О молитве. Статья II

Holy, great, soul-saving feat of prayer. He is the main one and the first among the monastic exploits. All other feats are service feats to this feat; they are undertaken so that the feat of prayer is accomplished more successfully, so that the fruits of prayer are more abundant. “The head of all pious life,” said the Monk Macarius the Great, “and the top of all good deeds is a constant stay in prayer” 60. What human position could be higher, could be compared with the position of a person admitted to a conversation through prayer with the King of kings, with the God of gods, with the Creator and sovereign Ruler of all visible and invisible, material and spiritual creatures? Due to the importance of the exercise of prayer, this exercise requires significant preliminary preparation 61 . From those who wish to approach the King of kings, He requires a way of thinking and a heart mood pleasing to Him, that way of thinking and that heart mood through which all the righteous of the Old and New Testaments came close to Him and pleased Him (Luke 1:17). Without this mindset and heart attitude, access is impossible, attempts and efforts to gain access are futile. If you want to approach God and become assimilated to Him through constant prayer, look around! Examine carefully your way of thinking: are you infected with any false teaching? Will you follow exactly and without exception the teachings of the Eastern Church, the only true, holy, apostolic one? 62 If anyone “disobeys the Church,” the Lord said to His disciple, “you will be like a pagan and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17), strangers to God, enemies of God. What meaning can the prayer of one who is in a state of enmity towards God, in a state of alienation from God, have? Consciousness of one’s sinfulness, consciousness of one’s weakness, one’s insignificance is a necessary condition for prayer to be graciously accepted and heard by God. All saints placed the basis of prayer on the consciousness and confession of their sinfulness and the sinfulness of all humanity. Man's holiness depends on the consciousness and confession of this sinfulness. The One who bestows holiness on people for their repentance said: “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). Those who want to engage in the feat of prayer! Before you begin this feat, try to forgive everyone who upset, slandered, humiliated you, everyone who caused you any harm. The One before Whom you intend to appear in prayer commands you: “If you bring the gift of prayer to the high altar of the King of kings, remember her as if your brother has something for you: leave her your gift before the altar and go first to humble yourself with your brother, and then come and bring your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). Prepare yourself for prayer with impartiality and carelessness. From addictions - care. Held back by passions, distracted by worries, your thought will not be able to steadily strive towards God through prayer. “You cannot serve God and mammon: for where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Don’t worry about saying: what are the pits, or what are we drinking, or what are we wearing? Seek with diligent, constant, prayers filled with tenderness...the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these will be added to you” (Matthew 6:24, 21, 31, 33). Tear your mind and heart away from the earth and from everything earthly, and it will not be inconvenient for you to begin the invisible procession of prayer to heaven. If you suffer poverty, or sorrowful circumstances oppress you, or your enemy is plotting against you and persecuting you: leave it unattended - so that your attention during prayer is not spoiled by any entertainment, any embarrassment - leave unattended the memories and thoughts brought to you about your poverty, about your circumstances, about your enemy. The One who has complete power over you, your circumstances, and your enemy, says to His beloved: “Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, and believe in Me” (John 14:1). “Whenever you pray,” the Lord commands, “go into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret” (Matthew 6:6). Whether you are in the company of people or are alone, try to constantly delve deeper into your inner spiritual cell, close the doors of your feelings and tongue, and pray secretly with your mind and heart. Having loved the feat of prayer, love solitude and a physical cell. Close its doors for yourself and for others. Patiently endure the boredom of the shutter: it will not be slow to be replaced by the most pleasant feeling. “Stay in your cell,” said the Holy Fathers, “it will teach you everything” 63, i.e. monastic life, which is all concentrated in prayer. Having loved the feat of prayer, love silence: it keeps the forces