Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Asceticism & Spirituality

Four Homilies on Prayer

St. Theophan the Recluse

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The modern English translation and the cover design are © 2026 Royal Archives. All rights reserved.

The underlying source text is in the public domain.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Translated by Royal Archives

Source: Четыре слова о молитве

Cover: The Angelus (1857–59) by Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875), Wikimedia Commons / Musée d’Orsay, which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:chetyre-slova-o-molitve:en:1

Introduction

The Author

Saint Theophan the Recluse was born Georgy Vasilievich Govorov in 1815, the son of a village priest in the Oryol region of central Russia. He was formed entirely within the schools of the Russian Church, taking his degree at the Kiev Theological Academy, where he was tonsured a monk in 1841 and given the name Theophan. The years that followed carried him across the breadth of the Orthodox world and its learning: he taught and served as rector in several seminaries, joined the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, and spent time as chief priest of the Russian church in Constantinople, with visits to the monasteries of Mount Athos. That exposure to the living tradition of the Christian East—its manuscripts, its elders, its unbroken discipline of prayer—would mark everything he later wrote.

In 1859 he was consecrated bishop and sent to the see of Tambov, and in the summer of 1863 he was transferred to Vladimir, where he governed the diocese for three years. He was, by every account, a conscientious and much-loved pastor who preached constantly, travelled widely among his people, and restored churches. Yet the demands of administration weighed on a man whose deepest desire was silence before God. In 1866 his request to be relieved of his episcopal duties was granted, and he withdrew to the Vysha hermitage in the Tambov diocese, a quiet monastery he had come to love. After some years there he entered strict reclusion, sealing himself in his cell for the remaining decades of his life. From that seclusion flowed the enormous body of writing—spiritual treatises, scriptural commentary, and a vast correspondence answering the letters of ordinary Christians—for which he is now chiefly remembered. It was also in these years that he produced his monumental five-volume Russian Dobrotolyubie, a rendering and expansion of the Greek Philokalia that carried the Church’s hesychast masters into the hands of Russian readers. He reposed in 1894 on the feast of Theophany and was numbered among the saints by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988, during the celebrations of the millennium of the baptism of Rus’. He is commemorated widely across the Orthodox world as one of the great spiritual teachers of the modern age.

The Work: Occasion & Purpose

These four homilies are not a product of the reclusion for which Theophan is best known. They belong to his active episcopate, and their four dates fix them precisely: they were delivered on the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-ninth of November and the twentieth of December, 1864, while their author was the ruling bishop of Vladimir and Suzdal. The first was preached on the feast of the Entrance of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple—a fitting occasion, as the bishop notes, to speak of prayer, “the chief work of the temple.” The next two follow in quick succession, on consecutive days and then a week later, so that the opening three form a tightly linked series delivered within nine days; the fourth comes three weeks afterward as a summation.

The setting shapes the tone throughout. These are sermons spoken aloud from the cathedral to a gathered congregation of townspeople, not chapters composed in a study. Theophan addresses hearers who already pray—“when you gather in the temple, you certainly pray”—and disclaims any intention of teaching them their duty; he means only, he says, to offer “two or three principles” on how to pray, “if not as teaching, then as a reminder.” That modest framing is the key to the whole. He is not writing for monks or specialists. He is taking the loftiest heights of the Church’s contemplative tradition—unceasing prayer, the warmth of the heart, the prayer that never sleeps—and showing an ordinary parish that this summit is open to them, reachable by a graded path that begins with the prayer book already in their hands.

Within Theophan’s large corpus on the interior life, this set stands as one of his most compact and complete statements on prayer as such. He returned to the theme repeatedly, and readers will find kindred material in his other short discourses on prayer and his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer; but here, uniquely, he lays the entire ascent end to end in a single deliberate sequence.

Argument & Structure

The four homilies are built on a single architecture: a ladder of three ascending degrees of prayer, followed by a discourse setting that ladder within the whole of the Christian life. Each of the first three homilies takes one rung.

The first homily, “The beginning of the science of prayer,” treats the lowest and most accessible degree: prayer by recitation—the reading of set prayers from the prayer book or by heart. Theophan’s central insight here is that the outward act is not yet prayer. To stand before an icon, to make prostrations, to read the appointed words, is only “an instrument or means”; prayer itself is “the arising in our heart one after another of reverent feelings toward God.” The whole labor, then, is to fill the recited words with living feeling. He reduces this to two rules—“understand what you read and feel what you understand”—and surrounds them with plain, practical counsel: prepare briefly before praying rather than plunging in cold; keep a modest prayer rule blessed by one’s spiritual father; read the prayers over beforehand, even memorizing them, so their meaning is ready; recover the wandering mind patiently, rereading any words passed over without attention; and when a single word kindles the soul, stop and dwell there rather than press on. The aim of it all is to “taste the sweetness of prayer,” for that taste is what gradually cultivates a prayerful spirit.

The second homily, “Teaching the soul to pray,” ascends to the soul’s own prayer—the point at which the heart, no longer dependent on borrowed words, ascends to God in its own speech. Theophan diagnoses why so many pray for years without ever reaching this: they turn to God only during the morning and evening rule and forget Him through the whole long day between. His remedy is threefold. First, frequent brief invocations flung up from the heart as the day’s needs arise—“Bless, O Lord,” “Save me, O Lord, I perish,” “Lord, have mercy.” Second, the directing of every deed to God’s glory, on the Apostle’s rule that “whether you eat or drink” all be done to God’s glory (1 Cor. 10:31), so that each action becomes an occasion of turning to Him. Third, and foundational, meditation on God — a reverent morning reflection on the divine attributes and works, on God’s goodness, omnipresence, omniscience, and justice, each of which stirs a corresponding disposition of gratitude, awe, or watchfulness in the heart. These three practices, he says, are the most effective instruments for lifting the soul toward habitual, heartfelt prayer.

The third homily, “Unceasing prayer,” reaches the summit: the constant turning of mind and heart to God “accompanied by inner warmth or burning of the spirit.” This, Theophan insists, is the true goal to which the first two degrees are only preparation—not a single interrupted act but a permanent state of the spirit, “like the breathing and beating of the heart.” Marshalling the New Testament’s commands to “pray without ceasing” and to watch in prayer, he presses the point that Scripture would not command what is impossible, and that this angelic standing before God is “attainable by all,” not reserved to a spiritual elite. The means is unwearied labor: as wood rubbed against wood at length bursts into flame, so the soul, rubbed in persevering prayer, at length produces prayer-fire. And he names the three fruits by which the fire is kindled—the fear of God born of meditation, the remembrance of God (or walking before Him) born of dedicating every deed, and the constant warm invocation of the Lord’s name born of frequent heartfelt calling. He closes with a pastoral image of markers set along a road, that those who have travelled a little way may know how far they have come and not stop short of the goal.

The fourth homily, “The union of prayer with other virtues,” steps back from the ladder to guard against a fatal misunderstanding—that prayer might be pursued in isolation. Prayer, Theophan warns, cannot abide in a soul cracked by the absence of virtue, any more than fragrant oil stays in a broken vessel. Prayer is the queen of the virtues and their crowning flower, but a flower must be preceded by root, trunk, and leaf—by faith, love, and ascetic labor. He reads the Apostle’s armor of God (Eph. 6) and wedding garments (Col. 3) to show prayer always set amid a whole company of virtues, and he yields the practical portrait of the prayerful life to another voice, quoting at length the fifteen counsels of Saint Dimitri of Rostov. The homily, and the set, ends on a note of encouragement: what is asked is not a crushing burden but one thing only—zeal for God and the salvation of the soul—which, once awakened, gathers all the soul’s buried goodness around itself and grows of its own accord into prayer.

Theological & Spiritual Significance

The distinctive contribution of these homilies is not any single teaching about prayer but the shape into which Theophan casts the whole: a clear, graduated ladder that carries a person from the first stumbling recitation of a set prayer all the way to unceasing prayer of the heart, with each rung explained in terms a layman can act on the same afternoon. The three degrees—recited prayer, the soul’s own mental prayer, and unceasing prayer with warmth of heart—give ordinary Christians a map of a terrain that the contemplative tradition had often described only for monks. Theophan’s boldest move is his insistence, made explicitly in the third homily, that the summit is “attainable by all” and no mere “high, unattainable state for worldly people.” Preached from a cathedral to a mixed congregation, this is the democratization of hesychast prayer.

Two motifs particular to this set deserve notice. The first is the image, drawn from the ancient fathers, of prayer as the very breath of the spirit: as the body lives while it breathes and dies when breath ceases, so the spirit lives where there is prayer and is lifeless where there is none. Theophan opens with it in the first homily and returns to it in the third, and it does quiet work throughout—it is what makes unceasing prayer not an extraordinary feat but the spirit’s natural respiration, and it is why the whole ascent can be pressed on ordinary people as their birthright rather than a monastic luxury. The second is his unusual pastoral realism about the wandering mind. Far from treating distraction as a mark of failure, he assumes it—“knowing in advance that your mind will run away”—and gives a gentle, repeatable discipline for it: bring the mind back, reread the words it skipped, and expect that the difficulty, faced once, will trouble the next attempt less. This candor about the ordinary struggle of prayer is part of what makes the homilies so usable.

That kinship with the hesychast inheritance runs through every page—the language of the heart, of inner warmth and burning, of watchfulness, of the ceaseless remembrance of God. It is the same current that Theophan would later devote years to channeling into his Russian Dobrotolyubie. Yet these homilies are notable for how lightly they wear that learning. He does not reduce unceasing prayer to the formula of the Jesus Prayer, nor demand the physical techniques some of his sources describe; he speaks of brief invocations of many kinds and of the loving cherishing of the Lord’s name, keeping the path wide enough for any earnest believer to walk. His authorities are woven in without display—a word from Saint Macarius of Egypt on laboring until prayer is granted, Saint John of the Ladder’s saying that prayer is the mother and daughter of the virtues, the meditative example and the fifteen counsels of Saint Dimitri of Rostov. The result is a small work of unusual completeness: a theology of prayer that is at once faithful to the depths of the Christian East and immediately usable by a beginner. Its abiding significance lies in that union—the highest tradition made genuinely available to the ordinary soul.

The Text & This Edition

This edition presents Four Homilies on Prayer in a fresh, modern English translation made from Theophan’s Russian, following the public-domain text of the homilies as preserved and published in Russian (the source used here is the digitized text at azbyka.ru). The translation aims at clear contemporary English while preserving the homiletic warmth and directness of the spoken original—the bishop’s habit of addressing his hearers, his plain analogies, and the rhythm of counsel and encouragement that mark these as sermons rather than treatise.

In keeping with the conventions of this series, the work is attributed to Theophan the Recluse as the Church has always received him, under the name by which he is venerated; those who prepared this English text are credited as translators and never as authors. Scripture references are given in the modern citation style—book, chapter, and verse in Arabic numerals (for example, 1 Cor. 10:31)—and Theophan’s own scriptural quotations are rendered in the register of his discourse rather than conformed to any single standard version. The four homilies retain their original sequence and their concluding dates, which have been kept because they locate the sermons so exactly in the winter of 1864. This is an English-only reading edition, intended to let a present-day reader receive Theophan’s counsel as his Vladimir congregation first heard it: as a practical, step-by-step invitation into the life of prayer.

Suggestions for Reading

Read the four homilies in order and, if possible, one at a time—they were preached that way, each meant to be carried and practiced before the next was heard. The first homily rewards the reader who tries its counsel rather than only studying it; Theophan means his “understand and feel” to be done, not admired. Those drawn to the heights of the third homily should be careful not to skip the fourth, which is his deliberate corrective: unceasing prayer is not a technique to be extracted from the life of virtue but the flower that whole life brings to bloom.

St. Theophan the Recluse

The author of this work on prayer.

The Beginning of the Science of Prayer

On the feast of the Presentation of the Holy Theotokos into the temple, I find it timely to offer you instruction on prayer—the chief work of the temple. The temple is a place of prayer and the field for its development. For us, entry into the temple is entry into the prayer-filled spirit. And the Lord is pleased to call the heart His temple, where entering noetically, we stand before Him, stirring up ascent to Him as fragrant incense of myrrh. Let us then learn how to achieve this!

When you gather in the temple, you certainly pray. And performing prayer here, surely you also do not abandon it at home. Therefore it would be superfluous to speak to you of our obligation to pray when you do pray; but I think it is not at all superfluous to point out two or three principles to you about how to perform prayer, if not as teaching, then as a reminder. The work of prayer is the first work in Christian life. If with respect to the usual order of affairs the saying is true—live a century, learn a century—how much more does it apply to prayer, whose action should have no interruption, and whose degrees have no limit.

I recall the wise custom of the ancient holy fathers, by which they, greeting one another upon meeting—did not ask about health or anything else, but about prayer, saying: how is it, or how does prayer work? For them, the action of prayer was a sign of spiritual life—and they called it the breath of the spirit. There is breathing in the body—the body lives; breathing ceases—life ceases. So it is in the spirit. There is prayer—the spirit lives; there is no prayer—there is no life in the spirit.

Not every performance of prayer or recitation of prayers is prayer, however. To stand before an icon—at home, or here—and to make prostrations is not yet prayer, but belongs to prayer; to read prayers from memory, or from a book, or to listen to another reading them is not yet prayer, but only an instrument or means of manifesting and stirring up prayer. Prayer itself is the arising in our heart one after another of reverent feelings toward God—the feeling of self-abasement, devotion, thanksgiving, glorification, petition, fervent falling before Him, contrition, submission to God’s will, and so on. Our entire concern should be that during our prayer recitations, these and similar feelings fill our soul, so that when the tongue reads prayers, or the ear listens, and the body makes prostrations, the heart is not empty, but some feeling is stirring in it, directed toward God. When these feelings exist, our prayer recitation is prayer; when they do not exist, it is not yet prayer.

It seems that nothing could be simpler and more natural to us than prayer, or the turning of the heart to God. Yet it does not happen in all people and not always. We must arouse it and strengthen it when aroused, or, which is the same thing, we must cultivate the prayer-filled spirit in ourselves. The first means to this is prayer recitation through reading or listening. Perform the prayer recitation as it should be done—and you will surely arouse and strengthen the ascent in your heart to God, or enter into the prayer-filled spirit.

In our prayer books are placed the prayers of the holy fathers—Ephrem the Syrian, Macarius of Egypt, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and other great teachers of prayer. Being inspired by the prayer-filled spirit, they set down in words what this spirit revealed to them and transmitted it to us. In their prayers moves great power of prayer, and whoever devotes his full attention and zeal to them will, by virtue of the law of mutual influence, surely taste the power of prayer in measure with how closely his disposition aligns with the content of the prayer. To make our prayer recitation a truly effective means for cultivating prayer, we must perform it so that both mind and heart receive the content of the prayers composing it. I will point out three very simple means for this: do not approach prayer recitation without prior, though brief, preparation; do not perform it carelessly, but with attention and feeling; and do not immediately after finishing prayers turn to ordinary occupations.

Prayer recitation is undoubtedly our most ordinary activity, but it cannot be that it requires no preparation. What is more ordinary for those who can read and write than reading or writing? Yet when sitting down to write or read, we do not begin at once, but pause for a while, at least enough to place ourselves in a suitable position. How much more are preparatory actions toward prayer necessary before prayer—especially when the preceding activity was from an entirely different realm than prayer.

So then, approaching prayer recitation, whether in the morning or evening, stand for a bit, or sit, or walk about, and labor in that time to clear your mind, drawing it away from all earthly affairs and concerns. Then consider who He is toward whom you will turn in prayer, and who you are, about to begin this prayerful turning to Him—and stir up in your soul a disposition of humbled and reverent, awe-filled standing before God in the heart. In this lies all preparation—to stand reverently before God—small, yet not insignificant. Here the beginning of prayer is laid down; and a good beginning is half the work.

Having established yourself in this way inwardly, then stand before an icon and, having made some prostrations, begin the usual prayer recitation: “Glory to You, our God, glory to You!”—“King of Heaven, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, come and dwell in us,” and so on. Read unhurriedly—think carefully about every word, and lead the sense of every word down to the heart, accompanying this with prostrations. In this lies all the work of reading prayer that is pleasing and fruitful to God. Think carefully about every word and lead the sense of every word to the heart—in other words, understand what you read and feel what you understand. No other rules are needed. These two—understand and feel—fulfilled as they should be, adorned every prayer recitation with full dignity and impart all fruitful action to it. You read: “cleanse us from all defilement,”—feel your defilement, desire purity, and hopefully seek it from the Lord. You read: “forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors,”—and in your soul forgive all, and with your heart ask the Lord’s forgiveness for yourself as one who has forgiven all. You read: “Your will be done,”—and in your heart completely surrender your lot to the Lord and show unreserved readiness to receive with equanimity all that the Lord is pleased to send you. If you act thus at every verse of your prayer, you will have true prayer recitation.

To be more successful in performing it this way, do the following:

1) Have a prayer rule, with the blessing of your spiritual father—not a large one, but such that you can perform it unhurriedly, in the normal course of your affairs;

2) Before you pray, in free time read carefully into the prayers that form your rule, understand fully every word and feel it, so that you may know beforehand what feeling should be in your soul at each word, and even better, if you memorize the appointed prayers. When you do this, it will be easy for you during prayer recitation to understand and feel. One difficulty will remain: the fleeting mind will constantly run off to other matters. Here is what you must do:

3) You must exert effort to preserve attention, knowing in advance that your mind will run away. Then, when during prayer it does run away—bring it back; it runs away again—bring it back again; so each time. But every time that something is read during the mind’s running away—and consequently without attention and feeling—do not forget to read it again; and even if your mind runs away several times at the same place, read it several times until you read it with understanding and feeling. Overcome this difficulty once—the next time it may not happen, or not with such force. This is how you must act when the mind runs away and scatters. But it can also happen that some word affects the soul so powerfully that the soul does not wish to continue further in prayer recitation, and although the tongue reads the prayers, the mind keeps running back to that place which affected it so. In such a case:

4) Stop, do not read further; instead, dwell with attention and feeling at that place, feed your soul on it, or on the thoughts it produces. And do not hurry to tear yourself away from this state—so that if time does not allow, leave your rule incomplete rather than disturb this state. It may overshadow you, perhaps, throughout the entire day, like your Guardian Angel!

Such grace-filled influences on the soul during prayer recitation show that the spirit of prayer is beginning to penetrate, and that, consequently, preserving this state is the most reliable means for cultivating and strengthening in us the prayer-filled spirit.

Finally, when you finish your prayer recitation, do not immediately turn to some occupation, but again stand for a bit and think about what you have accomplished and what it obligates you to, striving, if you have been granted something to feel during prayer, to preserve it after prayer as well. However, if anyone truly performs his prayer recitation as it should be done, he himself will not wish to quickly busy himself with affairs. Such is the nature of prayer! What our ancestors said upon returning from Constantinople: whoever has tasted what is sweet will not wish for what is bitter—comes true for everyone who has prayed well during his prayer recitation. And it should be known that tasting this sweetness of prayer is the very goal of prayer recitation—and that if prayer recitation cultivates the prayer-filled spirit, it does so precisely through this tasting.

If you will fulfill these few rules, you will soon see the fruit of prayerful labor. And those who fulfill them even without this instruction already taste this fruit. Every prayer recitation will leave a trace of prayer in the soul—continuous repetition of it in the same manner will root it in you, and perseverance in this labor will graft the prayer-filled spirit itself. May the Lord grant it to you through the prayers of our Most Pure Lady the Theotokos!

I have shown you the first, initial way of cultivating the prayer-filled spirit—that is, the performance of prayer recitation in accordance with its purpose, at home morning and evening and here in the temple. But this is not yet everything. Tomorrow, God willing, I will show you another way. Amen. November 21, 1864.

Teaching the Soul to Pray

Yesterday I showed you one way of cultivating in yourself the prayer-filled spirit—namely, the performance of our prayer recitations in accordance with their purpose. But here only the beginning of the science of prayer is laid down; we must go further. Remember how people learn languages, for example. At first they memorize words and forms of speech from books. But they do not stop at this alone, but strive with its help to reach, and truly do reach, the point where they themselves, without the aid of what they have memorized, conduct properly a long speech in the language being learned. So must we proceed in the matter of prayer. We learn to pray from prayer books—praying by means of ready prayers transmitted to us by the Lord and the holy fathers who have advanced in prayer. But we must not stop at this alone; we must go further and, having grown accustomed through mind and heart to turn to God with outside help, we must attempt our own ascent to Him—and reach the point where the soul itself, with its own, so to speak, speech, enters into prayerful conversation with God, itself ascends to Him, opens itself to Him and confesses what is in it and what it desires.

And we must teach the soul this. I will indicate to you briefly what must be done in order to succeed in this science.

The very practice, with reverence, attention, and feeling, of praying from prayer books leads to this. For as water flows out by itself from a vessel that is overflowing, so from a heart filled through prayer recitations with holy feelings, the soul’s own prayer to God will begin to flow forth by itself. But there are also special rules directed exclusively to this goal, which every one desiring success in prayer should set for himself to fulfill.

Why is it, tell me, that after praying from prayer books for so many years sometimes people still do not have prayer in the heart? I think, among other reasons, because they only somewhat exert themselves to ascend to God at the time when they perform their prayer rule; during all the rest of the time they do not even remember God.

They finish, for example, their morning prayers and think that in relation to God everything has been fulfilled by that; then the whole day—only task after task—and they do not turn to God at all; only toward evening does it occur to them that soon they must again stand for prayer and perform their prayer recitation. From this it happens that if the Lord gives some good feeling in the morning, it is stifled by the tumult and busyness of the day. From the same cause evening does not bring a desire to pray—a person cannot master himself to soften his soul even a little, and prayer generally does not come easily or mature. This wrongness—is it not nearly universal?—must be corrected; that is, we must arrange it so that the soul does not turn to God only when standing in prayer, but throughout the entire day, as much as possible, continuously ascends to Him and remains with Him. For this:

First, you must during the day frequently call out to God from the heart in brief words, according to the needs of your soul and current affairs. When you begin something, for example, say: “Bless, O Lord!” When you finish a task, say: “Glory to You, O Lord,”—and not with the tongue alone, but with the feeling of the heart. When some passion arises, say: “Save me, O Lord, I perish.” When a darkness of troubling thoughts comes upon you, cry out: “Lead my soul out of prison.” When evil deeds present themselves, and sin draws you toward them, pray: “Guide me, O Lord, on the path,” or “Let my feet not be moved.” When sins oppress you and draw you into despair, cry out with the voice of the tax collector: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” So in every circumstance. Or simply say often: “Lord, have mercy”; “Lady, Theotokos, have mercy on me,” “Holy Angel of God, my guardian, defend me,” or call out with some other word. Only make these invocations as often as possible, striving always that they proceed from the heart, as if wrung from it. When we act this way, there will be frequent mental ascents to God from the heart, frequent turnings to God, frequent prayer—and this frequency will impart the habit of mental conversation with God.

But for the soul to cry out thus, we must first make it turn everything to the glory of God—all its doing, great and small. And this is the second way to teach the soul to turn to God more often during the day. For if we establish for ourselves the law to fulfill the Apostle’s commandment to do all things to the glory of God, even “whether you eat or drink” (1 Cor. 10:31), then surely, with each deed we will remember God, and remember not simply, but with fear, as if to avoid at some point acting wrongly and offending God in some deed. This will make us turn to God with fear and prayer to ask for help and understanding. As we are almost constantly doing something, we will almost constantly turn to God in prayer, and consequently almost continuously practice the science of prayerful ascent from the heart to God.

But for the soul to fulfill this—that is, to do all things to the glory of God—as it should, we must dispose it to this from early morning—from the very beginning of the day, before “the human goes out to his work and to his labor until evening” (Ps. 103:23). This disposition is produced by meditation on God. And this is the third way of teaching the soul to turn frequently to God. Meditation on God is reverent reflection on God’s divine attributes and actions and on how knowing them and their relation to us obligates us—reflection on God’s goodness, justice, wisdom, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, on creation and providence, on the arrangement of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ, on grace and God’s word, on holy mysteries, on the Kingdom of Heaven. About whatever of these subjects you begin to reflect, this reflection will surely fill your soul with reverent feeling toward God. Begin to reflect, for example, on God’s goodness, and you will see that you are surrounded by God’s mercies both bodily and spiritually, and you would have to be stone not to fall before God in an outpouring of feelings of gratitude. Begin to reflect on God’s omnipresence—you will understand that you are everywhere before God, and God is before you, and you cannot but be filled with reverent fear. Begin to reflect on God’s omniscience, you will know that nothing in you is hidden from God’s eyes, and you will surely resolve to be strictly watchful over the movements of your heart and mind so as not to offend the all-seeing God in some way. Begin to reason about God’s justice—and you will be convinced that no evil deed will remain without punishment, and you will surely resolve to cleanse all your sins through heartfelt sorrow before God and repentance. Thus, about whatever divine attribute or action you begin to reflect, every such reflection will fill your soul with reverent feelings toward God and dispositions toward Him. It directly directs all of a person’s being toward God and is therefore the most direct means to accustom the soul to ascend to God. The most fitting and convenient time for this is morning, when the soul is not yet burdened by multitudes of impressions and cares about tasks, and specifically after morning prayer. Finish your prayer, sit down, and with your mind sanctified in prayer, begin to reflect now on one divine attribute or action, tomorrow on another, and produce in your soul the corresponding disposition. “Go,” said the holy Dimitri of Rostov, “go, holy meditation on God, and let us plunge into reflection on the great works of God,” and he would pass through in thought either the works of creation and providence, or the miracles of the Lord Savior, or His passion, or something else, stirred his heart thereby and began to pour out his soul in prayer. So everyone can do. There is little labor—only desire and determination are needed; but there is much fruit.

So here are three ways, besides the prayer rule, to teach the soul to ascend in prayer to God: devote some time in the morning to meditation on God; turn every deed to the glory of God, and frequently turn to God with brief invocations. When meditation on God is well performed in the morning, it will leave a deep disposition for thinking about God. Thinking about God will make the soul carefully perform all its actions, both inner and outer, and turn them to God’s glory. And these two will place the soul in such a state that frequently there will flow from it prayerful invocations to God. These three—meditation on God, doing all things to God’s glory, and frequent invocations—are the most effective instruments of noetic and heart prayer. Each of them raises the soul to God. Whoever resolves to practice them will soon acquire the habit of placing ascent in his heart toward God. The labor in this is like climbing a mountain. The higher one climbs the mountain, the more freely and easily one breathes. So here too, the more one grows accustomed to the shown practices, the higher one lifts the soul, and the higher the soul rises, the more freely prayer will work in it. Our soul by nature is an inhabitant of the higher divine world. There it should dwell uninterruptedly both in thought and in heart; but the weight of earthly thoughts and attachments draws it down and burdens it. The shown ways tear it from the earth little by little, and finally will tear it away completely. When they have torn it away completely, then the soul will enter its own domain and will dwell sweetly on high—here spiritually and mentally, and afterwards will be deemed worthy to abide before God’s face in the ranks of angels and saints with its very being. May the Lord deem you all worthy of this through His grace. Amen. November 22, 1864.

Unceasing Prayer

I have explained to you briefly two kinds or degrees of prayer: prayer by recitation, when we pray to God through the prayers of others, and our own mental prayer, when we ascend to God mentally through meditation on God, dedication of all things to God, and frequent invocations from the heart to Him.

But this is not yet all. There is a third kind, or degree, of prayer, which constitutes true prayer itself, and to which the first two serve only as preparation. Namely: the unceasing turning of mind and heart to God, accompanied by inner warmth or burning of the spirit. This is the goal to which prayer must reach, and the aim that every laborer in prayer should keep in mind, so as not to labor fruitlessly in the work of prayer.

Recall what is said of prayer in God’s word: “Watch and pray”, says the Lord (Matt. 26:41). “Be sober, be watchful”, teaches the Apostle Peter (1 Pet. 5:8). “Persist in prayer, being watchful in it” (Col. 4:2); “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17); “at all times pray with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” (Eph. 6:18), commands the Apostle Paul, explaining in other places the reason why this is and why it should be—because, he says, “your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3), and because “the Spirit of God dwells in you” (1 Cor. 3:16)—“through whom we cry out: Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15). From these instructions and commandments you cannot fail to see that prayer is not some single, interrupted action, but is a state of the spirit, constant and uninterrupted, like the breathing and beating of the heart in the body, which are constant and uninterrupted.

Let me explain this with an example. The sun stands in the middle, and all our planets circle around it, all gravitate toward it, and all are constantly turned toward it in some way. But what the sun is in the material world, God is in the spiritual world—the divine sun of the mind. Transport yourself in thought to heaven; what do you see there? Angels, who, by the word of the Lord, ever gaze upon the face of their Father in heaven. All bodiless spirits and all the saints in heaven are turned toward God, direct their noetic eyes toward Him, and do not wish to tear them away from Him because of the inexpressible blessedness flowing from this beholding of God. But what the angels and saints do in heaven, we must accustom ourselves to do on earth—to grow accustomed to an angel-like, unceasing prayerful standing before God in the heart. Whoever achieves this becomes a true teacher of prayer. How then can we be deemed worthy of such great blessing?!

