Дух молитвы новоначального

Here we offer a teaching about the quality of prayer characteristic of someone who begins to go to the Lord through repentance. The main ideas are presented each separately with the aim that they can be read with greater attention and retained in memory with greater convenience. Reading them, feeding the mind with truth and the heart with humility, can provide the soul with the proper direction in its prayerful feat and serve as a preparatory exercise for it. 1. Prayer is the offering of our petitions to God. 2. The basis of prayer is that man is a fallen creature. He strives to receive the bliss that he had but lost, and therefore he prays. 3. The refuge of prayer is in God’s great mercy towards the human race. The Son of God, to save us, offered Himself to His Father as a propitiatory, reconciling sacrifice: on this basis, wanting to engage in prayer, reject doubt and double-mindedness (James 1:6-8). Don’t say to yourself: “I’m a sinner, will God really hear me?” If you are a sinner, then the consoling words of the Savior apply to you: “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). 4. The preparation for prayer is: an unsatiated belly, cutting off cares with the sword of faith, forgiveness from the sincerity of the heart of all offenses, thanksgiving to God for all sorrowful incidents of life, removing from oneself absent-mindedness and daydreaming, reverent fear, which is so characteristic of a creature when it is allowed to have a conversation with its Creator due to the ineffable goodness of the Creator to the creature. 5. The Savior’s first words to fallen humanity were: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is drawing near” (Matthew 4:17). Why, until you enter this kingdom, knock on its gates with repentance and prayer. 6. True prayer is the voice of true repentance. When prayer is not animated by repentance, then it does not fulfill its purpose, then God is not pleased with it. He will not despise “a broken spirit, a contrite and humble heart” (Ps. 50:19). 7. The Savior of the world calls the poor in spirit blessed, that is, those who have the most humble concept of themselves, who consider themselves fallen beings, who are here on earth, in exile, outside their true fatherland, which is heaven. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” who pray with a deep consciousness of their poverty, “for to them is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). “Blessed are those who weep” in their prayers from the feeling of their poverty, “for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4) by the gracious consolation of the Holy Spirit, which consists in the peace of Christ and in the love of Christ for all their neighbors. Then none of his neighbors, even his worst enemy, are excluded from the embrace of love of the one praying, then the one praying is reconciled with all the most painful circumstances of earthly life. 8. The Lord, teaching us to pray, likens a praying soul to a widow, offended by a rival, sitting relentlessly before an impartial and impartial judge (Luke 18:1-8). When praying, do not move away from this likeness in your soul. Let your prayer be, so to speak, a constant complaint against the sin that oppresses you. Go deep into yourself, open yourself with attentive prayer: you will see that you are definitely a widow in relation to Christ because of the sin living in you, hostile to you, causing internal struggle and torment in you, making you alien to God. 9. “All day,” David says about himself, he spent the entire day of his earthly life, “lamenting as he walked,” in blissful sadness about his sins and shortcomings: “for my soul is filled with reproach, and there is no healing in my flesh” (Ps. 37:7, 8). Lyadvia is the name given to the procession along the path of earthly life; flesh - the moral state of a person. All steps of all people on this path are filled with stumbling blocks; their moral state cannot be healed by any of their own means and efforts. For our healing, the grace of God is necessary, healing only those who recognize themselves as sick. True recognition of oneself as sick is proven by thorough and constant repentance. 10. “Work for the Lord with fear and rejoice in Him with trembling” (Ps. 2:11), says the Prophet, and another Prophet speaks on behalf of God: “On whom I will look, only to him who is meek and silent, and who trembles at My words” (Is. 66:2). The Lord “look upon the prayer of the humble, and do not despise their prayers” (Ps. 101:18). He is the “giver of life,” that is, salvation, “to the brokenhearted” (Is. 57:15). 11. Even if someone stands at the very height of virtues, if he does not pray as a sinner, his prayer is rejected by God 88 . 12. “On the day on which I do not cry for myself,” said some blessed worker of true prayer, “I consider myself to be in self-delusion” 89. 13. “Even though we undergo many sublime feats,” said Saint John Climacus, “they are not true and fruitless if we do not have a painful feeling of repentance with them.” 90. 14. The sadness of the thought of sins is an honest gift of God, who wears it in his chest with due care and reverence, wears a shrine. It replaces all bodily feats, with a lack of strength to perform them 91. On the contrary, when praying, work is required from a strong body; without it, the heart will not be crushed, prayer will be powerless and untrue 92 . 15. The feeling of repentance protects a praying person from all the wiles of the devil: the devil flees from ascetics who exude from themselves the fragrance of humility, which is born in the heart of the repentant 93 . 16. Bring to the Lord in your prayers the babbling of a child, a simple childish thought - not eloquence, not reason. “Unless you are converted” - as if from paganism and Mohammedanism, from your complexity and duplicity - “and you will,” the Lord told us, “like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3) 94. 17. A baby expresses all its desires by crying: and let your prayer always be accompanied by crying. Not only with the words of prayer, but also with prayerful silence, let your desire for repentance and reconciliation with God, your extreme need for God’s mercy, be expressed through crying. 18. The merit of prayer lies solely in quality, and not in quantity: then quantity is commendable when it leads to quality. Quality always leads to quantity; quantity leads to quality when the worshiper prays carefully 95 . 19. The quality of true prayer is when the mind is attentive during prayer, and the heart sympathizes with the mind. 20. Enclose your mind in the spoken words of prayer and keep it in attention 96. Keep your eyes on your lips, or closed 97: this will help connect your mind with your heart. Pronounce the words with extreme leisurelyness and you will be more comfortable enclosing your mind in the words of prayer: not a single word of your prayer will be uttered without being animated by attention. 21. The mind, enclosed in the words of prayer, attracts the heart to compassion for itself. This sympathy from the heart to the mind is expressed by tenderness, which is a pious feeling that combines sadness with quiet, meek consolation 98 . The necessary accessories of prayer are waiting 99. When you feel dryness and bitterness, do not give up prayer: for your longing and struggle against heartfelt insensibility, God’s mercy, consisting of tenderness, will descend upon you. Tenderness is a gift of God, sent down to those who remain and endure in prayer (Rom. 12:12; Col. 4:2), constantly growing in them, guiding them to spiritual perfection. 22. The mind, standing before the invisible God in attentive prayer, must itself be invisible, like the image of the invisible Divinity, that is, the mind should not represent any form either in itself, or from itself, or in front of itself, it must be completely formless. Otherwise: the mind must be completely alien to daydreaming, no matter how immaculate and holy this dream may seem 100 . 24. During prayer, do not seek delight, do not set your nerves in motion, do not get your blood hot. On the contrary, keep your heart in deep calm, into which it is brought by a feeling of repentance: material fire, the fire of the fallen nature, is rejected by God. Your heart needs to be cleansed by crying repentance and prayer of repentance; when it is cleansed, then God Himself will send down into it His all-holy spiritual fire 101. 25. Attention during prayer calms the nerves and blood, helps the heart to plunge into repentance and remain in it. Divine fire does not disturb the silence of the heart if it descends into the chamber of the heart, when the disciples of Christ are gathered in it - thoughts and feelings borrowed from the Gospel. This fire does not scorch or heat the heart, on the contrary, it irrigates, cools it, reconciles a person with all people and with all circumstances, draws the heart into ineffable love for God and for neighbors 102. 26. Absent-mindedness robs prayer. The one who has prayed absent-mindedly feels a vague emptiness and dryness within himself. One who constantly prays absent-mindedly is deprived of all the spiritual fruits that are usually born from attentive prayer, and acquires a state of dryness and emptiness; from this state is born coldness towards God, despondency, clouding of the mind, weakening of faith, and from them deadness in relation to eternal, spiritual life. Yet, taken together, this is a clear sign that such prayer is not accepted by God. 27. Daydreaming in prayer is even more harmful than absent-mindedness. Absent-mindedness makes prayer fruitless, and daydreaming causes false fruits: self-delusion and, as the Holy Fathers call it, demonic