of the soul undivided, capable of constant prayer in the inner cell. The habit of silence makes it possible to silently pray from the heart even in the midst of noisy crowds 64 . As a sacrifice to the love of prayer, sacrifice the pleasures of the senses and the pleasures of the mind, inquisitiveness, curiosity; keep your soul from all external impressions, so that God may be imprinted on it through prayer. His all-holy, invisible, spiritual Image does not tolerate dwelling in a soul clogged with images of the vain, material, transitory world. Do not admire visible nature, do not engage in contemplation of its beauties; do not waste precious time and soul energy on acquiring knowledge provided by human sciences 65 . And use your strength and time to acquire prayer, sacred in the inner cell. There, within yourself, prayer will reveal a spectacle that will attract all your attention; it will give you knowledge that the world cannot contain, the existence of which it has no idea. There, in the depths of your heart, you will see the fall of humanity, you will see your soul, killed by sin, you will see the coffin, you will see hell, you will see demons, you will see chains and shackles, you will see the flaming weapon of the Cherub, guarding the path to the tree of life, prohibiting man from entering the abodes of paradise - you will see many other mysteries hidden from the world and from the sons of the world 66. When this spectacle opens, your eyes will be drawn to it; you will grow cold towards everything temporary and perishable, with which you have sympathized until now. “Today or tomorrow we will die,” said Saint Andrew to the monk, 67 distracting him from his attachment to the substance and explaining the folly of such attachment. Very true words! A very true depiction of the indefinite period of our earthly life! Not today or tomorrow we will die. Nothing is easier than dying. The longest life, when we come to the end of it, turns out to be the shortest moment. Why engage in something that, of necessity, we will have to leave forever, leave very soon. It is better to study ourselves through prayer, to study the life and world awaiting us, in which we will remain forever. The solitude of the cell and the desert are the abode of prayer. “He who has tasted prayer,” said Saint John Climacus, “will flee crowds: who, if not prayer, makes his lover, like a desert-loving onager, free from the need for society” 68? If you want to devote your soul to the work of prayer: remove yourself from the vision of the world, renounce human society, conversations and the usual reception of friends in your cell, even under the pretext of love. Eliminate from yourself everything that interrupts and disturbs your mysterious conversation with God 69 . Stay on earth and in human society as a wanderer. You are a wanderer. The earth is a hotel. The hour at which you will be called is unknown. The call is inevitable and inescapable; It is impossible to refuse or resist. Prepare yourself with holy prayer for the joyful departure from the hotel. Prayer assimilates a person to God. With inexpressible envy and hatred, the fallen angels look at its action, having fallen from assimilation to God to a terrible, insane enmity towards Him. With various temptations they try to sway the one praying, to turn him away from the most saving feat, to wrest from him the prosperity and bliss that the feat will undoubtedly bring. Therefore, anyone who wants to devote himself to the exercise of prayer must prepare for sorrows in good time, so as not to be perplexed and embarrassed when they befall him, in order to courageously resist them with the power of faith and patience 70 . Demons strike a monk who is in prayer with bodily illnesses, oppress him with poverty, lack of attention and human help, just as they struck and oppressed the much-sick Job, by God’s permission. But we, like this righteous man, will bless and thank God for what He allowed, filled with demons 71; By glorifying and thanking God, let us accomplish the all-holy will of God, declared to us by the Holy Spirit of God: “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God for Christ Jesus in you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Demons teach people to attack the worker of prayer, to condemn him for the strangeness of his behavior, for the paucity of useful activity, to accuse him of idleness, hypocrisy and emptiness, to attribute to him evil and insidious intentions, vicious actions, to violate and disturb his silence, to force him to engage in activities that are opposite to his life, associated with entertainment, absent-mindedness, and disruption of the peace of the heart. Knowing the initial cause of these temptations, let us pray according to the commandment of the Gospel and according to the testament of the Holy Fathers for our neighbors