I answer this briefly thus: you must labor in prayer untiringly, earnestly, hopefully, striving to reach, as the promised land, the burning of the spirit with sober attention to God. Labor in prayer and—praying about all things, above all pray about this goal of prayer—the burning of the spirit—and truly you will receive what you seek. Thus assures us Saint Macarius of Egypt, who through deed bore the labor and tasted the fruit of prayer. “If,” he says, “you do not have prayer, labor in prayer, and the Lord, seeing your labor and your patient labor in it, how earnestly you desire this blessing, will grant you this prayer” (Homily 19). There is labor only until this goal. When the fire, of which the Lord speaks, is kindled: “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled” (Luke 12:49), then labor ceases, there begins easy, free, joy-giving prayer.

Do not think that this refers to some very high, unattainable state for worldly people. No. It is truly a high state, but attainable by all. After all, everyone at times feels during prayer an inflow of warmth and zeal, when the soul, having detached itself from all, enters deeply into itself and prays fervently to God. That which sometimes comes, as it were, an inspiration of the prayerful spirit, must be brought to a constant state—and the goal of prayer will be reached.

The means to this, as I have said, is prayerful labor. When wood is rubbed against wood, it grows warm and produces fire. So when the soul is rubbed in prayerful labor, it at length produces prayer fire. Prayerful labor consists of the proper performance of those two kinds of prayer I have already spoken of—the reverent, attentive, and feeling-filled performance of our ordinary prayer recitations, and then teaching the soul to ascend frequently to God through meditation on God, turning all things to God’s glory, and frequent invocations to God from the heart. We pray morning and evening: there is a long distance between them. If we turn to God only in these times, then, however earnestly one prays, during the day or night everything scatters again, and by the time for prayer the soul again becomes cold and empty, as before. Even if one prays again earnestly, but if one grows cold and scatters again, what good is that?! This will mean—to build and to tear down, build and tear down; only labor. If now we resolve not only morning and evening to perform the prayer rule with attention and feeling, but also besides this to practice daily meditation on God, turn every deed to God’s glory, and frequently call to God from the heart in brief prayerful words, then this long interval from morning prayer to evening prayer, and back again, we will fill with frequent turnings to God, pure prayerful acts. Although this will not be unceasing prayer, it will be very frequently repeated prayer, and the more frequently it is repeated, the nearer it will approach unceasing prayer. In every way this labor stands on the threshold of the latter, as a necessary step.

For suppose that you fulfill this labor each day without fail, untiringly—consider what must come about in your soul?

From meditation on God there will be born the fear of God. For the fear of God is in itself the grasping by reverent thought and the reception by feeling of God’s infinite perfections and actions. From turning every deed of ours to God’s glory there will be born the remembrance of God, or walking before God; for walking before God means: whatever you do, remember that you are before God. Finally, from frequent invocations to God, or in other words from frequent outpourings from the heart of reverent feelings toward God, there will be born constant warm, or loving, invocation of God’s name. When these three visit the soul: the fear of God, the remembrance of God, or walking before God, and this loving turning of the heart to God, or loving cherishing of the sweetest name of the Lord in the heart—then the spiritual fire of which I spoke at the beginning will surely be kindled in the heart, and it will bring with it deep peace, unceasing sobriety, living vigilance. The person will enter then into that state, beyond which there is nothing he should wish for on earth, and which is the true foretaste of the blessed state awaiting all in the future. Here is accomplished in deed what the Apostle said: “your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).

These three are what you should strive for in your prayerful labor. They are themselves the reward of labor and at the same time the key to the hidden temple of the Kingdom of Heaven. Having opened the door with them, we enter within, are brought to the footstool of God’s throne, and from the heavenly Father receive the approving word, the touch and embrace, for which all bones cry out: Lord—O Lord! Who is like You? About this, then, pray in your prayerful labor and sigh daily: when will I come and appear before Your face, O Lord? My face seeks Your face, O Lord, I will seek it.

To one desiring to know how to grow perfect in these three—fear of God, remembrance of God, and this loving unceasing invocation of God’s name—I will briefly answer: begin to seek—and the deed itself will teach how to find; hold fast to one law only: set aside all that hinders them, earnestly pursue all that is beneficial to them. And the deed itself will teach this distinction. I will only add the following to this instruction.

When you begin in your heart to hold yourself as the body holds itself, embraced from all sides by warmth, or when you begin to hold yourself as one holds oneself before a great person, with fear and attention, as if not to offend them in some way, despite the freedom to move and act, or see that in your soul there is beginning to be the same thing toward the Lord as there is with a bride toward her beloved bridegroom, then know that the hidden Visitor of souls is near, at the door, and He will enter and dine in you with you.

And these few signs, I think, are sufficient as a guide for zealous seekers. All this has been said only with the aim that those of you who are zealous in prayer know the final goal of prayer and, having labored a little and achieved something small, not think that you have achieved everything—do not grow weak in labor from that, and thus do not set a barrier to further ascents in the degrees of prayer. As on great roads there are set markers so that those going and riding know how far they have gone and how much remains; so in our spiritual life there are, as it were, signs that determine the degree of perfection of life, and they are marked out so that those striving for perfection, knowing where they have reached and how much remains to go, do not stop halfway and thus do not deprive themselves of the fruit of their labors, which, perhaps, is right there, just two or three more turns away.

I will conclude my discourse with earnest prayer that the Lord grant you understanding of all things, that you all reach the measure of a mature person, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Amen. November 29, 1864.

The Union of Prayer With Other Virtues

I have spoken to you three times about prayer: about the prayer when people read prayers with attention, about the prayer when they themselves ascend to God in mind and heart, and about the prayer when they stand before God unceasing in the burning of the spirit. The Lord has shown us different degrees and kinds of prayer so that everyone, according to the measure of their strength, could participate in the good of prayer. For the work of prayer is a great work. As I have said, it is both the sign and the sustenance of spiritual life. Therefore one must strive above all for perfection in it.

How to succeed in some kind of prayer I have partly told you. Now I wish to remind you, as a warning, that it is difficult, and perhaps nearly impossible, to succeed in prayer if we do not at the same time care for other virtues. If we compare prayer to a fragrant compound and the soul to a vessel for it, we understand that as a fragrant compound will not remain in a cracked vessel, so prayer will not abide in a soul that is broken through the lack of any virtue.

If we compare one who prays to a whole body, we find the following lesson: just as the legless, for example, cannot walk, however sound everything else in them may be, so one lacking active virtues cannot approach God, or reach God in prayer. Heed the Apostolic teachings and you will see that with them prayer never stands alone, but always with a whole multitude of virtues. Behold, the Apostle Paul prepares a Christian for spiritual combat and clothes him in all the armor of God. Look—what are these? The belt around the waist—truth, the breastplate—righteousness, the shoes—the gospel of peace, the shield—faith, the helmet—hope, the sword—God’s word. There are the instruments! And after all of them, as in a fortress, he seats his warrior in prayer, saying: “at all times pray with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” (Eph. 6:18). And surely with prayer alone you can defeat all enemies, but to be strong in prayer, you must advance in faith, hope, knowledge of truth, righteousness and all the rest. In another place the same Apostle, adorning the soul as a bride of Christ with wedding garments, says: “put on tender compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, forgive grievances, love, …peace, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly through wisdom.” And then, as the crown of beauty, he places on the head prayer: “teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing in your hearts to the Lord with grace” (Col. 3:12–16). And in many other places in God’s word prayer is placed in inseparable union with all virtues, as their queen, after which they all rush and which draws them all after it, or better yet, as their fragrant flower. For a flower to appear and attract the eyes, it must be preceded by leaves, a trunk with branches, and roots; so for prayer to flower as a flower in the soul, there must precede and accompany it good spiritual dispositions and labors, which in relation to it are: sometimes like roots, such as faith, sometimes like a trunk with branches, such as many-faceted love, sometimes like leaves, such as all spiritual and physical ascetic labors. When such a holy tree has been planted in the soul, then on it, now in the morning, now in the evening, now in the course of the day, according to its nature, the flower of prayer will freely bloom and fill with fragrance our entire inner sanctuary.

All this I bring to your remembrance so that none of you think: I labor in prayer, and that is enough. No—you must care for all things equally and be zealous in all—both pray and advance in every virtue. It is true that you cannot advance in virtues without prayer; but you must still labor in doing good together with prayer, so that prayer has something to help you with. And to succeed in prayer you must pray; but the labor of prayer must be used as the labor of doing good is used there. You must have care for all things and show yourself diligent in all. You know, this is the same as in clocks. When do clocks run correctly and accurately show the time? When every wheel and every other part in them is whole, stands in its place and in its connection. So in our inner, soul-level mechanism: the direction of the spirit, like the hand, points truly, that is, directly toward God, when all other parts of the soul are whole and stand in their order, are, so to speak, wrought into virtue.

What virtues specifically should surround prayer, or what kind of prayer-filled and virtuous life should a Christian establish in himself, I will indicate to you not in my own words, but in the words of the holy bishop Dimitri of Rostov, who briefly portrays this in the following instruction (“God-Inspired Christian Instruction,” Part 1, p. 288). I ask you to take heed!

1) When you rise from sleep, let your first thought be of God, your first word and prayer be to God, your Creator and the Sustainer of your life, who is able always to kill and make alive, to strike and heal, to save and destroy.

2) Bow down and give thanks to God, who raised you from sleep, and has not destroyed you for your lawlessness, but in longsuffering awaits your conversion.

3) Begin toward the better, saying with the Psalmist: “I said: now I have begun” (Ps. 76:11), and so on. For the path to heaven no one accomplishes well unless they begin well each day.

4) In the morning be a Seraph in prayer, a Cherub in deeds, an Angel in your conduct.

5) Never waste time, except in necessary tasks.

6) In all deeds and words and thoughts, keep your mind in God; write nothing else in your mind except Christ, let no image touch your pure heart except the pure image of Christ God and Savior.

7) Stir yourself to love of God in all ways, as much as you are able, and especially through this reflection, speaking it with the Psalmist within yourself: “in my meditation a fire shall kindle” (Ps. 38:4).

8) Whom you wish to love unceasingly, on His presence always gaze with inner eyes, and therefore abstain from every evil deed and word and thought. Wherefore do all things honorably, humbly and with filial fear, speak, and think.

9) Let meekness with praise and humility with honor be together.

10) Let your speech be quiet, humble, honorable and profitable: and let silence discern the words you have to speak. But let no idle and corrupt word issue from your lips.

11) If laughter happens, let it be only a slight smile, and even that not often.

12) Guard yourself from anger, hasty temper, and quarreling: even in anger, keep yourself measured.

13) In eating and drinking, temperance must always be preserved.

14) In all things be compassionate, and God will bless you, just as people will also praise you.

15) Death is the end of all things, and one must always pray concerning it.

Do you see what a beautiful life is laid out for the Christian who prays? True, there is more said here about prayer—that is, about the noetic and heartfelt turning toward God—but various virtues are also indicated, and all of them are such that prayer cannot even come into being without them: each person will experience and learn this by their own practice, as soon as they begin to exercise themselves in prayer as they should. How can you pray when you are weighed down by intemperance, or disturbed by anger and vexation, or at odds with someone, or distracted by cares and scattered attention? But if you do not have these failings, then you must have the opposite—that is, virtues. This is why the holy John of the Ladder says of prayer that it is the mother and daughter of the virtues.

Hearing this, someone may think: “What great demands! What a heavy and weighty burden! Where will we find the strength and time for this?” But be encouraged, brothers! Very little is needed, but you need to have only one thing: zeal for God and for the salvation of your soul in him. The soul by nature possesses much that is good, only it is buried under all kinds of degradation. As soon as zeal for salvation and pleasing God is awakened in the soul, immediately all its goodness gathers around this zeal, and much good at once appears in the soul. Then zeal, strengthened by God’s grace and aided by this initial good, begins to acquire all other virtues and become enriched by them—and everything begins to grow gradually. Zeal itself already contains the seed of prayer. At first it will be nourished by natural goodness, but then it will begin to be nourished by the goodness acquired through effort, and will grow and strengthen, and will increase and begin to sing and offer to God in the heart a beautiful and many-faceted hymn of prayer.

May the Lord help you to succeed in this. Amen.
December 20, 1864.

Scripture Index

Every Scripture reference identified in this book, sorted in canonical Bible order. Tap a reference to jump to the verse where it appears.

Psalms

Psalms 38:44. The Union of Prayer With Other Virtues (4.12)

Psalms 76:114. The Union of Prayer With Other Virtues (4.8)

Psalms 103:232. Teaching the Soul to Pray (2.8)

Matthew
Matthew 26:413. Unceasing Prayer (3.3)
Luke
Luke 12:493. Unceasing Prayer (3.5)
Romans
Romans 8:153. Unceasing Prayer (3.3)
1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians 3:163. Unceasing Prayer (3.3)

1 Corinthians 10:312. Teaching the Soul to Pray (2.7)

Ephesians

Ephesians 6:183. Unceasing Prayer (3.3); 4. The Union of Prayer With Other Virtues (4.3)

Colossians

Colossians 3:33. Unceasing Prayer (3.3, 3.9)

Colossians 3:12–164. The Union of Prayer With Other Virtues (4.3)

Colossians 4:23. Unceasing Prayer (3.3)
1 Thessalonians
1 Thessalonians 5:173. Unceasing Prayer (3.3)
1 Peter
1 Peter 5:83. Unceasing Prayer (3.3)

Illustration Credits

Sources and attribution for every illustration in this book. Each entry lists the photographer or artist when known, the licence under which the image was released, and a link to the original page on Wikimedia Commons or the equivalent host. Images released into the public domain are listed without further obligation; images released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence are reproduced here under the same licence.

1. St. Theophan the Recluse

Photograph by P.F. Borel.

Licence: Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Author: Saint Theophan the Recluse

Saint Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894) is among the most beloved teachers of the spiritual life in the Russian Orthodox Church. He was born on 10 January 1815 in the village of Chernavsk, in the Oryol province of central Russia, and given the name Georgy Vasilyevich Govorov. His father was a parish priest, and the boy was raised in the ordered piety of a country rectory. He studied first at the theological school in Livny, then at the Oryol Seminary, and finally at the Kiev Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1841. The ancient monasteries of Kiev, and above all the Monastery of the Caves, left a deep mark on him during those years.

In his last year as a student, in 1841, Georgy Govorov was tonsured a monk and given the name Theophan, after Saint Theophan the Confessor, a defender of the holy icons. He was soon ordained hieromonk and set on the path of teaching and administration in the Church’s schools: he served in the theological schools of Kiev, as inspector at Novgorod, and as an instructor in moral and pastoral theology at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy. For several years he lived in the Christian East, attached to the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, where in Jerusalem, Constantinople, and on Mount Athos he studied, copied, and gathered the writings of the Fathers that he would later render into Russian. In 1857 he was appointed rector of the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy.

In 1859 he was consecrated Bishop of Tambov and Shatsk, and in 1863 he was transferred to the ancient see of Vladimir. As a bishop he was known for gentleness, tireless preaching, and care for the education of his people, founding diocesan schools for girls in both dioceses. Yet the labours of administration drew him away from the inner life he most desired. In 1866, at his own request, he was released from the government of his diocese and withdrew to the Vyshensky Hermitage, a quiet monastery he had come to love while at Tambov.

At Vysha, Saint Theophan gradually gave himself wholly to prayer and writing. Beginning in 1872 he entered strict reclusion: he no longer left his cell for the monastery church, received almost no visitors, and lived for the remaining years in two small rooms, celebrating the Divine Liturgy alone in a chapel he had arranged. This seclusion, far from being idleness, became the most fruitful period of his life. From it flowed the works for which he is remembered: The Path to Salvation and What the Spiritual Life Is; his translation and great expansion of the Philokalia (the Russian Dobrotolyubie) and of other monastic writings; Unseen Warfare; his commentaries on almost all the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, together with expositions of several Psalms; and an immense correspondence, in which he answered, often at the rate of dozens of letters a day, the spiritual questions of people throughout Russia. In 1890 the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy conferred on him a doctorate in theology.

Saint Theophan reposed on 6 January 1894, the Feast of the Theophany whose name he bore, at the age of seventy-nine, and was buried at the Vysha monastery. In 1988, during the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church that celebrated the millennium of the Baptism of Rus’, he was numbered among the saints. His feast is kept on 10 January.

His significance for the Church lies in the way he gathered the whole ascetical and patristic inheritance of Orthodoxy and made it speak to ordinary Christians. He wrote not for specialists but for anyone seeking God, tracing with unusual clarity the movements of the heart, the discipline of unceasing prayer, and the long work by which grace and human freedom together bring a soul to salvation. In his Scripture commentaries this same pastoral aim is at work: he reads the sacred text through the eyes of the ancient Fathers and turns every doctrine toward the reader’s own inner life. For this the Russian Church honours him as a Father in her own age and a sure guide on the path of salvation.

Colophon

Four Homilies on Prayer
by St. Theophan the Recluse.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
The Angelus (1857–59)
by Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875), Wikimedia Commons / Musée d’Orsay, which is in the public domain.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Introduction
- The Beginning of the Science of Prayer
- Teaching the Soul to Pray
- Unceasing Prayer
- The Union of Prayer With Other Virtues
- Scripture Index
- Illustration Credits
- The Author: Saint Theophan the Recluse
- Colophon