delusion. Images of objects of the visible world and images of the invisible world, created by daydreaming, are imprinted and slowed down in the mind, making it seem material, transferring it from the Divine land of Spirit and Truth to the land of matter and lies. In this country, the heart begins to sympathize with the mind not with a spiritual feeling of repentance and humility, but with a carnal feeling, a bloody and nervous feeling, a timeless and disorderly feeling of pleasure, so much not characteristic of sinners, a feeling of wrong and false imaginary love for God. Criminal and abominable love seems unskillful in the spiritual experiences of a saint, but in fact it is only a disordered sensation of a heart not cleansed of passions, enjoying vanity and voluptuousness set in motion by daydreaming. This state is a state of self-delusion. If a person sharpens it, then the images that appear to him acquire extreme vividness and attractiveness. When they appear, the heart begins to heat up and enjoy lawlessly, or, according to the definition of Holy Scripture, to commit adultery (Ps. 72:27). The mind recognizes such a state as grace-filled, divine: then the transition to obvious demonic delusion is close, in which a person loses autocracy and becomes a plaything and a laughing stock of the evil spirit. God turns away with anger from dreamy prayer that brings a person into this state. And the sentence of Scripture comes true over the one who prays such prayer: “Let his prayer become sin” (Ps. 109:7) 103. 28. Reject apparently good thoughts and apparently bright understandings that come to you during prayer, distracting you from prayer 104. They leave the realm of the false mind and sit, like riders on horses, on vanity. Their gloomy faces are hidden so that the mind of the person praying cannot recognize them as his enemies. But precisely because they are hostile to prayer, distract the mind from it, lead it into captivity and painful enslavement, expose and empty the soul, precisely because they are recognized as enemies and from the realm of the ruler of the world. Spiritual mind, the mind of God, promotes prayer, concentrates a person in himself, immerses him in attention and tenderness, brings to mind reverent silence, fear and surprise, born from the feeling of the presence and greatness of God. This feeling in due time can become very intensified and make prayer for the one praying a terrible judgment seat of God 105. 29. Attentive prayer, free from distraction and daydreaming, is a vision of the invisible God, attracting the vision of the mind and the desire of the heart. Then the mind sees without form, and completely satisfies itself with non-seeing, which surpasses all vision. The reason for this blissful invisibility is the infinite subtlety and incomprehensibility of the Object to which vision is directed. The invisible Sun of Truth - God also emits rays that are invisible, but cognizable by the clear sensation of the soul: they fill the heart with wonderful calmness, faith, courage, meekness, mercy, love for neighbors and God. By these actions, visible in the inner heart cell, a person undoubtedly recognizes that his prayer is accepted by God, begins to believe with living faith and firmly trust in the Lover and Beloved. This is the beginning of the revival of the soul for God and blissful eternity 106. 30. The fruits of true prayer: holy peace of the soul, combined with a quiet, silent joy, alien to daydreaming, conceit and heated impulses and movements, love for neighbors, which does not distinguish good from evil, worthy from unworthy, but intercedes for everyone before God as for itself, as for its own members. From such love for others, the purest love for God will shine forth. 31. These fruits are a gift from God. They are attracted to the soul by its attention and humility, and are preserved by its faithfulness to God. 32. The soul then remains faithful to God when it withdraws from every word, deed and thought of sin, when it immediately repents of those sins into which it is drawn due to its weakness. 33. We prove that we wish to acquire the gift of prayer by patiently sitting down in prayer at the door of prayer. For patience and constancy we receive the gift of prayer. “Lord,” says the Scripture, “give grace-filled prayer to him who prays” (1 Samuel 2:9) patiently with one’s own effort. 34. For beginners, short and frequent prayers are more useful than long ones, separated from each other by a significant amount of time 107 . 35. Prayer is the highest exercise for the mind. 36. Prayer is the head, the source, the mother of all virtues 108. 37. Be wise in your prayer. Do not ask for anything perishable or vain in it, remembering the Savior’s commandment: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all this,” that is, all the needs for temporary life, “will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33) 109. 38. When intending to do something, or wanting something, also in difficult circumstances of life, cast your thoughts in prayer before God: ask for what you consider necessary and useful for yourself; but leave the fulfillment and non-fulfillment of your request to the will of God in faith and trust in the omnipotence, wisdom and goodness of the will of God. This excellent image of prayer was given to us by the One who prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “that the cup appointed for Him might pass by.” “Either way, not My will,” He concluded His prayer to the Father: “But Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). 39. Bring to God a humble prayer for the virtues and pious deeds you perform: cleanse and perfect them through prayer and repentance. Say about them in your prayer what righteous Job said about his children in his daily prayer: “When my sons sinned and in their thoughts they thought evil thoughts against God” (Job 1:5). Malice is cunning: it inconspicuously mixes with virtue, defiles, poisons it. 40. Renounce everything in order to inherit prayer and, raised from the earth on the cross of self-denial, hand over your spirit, soul and body to God, and from Him receive holy prayer, which, according to the teaching of the Apostle and the Universal Church, is the action of the Holy Spirit in a person, when the Spirit dwells in a person (Rom. 8:26) 110. “Whoever has achieved (unceasing prayer) has reached the edge of virtues and has become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit,” said St. Isaac. Whoever neglects to practice attentive prayer, dissolved in repentance, is alien to spiritual success, alien to spiritual fruits, and is in the darkness of diverse self-delusion. Humility is the only altar on which people are allowed to offer prayer sacrifices to God - the only altar from which prayer sacrifices are accepted by God 111; prayer is the mother of all true, divine virtues. It is impossible, no spiritual success is possible for one who has rejected humility, who has not bothered to enter into a sacred union with prayer. Exercise in prayer is the testament of the Apostle: “Pray without ceasing,” the Apostle tells us (1 Thess. 5:17). Exercise in prayer is a commandment of the Lord Himself, a commandment combined with a promise: “Ask,” the Lord invites us, the Lord commands us, “and it will be given to you: seek, and you will find: press, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). “He will not sleep, he will fall asleep” (Ps. 121:4) prayer, until he shows the one who loves it and constantly exercises in it the palace of eternal pleasures, until he leads him into heaven. There she will be transformed into a constant sacrifice of praise. This praise will be unceasingly brought, the chosen ones of God will incessantly proclaim from the unceasing feeling of bliss in eternity, vegetated here on earth and in time, from the seeds of repentance sown by attentive and diligent prayer. Amen. St. Isaac the Syrian. Word 55. These words were spoken by Hieroschemamonk Athanasius, who was silent in the tower of the Svensky Monastery of the Oryol diocese, to a certain wanderer who visited him in 1829. Ladder. Word 7, ch. 64, according to the publication of the Moscow Theological Academy in 1851. St. Isaac the Syrian. Word 89. St. Gregory Sinait. About charm, idea and many other pretexts. Dobrot., part 1. “Whenever the devil sees someone,” says Saint Gregory, “living in tears, he does not remain there, afraid of the weeping that comes.” Ladder, Homily 28, ch. 9. St. Meletius, who labored in the Galician mountain. Poem about prayer; Ladder, Homily 28, ch. 21. Council of the elder, hieromonk Seraphim of Sarov. The fact that it is useful to pray with closed eyes is also said in his 11th instruction on prayer. Edition 1841. Moscow. St. Mark the Ascetic. About those who think that they will be justified by works, ch. 34. Kindness, part 1. St. Gregory Sinait. “How befitting a silent person should sit and say prayer.” Dobrot., part 1. St. Callistus and Ignatius. About silence and prayer. Word 73. Kindness, part 2 and Ladder. Word 28, ch. 42. Ladder. Word 28, ch. 45. St. Maxim Kapsokalivi. Interview with Rev. Gregory Sinait. Dobrot., part 1. St. Simeon the New Theologian. About the first image of prayer in St. Sinaita, ch. 131. Kindness, part 1. Ladder. Word 28, ch. 59. The above-mentioned poem by St. Meletia. A Word about the Hidden Work of Theoliptus, Metropolitan of Philadelphia. Dobrot., part 2. St. Demetrius of Rostov, part 1. The inner man, ch. 4. St. Macarius the Great. Word 3, ch. 1. Ladder. Word 28, title. Other Fathers also teach according to this. St. Isaac the Syrian. Word 5. St. Isaac the Syrian. Word 21. Opinion of Rev. Pimen the Great. Alphabetical Patericon. You might be interested in: