О молитве. Статья I

It is natural for the poor to ask, and it is natural for a person impoverished by the Fall to pray. Prayer is the appeal of a fallen and repentant person to God. Prayer is the cry of a fallen and repentant person before God. Prayer is the outpouring of heartfelt desires, petitions, sighs of a fallen person killed by sin before God. The first discovery, the first movement of repentance is the cry of the heart. This is the prayerful voice of the heart, preceding the prayer of the mind. And soon the mind, carried away by the prayer of the heart, begins to give birth to prayerful thoughts. God is the only source of all true blessings. Prayer is the mother and head of all virtues 36, as a means and state of communication between a person and God. She borrows virtues from the source of blessings - God - and assimilates them to the person who, through prayer, tries to remain in communion with God. The path to God is prayer. The dimension of the journey taken is the various prayerful states into which the person praying correctly and constantly gradually enters. Learn to pray to God correctly. Having learned to pray correctly, pray constantly, and you will comfortably inherit salvation. Salvation appears from God in due time, with an indisputable heartfelt message about oneself, who prays correctly and constantly. For prayer to be correct, it must be offered from a heart filled with poverty of spirit, from a contrite and humble heart. All other states of the heart, until it is renewed by the Holy Spirit, recognize - what exactly they are - are unusual for a repentant sinner begging God for forgiveness of his sins and for liberation - both from prison and shackles - from enslavement to passions. The Mosaic Law ordered the Israelites to offer all their sacrifices in only one place, appointed by God. And the spiritual law has designated for Christians one spiritual place to offer all their sacrifices, especially the sacrifice of sacrifices - prayer. This place is humility 37 . God doesn't need our prayers! He knows, even before we ask, what we need; He, the Most Merciful, pours out abundant bounties on those who do not ask Him. We need prayer: it assimilates a person to God. Without it, a person is a stranger to God, and the more he practices prayer, the closer he gets to God. Prayer is the communion of life. Leaving her brings invisible death to the soul. What air is to the life of the body, the Holy Spirit is to the life of the soul. The soul, through prayer, breathes this holy, mysterious air. When you arise from sleep, let your first thought be about God; Bring the very beginning of your thoughts, still unimpressed by any vain impression, to God. When you go to sleep, when you are preparing to plunge into this image of death, let your last thoughts be about eternity and about the God reigning in it. The angel revealed to a certain holy monk the following order of thoughts in prayer, pleasing to God: “The beginning of prayer should consist of glorifying God, thanking God for His countless benefits; then we must bring to God a sincere confession of our sins, in contrition of spirit, in conclusion we can offer, however with great humility, petitions to the Lord for our mental and physical needs, reverently leaving the fulfillment and non-fulfillment of these petitions to His will” 38 . The initial reason for prayer is faith: “I believed, and so I cried” (Ps. 115:1) with my prayer to the merciful God, who was pleased to command me prayer and gave a promise to listen to it. “Whenever you pray, if you ask, believe, as you receive, and it will be done for you” (Mark 11:24), declared the Lord. And therefore, having rejected all doubt and double-mindedness, persistently remain in prayer with the Lord, who commanded “to pray always and not to be cold” (Luke 18:1) i.e. do not become discouraged by the tightness of prayer, which, especially at first, is painful and unbearable for a mind accustomed to wandering everywhere. Blessed is the soul that with prayer incessantly knocks on the door of God’s mercy, and with complaints against its “rival” (Luke 18:3) - the sin that rapes it - constantly tires the Tireless 39: it will rejoice in due time about its purity and its dispassion. Sometimes our request is immediately heard; sometimes, according to the Savior, “God is patient with us” (Luke 18:7), that is, He does not quickly fulfill what we ask: He sees that we need to stop this fulfillment for a while for our humility, that we need to get tired, to see our weakness, which is always revealed very sharply when we are left to ourselves. Prayer, as a conversation with God, is in itself a high good, often much greater than what a person asks for, and the merciful God, without fulfilling the request, leaves the petitioner with his prayer, so that he does not lose it, does not abandon this highest good when he receives the requested good, much less. God does not satisfy requests the fulfillment of which is associated with harmful consequences; He does not satisfy those requests that are contrary to His holy will, contrary to His wise, incomprehensible destinies. Contrary to God’s determination, the great Moses the God-Seer asked that he be granted entry into the Promised Land, and was not heard (Deut. 3:26); Saint David prayed, strengthening his prayer with fasting, ashes and tears, for the preservation of the life of his sick son; but was not heard (2 Samuel 12:16–17). And you, when your request is not fulfilled by God, reverently submit to the will of the all-holy God, Who, for unknown reasons, left your request unfulfilled. The holy Apostle James proclaims to the sons of the world, who ask God for earthly blessings to satisfy their carnal lusts: “Ask and do not receive; you ask evilly, so that you may depend on your desires” (James 4:3). When we want to appear before the king of the earth, we prepare for this with special care: we study what the mood of our heartfelt feelings should be when talking with him, so that, on the impulse of some feeling, we do not get carried away into a word or movement that is unpleasant to the king; We figure out in advance what to say to him, so that we can say whatever pleases us, and thereby win him over; We take care that our very outward appearance attracts his attention to us. Moreover, we must make decent preparations when we wish to appear before the King of kings and enter into conversation with Him through prayer. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7); but in a person the location of the heart is most consistent with the position of his face, his appearance. And therefore, when praying, give the most reverent position to the body. Stand like a condemned man, with your head bowed, not daring to look up at the sky, with your hands hanging down or folded behind you, as if tied with ropes, as criminals caught at the scene of a crime are usually tied up. Let the sound of your voice be the pitiful sound of crying, the groan of one wounded by a deadly weapon or tormented by a cruel disease. "God looks on the heart." He sees our most intimate, most subtle thoughts and sensations; sees all our past and all our future. God is omnipresent. And therefore stand in your prayer as if you were standing before God Himself. Exactly: you stand before Him! you stand before your Judge and sovereign Master, on Whom your fate in time and in eternity depends. Use your presence before Him to build your well-being; Do not allow this coming, due to its unworthiness, to serve as the cause of temporary and eternal executions for you. Intending to offer prayer to God, reject all earthly thoughts and concerns. Do not engage in thoughts that then come to you, no matter how important, brilliant, necessary they may seem. Give what is God to God, and you will have time to give what you need for temporary life in due time. It is not possible at the same time to work with God in prayer and occupy the mind with thoughts and concerns of extraneous things. Before prayer, show in your heart the incense of the fear of God and holy reverence: think that you have angered God with countless sins, which are more obvious to Him than to your conscience itself: try to appease the Judge with humility. Beware! Do not arouse His indignation with negligence and insolence: He is pleased that even those closest to Him, the purest angelic Powers, stand before Him with all reverence and the most holy fear (Ps. 88:8). The robe of your soul should shine with the whiteness of simplicity. Nothing should be complicated here! Evil thoughts and feelings of vanity, hypocrisy, pretense, man-pleasing, arrogance, voluptuousness should not be mixed in - these dark and fetid stains with which the spiritual clothing of praying Pharisees are spotted. Instead of pearls and diamonds, instead of gold and silver, adorn yourself with chastity, humility, tears of meekness and spiritual intelligence, and before you receive these tears, with tears of repentance; adorn yourself with infantile, angelic gentleness: here are precious utensils! When the King of kings sees this utensil on the soul: His merciful gaze bows to the soul. Forgiveness of everyone, all offenses without exception, even the most severe ones, is an indispensable condition for success in prayer. “When you stand praying,” the Savior commands, “forgive whatever you have done against anyone, so that your Father, who is in Heaven, will forgive you your sins. If you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in Heaven forgive you your sins” (Mark 11:25-26). “The prayers of those who are wicked in memory are sowing on stone,” said the Monk Isaac of Syria 40 . Moderate, prudent, constant abstinence from food and drink makes the body light, cleanses the mind, gives it vigor, and therefore also serves as preparation for prayer. Incontinence of the belly makes the body heavy, plump, hardens the heart, darkens the mind with a multitude of fumes and gases ascending from the stomach to the brain. As soon as a satiated or satiated person gets up to pray, drowsiness and laziness attack him, many crude dreams are depicted in his imagination, his heart is unable to come to tenderness. As much as intemperance is harmful, so is immoderate fasting, or even more so, 41. Weakness of the body, resulting from malnutrition, does not allow prayers to be performed in the proper quantity and with the proper strength. The amount of prayer is determined for each person by his lifestyle and the amount of his strength, mental and physical. The widow's two mites, which she brought to the church and made up her entire estate, turned out to be greater on the scales of the just God than the significant offerings of the rich from their excesses. Judge your prayer in the same way: assign yourself the quantity according to your strengths, remember the wise instruction of the great mentor of ascetics: “If you force a weak body to do things that exceed its strength, then by doing this you put darkness into your soul and bring it confusion, not benefit 42.” The appropriate prayer is required from a healthy and strong constitution. “Every prayer, said the same great Father, in which the body does not become tired, and the heart does not come into contrition, is recognized as unripe fruit: because such prayer is without a soul” 43. Being busy with social duties, and if you are a monk, then with obediences, and not being able to devote as much time to prayer as you would like, do not be embarrassed by this: serving lawfully and conscientiously prepares a person for fervent prayer, and replaces quantity with quality. Nothing contributes more to success in prayer than a conscience satisfied with God-pleasing activity. Fulfillment of the Gospel commandments attunes the mind and heart to pure prayer filled with tenderness, and true prayer directs one to think, feel, and act according to the commandments of the Gospel. Mercy towards neighbors and humility before them, expressed by outward deeds and nourished in the soul, together with purity of heart, mainly from prodigal thoughts and feelings, constitute the basis and strength of prayer 44 . They are like her “wings” (Ps. 54:7), with which she flies to the sky. Without them, prayer cannot rise from the ground, that is, arise from carnal wisdom: it is held by it, like a net or a force; she is indignant, desecrated, destroyed by him. The soul of prayer is attention 45. Just as a body without a soul is dead, so prayer without attention is dead. A prayer pronounced without attention turns into idle talk, and the one praying is thus counted among those who take “the name of God in vain.” Say the words of prayer slowly; do not let your mind wander everywhere, but close it in the words of prayer 46 . This path is narrow and deplorable for a mind accustomed to wandering freely throughout the universe; but this path leads to attention. Whoever tastes the great benefit of attention will love to oppress the mind on the path leading to blissful attention. Attention is the initial gift of Divine grace, sent down to the worker and patiently suffering in the feat of prayer 47 . Graceful attention must be preceded by one’s own effort toward attention: the latter must be active evidence of a sincere desire to receive the former. One’s own attention is overwhelmed by thoughts and dreams, fluctuating from them; gracious - full of firmness. Forbid yourself from distracted thoughts during prayer, hate daydreaming, reject worries with the power of faith, strike your heart with the fear of God, and you will comfortably learn to pay attention. The praying mind must be in a completely true state. A dream, no matter how tempting and plausible, being its own, arbitrary creation of the mind, takes the mind out of the state of Divine truth, introduces it into a state of self-delusion and deception, and therefore it is rejected in prayer. The mind, during prayer, must be kept, and with all care, formless, rejecting all images drawn in the faculty of imagination: because the mind in prayer stands before the invisible God, Who cannot be represented in any material way. Images, if the mind allows them in prayer, will become an impenetrable curtain, a wall between the mind and God. “Those who see nothing in their prayers see God,” said the Monk Meletius the Confessor 48. If, during your prayer, the image of Christ, or an Angel, or some Saint, - in a word, any kind of image - presented itself to you sensually or was depicted in you mentally, in a word, do not accept this appearance as true, do not pay any attention to it, do not enter into conversation with it 49 . Otherwise, you will certainly be subjected to deception and severe mental damage, which is what happened to many. A person, until he is renewed by the Holy Spirit, is incapable of communicating with holy spirits. He, as still in the realm of the fallen spirits, in captivity and slavery to them, is able to see only them, and they often, noticing in him a high opinion of himself and self-delusion, appear to him in the form of bright angels, in the form of Christ Himself, for the destruction of his soul. Holy icons were accepted by the Holy Church to excite pious memories and sensations, and not at all to excite reverie. Standing before the icon of the Savior, stand as if before the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, omnipresent in Divinity, and present with His icon in the place where it is located. Standing before the icon of the Mother of God, stand as if before the Most Holy Virgin Herself; but keep your mind formless: the greatest difference is to be in the presence of the Lord and stand before the Lord, or imagine the Lord. The feeling of the presence of the Lord instills saving fear in the soul, introduces into it a saving feeling of reverence, and the imagination of the Lord and His saints imparts to the mind, as it were, materiality, leads it to a false, proud opinion about itself - the soul leads to a false state, a state of self-delusion 50 . A high state - a feeling of the presence of God! They keep the mind from conversing with alien thoughts that denigrate prayer; because of it, the insignificance of man is abundantly felt; because of this, there is special vigilance over oneself, protecting a person from sins, even the smallest ones. The feeling of God's presence is brought about by attentive prayer. Standing reverently before holy icons also helps a lot in acquiring it. The words of prayer, animated by attention, penetrate deep into the soul, gore, pierce, so to speak, the heart, and produce tenderness in it. The words of prayer, performed absent-mindedly, seem to touch only the surface of the soul, without making any impression on it. Attention and tenderness are recognized as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit can stop the waves of the mind scattering everywhere, said St. John Climacus 51 . Another blessed Father said: “When tenderness is with us, then God is with us” 52. Having achieved constant attention and tenderness in his prayers, he has achieved a state of bliss called in the Gospel “poverty of spirit” and “crying.” He has already broken many chains of passions, he has already smelled the stench of spiritual freedom, he already carries in his depths the guarantee of salvation. Do not leave the narrowness of the true prayer path - and you will achieve sacred peace, the mysterious Saturday: on Saturday no earthly work is performed, struggle and feat are eliminated; in blissful dispassion, without distraction, the soul comes before God in pure prayer, and rests in Him through faith in His infinite goodness, devotion to His all-holy will. In an ascetic of prayer, success in prayer first begins to manifest itself through a special action of attention: from time to time it unexpectedly embraces the mind, enclosing it in the words of prayer. Then it will become much more constant and lasting: the mind, as it were, cleaves to the words of the prayer and is drawn by them to unite with the heart. Finally, tenderness suddenly combines with attention and makes a person a church of prayer, a church of God. Bring quiet and humble prayers to God, not ardent and fiery ones. When you become a mysterious priest of prayer, then you will ascend into God’s tabernacle, and from there you will fill the prayer censer with sacred fire. Unclean fire - blind, material heating of blood - is forbidden to be brought before the all-holy God. The sacred fire of prayer, borrowed from the tabernacle of God, is holy love, poured out into true Christians by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). He who tries to combine prayer with the fire of blood imagines, in his self-delusion, deceived by his opinion of himself, to serve God, but in reality angers Him. Do not look for pleasures in prayer: they are by no means characteristic of a sinner. The desire of a sinner to feel pleasure is already self-delusion. Seek for your dead, petrified heart to come to life, so that it opens to the feeling of its sinfulness, its fall, its insignificance, so that it sees them, confesses to them with selflessness. Then the true fruit of prayer will appear in you: true repentance. You will groan before God, and you will cry out to Him in prayer from the disastrous state of your soul, which was suddenly revealed to you; You will cry out as from a prison, as from a tomb, as from hell. Repentance gives birth to prayer, and it is born in great quantity from his daughter. Delight in prayer is the exclusive destiny of God’s holy chosen ones, renewed by the Holy Spirit. Whoever, carried away by gusts of blood, carried away by vanity and voluptuousness, invents pleasures for himself: he is in woeful self-delusion. A soul darkened by living according to the flesh, a soul deceived and deceived by its pride, is very capable of such composition. The sensations generated by prayer and repentance consist of relief of conscience, peace of mind, reconciliation with others and the circumstances of life, mercy and compassion for humanity, abstinence from passions, coolness towards the world, submission to God, strength in the fight against sinful thoughts and inclinations. Be content with these sensations—which nevertheless contain a taste of the hope of salvation. Do not seek prematurely high spiritual states and prayerful delights. They are not at all what they appear to be in our imagination: the action of the Holy Spirit, from which high states of prayer arise, is incomprehensible to the carnal mind 53 . Learn to pray with all your thoughts, with all your soul, with all your strength. You ask: what does this mean? “This cannot be known except by experience.” Try to constantly engage in attentive prayer: attentive prayer will give you the resolution of the issue through a blissful experience. The feat of prayer seems painful, boring, and dry for a mind accustomed to being occupied only with perishable objects. It is difficult to acquire the skill of prayer; when this skill is acquired, then it becomes a source of constant spiritual consolation. Prayer, as mentioned above, is the mother of all virtues: acquire the mother! With her, her children will come to the house of your soul, making it a sanctuary of God. Before starting any business, bring a prayer to God; with it attract God's blessing to your deeds, and with it judge your deeds: the thought of prayer stops you from deeds that are contrary to the commandments of God. Whoever, before every deed and word, turns to God in prayer for admonition, help and blessing: he carries out his life as if under the eyes of God, under His guidance. The habit of such behavior is convenient; There is nothing faster than the mind, said the Great Barsanuphius, nothing is more convenient than raising the mind to God for every need encountered 54. In difficult circumstances of life, increase your prayers to God. It is better to resort to prayers than to empty considerations of the weak human mind, considerations that for the most part turn out to be unrealizable. It is better to rely with faith and prayer on the almighty God than with shaky considerations and assumptions - on your weak mind. Do not be reckless in your requests, so as not to anger God with your foolishness: he who asks the King of kings for something insignificant humiliates Him. The Israelites, ignoring the miracles of God performed for them in the desert, asked for the fulfillment of the desires of the womb - “and the food that is in their mouths, the wrath of God will come upon them” (Ps. 77:30-31) 55. Bring to God petitions consistent with His greatness. Solomon asked Him for wisdom; I received it, and with it many other benefits: because I asked wisely. Elisha asked Him for the grace of the Holy Spirit, especially before his great teacher, and his request was accepted. He who seeks in his prayer perishable earthly goods arouses the indignation of the Heavenly King against himself. Angels and Archangels - these nobles of Him - look at you during your prayer, they look at what you ask from God. They are surprised and rejoice when they see an earthly person leaving his earth and making a petition to receive something heavenly; They grieve, on the contrary, for those who have ignored heavenly things and ask for their earth and corruption. We are commanded to be children in malice and not in understanding (1 Cor. 14:20). When praying, the mind of this world, which is verbose and arrogant, is rejected: it does not follow from this that it is accepted; feeblemindedness is required in it. It requires a perfect mind, a spiritual mind, filled with humility and simplicity, often expressed in prayer not in words, but in a prayerful silence that exceeds words. Prayerful silence then envelops the mind when new, spiritual concepts suddenly appear to it, inexpressible in the words of this world and age, when a particularly living sensation of the present God appears. Before the immense greatness of the Divine, His weak creature, man, falls silent. Polyphony (Matthew 6:7-8), condemned by the Lord in the prayers of the pagans, consists in the numerous petitions for temporary blessings with which the prayers of the pagans are filled, in the florid presentation in which they are offered 56 - as if rhetorical embellishments, material sonority and force of syllable can act on God in the same way as they act on the ears and nerves of carnal people. Condemning this verbosity, the Lord by no means condemned long prayers, as some heretics imagined: He Himself sanctified long prayer, remaining in prayer for a long time. “And there was noshch (that is, he remained all night) in the prayer of God” (Luke 6:12), the Gospel tells about the Lord. The duration of the prayers of God's saints is not due to much verbiage, but due to the abundant spiritual sensations that appear in them during prayer. By the abundance and strength of these sensations, time is destroyed, so to speak, and is henceforth transformed into eternity for the saints of God. When the worker of prayer achieves success in his blessed feat, then the variety of thoughts in the psalms and other prayers becomes inappropriate to his structure. The publican's prayer and other shortest prayers more satisfactorily express the inexpressible, vast desire of the heart, and often the saints of God spent many hours, days and years in such prayer, not feeling the need for a variety of thoughts for their strong, concentrated prayer. (Hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov, a monk who was especially successful in prayer, spent a thousand days and a thousand nights standing on a stone and crying to the Lord: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”) 57. The prayers composed by heretics are very similar to the prayers of the pagans: they contain many verbs; they contain the earthly beauty of words; the blood is heated in them; they lack repentance; in them there is a desire for the marriage of the Son of God directly from the fornication of passions; they contain self-delusion. They are alien to the Holy Spirit: the deadly infection of the dark spirit, the evil spirit, the spirit of lies and destruction emanates from them. Great is the work of prayer! The Holy Apostles, for prayer and for serving the Word, renounced serving their neighbors in their bodily needs. “It is not good for us to eat,” they said, “forsaking the word of God, to serve meals... We will abide in prayer and the service of the Word” (Acts 6:2, 4), that is, in conversation with God through prayer and in conversation about God with our neighbors, proclaiming to them the Trinitarian God and the incarnate God the Word. The practice of prayer is the highest occupation for the human mind; the state of purity, alien to entertainment, brought to the mind by prayer, is its highest natural state; His admiration for God, the initial reason for which is pure prayer, is a supernatural state 58. Only the holy saints of God ascend to the supernatural state, renewed by the Holy Spirit, having put off the old Adam, putting on the New, capable of “beholding with the revealed face of the soul the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” by the action of the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). They receive most of Divine revelations during the exercise of prayer, as at a time in which the soul is especially prepared, especially purified, and tuned to communion with God 59 . Thus, the Holy Apostle Peter, during prayer, saw the significant shroud descending from heaven (Acts 10:11). So an angel appeared to Cornelius the centurion while he was praying (Acts 10:3). So, when the Apostle Paul was praying in the temple of Jerusalem, the Lord appeared to him and commanded him to immediately leave Jerusalem: “Go, for I will send you to a far off place” (Acts 22:21), He said to him. Prayer is commanded by the Lord, as is repentance. The end of prayer, as well as repentance, is indicated by one thing: entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, into the Kingdom of God, which is within us. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is drawing near” (Matthew 4:17). “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; press, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives it, and everyone who seeks finds it, and it will be opened to him who asks... The Father who is in heaven will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Luke 11:9-10, 13). “Shouldn’t God take vengeance on His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night and complain about the violence inflicted on them by the sinful infection and demons? I tell you that he will take their vengeance quickly” (Luke 18:7-8). Entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, which is planted in the heart of every Christian through holy baptism, is the development of this Kingdom through the action of the Holy Spirit. Hurry in prayer, soul thirsty for salvation, hurry in the wake of the Savior, accompanied by His countless disciples. Call after Him with prayer like the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:22–28); do not be upset by His prolonged inattention; generously and humbly endure the sorrows and humiliations that He will allow you on your path of prayer. To be successful in prayer, you definitely need help from temptations. According to your faith, for your humility, for the persistence of your prayer, He will comfort you by healing your daughter who is enraged by the action of passions - by healing your thoughts and feelings, transforming them from passionate to passionless, from sinful to holy, from carnal to spiritual. Amen. Ladder. Title of the word 28th. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 3. Ch. 1. According to the explanation of St. Pimen the Great. Alphabetical Patericon. Ladder. Word 28th, ch. VII. Ladder. Word 7, ch. 11. Reverend Cassian. A word about reasoning. Philokalia, part 4. St. Isaac of Syria. Word 85. Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 56 and 57th. Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. A word about three types of prayer. Philokalia, part 1. Ladder. Word 28, ch. 17. Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos. Philokalia, part 4, ch. 24. The essay “about prayer” by this saint of God is published in the book “Classes”, published by Optina Pustyn. Venerable Gregory of Sinaite. Oh my goodness, the chapters are very useful. Philokalia, part 1. The word of St. Simeon on three types of prayer. Ladder, Homily 28, ch. 17. Hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov. Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 55. This article and the two that follow it are borrowed from the 5th word of St. Isaac of Syria. According to the explanation of Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria. The legend about the life and exploits of O. Seraphim. Moscow, edition 1844. Saint Isaac of Syria. Word XVI. You might be interested in: