pray more often and with more zeal and you will learn it: you would not need
anything else. If you work hard and patiently, you will acquire the skill of
unceasing prayer with time. Make it your goal — to seek and do seek. The Lord
is close to you. Keep God always in your mind and always try to see the Lord
before you and to venerate Him.
When interfering thoughts
come to your mind during praying — drive them away, if they persist — banish
them again...and be that way in everything. This is a deed of sobriety. Exert
yourself to keep your heart in a religious spirit. When your heart is overcome
with a feeling, vain thoughts do not bother it.
We began writing with the
effort to write and the wish to do the work properly. In the same way we have
to learn praying through effort and persistence. A prayer will not come by
itself, you have to learn it like rubbing your soul would warm it up. When the
warmth comes, your thoughts would calm down, and your prayer will become
cleansed. Everything comes through God’s grace. That is why we have to pray to
the Lord for Him to grant us the prayer.
As far as the praying rule
is concerned, you can choose any of them as long as you are keeping your soul
in reverence to God.
It would be good to get
used to appeal to God with short prayers during the day. The main prayer out of
all of them is the Jesus prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have
mercy on me a sinner." Learn 24 prayers of John Chrysostom and pray to God
with them. Using short prayers concentrates your attention and reviews all your
spiritual needs.
Do not forget that the
strength of the prayer is the "contrite spirit," that is the state
when your heart is filled with repentance and humbleness. Commend yourselves
into the hands of God and He would never leave you. While praying you should
not try to visualize God or Theotokos, or the saints, or angels, or any other
visions, but just pray being sure that God and the saints hear your prayer. How
can they hear it? — What use in discussing that? They just hear it — that’s
all. If you start creating various images in your mind, there appears the
danger of praying to some fantasy. How can we visualize something that we have
never seen? And also the state in which the saints find themselves in that
other world is so different from anything familiar to us that all our
visualizations are doomed to turn out fraudulent and false. That is why we
should get accustomed to saying a prayer without creating any images in our
minds.
Material gathered and organized by Bishop Alexander (Mileant)
Translated from Russian by Irina Nabatova-Barrett
Source: http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/prayer_theofan_e.htm#_Toc523533560