who sin in ignorance and out of passion; God will destroy the machinations of demons. Tempting us from the outside, demons also act within us. When we retire into solitude, we begin to engage in prayer: they arouse in us various sinful desires that we have not felt before; they agitate our heart with countless sinful thoughts and dreams that have never appeared to our minds until now: they do this with the goal that we, driven into bewilderment and despondency, as not seeing any benefit from prayerful deeds and solitude, leave them 72. This action of demons, for ascetics who are new to the feat, seems to be the own action of the soul: our invisible, evil enemies, committing atrocities, together want to hide, so that escape from the nets placed for man would be impossible for him, disorder and death would be inevitable 73 . Just as demons recognize that it is very important for themselves to hide themselves from humans, so it is very important for humans to understand that they are the original perpetrators of sin, the source of our temptations, and not our neighbors, not us, when we spend our lives in the service of God, not some chance. Having identified our enemies, we will gradually learn, under the guidance of the Word of God, to vigilantly observe them and ourselves, and resist them with firmness. “Humble yourself,” the Supreme Apostle instructs us, “under the strong hand of God, so that in time you will lift up all your sorrow, casting aside Nan, as He cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour, whom you resist in the firmament by faith” (1 Peter 5:6-9). This struggle, these attacks of demons on those fleeing and praying were allowed by God Himself, the essence of the consequences of our arbitrary fall, in which we submitted ourselves to the power of demons. Let us submit to God’s just determination for us and bow our heads under all the blows of sorrows and illnesses, with which it will please God to punish our sinfulness and our sins in temporary life, in order to save us from the eternal sorrows and illnesses we deserve. God, allowing us temptations and handing us over to the devil, does not cease to provide for us; while punishing, he does not cease to do good to us. “God is faithful,” says the Apostle, “who will not leave you to be tempted beyond what you can, but will create with temptation also the abundance that you may be able to bear” (1 Cor. 10:13). And the devil, being a servant and creation of God, tempts not as much as he wants, but as much as God’s beck allows him; He tempts not when he wants, but when permission is given 74. Let us entrust to God, on the advice of the Apostle, all our care for ourselves, all our sorrows, all our hope, and for this we will become more frequent and intensify our prayer to Him. Allowing demons to tempt us is necessary for our success: by opposing our prayer, they force us to learn a particularly skillful use of this sword. The sword of prayer crushes the fiery sword of the Cherubim, which marks the path to the tree of life, and the winner becomes a partaker of the eternal life 75 . According to the ineffable wisdom of God, “evil promotes good with evil intentions” 76 . When, in our solitude and while practicing prayer, passionate sensations and movements suddenly boil within us, fierce thoughts attack us, and sinful dreams appear to us in seductive vividness: this is a sign of the coming of enemies. Then it is not a time of despondency, not a time of relaxation: a time of achievement. Let us resist our enemies with intense prayer to God, and He will scatter and drive away our enemies 77. In invisible warfare, we do not always and do not quickly become winners: victory is a gift of God, bestowed upon the ascetic by God in his own time, known to the one God and determined by the one God. The very victories are necessary for us. Here we mean victories that come from our weakness and sinfulness, and not from a changed will. Victories are allowed to us to our humility, so that we can see and study the fall of our nature, recognize the need for a Redeemer, believe in Him and confess Him 78 . With such victories, our invisible enemies put shame on us because of the victory, and because of shame, relaxation in the prayerful feat, distrust in it, the thought of leaving it and moving on to good activities in the midst of human society. Let's not fall into deception! With selflessness and shamelessness, let us reveal our ulcer before our all-good and all-powerful Physician, who commanded this shamelessness that saves us and promised to crown it with vengeance on our rivals (Luke 18). Let us make a covenant in our souls: not to abandon the feat of prayer until the end of our lives, and to pass from its midst into eternity. Our modesty during victories is alien to the meaning: it is an evil mockery of our enemies. Is this fig leaf - modesty with its means - capable of hiding a person’s sin from the all-seeing God? God sees sin even without confessing sin. He seeks confession solely in order to heal. If He commanded His Apostle to forgive his sinner and repentant brother “seven times” for a day, how much more will He Himself fulfill this for us, who continually bring Him prayer and repentance (Luke 17:4). Let us pay careful attention to the following: is it not our double-mindedness that strengthens our enemies in the fight against us? Is this not the reason for our frequent victories? Are we not ourselves strengthening the power and influence of our enemies over us, fulfilling their will by fulfilling our carnal desires, desires, and addictions? Are we not angering God by this, are we not driving Him away from ourselves? Doesn’t a love of peace operate in us, leaving behind us the appearance of servants of God, taking away the essential dignity of God’s servants, making us in essence enemies of God (James 4:4–5)? “A double-minded man is unsettled in all the ways of his virtues” (James 1:8), all the more so will he waver on the path of the most sublime, primary virtue - prayer. He is rejected by God, no matter how warm or cold (Rev. 3:16). He cannot be a student of true prayer, bringing his disciples before the face of God for supernatural edification, leading them in the footsteps of Jesus, “unless he renounces all his possessions” (Luke 14:33): the painful deviations of the will of fallen man towards the world. “They who are Christ's are the flesh crucified with passions and lusts” (Gal.5:24): only those who belong entirely to Christ can acquire true prayer. An apparently insignificant partiality, an apparently innocent love for some object, animate or inanimate, brings the mind and heart down from heaven, casting them on earth among the countless reptiles and reptiles of the vast sea of ​​life (Ps. 103:25). The Holy Fathers liken an ascetic who has succeeded in prayer to an eagle, and petty addiction to a snare; if one claw of an eagle’s mighty paw gets entangled in this loop, then the eagle becomes unable to soar the mountain, becomes an easy and indispensable prey for the hunter 79: then both the strength and courage of the royal bird are in vain. “Go,” the Holy Fathers instruct us, borrowing instructions from the Holy Gospel, “sell your material possessions, and give to the poor, and take up the cross, deny yourself by opposing your addictions and your fallen will” (Matthew 19:21, 16:24, Mark 10:21), so that you can pray unperturbed and without distraction 80. As long as addictions are alive in you, confusion and absent-mindedness will plague your prayer. It is necessary first to renounce material possessions, to part with the world, to renounce it: only after completing this renunciation can a Christian discern his inner captivity, prison, bonds, ulcers, and mortification of the soul 81 . The struggle against death living in the heart, carried out through prayer, under the guidance of the Word of God, is crucifixion, is the destruction of the soul for the salvation of the soul (Mark 8:35) 82. Combine prayer with prudent fasting: the combination of these two spiritual weapons is commanded to us by the Lord Himself to drive out demons from ourselves (Mark 9:29). “When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face” (Matthew 6:17), the Savior commanded. According to the explanation of the Holy Fathers 83, the oil, with which, according to the custom of that time, anointed the head, means mercy, which should remain in our spiritual judgment, as the Apostle said: “Be clothed therefore as the election of God, holy and beloved, in the womb of generosity, kindness, humility, meekness and long-suffering: accepting one another and forgiving yourself, if any against whom be reproached: just as Christ forgave you to eat, so also do you” (Col. 3:12-13). The face of the body and soul should be washed with tears: they will then appear in the eyes of the one praying and fasting, when his heart is filled with mercy for his neighbors, compassion for all humanity without exception. Do you want to become assimilated to God through prayer? Assimilate into your heart mercy, by which we are commanded to become like the heavenly Father (Luke 6:36) and achieve grace-filled perfection (Matthew 5:48). Force your heart to mercy and goodness, immerse, clothe your entire spirit in these qualities, until you feel in yourself love for mankind, similar to that which with its sun shines equally “on the evil and on the good, and rains on the righteous and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). 84. When you forgive all your neighbors from the heart for their sins, then your own sins will be revealed to you. You will see how much you need God’s mercy, how much all humanity needs it: you will cry before God for yourself and for humanity. The Holy Fathers combine all the deeds of the monk, his entire life, into “crying.” What does the “crying” of a monk mean? This is his “prayer” 85. The Holy Spirit, when it dwells in a person, makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered (Rom. 8:26). The Divine and heavenly Spirit, having become, as it were, the soul of man, prays and cries for him; He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Rom. 8:27), because He alone knows the will of God completely. “No one knows the message of God, but the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11). The Lord, promising His disciples the greatest gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit, said: “The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, by whom you will teach all things” (John 14:26); If it’s all, then I cry and pray. He will weep for us, He will pray for us, but we “will not know what we should pray for” (Rom. 8:26). So we are weak, limited, darkened and damaged by sin 86! If the Holy Spirit, having taken possession of us, weeps for us, much more should we, before accepting this all-holy Wanderer, weep for ourselves. If our condition, after our renewal by the Holy Spirit, is worthy of weeping - worthy of weeping according to the testimony of the Spirit Himself, how much more is it worthy of weeping in its old age, in its fall, left to itself. Crying should be an integral quality of our prayer, its constant, inseparable companion and assistant, its soul. He who combines crying with prayer strives according to the direction of God Himself, strives correctly and legally. In due time he will reap abundant fruit: the joy of certain salvation. He who has eliminated crying from prayer works contrary to God’s establishment and will not reap any fruit. Not only that, but he will reap the thorns of conceit, self-delusion, and destruction. Brethren! Let us not allow ourselves to be deceived by false, ridiculous, reckless, disastrous thoughts: let us not strive to seek pleasure during our prayer! Grace-filled pleasure is not characteristic of sinners; They are characterized by crying: let us search for it diligently, let us search for this treasure - the key to all spiritual treasures. He who does not cry is in a false position: he is deceived by his pride. The Holy Fathers call crying the leader in spiritual achievement. He must lead all our pious thoughts, direct them to the true goal. A thought that is not penetrated by crying and not guided by it is a lost thought 87 . The Monk Pimen the Great said: “The entire life of a monk should be a lament. This is the path of repentance taught to us by Scripture and the Fathers, who said: weep! There is no other way but crying” 88. Another great Father said: “If you want to please God, come out of the world, separate from the earth, leave creation, approach the Creator and unite with God through prayer and weeping” 89 . Monks living in crowded monasteries and wishing to acquire prayerful lamentation must pay special attention to the mortification of their will. If they cut it off and do not pay attention to sins, in general to the behavior of their neighbors, they will gain both prayer and crying. Thoughts, gathering in the heart, arouse in it prayer and sadness for God, and this sadness produces tears 90. Given the terrible scarcity of teachers of true prayer in our time, let us choose lamentation as our leader and mentor. He will teach you prayer and protect you from self-delusion. All those who rejected crying and separated him from their prayer fell into self-delusion. This is confirmed by the Holy Fathers 91. He who has achieved pure prayer through crying remembers only God and his sinfulness during prayer. Death and the judgment that must immediately occur after death seem to have occurred to him. He stands with a heartfelt sensation before the impartial and inexorable Judge on the final day of judgment, before the Judge, who can still be begged and can accept the face of the weeping at the trial established and predetermined by prayer. He is horrified in good time, perplexed, trembles, sobs, groans, in order to avoid the useless horror, trembling, bewilderment, sobbing, despair that the final verdict of an eternally angry God will generate in rejected sinners. He condemns himself so as not to be condemned; recognizes himself as a criminal, worthy of all executions, in order to avert executions from himself; confesses as a sinner in order to receive righteousness from the right hand of God, who gives this righteousness to all sinners who confess and repent of their sinfulness. The Lord commands: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; press, and it will be opened to you.” What is indicated here is not a one-time action, but a permanent one; The command applies to the entire earthly life of a person. “Everyone who asks in this way receives it, and he who seeks finds it, and it will be continually 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) 92. According to the promise itself, the most careful, continuous work is necessary: ​​“for you do not know when the Lord will come to the house, whether it will be evening, or midnight, or at the sound of a noose, or in the morning; lest He come suddenly and find you sleeping” (Mark 13:35–36) It is impossible, notes Saint John Climacus, to teach prayer to someone who wants to learn it, with words alone 93. Her teachers are experience and crying. In contrition and humility of spirit, we will begin the feat of prayer, let us enter under the guidance of lamentation: God Himself, “give prayer to him who prays” (1 Samuel 2:9), will become our teacher of prayer. “Come to me,” the sacred mother of all virtues invites us - prayer, “all who labor under the yoke of passions, in captivity of fallen spirits, burdened with various sins, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you... and you will find rest for your souls,” healing for your ulcers. “The yoke is my good” (Matthew 11:28–30), capable of healing from sins, even the greatest ones 94. “Come children,” the sacred mother of all virtues invites us - prayer - listen to me: “I will teach you the fear of the Lord” (Ps. 33:12). I will teach you the “fear of the Lord” through experience, I will bring the feeling of it into your hearts. I will teach you both the “fear” of beginners, with which “everyone will turn away from evil” (Prov. 15:27), and the pure “fear” of the Lord, “which endures forever and ever” (Ps. 19:10), the fear with which the Lord is terrible “over all those around Him” (Ps. 88:8), terrible to the fiery Cherubim themselves and the glorious, six-winged Seraphim. Give up your fruitless and vain attachment to everything transitory, which you must part with involuntarily! Leave the amusements and seductive pleasures! Leave idle talk, ridicule and verbosity, which devastate the soul! Remember, consider, make sure that you are here on earth, short-term wanderers, that your fatherland, your eternal abode is heaven. You need a loyal and strong leader there: this leader is me, no one else. All the saints who ascended from earth to heaven made the procession in no other way than by me. I reveal to those who have entered into an alliance with me the fall and sinfulness of man and draw them out of them, as if from a deep abyss. I discover before him the princes of the air, their nets and chains, I break these nets and chains, I defeat and drive away these princes. I explain the Creator to the created and the Redeemer to the redeemed, I reconcile man with God. I reveal to my disciple and beloved the immense greatness of God and introduce me into that state of reverence and submission to Him in which creatures should be before the Creator. I plant humility in the heart, I make the heart a source of abundant tears; I make my partakers partakers of Divine grace. I do not leave those led by me until I bring them before the face of God, until I unite them with God. God is the unfulfillable fulfillment of all desires in this and the next century. Amen. Ladder. Word 28, ch. III. Breviary. Following the Confession. Alphabetical Patericon. Venerable Arseny the Great. Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 41. St. John of Carpathia, ch. 13. Philokalia, part 4. Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 1, ch. 1. Word 7, ch. 1. Ladder. Word 27, ch. 56. Borrowed from the 56th Word of Saint Isaac of Syria. Venerable Neil of Sinai. About prayer. Philokalia, part 4. Venerable Nil of Sorsky, Homily 3rd. Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 7th, ch. 31. Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 4, ch. 7. Apoc. II, 7; Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 4, ch. 5. Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 4, ch. 6. An example of the fight against rebellious passions can be seen in the life of Saint Justina. Chet'i-Minei, October 2. Venerable Nil of Sorsky, Homily 3. Venerable Abba Dorotheos. Lesson 11, about quickly cutting off passions. Venerable Neil of Sinai. On prayer, ch. XVII. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Conversation 21, ch. 2, 3. We see experiences of such struggle and crucifixion in the lives of St. Anthony the Great, St. Macarius of Egypt and other holy monks. Saint Isaac of Syria, Homily 1st. Saint Isaac. Word 21st. Venerable Macarius the Great. Word 6, ch. 11. Word 7, ch. 12. Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. Word 6. Alphabetical Patericon. Sisoy the Great. Guide to the spiritual life of St. Barsanuphius the Great and John the Prophet, answer 282. St. Gregory of Sinaite about delusion, idea and many other pretexts. Philokalia, part 1. Ladder. Word 28, ch. II. You might be interested in: