Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life: Modern English
Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Asceticism & Spirituality

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life

Modern English

Saint 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: Письма о молитве и духовной жизни

Cover: Praying Monk by Jacob Maris (Dutch, 1837–1899), Rijksmuseum, which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:theophan_letters:en:1

Introduction

The Author

Theophan the Recluse was born Georgy Vasilyevich Govorov on the tenth of January, 1815, in the village of Chernavsk, in the Oryol region of central Russia. His father was a parish priest, and the household that raised him was the ordinary, devout, book-loving world of the rural Russian clergy—a world in which the round of church services, the reading of the Psalter, and the memory of local ascetics were the natural furniture of a boy’s imagination. He passed through the seminary at Oryol and then, from 1837 to 1841, through the Kiev Theological Academy, one of the great centers of learning in the Russian Church. Kiev left two lasting marks on him. The first was intellectual: he emerged a trained theologian, at home in Scripture, the Fathers, and the scholarly languages. The second was closer to the bone. While still a student he was tonsured a monk and took the name Theophan, and the nearness of the Kiev Caves Lavra, with its centuries of buried ascetics, fixed in him early the conviction that the goal of all learning is the transformation of the living person.

The decades that followed were outwardly a distinguished academic and administrative career. He taught and governed in a succession of schools—rector of church schools in Kiev, rector of the seminary at Novgorod, professor and assistant inspector at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy—and for a time served the Russian ecclesiastical mission in Jerusalem and Constantinople, where he saw the living monasticism of the Christian East at first hand and deepened his reading of the Greek ascetic Fathers. In May of 1859 he was consecrated Bishop of Tambov, and in 1863 he was transferred to the see of Vladimir. By every measure of his church he was a successful hierarch, founding schools, preaching, visiting his far-flung parishes. Yet the demands of governance pressed against a deeper pull. He had come to believe that his own calling lay not in administration but in the interior life and in writing, and in 1866 he petitioned to be released from his diocese. The request was granted; he withdrew to the quiet Vysha Hermitage, a monastery he had come to love, deep in the Tambov countryside.

For the first years at Vysha he lived as an ordinary retired bishop, attending the services and receiving guests. Then, in 1872, he took the step that gave him his name. He entered strict reclusion—closing his door to visitors, keeping contact with no one but his confessor, and no longer even going out to the monastery church. He fitted out a small chapel in his own quarters and there celebrated the Liturgy, for the first years on Sundays and feasts, and in his last years daily and alone. He would remain in this seclusion for twenty-two years, until his death on the sixth of January, 1894. It was not a withdrawal into idleness. Behind the closed door the recluse worked with extraordinary energy: he produced commentaries on Scripture, treatises on the moral and spiritual life such as The Path to Salvation and What the Spiritual Life Is and How to Be Attuned to It, and above all his great labor of translation, a five-volume Russian Dobrotolyubie — a free and expanded rendering of the Greek Philokalia, the anthology of ascetic and contemplative Fathers, made deliberately accessible to literate laypeople rather than to specialists alone. The Russian Church glorified him as a saint in June of 1988, at the council held during the celebrations of the thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Rus; he is commemorated in January, and his relics rest at Vysha.

The Work: Occasion and Purpose

The recluse’s door was closed, but his desk was not. Alongside the books, a second and quieter stream of work flowed out of the cell in the form of letters. Word had spread that a learned bishop who had renounced the world was answering, personally and at length, whoever wrote to him with a spiritual difficulty, and the correspondence grew until it reportedly reached twenty to forty letters a day. To these he replied by hand, one by one, for the rest of his life. This was the paradox of his reclusion: a man who would not open his door to a visitor kept up, through the post, one of the widest pastoral ministries in the Russian Church of his century. The seclusion did not cut him off from souls; it concentrated and multiplied his reach.

The present collection gathers one hundred and thirteen of these letters, chosen and arranged around a single theme—prayer and the spiritual life. They were written to lay correspondents far more often than to monastics: to devout women of the merchant and landed families, to householders, to parish priests, to the occasional convert or seeker, people living in the ordinary conditions of family, work, and worldly obligation. Each letter answers a real person’s real question. Someone has asked whether to take up the Jesus Prayer; someone reports a new experience in prayer and wants to know whether to trust it; someone has grown bored and cold and cannot understand why; someone is anxious about a technique read in a book. The bishop writes back to that person and to that difficulty. This is what gives the letters their particular flavor and their durable usefulness. They are not a treatise disguised as correspondence but genuine spiritual direction, shaped to the capacity of the one addressed, plain-spoken, sometimes blunt, often warm, never abstract for its own sake.

The collection therefore stands in a definite relation to the recluse’s larger books. Where The Path to Salvation lays out the whole course of the Christian life in orderly stages, the letters take up that same teaching at the point where a particular soul is stuck, and press it home. They are the treatises brought down to the scale of a single reader’s Tuesday. In them one sees the same doctrine that fills his systematic works, but tested against the friction of ordinary lives and translated into counsel a busy laywoman could act on that week.

The Character and Range of the Correspondence

Because these are letters and not chapters, they do not build a single argument from a first premise to a conclusion. Each stands on its own, occasioned by its own question. Yet read together they circle steadily around a small cluster of concerns, returning to them from every angle, and it is this circling that gives the collection its coherence.

At the center stands prayer, and within prayer the Jesus Prayer—the short invocation, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,” repeated in the heart. The recluse teaches it constantly, but his most insistent lesson is a warning against mistaking the words for the thing. The spoken prayer, he writes, is vocal prayer like any other; it has no magic in its syllables and works nothing by itself. Its whole power lies in the disposition of the one who says it. He is sharply dismissive of those who treat the formula as a talisman, and equally wary of the elaborate bodily techniques—postures, control of the breath—described in some of the Athonite manuals, which he judges unsuited to most people and dangerous without a living guide. The one method binding on everyone, he says again and again, is simpler and harder: to stand before God in the heart, with attention.

From this flows a second great theme, the interior life of prayer itself—what he calls prayer of the mind and heart, or noetic prayer. He describes it in careful stages: first the habit of the ordinary prayers said in church and at home; then the gradual union of those prayerful thoughts and feelings with the mind and heart, until they no longer depend on words or on standing at prayer; and finally an unbroken attention to God that continues through conversation and work—walking before God, the remembrance of God, unceasing prayer. He insists that this interior prayer should carry no mental image whatever; the awareness of God is not a picture held before the mind but a simple, settled conviction that God, who is everywhere, is also within, and sees all that is within more clearly than we see it ourselves. He reaches often for homely comparisons—the way warmth from a heated room envelops and soaks into the body is how the presence of God should suffuse the inner person.

A third theme is discernment, the sober weighing of one’s own spiritual states. The recluse is a realist about the soul’s self-deception. He distinguishes carefully between the natural fruits of prayerful effort—a gathered mind, reverence, the fear of God, the remembrance of death, a certain warmth of heart—and the true action of grace, which is God’s free gift and cannot be manufactured. He wants his correspondents to labor honestly at what is theirs to do, and at the same time to hold it all as worth nothing until grace comes, so that they neither despair in dryness nor grow vain over their own progress. He watches for the counterfeit: the resolve that was really play-acting and never entered the heart, the self-satisfaction that quietly stops praying because it feels no need. Against these he prescribes repentance, humility, and persistence.

Around these central matters the letters open outward onto the whole of everyday Christian living. They speak of keeping a rule of prayer without turning it into mere recitation, of attending the Church’s services, of examining the conscience, of enduring the long stretches of dryness and boredom when prayer gives no pleasure and the soul wants distraction—a condition the recluse treats not with indulgence but with a bracing summons back to the work. They offer consolation in trials and reassurance to the anxious, and they hand on, in passing, small readings of Scripture and parable pressed into the service of the immediate question. The recluse is unafraid to be practical about the mechanics of a devout day—when to pray if the evening finds one exhausted, how to hold a rule lightly enough that it serves the soul rather than crushing it, how to keep the memory of God alive in the middle of company and business. He can be tender with a frightened conscience and severe with a comfortable one in the space of the same page, and this variation of tone is itself instructive, for it shows a director reading each soul and giving it what that soul, at that moment, most needs to hear. Throughout, one pastoral conviction governs everything: that the interior life of prayer is not the private preserve of monks but the ordinary vocation of any baptized Christian willing to keep a rule, worship, watch over the conscience, and persevere. It is this democratic confidence—that a married woman with a household to run is called to the same union with God as the desert ascetic, and can reach it by the same means adapted to her state—that unifies the collection and accounts for much of its enduring appeal.

Theological and Spiritual Significance

The significance of these letters lies less in any novel doctrine than in the way they carry an ancient and demanding tradition into ordinary hands. The recluse stood consciously within the great renewal of contemplative prayer that had swept through the Orthodox world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the revival associated with the Greek Philokalia and, in the Slavic lands, with Paisius Velichkovsky, whose disciples spread the practice of the Jesus Prayer and the ideal of unceasing interior prayer through Russia’s monasteries. It was the same current that produced the beloved anonymous Way of a Pilgrim. The recluse’s distinctive contribution was to take this monastic and philokalic inheritance, so easily walled off as the property of specialists, and open it deliberately to the literate laity—first through his Russian Dobrotolyubie, and then, one soul at a time, through letters like these.

In doing so he performed a work of great discernment as well as of translation. The contemplative tradition he loved carried real dangers when handed on carelessly: the temptation to chase experiences, to trust in techniques, to mistake natural pleasant sensations for grace, to fall into the self-deception the ascetic writers call spiritual delusion. Much of the enduring value of these letters is that they administer the tradition with the antidote already mixed in. Their steady insistence that the words are only an instrument, that no image should stand between the mind and God, that the fruits which matter are God’s gift and not our achievement, that humility and repentance are the ground of everything—this is the sober, guarded, deeply traditional teaching of the Fathers, made safe for people without a monastic elder at their elbow. The recluse is, in effect, the elder they lacked, and the letters are his direction.

Their teaching also speaks well beyond the boundaries of any single Christian communion. The practice of a short, repeated invocation of the name of Jesus; the ideal of praying without ceasing; the discipline of recollecting oneself in the presence of God; the careful discernment of consolation and dryness—these belong to the broad inheritance of Christian contemplative prayer, and readers across the Christian traditions have long found in the recluse a wise and trustworthy guide. What he offers is not a system but a schooling in attention and humility before God, and that schooling has proved remarkably portable. The letters have remained in print and in devotional use in Russia and, through translation, far beyond it, because they answer a need that did not end with their nineteenth-century recipients: the need of ordinary believers, in the middle of ordinary life, to learn how actually to pray.

The Text and This Edition

The recluse wrote in Russian, for Russian correspondents, and after his death his vast correspondence was gathered and published—first widely across Russia and then abroad—as one of the treasures of his legacy. The present one hundred and thirteen letters were drawn together as a thematic collection devoted to prayer and the spiritual life, selected from the larger body of his letters; the edition’s own source note traces them to the multi-volume Collected Letters (Sobranie pisem) associated with the Russian monastery of Saint Panteleimon on Mount Athos, one of the principal channels through which his writings reached the wider Orthodox world. Within this collection the letters are numbered in sequence from one to one hundred and thirteen.

This edition presents a fresh, modern English translation made directly from that Russian text. It is an English-only reading edition, not a parallel or bilingual one: the aim is a clear, faithful, readable English that lets a present-day reader hear the recluse as his own correspondents heard him—direct, vivid, and unpretentious, with the abruptness and warmth of a real letter preserved rather than smoothed into treatise-prose. Where the Russian admits more than one defensible rendering, or where a phrase needs a word of clarification, the translation resolves the matter in favor of plain sense; the terse, sometimes exclamatory movement of the original has been kept, since it is part of how the recluse taught.

The edition follows the house conventions used throughout this library. The author is named as the Church has long received him—Saint Theophan the Recluse—with the title of saint recorded as an honor of veneration rather than as part of his name, and the modern translators credited as translators, never as authors. Scripture quotations and allusions woven into the letters are marked and linked to their sources, so that a reader can see how thoroughly the recluse’s counsel is saturated with the Bible and the Psalter. Chapter and section numbers and scriptural citations are given in the ordinary modern style. The correspondents themselves are left as the source leaves them—usually unnamed, or indicated only by an initial or a familiar diminutive—both because the sources preserve their privacy and because the counsel was always meant to pass beyond its first reader to anyone who stood in the same need.

Suggestions for Reading

This is a book to be read slowly and in small portions, not consumed at a sitting. Each letter was written to be pondered and acted on, and it rewards the same unhurried attention now. A reader new to the recluse might begin with the opening letters, where he lays out most plainly what the Jesus Prayer is and is not, and then move to those on the degrees of prayer, which give the fullest map of the interior life he describes everywhere else. It helps to remember that every letter is one half of a conversation: behind each answer stands a question we usually cannot see, and part of the pleasure of reading is reconstructing the anxious or hopeful soul on the other side of the correspondence. Above all the letters ask to be received as their first readers received them—not as information about prayer but as direction in it, from a man who had closed his door on everything except God and the souls who wrote to him for help.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life

1 On the Jesus Prayer and Interior Prayer

You ask about the Jesus Prayer? Read about it in books. Everything has been written. My thought about it is this:

– The prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me’ is vocal prayer, like any other. In itself it has nothing special, but draws all its power from the disposition with which people say the prayer.

All the techniques that are written about (sitting down, bending over)… or the technical practice of this prayer is not suitable for everyone, and is dangerous without an instructor present.[1] It’s better not to take on any of that. There is one method that is universally binding: to stand in the heart with attention. Everything else is extraneous addition that leads nowhere.

As for the fruits of this prayer, people speak of them in such a way that nothing higher exists in all the world. That’s unlawful. They’ve found a talisman! None of the fruit comes from the verbal structure of the prayer or from speaking it. All the fruits can be obtained even without this prayer, and even without any vocal prayer at all – through the striving of the intellect and heart toward God alone.

The essence of the matter is to become established in the remembrance of God, or to walk in the presence of God. You can say to anyone: do it however you like, only attain this… Whether you say the Jesus Prayer… or make prostrations, or go to church… do whatever you like, only attain being always in the remembrance of God. I remember, in Kiev I met a man who said: I used no techniques, and I didn’t know the Jesus Prayer, yet everything that is written about here was and is present. But how, I myself don’t know. God gave it!

What God has given or will give – that’s what you must keep as your goal, so you don’t confuse self-made efforts with the gift of grace.

The technical practice of the Jesus Prayer… saying it simply with attention in the heart or walking in remembrance of God – these are our labor, and by themselves they have their own natural – not grace-filled – fruit. This fruit is: the gathering of thoughts, reverence and fear of God, remembrance of death, the stilling of thoughts, and a certain warmth of the heart. All these are natural fruits of interior prayer. You must fix this firmly in your mind, so you don’t trumpet before yourself or exalt yourself before others.

As long as we have only natural fruits, we’re not worth a penny – both in the essence of the matter and by God’s judgement. We have value when grace comes. For when it comes, that will mean that God has looked upon us with a merciful eye. But until it comes, no matter what we do, no matter what ascesis we undertake, it means we’re worthless people whom God doesn’t even want to look at. I can’t tell you exactly how this action of grace manifests itself; but it’s certain that it cannot come before all the fruits of interior prayer mentioned above appear.

The phrase ‘interior prayer’ came to me by chance… But it expresses the matter very well. And it must be placed where people have begun to say ‘Jesus Prayer’. They say: acquire the Jesus Prayer, that is, interior prayer. The Jesus Prayer is a good means to interior prayer, but in itself it is not interior prayer but external prayer. Those who become skilled in it do very well. But if they stop at it alone and go no further, then they stop halfway.

I read in the rules of Saint Antony and in many others: learn the psalms by heart… and whether you’re going somewhere or sitting at work, recite them. This means that in those days they read psalms, reflected on them, and cultivated interior prayer within themselves. Nowadays people say: whatever you’re doing, say the Jesus Prayer—and you’ll achieve the same result. With the Jesus Prayer, meditation on God is still necessary; otherwise it’s dry food. It’s good when someone has the name of Jesus fixed on their tongue. But one can do this while forgetting the Lord entirely and even holding thoughts contrary to Him. Therefore, everything depends on conscious and free turning toward God and the labor of keeping oneself in this with discernment.

Here are my thoughts!.. You may read them to the Sh…vs,[2] so they may know where the power lies.

Save yourselves, and pray to God for us.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

September 29, 1874.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘художественное творение’ rendered as ‘technical practice’ to convey the methodical, technique-focused approach

[2] Translator’s note: ‘гг.’ is an abbreviation for ‘господа’ (gentlemen/Messrs.), here referring to the Sh…v family

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1)

2 On the Prayer Rule and Attention

The mercy of God be with you!

Your prayer rule is very good. And continue to fulfill it as you have grown accustomed. But remember that the matter lies not in words and prostrations, but in lifting your intellect and heart to God. You could recite everything written in your rule and perform all the prescribed prostrations, yet not remember God at all, or remember Him carelessly, with a scattered thought and a wandering intellect. And consequently, without praying, you would have fulfilled your prayer rule. The result is that your prayer becomes sin before God.[1] Deliver me, Lord! With fear and trembling you must accomplish the work of God—keep this in mind. Do everything you can so that wherever there is a word, your intellect is also there—or, as Saint John of the Ladder says, enclose your intellect within the words of prayer.[2] When you approach your prayer rule, you must establish yourself in attention before God and not depart from Him.

Reading prayers from a book scatters your attention greatly. It’s better to memorize them. Likewise, flipping through pages to find this or that ikos and kontakion must also scatter attention. Try doing this: learn the morning prayers and evening prayers by heart, with understanding of them and a feeling for what is said in them. Then read them as though they were coming from the heart. From the Psalter, too, choose which psalms are understandable and closer to the heart, and learn them by heart… And read these, too, in prayer from memory in order. Read them also as you go somewhere and do something… Read the daily Gospel after prayer, with reflection and drawing out what you need for yourself. Compose a commemoration list following the model of the printed one (in the Psalter with Appended Offices) according to your own needs and circumstances, and say it from memory.

Turn all the akathists into prostrations… don’t read from the book, but mentally turn to those to whom you have appointed them… and make prostrations… Because you won’t be reading the words, add an extra prostration or two. Everything else is good.

The less you need the prayer book, the better. Learn above all to be in the remembrance of God and the remembrance of death. The sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit. Then consider that you have prayed well when you leave prayer with contrition and complete self-abasement. And during the day, instead of counting beads, strive to stand noetically before God with the Jesus Prayer. As angels always stand before the face of God, so we too must strive. They offer a sacrifice of praise, and we—contrition.

That you came to marry above your station is not pride. God gave it. But to take pride in it—that’s possible. So if you are proud, stop being proud. No one else can see this except you and God. Pray to God that He give you a contrite spirit and humility, and He will give it. Meanwhile, gather such thoughts yourself and hold them in your soul—thoughts that humble you.[3] Pride is the most destructive passion, and all the more destructive because it appears pure on the surface.[4] What the elders told you about pride when you were a child means that God wants you to humble yourself, and He is ready to give you humility if you seek it. But the fact that you are now in a higher position and wealthier is not a violation of the elder’s words. Pride is in one’s feelings, not in one’s outward position. Even great kings can be the most humble… Saint David—a shepherd who became king—said: But I am a worm and not a man, the reproach of men and despised by the people….

Fasting on Wednesday and Friday is sufficient. There’s no need to add anything more to this. Focus more on ordering your thoughts and feelings. It is enough to keep the body in self-control. Fasting for children is not obligatory if their health does not permit it. But it is a great pity that, having grown accustomed to it from childhood, they will not afterwards take up the fast.[5] The salvation of the soul is what matters most. But it is the Saviour who saves souls, not we ourselves. We only bear witness to our faith and our submission to Him, and He, according to the measure of our cleaving to Him, grants us all that is needful for salvation.[6] Don’t think you can earn anything by labor; you earn it by faith, by contrition, and by devotion to God. Do more good; help those in need.

I still owe you a reply to your husband. I’ll write to him right away, assuming you share the same household.[7]

Christ is in our midst, servant of God!

That the Lord has turned you to faith is a great mercy. So then, He expects that you, having received the gift of faith, will remain faithful to the faith. Faithfulness to the faith is life in the spirit of faith.

Faith in God!.. But even deists believe in God and in Providence… and go no further… they’ve stopped halfway. God created us and honored us with His image, so that we might live in God—be in living union with Him. In paradise it was so. The fall of the forefathers severed this union. But God had mercy on us and did not want us to remain outside Him, separated in our fall; instead He was pleased to devise a way of reunion, which consists in this: the Son of God and God came to earth and became incarnate, and in His person united humanity with divinity, and through this gave us all the possibility of being united through Him with God. Those who believe are baptized and others receive sacraments, and are vitally united with the Saviour, and through Him with God. And in this is salvation! Our goal is life in God, but there is no other way to God for us except through the Lord Jesus Christ. There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus. This is how you must believe in Christ the Saviour, receive the holy mysteries, keep the commandments, and do all that the Holy Church contains and prescribes. The Lord is with those who are with the Church. Be free from empty wisdom, and you will be on the path of salvation.[8]

Because the Lord has called you to faith, nothing special is required of you except to be genuinely faithful to the faith. And be grateful that the Lord has called you out of darkness into light. Above all, help those in need. Whoever comes to you with tears, don’t send them away without drying those tears. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy…. Through the hand of the one in need, always see the outstretched hand of the Lord Himself, who has turned to you. He Himself said: «What you do for them—the poor—you do for Me»…. Those who have means shouldn’t think they are masters, but rather stewards of God. And what is the law for stewards? Measure out to each what is needed… See the inscription above you: “To you the poor is left; you be a helper to the orphan”.

To clarify your religious understanding, read Saint Tikhon, Saint Dimitry of Rostov, the hierarchs John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, and so on. I can’t tell you a prayer rule, not knowing how you pray now. I’ll say one thing: stand and pray to the Lord as your soul requires, telling Him what is on your soul. God is everywhere and hears everything… You only need to speak clearly. Speech to God is not uttered by the tongue, but by the feelings of the heart. If you do this, it will be true prayer.

Concern about possessions? But how am I to manage? I have to settle my children. No one is without cares. But there is a measure to our cares, and moreover, cares coupled with complete hope in God. Hold this care as an obedience, like the obedience laid upon each person in monasteries. Saint Symeon the New Theologian has a rule: keep your conscience pure before God, people, and things… So there is a price of conscience even toward them… Moscow!.. Pray, and God will preserve you. Don’t become acquainted with the frivolous, but with the God-fearing, of whom there are plenty in Moscow. There are many people of spiritual life there. They will support you. But most important—may the Lord be your support.

Be well and cheerful, both of you. Finally, Solomon concluded his Ecclesiastes with this: Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Pray to God for me, a sinner.

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

September 14, 1874.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘let his prayer become sin’.

[2] Translator’s note: Лествичник is the traditional epithet for John Climacus, author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘смирительные мысли’ is somewhat elliptical; rendered as ‘thoughts that humble you’ to clarify the sense in English.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘чиста совне’ (pure outwardly/on the surface) is rendered idiomatically to convey the deceptive nature of pride.

[5] Translator’s note: ‘наладят’ (will establish/take up) rendered idiomatically as ‘take up’ rather than ‘arrange’ to match the pastoral tone.

[6] Translator’s note: ‘по мере нашего к Нему прилепления’ rendered as ‘according to the measure of our cleaving to Him’ to preserve the patristic sense of union with God.

[7] Translator’s note: ‘разделения’ (lit. ‘division’) idiomatically rendered as ‘separate household’

[8] Translator’s note: суемудрствуя (vain wisdom, empty philosophy) rendered idiomatically as ‘free from empty wisdom’ to capture the imperative sense in English.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2)

3 Purity of Heart and Purification from Spiritual Numbness

The mercy of God be with you!

I’m taking up the task of answering your letter full of content… I’m very glad that you’re already practicing what was prescribed for you. May God grant you not to fall away and not to turn back. You’ve taken up the yoke—pull it, encouraged by sure hope. The Kingdom lies ahead; purity of heart is the door to the Kingdom; all the prescribed labors and deeds are means to the purification of the heart. So it turns out that our immediate goal is the purification of the heart, and after it—the Kingdom of God: for nothing unclean will enter there. You must always keep this in mind, so as not to ruin your labors by mixing anything unclean into them. For example—to fast and be angry, to pray and be high-minded; to do good in order to display your humanity, and the like.

You undertake labor—‘not always by inclination, but more by constraint’. Such is the law: to resist yourself in what is evil and compel yourself toward what is good. This is what the Lord’s words mean: The Kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. And so following the Lord is a yoke. If everything were done by inclination, what kind of yoke would it be? But in the end, it comes to pass that everything is done willingly and easily.

“A dull numbness comes over you,” he said, “and you become like a machine—no thoughts, no feelings.”

Such states do occur. Sometimes they come as a punishment for an inclination to evil in thought and sympathy; sometimes as a form of training—chiefly as a lesson in humility, so that a person learns to expect nothing from his own strength, but everything from God alone. A few such experiences undermine your confidence in yourself, and deliverance from the burden shows you where help comes from and on whom you must rely in all things. This state is hard to bear, but you must endure it with the understanding that you deserve nothing better, that you’ve earned it. There’s no remedy for it; it passes only by the will of God. But we must stand and cry out to the Lord: Your will be done! Have mercy! Lighten my burden! But we must not give in to any indulgences whatsoever, for that is ruinous and destructive. You do well to grieve over this and to strain every effort to free yourself from it. But your supposition that eternal torment will be like this is mistaken. Both eternal blessedness and eternal torment are beyond imagination and cannot be compared to anything that happens in this life. Both of these things are immeasurably higher there than anything here. Among the holy Fathers, such states are called spiritual coldness and dryness; and everyone considers them inevitable in a life lived for God: for without them we quickly become proud.

The example of meditation on God that you have presented is genuine work. So go through all the truths of our holy faith and establish them more firmly in your mind and heart. But this is only an initial preparatory exercise. The proper use of meditation on God in life is the representation of some truth of the faith with corresponding feelings and intentions, without the movement of reasoning, as something already completed once and for all. – Among the holy Fathers it is called contemplation, which is the intellect’s vision of truth with feelings. Take the trouble to review all the truths, just as you reviewed one… And then contemplate each reviewed truth more often, so that it won’t be forgotten. When you have reviewed all the truths, then all that will remain for you is to contemplate them. The use of contemplation is as follows: in the morning, immediately upon the full restoration of consciousness after sleep, make a general survey of them, beginning with the pre-eternal existence of the Triune God and ending with the dread judgement and the eternal lot of all, neither hastily nor at length, but with attention. This can be done according to the Creed. The whole sum of these truths is the order of the mental, spiritual, divine world. By reviewing them, consciousness is set in order with them and enters the spiritual world. This corresponds to how, when we wake up, we enter the order of the external world around us and consciously hold ourselves in it: the sun and sky above us, the elements and all creatures of the earth around us, as well as family, neighbors, and the state with all that happens in them. The latter happens of itself, involuntarily, but the former requires labor—though it is not overly difficult. These two worlds—the one contemplated in thought and the one seen without—knowing both, seek guidance in the mental world for how you should conduct yourself in the visible one.[1] This is the general rule of contemplation! In your private practice: after you’ve completed your mental review in the morning, you should dwell on whichever subject has moved your heart most deeply, and use it to enliven your spirit of prayer. When that isn’t possible, then let the enlivening of your spirit of prayer be a reverent feeling toward the whole order of the spiritual divine world. Make the effort not to leave a single morning without refreshing your interior life through such contemplation of God, just as you have the habit of refreshing your rooms by letting in fresh morning air; and then throughout the whole day live in the awareness that, beyond what is visible, you are overshadowed and surrounded by what is invisible—and not without its influence.

Your prayer practices are good. May God grant you to keep them with patience and fruitfulness. And I think it’s quite good that the children are there too. And I don’t think it burdens them; on the contrary, I’m quite confident that children enjoy taking part in the common prayer. It occurs to me to suggest that it would be good to hold a common prayer in the evening as well, setting for this an Hour that comes before anyone in the household goes to bed.[2] But do as seems most convenient to you.

We have many ready-made prayers. They were not composed, but poured forth from the heart of the saints under the action of some contemplation or event and circumstance in life. The one who reads them with attention enters into the same feelings that breathe in them, and thereby awakens and builds up in himself a spirit of prayer. To accomplish this more easily, it is good to think through the prayers you choose beforehand, taking in the feelings hidden within them. Better still is to memorize prayers, so that you have no need of a prayer book, but always carry it in your soul ready to open, whenever the need arises.

But as you grow accustomed to praying by ready-made prayers, you should begin gradually to pray also in your own words, according to your own needs—whether spiritual or external. Spiritual needs, as soon as they awaken, at once turn the heart toward God. The impulse to turn to God sometimes arises without any particular need, but simply from a thirst for God. Whatever form this impulse takes, you must never leave it unsatisfied. Instead, turn at once to prayer and pray in whatever circumstances the impulse finds you: if you’re at work, pray while working; if you’re reading, pray in the midst of it; if you’re walking, pray as you walk. Of course, it’s better and more fruitful to go to a place of prayer and assume a prayerful posture, if you can. The more earnestly you carry out these turns to God, the more frequently they will appear, the longer they will last, and the deeper they will take root. Don’t forget this point. This practice is the very best means for advancing in prayer. Prayer is the chief thing in our work. Don’t spare the labor for this above all else. If during your prayer rule this impulse arises, stop your reading and pray according to this impulse, with words of your own or in wordless prayer.[3] God will see how earnestly you desire and seek prayer, and will grant you prayer that will not be interrupted. May the Lord bless you in this work!

Concerning reading. Reading for knowledge is one thing, but reading for edification is another. In the first case you read a lot, but in the second you shouldn’t read much; rather, as soon as something from what you’re reading falls upon your heart, stop and think, trying both to clarify it and—more importantly—to deepen this thought in your heart. This is the same as turning it into a subject for meditation on God. That way you’ll nourish and grow your soul, rather than stuffing it like a sack.—You don’t have books… I’ll send you some. I have several to give away. Are you reading Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk?[4] Good? No book can compare with his books.

‘Zeal comes and goes’… This happens to everyone. When it runs low, guard your intention and resolve—to serve the Lord, remaining in godly disciplines without compromise, without slothfulness, without self-indulgence toward the flesh. And it will pass. Meditation on God powerfully restores zeal—especially the remembrance of death and judgement… death is right at hand. As soon as this thought falls completely upon the heart, the heart cannot help but stir.

About food… Make it a rule to leave the table a little hungry. The evil servant – the flesh – will feel that there is a commanding hand over it… And it’s excellent that wine-drinking has been cut off. This is the very best means for the body to be always alert, sober, and fresh. This is a great work!

You think that to undo the evil caused by forty-seven years of dissipation, you must labor just as long in good habits of life… No, that’s not the case at all. Everything that is soiled is cleansed by turning away from it and by relentless opposition to it, with faith, hope, and love toward the Lord. These dispositions can become so powerful that in a single moment they cleanse everything. This is what happened with the thief on the cross. Today you will be with me in paradise, the Lord promised him. And nothing unclean will enter paradise. For others, however, this purification takes a long time—chiefly because of self-indulgence and yielding to their own desires.

It is a great mercy of God for you that you are content with your wife and children. May they remain so forever, unchanging. As for everything else you desire in your family life, commit it to the will of God, praying earnestly, but showing yourself ready to accept all that God is pleased to send—even if it should be difficult.

I can say nothing about what you are seeking. Look to yourself what you are suited for.[5] But don’t look to feeling. The main thing is duty. External duty is faithful service. But any service can be transformed into a means of pleasing God, or the external can be fulfilled in connection with the internal, sanctifying the former by the latter. May the Lord grant your Lev to pass his examination well… May the Lord bless all of you.

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

May 18, 1888.

[1] Translator’s note: The syntax is compressed; ‘сознавая’ (knowing/being aware) governs both worlds as objects.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘Hour’ capitalized per glossary; refers to a designated time for prayer.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘сей позыв’ (this impulse/urge) refers to an inner prompting toward prayer.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘Святителя Тихона’ rendered as ‘Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk’ for clarity in English.

[5] Translator’s note: гожи: archaic/dialectal form; best sense is ‘suited for’ or ‘fit for’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 3)

4 On spiritual guidance and relations with those of other faiths

May the mercy of God be with you!

I’ve sent you the books, but I haven’t had time to write letters. Now I’m sitting down to write, and I’ll say what’s needed in response to the course of your letter.[1]

Stop calling me your spiritual guide, instructor, and pastor. I don’t take on that role for anyone. But when someone asks me, I share what seems fitting to me.

Your plan to do something on the occasion of sending books is not suitable. I don’t publish or sell my books; rather, the publishers send me a certain number of the published books for distribution. I distribute them to whomever I think needs them. If you carry out what you find suitable for yourself, and then make a prostration for this sinful writer—that’s all you can do.

Have you read The Path to Salvation? Good… And read it again sometime. Everything I have written, am writing, and will write is there. These are my lectures to the students of the St. Petersburg Academy. The outline was reviewed with Fr. Archimandrite Ignatius—later a hierarch, Brianchaninov—and he approved it. This was in the years ‘46–‘47.

“You can’t do without a spiritual guide,” you wrote. A spiritual guide is a signpost on the road, but everyone must walk the road himself, and also watch where he’s stepping and what’s around him. The elder Paisius Velichkovsky… searched all his life for a spiritual guide and never found one. But they lived two or three together – and guided themselves by mutual counsel. Please exclude me from the list of suitable spiritual guides… And look for yourselves how to proceed, with prayer and patristic lessons.

The instances when your self-will erupted are not important in themselves, but what matters is the spirit with which you did what you did. You have already condemned it yourself. And that’s how it should be. Most blameworthy of all is your action with the Molokane.[2] The communion you fear is not, of course, worldly or merely friendly—it is religious: not to share in faith, in the sacraments, and in prayer. Whatever he came to you for, you should have helped him.

In the other two cases, you could have given him serious counsel—and without making a fuss.[3] Much can be excused by the fact that a Russian, no matter how reasonably you explain things to him, won’t listen—but threaten him and strike, and he’ll obey. But this applies more to those in authority than to private individuals. It seems to me that you’ll do well if, when you encounter those people, you speak to them kindly, as though nothing had happened. You can say: ‘I got a little heated then; please forgive me. But that doesn’t mean I approve of what you did: you did wrong’… Tell the servant: ‘As soon as I notice you’ve beaten your daughter, I’ll dismiss you. Your sin is equal to murder’… Couldn’t you find some work for the girl in your rooms – sweeping a room, wiping something down, bringing water, and similar little household tasks… She’d be under your wing. Penance… When during the practice of the Jesus Prayer the desire comes to pray in your own words… remember these struggles as well and pray with contrition, making three prostrations. Do this for several days – about ten. But it would be stronger if you confessed to a spiritual father and he assigned you something. Show some kindness even to a Molokan… and stop shunning the Molokans. There’s no need to seek their friendship, but when you happen to be together, you shouldn’t scowl at them. To act otherwise toward them is to throw yourself face-down in the mud.

The word to the Guardian Angel: ‘Rejoice, for… you forbid fellowship’ – meaning: in the sacraments, and in belief, and in prayers.[4] Saint Paul did not forbid the faithful to go to dinners with pagans… and to eat everything set before them, even food sacrificed to idols, commanding them to abstain from the latter only when someone says: this is food sacrificed to idols But the Molokans are far removed from pagans in matters of faith. Your aversion to them is not good. You should pity them and pray for them, and when the occasion arises, drop a word or phrase into ordinary conversation—for their instruction. I forgot to enclose some booklets for you to instruct the Molokans. I’ll send them later.

There is no sin in accepting as tenants people living together unmarried… But as soon as this gives rise to any scandal in your own household, you must somehow free yourself from them. Some of them are very good and pious… It’s a pity about such people: look, all these anti-marriage teachings have sprung up among us and are leading people astray… They commit fornication and don’t bat an eye.

‘One must walk well… without grace this is impossible… but grace is the portion of the chosen’… That’s a twisted interpretation. No one is shut out from grace; it is given to all who come to the Lord; and the Saviour says that He came to save sinners, not the righteous… Grace is common to all, only take it… and access to it is open to all, and everyone can be saved, if they want to… The fault for not being saved lies not with grace, but with our unwillingness.

The practice of the Jesus Prayer is simple: stand with attention in the heart before the face of the Lord and cry out to Him: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!’ The point is not in the words, but in faith, contrition, and surrendering yourself to the Lord. With these feelings you can stand before the Lord even without words… and that will be prayer…

You’ll find full instruction on prayer in general, and on the Jesus Prayer, in the book Unseen Warfare… Read it there. The fact that, having received the spirit of prayer through the action of the Jesus Prayer, you begin to pray in your own words according to the pressing needs of a contrite heart, is very good and very fruitful for spiritual edification. Please bring yourself to this every time… but don’t strain to compose a prayer in the process… rather let it pour out from the heart by itself… This last is the very best path to unceasing prayer.

May the Lord bless you, and all your family.

Be saved.[5]

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

June 16, 1888

[1] Translator’s note: по течению вашего письма: ‘in response to the course of your letter’ captures the sense of following the thread or direction of the recipient’s correspondence

[2] Translator’s note: Molokane: a Russian sectarian group

[3] Translator’s note: ‘не пылить’ (lit. ‘not to dust’) is an idiom meaning to avoid making a scene or fuss

[4] Translator’s note: Liturgical quotation; [16] is a reference marker in the source

[5] Translator’s note: Idiomatic closing formula; ‘Continue in your salvation’ is also defensible.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 4)

5 On the Prayer Rule and Its Fruits

The mercy of God be with you!

I’m writing to you only to say that I don’t have time to write properly. A pile of tasks… and my head is often heavy. For the ailment you wrote about in your last letter, a good remedy is to push yourself out of bed.

You want a rule. I wrote to you—take the little prayers of Saint Chrysostom—the twenty-four. If that’s not enough, add verses from ‘Have mercy on me, O God…’ from the beginning up to ‘…Restore to me the joy of your salvation…’ That’s another twelve or thirteen. From the litany of supplication compose little prayers – six… ‘Perfect the day… An angel of peace…’ – You can compose them yourself… – The publican’s cry: God, be merciful to me a sinner. – The cry on the boat: Lord, save us, we are perishing!

Gather thirty, forty, fifty of them… Repeat them ten times each… and this will be your rule – morning and evening.

As you say the little prayers, go deep into the meaning, applying it to yourself… The first fruit… you won’t notice how the time passes.

And you’ll see the other fruits later. Your little prayers, which you wrote out, are very good, but they’re long. You can insert them between the short ones… but it’s not obligatory, and only when they come. But the main thing is: turn to the Saviour with every spiritual need. Stir up your faith that He is near and hears… And tell Him your need… Do this more often… and it will come.

If you find it convenient, go more often to the house of God. Nowhere does the spirit of prayer open up so much as in churches, when you remain in them attentively and reverently. If you do this, you’ll soon see fruit… though not after the first or second visit to church… You’ll need to give it months… and show perseverance and patience in this labor. But here too I’ll add – don’t bind yourself. – But if you do bind yourself by something, hold to it: for that’s what determines whether such sowing will bear fruit.

When you decide to make your way to the skete, visit there – in the guesthouse there’s an eldress who is very learned, but most importantly – familiar with the science of God… You can talk over everything with her… better than with anyone else.

But what an Hour![1]

Be saved!

I congratulate you on your new position!

The Lord bless you!

Pray, and the Lord will not abandon you.

Your devoted servant, Bishop Theophan.

February 20, 1889

[1] Translator’s note: Likely refers to a liturgical Hour or the lateness of the time of writing.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 5)

6 On Prayer That Proceeds from the Heart

May the protection of the Mother of God be upon you!

May the mercy of God be with you!

They began to pray with little prayers and then gave up. If they hadn’t given up, the work would have gone far by now; and now again we must begin anew. True prayer is that which comes straight from the heart and rises to God. And no other prayer is prayer if it is not of this kind. This, then, must be our whole concern in the matter of prayer. But usually our intellect is cluttered with a multitude of unholy thoughts, our will – with many worldly cares, our heart – with earthly sympathies and pleasures; and so for us to rise at once to God is the same as to clamber out of a swamp.[1] Little prayers are a very useful means to this end, or aid. They train the intellect to hold fast to one thing; gradually they draw the heart’s affection to their side and draw you away from cares. This action shows itself more powerfully and quickly if you review them with attention not only during your rule, but also at other times. The final fruit is the formation of a spiritual feeling toward God, which is inseparable from unceasing prayer or is one and the same thing with it. Here there is a living union with God—the goal of spiritual life.

Right when you wake up there’s a rapid flood of thoughts, tasks, and feelings. This must be destroyed, and the habit acquired of dedicating one’s first thought to God… This is accomplished by thinking about God. I think we talked about this… Specifically—you need to go through the Symbol of Faith—all the holy truths… up to the universal judgment and the determination of everyone’s fate.

Please keep to these two practices, and all will be well. Just add to this – turn away from evil and do good… in word, deed, and thought, – and the whole program is there…

Write it on a slip of paper… and read it often: as soon as you wake up – meditation on God; then short prayers with attention and feeling… and all day long: Turn away from evil and do good… every task – even the smallest – do in the best way, as before the eye of God.

The pain in your hand is muscular rheumatism. I had it myself… It was cured by an electromagnetic machine. I’m sure there’s one at the city hospital… Give it a try. My treatment lasted about a month and a half… morning and evening. The electromagnetism was applied to the place where the pain was. You can buy a sewing machine too…

May the Lord arrange your family and work matters in the very best way.

When the 33rd psalm comes out, I’ll send it to you.

I have not composed meditations on the Passion of the Lord. It is not my work.

Writing notes and placing them on the relics of the Hierarch seems to me to show great presumption.[2] Does Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk not have the hearing to listen to prayers addressed to him?

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

October 1, 1889

[1] Translator’s note: ‘трясина’ (swamp/quagmire) rendered idiomatically as ‘swamp’ to match the metaphor of spiritual struggle.

[2] Translator’s note: притязательность: ‘presumption’ or ‘arrogance’; the sense is overstepping proper bounds

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6)

7 On Prayer as the First Work of Christian Life

May the mercy of God be with you!

Prayer is the first work in Christian life. Prayer is the breath of the spirit. There is prayer – the spirit lives; no prayer – no life in the spirit.

To stand before an icon and make prostrations is not yet prayer, but only an accompaniment to prayer; to recite prayers from memory or from a book, or to listen to them, is not yet prayer, but only an instrument of prayer or a means of awakening and stirring it up. Prayer itself is the arising in our heart, one after another, of reverent feelings toward God – the feeling of self-abasement, devotion to God, thanksgiving, doxology, petition, contrition, submission to the will of God, fervent supplication, and so on.

Our whole concern here must be that during our prayer these and similar feelings fill our soul—that our heart not be empty. When these feelings are present in it, or some one of them directed toward God, then our prayer rule is prayer; but when they are not, it is not yet prayer. You must awaken prayer—or the turning of your heart toward God—and strengthen what you have awakened; in other words, you must cultivate in yourself a spirit of prayer.

The first way to do this is through our read prayer or our listening to prayer. Read or listen to the prayer rule as you should, and you will surely awaken and strengthen the ascent in your heart toward God—that is, you will enter into a spirit of prayer. In the prayers of the holy Fathers there moves a great power of prayer, and whoever penetrates them with full attention and zeal will surely taste that power of prayer, in measure as his disposition draws near to the content of the prayer.[1] To make our prayer rule an effective means of cultivating prayer, we must recite it in such a way that both our thought and our heart take in the content of the prayers that make up the prayer rule.

Here, then, are three very simple practices: do not begin your prayer rule without proper preparation; do not recite it carelessly, but with attention and feeling; and do not immediately turn to your usual occupations once the prayers are finished.

a) Preparation for the prayer rule.

When you are about to recite your prayer rule, whenever that may be, stand for a moment, or sit, or walk about—and take pains in that time to sober your thought, drawing it away from all earthly concerns and things. Then consider who it is to whom you will turn in prayer, and who you are, about to begin this prayerful turning to him—and stir up in your soul the disposition that befits it: one of self-abasement and filled with reverent fear in standing before God in your heart.[2] In this lies all the small but significant preparation—to stand reverently before God in your heart. Here is the beginning of prayer, and a good beginning is half the work.

b) The actual recitation of prayers.

Once you’ve settled yourself inwardly, stand before the icons, make the sign of the cross, make a prostration, and begin your usual prayer rule. Read slowly, pay attention to every word—bring the thought of each word down into your heart, accompanying this with prostrations and the sign of the cross. In this lies the whole matter of prayer that is pleasing to God and fruitful. – Pay attention to every word and bring the thought of the word down into your heart, in other words: understand what you are reading, and feel what you have understood. When you read, ‘Cleanse me from all defilement’, feel your own defilement, desire purity, and ask for it from the Lord with complete confidence. When you read, ‘Your will be done’, surrender your fate completely to the Lord in your heart, and with full readiness meet with equanimity whatever the Lord sends you. When you read, ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors’, forgive everyone in your soul for everything, and in this way ask the Lord for forgiveness for yourself. If you act in this way with every verse of your prayer, you will have a proper prayer rule. To help you carry this out more successfully in just this way, here is what you need to do: 1) have for yourself a definite prayer rule—a short one, so that with your usual occupations you can fulfill it without hurrying; 2) in your free time, study the prayers of your rule carefully, understand each word of the prayer and feel it, so that you know beforehand what should be in your soul and heart at each word, so that during the recitation of your prayer rule it will be easy for you to understand and feel; 3) if your flighty thought wanders off to other things during prayer, make every effort to keep your attention and bring your thought back to the subject of prayer; if it wanders off again, bring it back again: repeat the reading until you have read each word of the prayer with understanding and feeling. By this you will train your thought away from distraction in prayer; 4) but if some word of the prayer acts powerfully on your soul, stop at it and don’t read further; stand at that place with attention and feeling—nourish your soul with it, or with the thoughts it produces; don’t disrupt this state until it passes of its own accord: this is a sign that the spirit of prayer is beginning to take root in you, and this state is the most reliable means for cultivating and strengthening the spirit of prayer in us.

c) What should you do after prayer?

When you finish your prayer rule, don’t immediately move on to other activities; But also, even if only for a moment, pause and consider what you have done and what it binds you to—preserving especially after prayer what has worked powerfully upon you. The very nature of prayer is such that if you pray well, as you should, you won’t want to busy yourself with worldly affairs soon after: as it says, whoever has tasted what is sweet will not want what is bitter; And the tasting of this sweetness of prayer is the goal of the prayer rule, and through this tasting of the sweetness of prayer in the prayer rule the spirit of prayer is cultivated.[3]

By keeping these few rules, you will soon see the fruits of the labor of prayer. Every prayer rule will leave a trace of prayer in the soul—continuing it steadily in the same order will root it there, and patience in this labor will graft in the spirit of prayer.

This, then, is the first—the foundational—way of cultivating in us the spirit of prayer! This is the proper performance of our prayer rules, in keeping with their purpose. But that is not all; here only the beginning of the science of prayer is laid.[4] You must go further.

Once you have grown accustomed to turning to God with your intellect and heart by means of external help—through prayer books—you must then make attempts at your own direct ascent to God, reaching the point where your soul itself, so to speak, enters into prayer-conversation with God in its own words, rises up to Him, opens itself to Him, and confesses what is within it and what it desires.[5] And you must teach your soul to do this. What must one do to make progress in this science of God?

And practice, with reverence, attention, and prayerful feeling, in praying through prayer books leads to this same end; for from the heart, through prayer rules filled with holy feelings, one’s own prayer to God will begin to pour forth of itself.[6] But there are also particular rules for this, which lead to proper progress in prayer.

The first method of training the soul to turn frequently to God is meditation on God, or reverent reflection on the divine attributes and actions—reflection on the goodness of God, His righteousness, wisdom, almightiness, omnipresence, and all-knowingness; on creation and providence, on the ordering of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ; about grace and the word of God, about the holy mysteries, about the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever subject you turn your mind to contemplate, such contemplation will surely fill your soul with reverent feeling toward God: it directs your whole being straight toward God, and therefore it is the most direct means to train your soul to rise toward God. When you have finished your prayer rule, especially in the morning, sit down and begin to meditate—now on one attribute of God, tomorrow on another of his actions—and stir up in your soul the corresponding disposition. Speak with Saint Dimitry of Rostov: “Come, holy meditation on God, and let us immerse ourselves in contemplation of the great works of God”—stir your heart by this, and you will begin to pour out your soul in prayer.[7] Little labor, great fruit. All that’s needed is desire and resolve. Begin, for example, to reflect on the goodness of God—and you will see that you are surrounded by the mercy of God both in body and in spirit—and you will fall before God in an outpouring of grateful feeling. Begin to reflect on the omnipresence of God—and you will understand that you are always before God and God is before you—and you cannot help but be filled with reverent fear. Begin to consider the righteousness of God—and you will be convinced that no evil deed will go unpunished—and you will certainly resolve to purify all your sins through contrition of heart before God and repentance. Begin to reflect on the all-knowing nature of God—and you will know that nothing in you is hidden from the eye of God—and you will certainly resolve to be strict with yourself and attentive in all things, so that you do not somehow offend the all-seeing God.

The second way to train the soul to turn frequently to God is to direct every deed—great and small—to the glory of God. For if we make it a rule for ourselves, according to the apostle’s commandment, to do all things, even eating and drinking, to the glory of God, then we will certainly remember God at every deed—and remember him not simply, but with concern—lest we act wrongly in some case and offend God by some deed. This will compel us to turn to God with fear and to ask prayerfully for help and instruction. And since we are almost unceasingly doing something, we will almost unceasingly turn prayerfully to God and, consequently, will almost unceasingly practice the science of prayerful ascent of the soul to God. In this way we will teach the soul to turn to God as often as possible throughout the day.

The third way of training the soul to turn frequently to God is to cry out from the heart to God often throughout the day with brief words, according to the needs of the soul and the tasks at hand. When you begin something, say: ‘Lord, bless!’ When you finish a task—not only with your tongue but with the feeling of your heart—say: ‘Glory to You, Lord!’ When some passion rises up, say: ‘Save me, Lord, I am perishing!’ When a darkness of troubling thoughts comes upon you, cry out: ‘Bring my soul out of prison!’ When unjust deeds lie before you and sin draws you to them, pray: ‘Lead me, Lord, on the path’ or: ‘Let not my foot be moved.’ When sins weigh you down and drag you into despair, cry out with the voice of the publican: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ And so in every case. Or simply say more often: ‘Lord, have mercy!’ Lady Theotokos, save me! Angel of God, my holy Guardian Angel, protect me!’ Or call out with some other word.[8] Only—as often as you can—make these invocations, striving in every way for them to come from your heart, as though wrung from it. When we do this, there will be accomplished in us frequent, noetic ascents from the heart to God, frequent turnings toward God, frequent prayer; and this frequency will give us the habit of noetic communion with God.

So, besides the prayer rule—which teaches the soul to rise in prayer to God—there are three other ways that lead into the spirit of prayer. These are: to devote some time in the morning to meditation on God, to turn every deed to the glory of God, and to turn often to God with brief cries of prayer. When meditation on God is well accomplished in the morning, it will leave a deep disposition toward thinking about God. Thought about God will cause the soul to perform every action—both inner and outer—with care and to turn it to the glory of God; and both of these will place the soul in such a condition that brief cries of prayer to God will often burst forth from it. These three—meditation on God, the practice of doing all things to the glory of God, and frequent cries of prayer—are the most effective instruments of noetic and prayer of the heart. Each of them lifts the soul to God. Whoever sets himself to practice them will soon acquire the habit – to set ascents in his heart toward God.[9] Torn away from the earth, the soul will enter into its own realm and will dwell there sweetly on high—here in heart and mind, and there will be deemed worthy to dwell before the face of God.[10]

[1] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘в силу закона взаимодействия’ (literally ‘by the law of mutual action’) is rendered idiomatically as ‘will surely’ to preserve the sense of inevitable spiritual reciprocity.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘помысли’ here is an imperative: ‘consider’ or ‘think upon’.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘вкушение’ (tasting/savoring) is a key patristic metaphor for experiential knowledge of prayer’s grace.

[4] Translator’s note: молитвенная наука is ‘science of prayer’ (prayer-related science), not ‘science of God’

[5] Translator’s note: ‘умом и сердцем’ rendered as ‘intellect and heart’ following Orthodox glossary; ‘молитвенную беседу’ as ‘prayer-conversation’ to preserve the relational intimacy

[6] Translator’s note: ‘out of the abundance of the heart’

[7] Translator’s note: Saint Dimitry of Rostov (1651–1709) is a canonical Orthodox hierarch; the quotation is from his spiritual writings.

[8] Translator’s note: ‘Ангеле Божий, Хранителю мой святый’ combines direct address to the angel with the title Guardian Angel; rendered as ‘Angel of God, my holy Guardian Angel’ to preserve the liturgical tone.

[9] Translator’s note: ‘Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise!’—but the allusion here is to the phrase about ‘setting ascents in the heart.’

[10] Translator’s note: ‘You show me the path of life.’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7)

8 On the Jesus Prayer and noetic activity

Be a sincere child of the Church, and keep everything that the Church keeps.

Be pure and blameless in your life, and do not allow your conscience to accuse you of anything, great or small; but as soon as you stumble in anything, cleanse yourself through repentance.

Fulfill all the monastic rules conscientiously, regarding every task that lies before you to do according to these rules as though it were sent to you personally by God Himself, and dedicate the labor of monastic work to the Lord, as though He Himself were standing before you and watching you.

All of this will make up your active life. If you carry out everything I’ve indicated as you should, your life cannot possibly remain merely external, but will always be interior as well; the interior will permeate the exterior; but it’s possible that there will be no interior life in this, and your life will remain soulless. How can you avoid this? You must bring your heart to every task—a heart filled with fear of God. For the heart to be in a state of fear of God, it must be continually overshadowed by the thought of God. The thought of God will be the door through which the soul will enter into the active life. All labor now must be directed toward thinking unceasingly of God, or being in the presence of God. (Seek God… Seek His face continually). This is where sobriety and noetic prayer stand. God is everywhere: make sure that your thought is everywhere with God. How, then, is it to be done? Thoughts swarm like gnats in their columns, and above the thoughts are the feelings of the heart.[1] To fix the thought on one thing alone, the elders had the practice of training themselves in the continuous recitation of a short little prayer, and from habit and frequent repetition this little prayer became so fixed on the tongue that it repeated itself. Through this, the thought became attached to the prayer, and through the prayer to the unceasing remembrance of God. After the habit was formed, the prayer bound the remembrance of God, and the remembrance of God bound the prayer; and they sustained each other mutually. There it is—walking before God. People used various little prayers, such as: “God, be merciful to me.” or: “God, come to my aid.” or: “I have sinned as a man, but you, being God, have mercy on me.” But then everyone came to prefer the one Jesus Prayer: “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!” They learned to repeat it constantly, and with it to keep the remembrance of God. Now you see where the Jesus Prayer stands and what its significance is. In itself it is not noetic, but vocal and external, like all other written prayers; rather, it is a means to noetic prayer, when someone stands before the Lord with it and prays to Him. In the same way, it is not noetic activity either, but the same kind of practice as church prayer or domestic prayer rule recited from a prayer book. Noetic prayer is when someone, having established attention in the heart, from there raises prayer to God. Noetic activity is when someone, standing with attention in the heart and remembrance of the Lord, repels every other thought that tries to enter the heart. Now, I think, you yourself will resolve many of your own misunderstandings. By noetic prayer you surely mean here the Jesus Prayer: “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” But after the explanations I’ve given, you can see that this is not noetic prayer but vocal prayer, and you can practice it without fear, just as you learned any other prayer. Whether you’re sitting, walking, or doing something else—repeat this prayer, and that’s all there is to it… and you’ll get used to it, and it will start repeating itself on your tongue. No harm is foreseen in any of this.

Noetic prayer, on the other hand, is when you stand in your heart with attention and cry out to the Lord—whether asking, or repenting, or giving thanks, or glorifying Him. In this activity, too, there is no danger; such prayer is its own safeguard. For the Lord is there, if you turn to Him with faith. At this very hour you can try it out in practice.

Practice it, practice it—and not only when you sit alone in your cell, but everywhere: in church, at table, when you walk. Only take care that there is remembrance of the Lord present, and not mere words.

What the schemamonk Basil said about setting aside singing for noetic prayer applies to recluses and to those persons in whom noetic prayer has opened and become unceasing. These people can do all of it in place of church service and cell rule. But what is meant here is not the repetition of the Jesus Prayer, but the unceasing ascent of cries of prayer at the heart.[2] I read of an elder who could continue his prayer rule only until the first Glory (from the Psalter), and then he would enter into prayer of the heart and pray wordless prayer. The recitation of prayer then ceases of its own accord. So the laying aside of singing does not apply to us—you and I must both attend the church services and fulfill what has been appointed for our cell-rule prayer.

When unceasing prayer of the heart is formed in you, then you will see how to proceed. You ask me to bless your inner work—God will bless it! But understand clearly what the matter is here: learn to say the Jesus Prayer so that it becomes natural to your tongue, yet always with your mind fixed on the Lord. If at the same time you sigh to the Lord from your heart, this will be noetic prayer, not merely the words of the Jesus Prayer. If, standing in your heart with attention before the Lord and saying the Jesus Prayer, you drive away from your heart every other thought and feeling, this will be noetic activity.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘столбиках’ (little columns) is a vivid image for the clustering of thoughts; rendered idiomatically in English.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘воззваний’ (cries/invocations) is rendered as ‘cries of prayer’ to capture the sense of urgent, heartfelt prayer utterances.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 8)

9 On the Unfolding of Prayer of the Intellect and Heart through Church Services

Please read everything written above.[1] Alexander, understand everything according to what is written. I believe all your perplexities will be resolved. You must attend all the church services. And I tell you, there is no better way to awaken the prayer of the intellect and heart than to be in church, at the church services. In the church services there is a spirit of prayer. Whoever stands through a service with attention to all that is read and sung cannot help but grow warm in a prayerful disposition. If it is so now, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and so on. then at last a little flame of prayer will kindle in your heart. But when God grants this, then you will run to church as to a royal feast, and nothing will hold you back; only strive to attend to the church’s hymns and readings, for without attention nothing will come of it. Prostrations must necessarily accompany the Jesus Prayer, and the more of them, the better. If you are alone in your cell, then make prostrations frequently and do them as much as you wish with the Jesus Prayer. In the morning and evening, include them more often.

Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: о. is an abbreviation for ‘выше’ (above); context suggests ‘everything written above’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 9)

10 On the Prayer of Intellect and Heart

Prayer should always be an offering of intellect and heart to God. When, lifting ourselves to God, we glorify God, give thanks to Him, and ask Him for the gift of spiritual goods—with awareness and feeling of His greatness, His benefactions, and His generous mercy—then we are praying, or we are in a state of prayer. All our prayers, which are contained in prayer books and church books, include everything just mentioned; and if, when we read these prayers, we not only pronounce the words but also hold the same thoughts and feelings, then that is true prayer. If you pray in this way, then all is well. If, by praying in this way both in church and at home, you reach the point through long practice of your prayer that prayerful thoughts and feelings become united with your intellect and heart, so that whether you are standing in prayer or not, those feelings and thoughts do not depart from your attention and always keep it fixed on God – then you have ascended to the highest degree of prayer, which may rightly be called prayer of the intellect and heart. It occurs in the soul even without words, during conversation with others and while occupied with some task. This uninterrupted attention to God, or walking before God, is unceasing prayer…

The Jesus Prayer is a great help for this; it concentrates attention on God very powerfully and makes it strong. From this you can see where the place of this prayer is and what is required for success in it. Here are the stages of prayer.

1. Habituation to the customary prayer rules in church and at home.[1]

2. The uniting of prayerful thoughts and feelings with the intellect and heart.[2]

3. Unceasing prayer; The Jesus Prayer can be applied to all these, but its proper place is in unceasing prayer.

The chief condition for success in prayer is the purification of the heart from passions and every attachment to anything sensory. Without this, prayer will always remain at the first level, or the read prayer. As the heart is purified, the read prayer will gradually transform into the prayer of the intellect and heart, and when it is completely purified, then unceasing prayer will be established.

How you should act. In church, follow the divine service and hold in your mind the thoughts and feelings that the service offers. At home, awaken in yourself prayerful thoughts and feelings, and keep them in your soul with the help of the Jesus Prayer. May the Lord bless you!

Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: молитвословиям rendered as ‘prayer rules’ (plural of молитвословие)

[2] Translator’s note: сроднение (‘kinship’, ‘uniting’) conveys the intimate bonding of prayer with the faculties of intellect and heart

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10)

11 On the Jesus Prayer and the Formation of a Prayerful Habit

Certain particular movements in the body and spirit come from prayer, but they are not the same in all who pray – some experience one kind, others another; therefore, there is no need to dwell on them.

In some people there are no particular phenomena at all, and prayer proceeds quietly, even in full strength. And this is the best and safest lot! What is prayer? Noetic standing before God in the heart with doxology, thanksgiving, petition, and contrite repentance. Everything here is spiritual. The root of everything is reverent fear of God, from which comes faith about God and in God, surrender of oneself to God, hope, cleaving to God in the feeling of love with forgetfulness of all created things… When prayer is in strength, all these feelings and spiritual movements are present in the heart in corresponding strength. Read the prayers of the saints that have come down to us, pay attention – and you will see that all of this in them is the outpouring of their full prayerful disposition. Again I repeat: here everything is spiritual, it proceeds from God and ascends to God…

How does this happen? A holy father enters into the heart, goes deep into contemplation of the sacraments of the faith – either all of them in general or one particular rapture – sets in motion the feelings mentioned above, and pours them out in prayer… We read these prayers, come into a disposition like them, either partially or fully, and find ourselves in the proper disposition. Through frequent repetition of this, constant spiritual prayer is cultivated in us and a constant prayerful disposition is established, which is unceasing prayer.

Everything here is spiritual, noetic, and descends from above downward.

How then does the Jesus Prayer relate to this, which is a vocal prayer?

And what about the warmth that develops inside and around the heart from the action of this prayer…

The habit of prayer is not formed all at once… but requires long labor and exertion.

Now in this very labor of forming the habit of prayer, the Jesus Prayer and the warmth that accompanies it help best of all.

Notice, father, that they are means, not the thing itself.

It’s possible that the Jesus Prayer is there, and the warmth is there, but real prayer is not. Strange as it may seem, it does happen!…

When we pray, we must stand before God with our intellect and think of Him alone. Yet all the while, various thoughts crowd into the head and pull the intellect away from God. To teach the intellect to stand fixed on one thing, the Holy Fathers used little prayers and grew accustomed to reciting them unceasingly…

This unceasing repetition of the little prayer kept the intellect in thought of God and drove away all extraneous thoughts. These short little prayers were various.[1] Saint Cassian said that in Egypt everyone used this one: ‘O God, attend to my help; O Lord, make haste to help me.’ Saint Ioannikios unceasingly said: ‘My hope is the Father, my refuge the Son, my shelter the Holy Spirit, Holy Trinity, Glory to You.’ And another: ‘I as a man have sinned, but You as God are merciful—have mercy on me.’ No doubt others used other little prayers too… but among us the Jesus Prayer has especially become established and entered into common practice: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

So that’s what the Jesus Prayer is. It is one of the short vocal prayers, just like all the other little prayers. Its purpose is to keep the intellect fixed on a single thought of God.

One who has grown accustomed to this prayer and practices it as it should be practiced is indeed in remembrance of God unceasingly.

Since remembrance of God in a sincerely believing heart is naturally accompanied by religious feelings of reverence, hope, thanksgiving, submission to the will of God, and others—all of which are spiritual—we call the Jesus Prayer, which produces and sustains remembrance of God, a spiritual prayer. And this is correct when it is accompanied by those spiritual feelings. But when it is not accompanied by such feelings, it remains vocal prayer, like any other of the same kind.

This is how you should understand the Jesus Prayer. Now, what does the warmth mean that accompanies the use of this prayer?

In order for the intellect to remain focused on one thing when using the short prayer, you must bring it down by attention into the heart; for if it remains in the head, where there is a jostling of thoughts, it won’t manage to concentrate on one thing…

When attention descends into the heart, it draws all the powers of soul and body there into one point… This concentration of the whole human life in one place immediately makes itself felt there by a special sensation; this sensation is the beginning of the future warmth…

This sensation, at first slight, keeps growing stronger, firmer, deeper, and from being cold, as it is in the beginning, it passes into a warm feeling and holds the attention on itself. And so it happens that at first attention is held in the heart by an effort of will, and by its own strength attention generates warmth of the heart. And this warmth of the heart then holds attention without any special effort on its part. They then support each other and must remain inseparable, for distraction of attention cools the warmth of the heart, and a diminishing of warmth weakens attention.

From this comes the law of spiritual life: keep your heart in feeling toward God, and you will always be in remembrance of God. Saint John Climacus expressed this somewhere.

Now the question is—is this warmth of the heart spiritual? No—not spiritual! But ordinary, carnal warmth. Yet because it holds the intellect’s attention in the heart and thereby fosters the development there of the spiritual movements I mentioned earlier, it is called spiritual—provided, however, that it is not accompanied by lustful pleasure, however slight, but keeps the soul and body in a state of sobriety.[2]

From this it follows: whenever the warmth that accompanies the Jesus Prayer is not accompanied by spiritual feelings, it should not be called spiritual, but simply carnal warmth; and such warmth is not bad, provided it is not bound up with lustful pleasure, however slight; but if it is bound up with it, then it is bad and must be cast out.

This irregularity occurs when the warmth moves below the heart. The second irregularity is when, having grown fond of this warmth, one limits everything to it alone, not caring about spiritual feelings or even about remembrance of God, but only that this warmth be present; this irregularity is possible, though not in everyone and not always, but at times. One must notice this and correct it, for in such a case only a blood warmth remains, an animal warmth… One should not regard this warmth as spiritual or grace-filled… This warmth can be called spiritual only when it is accompanied by spiritual, prayerful movements… Whoever calls it spiritual without them admits an irregularity. Whoever calls it grace-filled is even more mistaken…

Grace-filled warmth is something distinct, and it is properly spiritual… It is detached from the flesh, and produces no noticeable changes in the body, and is witnessed by a subtle, sweet feeling.

From these feelings anyone can easily determine and distinguish warmth… Everyone should do this for themselves; an outsider has no business or place here.

If sometimes there are bodily movements or sensations of any kind during prayer and warmth, don’t pay attention to them; they don’t relate to the essence of the matter and vary from person to person.

Turn all your attention instead to spiritual actions and feelings. They will pass through soul and body like a pleasant morning coolness.

Bishop Theophan of Vysha.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘Various’ here means ‘of different kinds’ or ‘diverse in form’.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘кровяная’ rendered as ‘carnal’ in s2 to distinguish from ‘духовная’ (spiritual); here the warmth itself is spiritual when it supports noetic prayer and sobriety.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 11)

12 On Freedom in the Prayer Rule

The mercy of God be with you!

Bless us, Lord, and continue in prayer according to your rule.[1] But never bind yourself to a rule, and don’t imagine that there’s anything of value in having such a rule or in always keeping it. All the value lies in the prayer of the heart before God. The holy Fathers write that if someone leaves prayer not as one condemned and worthy of every punishment from the Lord, then such a person leaves it as a Pharisee. Another said: “When you stand in prayer, stand as if at the dread judgement, when the decisive determination of God concerning you is about to be uttered: Depart, or: Come.”

You must avoid formality and mechanical routine in prayer at all costs. Let it be each time an act of deliberate, free choice, and perform it with awareness and feeling, not carelessly. When circumstances require it, you should know how to shorten your rule. How many unexpected things come up in family life? For instance, when you don’t have time in the morning and evening, you can simply recite from memory the morning prayers and the prayers before sleep. You don’t even have to recite all of them—just a few. You can even skip reading altogether and simply make a few prostrations, but with genuine prayer of the heart. You should approach your rule with complete freedom. Be the master of your rule, not its slave. A servant of God alone, obliged to devote every moment of her life to pleasing Him. I will gladly receive your labor. But something small. Your labor should go to the poor, except for what concerns your family.

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

October 10, 1874

[1] Translator’s note: The imperative ‘Благослови’ is addressed to the Lord; ‘продолжать’ (infinitive) is rendered as an exhortation to continue.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 12)

13 On Unceasing Prayer and the Ordering of Our Affairs

May the mercy of God be with you!

I don’t know how to settle the question about the factory. For all the affairs of life, there is one principle: to adapt them to the one thing needful, and not to conduct them in a way that harms it. It seems to me that it would be better to get rid of the distillery. Vodka causes much harm. How could some of the responsibility not fall on those who produce it?![1] So give it up! What instead of it? Starch would be much better in every way.

It occurs to me that if you’re able to convert everything you have into capital, live without want, and raise and settle your children—that would be the best thing of all. I think this way because of your desire to spend more time with the Lord. But in any case, you are the head of your family. See what works best! When your duties don’t allow you to complete your prayer rule in full, then perform it in shortened form. But you should never rush. God is everywhere. In the morning, give thanks to Him and ask His blessing in your own words, make a few prostrations—and that’s enough! Never turn to God carelessly. Always do so with great reverence. He doesn’t need our prostrations or our long-winded prayers… A cry from the heart, short and strong—that’s what gets through!.. And you can do that on the go… And so you can pray unceasingly. So take care of this and direct everything toward it. They asked Saint Epiphanius: how should we keep the Hours? The Hours?! For prayer there are no special hours: it must be every hour and every minute. They asked Saint Basil the Great: how can we pray unceasingly? He answered: Keep a spirit of prayer in your heart, and you will pray unceasingly. Work with your hands, but lift your intellect to God. The apostles traveled the whole earth—what labors they endured! And yet they prayed unceasingly. And they wrote this commandment. The spirit of faith, hope, and submission to the will of God—that is what you must kindle in your heart.

You can arrange your own prayer rule, judging by what I wrote to your wife. Memorise the prayers you read, and recite them from memory with understanding and feeling. And right there insert your own prayer as well; the less you depend on the book, the better. Memorise a few psalms and, when you’re walking somewhere or doing something else and your mind isn’t occupied, recite them… This is conversation with God. The rule should be in your own free will. Do not be his slave.

Save yourselves!

October 10, 1874

[1] Translator’s note: The rhetorical question expresses moral concern about complicity in producing a harmful substance.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13)

14 On Prayer as the Work of All Christians

The mercy of God be with you!

N… N…

Last time I think I assured you that He who began His work in you will also complete it… To my great comfort I conclude from your words that He is indeed completing it. Glory to You, O God! Glory to You, O God! Glory to You, O God! What is happening in you is good. This is the ordinary path of those who, having been called and having heeded the calling, walk by the voice of the calling steadfastly, not allowing themselves anything that would be contrary to the requirements of God’s will, which the conscience suggests and confirms.[1] God is everywhere, and as soon as He finds a heart that does not resist Him, He enters into it and gladdens it. The heart rejoices and, clinging to Him, does not wish to depart from Him. Imagine an empty sphere. The air inside is stale and has become corrupted. If you drill a small hole, then fresh outside air, gradually pressing inward, will displace the old air that has become corrupted. If the ball had feeling, it would surely cry out: ah, how good it is for me now! It is the same with us. The heart, blocked up by selfishness, decays within, and things go very badly. We turn to the Lord—a hole is drilled in the heart through the labor of new life, the inner uncleanness departs, and in its place enters something else—what is pure.[2] This divine spiritual element is the Lord Himself. Feeling this, the heart rejoices with the joy of life drawn from the Lord. The Lord is called the Visitor of souls… When He visits, the soul rejoices.

That’s the meaning of what happens in you! But this is not some exclusive privilege for you alone. Such is the common path for all. And this is not from us—it is God’s gift! If it’s a gift, you must give thanks to the Giver and humble yourself… Humility is the foundation of everything! As soon as humility departs, the heart closes up and everything good in it suffocates. May your heart always be contrite and humble. You have this. Don’t lose it, but rather develop this feeling more and more… Our normal relationship to God is a sorrowful falling before Him in the heart with contrition, with the cry: ‘Save me by the judgements You know!’ We must place ourselves in the Lord’s hands, that He may do in us and with us whatever His holy will desires, if only He would save us…

Now it comes to mind: did you do the right thing by getting rid of the troubles with the estate? How to manage estates is a matter of indifference, as long as it doesn’t go by cunning, but everything is turned to the glory of God. The Lord instructed: that hearts not be weighed down, not only by gluttony and drunkenness, but also by the cares of life. That you acted rightly, you have the witness within yourselves: the soul has received wings, as it were… And glory to God!

The work of prayer is not the work of hesychasts alone, but of all Christians—and this extends to its very highest degrees. All degrees of prayer are God’s work. But before God all are equal… and He looks only upon the heart. As the heart turns to Him, so He turns to the heart – whoever’s heart it may be. The Lord said: that as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us… This is about all Christians. And the apostle says: your life is hidden with Christ in God. Childlikeness in prayer, as in the whole disposition of the soul, is the very best state of mind; so guard it… and ask the Lord not to let you lose this feeling. Children come up to their father or mother and say nothing, they just hover around them – because it’s sweet for them to be near them… So conduct yourself, that in simplicity of heart you always hover around the Lord.

Question: ‘Should I, given my many worldly obligations, maintain prayer, or should I use it only during my cell rule and in church, and the rest of the time, if not suppress it, then at least not maintain it?’ – You must always keep prayer… God is everywhere, and sees everything, and His eyes are brighter than the sun. The remembrance of this must be planted in the heart or fused with one’s consciousness. When the soul holds this awareness, it cannot help but have both the fear of God and reverence before Him, with a concern to please Him in everything – in word, in thought, in movement, and in deed. With this disposition meet others, and see them off, and do every task – whether you are alone or with people. Convince yourself that through every circumstance God is testing you and, fixing His eye upon you, waits to see how you will act. And conduct yourself as a student answers at an examination—both outwardly and inwardly. This disposition is the prayerful disposition, and it is given only through prayer. Prayer is the turning of intellect and heart to God. When this is present—there you have prayer… Labor at it. God willing, you will receive everyone and not depart from Him with your intellect. In this is the labor… and there is no division. Only perhaps at the beginning of your attempts. Don’t forget that this is the main thing… both a host’s warm hospitality to a visitor, and full attention, and cheerfulness, and along with all this the remembrance of God with fear and reverence. If you were to become incapable of continuing life in society, it would be no great loss… But prayer, when it follows the true path, should not lead to that. It will only lead you to glorify God with your whole life, having removed from it everything superfluous, vain, and passion-feeding, and having made it a silent preaching about what is fitting—yet without repelling anyone or cutting them to the heart, but attracting everyone and disposing all by the fragrance of your life to imitate it. Take the trouble to think this through according to your own circumstances and arrange things accordingly. A gloomy, repellent, or grumbling life is not God’s life. I hope that your prayer will not allow you to distort yourself in this way. Nevertheless, careful thought is necessary, along with trials… and asking for God’s help. The root of everything is humility and warmth of the heart toward all. God will give the burning of the heart. Then whoever meets you, everyone will sense this warmth, and it will bind all to you and make all submit to you. Bless us, Lord!

I’ve grown worse at praying from prayer books. This is no loss. Never mind if you never pick up a prayer book.[3] Prayer books are like conversations—French ones, for example.[4] At first, before someone learns to speak freely, he memorizes set phrases; but once he becomes fluent, those phrases fall away and are forgotten. So too with those who pray. They’re needed until the soul begins to pray on its own, but when it’s already praying on its own, you can leave them aside. Only when your own prayer won’t come—then, to stir it up, you need to begin praying with printed prayers. And when your own prayer is stirred up, leave them aside… That’s what the great men of prayer did… They would read—one person a single psalm, another a single Glory—and then, having entered into the spirit of prayer, they would leave the psalms. You need to know several prayers by heart, and also several psalms. But always, when prayer is in your heart, you can pray even without a prayer book—by your own turning to God, with prostrations. Just so long as there’s no slothfulness, no self-indulgence. For immediately the enemy will approach and, as if taking you by the hand, will begin to pull you away from prayer… Understand his tricks… The manifestation of the onset of prayer is not the same for everyone. With you it’s like this: ‘Some kind of pulse starts beating in the heart… an urge appears in the intellect to say the prayer… a tightness is felt in the throat… the intellect soon runs off, but in the heart the work continues’… Look: what here is essential and what is incidental? This pulse in the heart and tightness in the throat are nervous accidents which in some people manifest differently—for example, as trembling—and in others don’t occur at all. And it seems to me that even those who experience it can choose not to let it develop, just as they can develop it to an extreme—as, for example, someone in Siberia who fell into convulsions. All this is nervous, and can and should be cut off. For: ‘The presence of God expands and elevates our life’, producing no disorders or irregularities. Follow this with attention. But what’s essential here is this: ‘The heart feels a prompting to prayer’… There must be warmth, and with the warmth, attention… That the intellect runs away—that’s not right. You must hold it and bring it into harmony with the heart, or enclose it in the heart. Stand with your attention in the heart at this point and, without leaving it, pray there to the Lord with whatever words you wish, or even without words, by turning to God alone—contrite and humble. So remain there without leaving. When this movement is in your heart and you’re alone, leave everything else and pray—sitting or standing, just pray intently there in the heart. So, until the feeling evaporates. It’s written like this somewhere… I think in the Ladder. And if this happens when others are present, you should still pray—but you shouldn’t make a show of your prayerfulness. Know that you must never leave the heart with your attention. But the work in the heart is sometimes only noetic—accomplished by the intellect—and sometimes also of the heart, that is, both begun and continued with warm feeling. This is the law not only for hermits, but for all who must stand before God with a pure heart and work before His face—that is, for all Christians. The intellect grows tired of speaking the word of prayer. Pray then without words – casting yourself down before the Lord mentally in your heart and giving yourself over to Him… This is prayer properly speaking; the word is only its expression… and it is always weaker than prayer itself before God.

You pray well in church and don’t notice how the service goes by. This is good! If you can, go to church as often as possible. It is the true house of God… even though it’s built of bricks and mortar. The heart senses that it is in the Father’s house, and it is sweet to it… For cultivating prayer, the best thing is to go to church. At home slothfulness overcomes you, but there slothfulness has no place: for what else is there to do but pray?

You’re right not to give much weight to what happens with you… First fruits… how far from the real thing!.. And in general, you shouldn’t be too preoccupied with yourself. The Holy Fathers say: ‘Don’t measure yourself’… The best measure for yourself is: ‘there is nothing’… Lord, grant me to make a good beginning!.. Lord, by whatever judgements You know, save me! And drive away every thought about measuring yourself, but, forgetting what lies behind – as though it never was – press on to what lies ahead. The enemy prompts you to measure yourself, so as to stir up self-conceit and ruin the whole work. Always say to yourself: ‘There’s nothing there, nothing to measure.’

The fear of spiritual delusion is also justified… There is mental spiritual delusion – that’s self-conceit… and there is external spiritual delusion – that’s lights, sounds, some kind of figures… Spit on all of it… It’s the enemy’s work. A demon appeared to someone and started shouting: ‘Christ is coming, Christ is coming!’ The man said to him: ‘Get away, you deceitful delusion! Christ won’t come to me, for I am an utter sinner’ – and the demon vanished.

‘It seems like everyone would abandon everything.’[5] – Everything will come in its own time, if that is pleasing to God. Wait. But don’t desire it—rather, as the Lord wills.[6] For your present state is not contrary to God’s path. The prayer of the heart is never premature. It is the beginning of the work. By its establishment in the heart, God’s work comes to ripeness.[7] You must develop it, sparing no labor. God, seeing your labor, gives what you seek. True prayer doesn’t come about by itself: it is a gift of God. Seek, and you will find… That you haven’t used the technical method of grafting prayer—that’s no loss. That method isn’t indispensable; you can do without it. It’s not the position of the body that matters—it’s the inner disposition. The whole thing is this: to stand with attention in the heart and to look toward God or to cry out to him. I haven’t yet met anyone who approves of that technique. His Grace Ignatius and Fr. Macarius of Optina doesn’t approve of it either.

That you experience feelings of repentance in prayer and tears—that is the real work. Without feelings of repentance, prayer is not really prayer. So write it down as though it never happened.[8] Prayer without these feelings is the same as a stillborn child. So say the holy Fathers. But fan the tears into flame… Learn to wail over yourself as over someone dead—and with lamentations… For the chief thought, or the place where you should hold yourself mentally, is the hour of judgement, or that moment when God is ready to pronounce: come, or: depart! O, Lord, save me! And how can I not weep, unable to say with certainty that He will not say: Depart?![9]

I went through your letter line by line, and it seems I’ve left nothing untouched that came to mind to say to you. Have I missed something? In our letters we are brothers, but you are the elder. My handwriting is hard to read, and yours is even harder. Won’t you repent of this—and with the fruit of repentance?[10]

Do you have Isaac the Syrian? If not, get yourself a copy—and the Ladder too. These two books will explain everything to you. And there are many other books besides. Ephrem the Syrian, Abba Dorotheus, Barsanuphius and John—their answers—the Memorable Sayings.[11] I imagine you have them already. But if you don’t have it, get it. Ferapontov will bring it if you ask him. Look for the venerable Hesychius on sobriety and prayer. The monks of Mount Athos published it in Russian translation from the Philokalia as a separate book. It’s what you need most right now. Read it regularly. Doesn’t Father T… have it? I’m very grateful to His Eminence Eusebius for remembering me. When you write, please convey to him my deep respect and my request for his holy prayers.

May the Lord bless you, your wife, and your children.

That the children are weak in health—it’s nothing. The less energy they have, the closer to the Lord they’ll be. In any case, you must accept whatever children God has given you… And give thanks for everything.

Pray for my unworthiness.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

17 January 1877

[1] Translator’s note: ‘требованиям Божиим’ rendered as ‘requirements of God’s will’ to capture the sense of divine demands; alternatively ‘God’s demands’.

[2] Translator’s note: The antecedent ‘heart’ is implied from s4 context; made explicit for English clarity.

[3] Translator’s note: The Russian ‘Хоть никогда не берите’ is a concessive construction (‘even if you never take’) that functions here as a rhetorical softening or permission—a pastoral reassurance rather than a literal prohibition. Rendered idiomatically as reassurance.

[4] Translator’s note: The comparison is somewhat elliptical in the source; ‘молитвенники’ (prayer books) are likened to ‘разговоры’ (conversations/dialogues), with French dialogues as a concrete example of a familiar genre. The sense appears to be that prayer books function as structured dialogues or exchanges, much like French conversation manuals.

[5] Translator’s note: The antecedent of ‘everyone’ and ‘everything’ is contextually implied but not explicit in this fragment.

[6] Translator’s note: The ellipsis ‘как Господь’ (lit. ‘as the Lord’) is idiomatic for ‘as the Lord wills’ or ‘according to the Lord’s will’.

[7] Translator’s note: ‘спеется’ (lit. ‘ripens’) conveys the sense of maturation or completion of God’s work through the establishment of prayer in the heart.

[8] Translator’s note: ‘it’ refers to prayer without repentance from the previous sentence

[9] Translator’s note: the judgment scene

[10] Translator’s note: John the Baptist’s call to repentance

[11] Translator’s note: ‘Достопамятные сказания’ (Memorable Sayings) is a patristic anthology; the dash suggests these are examples of works to consult.

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15 Entrusting Everything to the Lord and Keeping Prayer

The mercy of God be with you!

I give thanks for your greetings and good wishes. I ask you to accept from me as well my wish for you of every good thing in this year and in every year to come. Things have become easier for you in your household duties. Glory to God! The very best thing is to entrust everything to the Lord, and He will arrange it—we can’t even imagine how well. Guard your prayer. It will slip away, and you won’t catch it. What you wrote about your faults—let that be a lesson to you on how to be diligent. Review each time what you’ve piled up; think through how to act ahead of time so you don’t fall into the same fault again… Only you mustn’t indulge yourself or willingly give yourself over to distractions: for that kind of behavior drives away the grace of God. What if he doesn’t come back?! It’s terrifying how everything will turn upside down… May the Lord save you from this trouble!.. But every spiritual need that troubles the heart should be entrusted to the Lord, and He will help and set right what is wrong.

I’m sending you Psalm 118. It was printed in Domestic Conversation. The editor made several copies and sent them to me. This editor suffered a stroke to the head, from which his memory departed. He’s in an asylum for the insane. His wife and children have been left with nothing and are in dire straits. If you ever feel inclined to help, please help her. It would be very timely. The address, I believe, is the same: Tatiana Vl… A… at Izmailovsky Bridge, Weber’s house.

I don’t know whether this letter will reach you while you’re still in the country? I’m sorry I was too lazy to reply sooner. May the Lord grant you a stay in Moscow for the good of your soul. There’s plenty of everything there: you can gather good things, and you won’t escape the bad either.

It seems the war is ending, but only if the Turks are compliant. I’m afraid our side might soften up. Bulgaria must be completely separated from the Turks… and only with great necessity should we perhaps concede the payment of tribute, as Serbia does now… If this isn’t achieved, the war must be drawn out; otherwise it will be needed again in a year or two…

I wish you every good from the Lord. God’s blessing upon your wife and children.

Pray to God for me, a sinner.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

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16 On Spiritual Coldness in the Practice of Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

I’m sorry—my reply has been delayed. And I’ve had to greet you not with the Bright Feasts, but with the fast.[1]

Grant you, Lord, to be conformed to the order of the Holy Church, not in food and drink alone, but also in the disposition of your soul.

You mention spiritual coldness in the practice of prayer… This is a great loss. Make the effort to shake yourself awake. Household affairs can excuse only a short time standing in prayer, but they cannot excuse the drying up of interior prayer. The Lord is pleased with little – but at least let that little be from the heart. Lift your intellect to Him and say with contrition: ‘Lord, have mercy! Lord, bless!’ Lord, help!’ is a cry of prayer. And if feeling toward God is reborn and dwells in the heart, that will be unceasing prayer without words and without standing at prayer.

You certainly have the book ‘On Sobriety and Prayer.’ A collection… Take it up and read it little by little… Prayer will begin to stir.

Insert into your prayer rule the little prayers of Saint Chrysostom: ‘Lord, do not deprive me of Your heavenly blessings!’ and so on.

You can skip one of the appointed prayers and say these three, five, or ten times… As your soul inclines.

You can even use them to replace the entire rule at times. It’s good to read them during the day too, in the midst of your work. You need to think them through and feel them deeply. And then they will be like levers.

I’m sending you the third volume of the Philokalia. And there you’ll find something to read for warming your prayer… May the Lord bless you![2] God’s blessing upon your husband and children.

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘поздравлять’ (to greet/congratulate) here carries the sense of liturgical greeting or acknowledgment of the Church calendar.

[2] Translator’s note: pattern; ‘warming prayer’ idiom for rekindling spiritual warmth

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17 On the Perfection of Noetic Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

I think you’ve now grown accustomed to the duties of your obedience… May the Lord grant that everything goes better and better. Wisdom is not a great thing! Don’t rush, endure, and little by little advance everything forward. The Lord desires this, and in these works He is always the all-powerful Helper. Only you must never allow yourself to say, ‘I want,’ but rather, ‘the order of things requires it; and I am your servant.’

You have wanted to learn noetic prayer. Good! But what kind of prayer were you engaged in before?![1] Prayer by its very nature is a noetic action, and if you were not praying noetically, then you were not truly praying at all. But I tell you, there is no one who does not pray noetically. Everyone prays noetically. Everyone, when they pray, mentally represents God as present and speaks their needs to him. Though they recite prayers, they all strive to lift their intellect to God in thought. If anything needs to be said, it’s that they don’t do this perfectly, not even continuously during the recitation of prayers, and above all, without feeling. So your desire will be: how to attain perfection in prayer, lifted noetically to God? The answer to this: seek, and you will find…

How did you learn to write? Through the labor of writing, with the desire to write correctly according to examples. Do this in prayer as well, and learn. It won’t come by itself—you have to learn.

1. Accustom yourself to walk (to live) in the presence of God, before the eyes of God, with the feelings that correspond to this.

2. Whenever you have the freedom, make prostrations with feelings of contrition and humility.

3. Read all the books about prayer and meditate on it.

4. Rather, strive with all your strength to conduct the church service in remembrance of God, and then your rule at home as well.

You must rub the soul, and it will grow warm.[2] When warmth comes, then thoughts will settle, and prayer will become pure. Yet all is from the grace of God. That is why you must pray to the Lord to grant you prayer.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: The exclamatory tone and rhetorical question convey Theophan’s pastoral challenge to the recipient.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘Rub’ (тереть) is a metaphor for spiritual effort; the warmth that follows is spiritual warmth.

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18 On Self-Pity and Self-Indulgence

May the mercy of God be with you!

The self-pity you complain of is dangerous and destructive. If you have to indulge yourself because of illness, that’s nothing to worry about. But if you do it under the pretext of illness, that’s bad. Here you see deception toward yourself—the worst kind of deception there is.

You seem to regard self-pity very lightly, treating instances of yielding to it as unimportant actions. That’s a serious mistake on your part. Instances of self-pity may indeed seem trivial; But the presence of this self-pity in the soul is far from trivial. What does it mean, after all? It means that self-indulgence is stronger in us than pleasing God. We resolved to do this and that, recognizing it as necessary in the work of establishing a saving life and pleasing to God; but then we abandon it for no other reason than that this abandonment is more pleasant to us—to our body or our soul. In that moment, we turn from pleasing God to self-indulgence. Your conscience sees your wrongdoing and troubles you. And it is right to do so. You shouldn’t have bound yourself with vows—saying you’ll do this and that for the sake of ascetic struggle—when you had no confidence that you could master yourself each time. For example: you resolved not to drink tea, and then you drank a cup. And you’re troubled by it. The matter itself—drinking a cup—is small. But what is great is that your conscience is wounded and that you allow yourself to do things that break your earlier resolutions. This destroys the inner order and creates a habit of not attending to your conscience when it points you toward what is right. And then… fearlessness will come, and complete indifference to pleasing God! It’s better not to bind yourself with rules down to the smallest detail, but to have one simple principle: every time, act against the demands of self-indulgence. And if you do allow your body some relief, let it be not out of self-indulgence, but out of the recognition that it’s necessary for your health. Not drinking tea is good and healthy. But since in other cases it does give strength to the body, you can sometimes drink a cup. That’s exactly how you should approach it: I will abstain from tea from time to time. Because sometimes it’s very easy to do without. But it’s better not to bind yourself with such petty restrictions. Rather, hold to the general principle: do not indulge the flesh; and act in this spirit, making your decisions each time with that in mind.

I mentioned tea only as an example; But you must act this way in everything: with food, sleep, walks, and rest, and so on. Whatever hinders your inner order, don’t allow it in any form. That’s why you need to have an elder at your side. A spiritual father is best for this. At the slightest thing that comes up, ask right away. Your conscience will be at peace. And so she will be able to demand it lawfully.

“There is no progress,” you say. And there won’t be, as long as self-indulgence and self-pity remain. Self-pity and self-indulgence plainly testify that the “I” dominates in the heart, not the Lord. Self-love is the sin living in us, from which all sinfulness comes, and which makes the whole person a sinner, from head to foot, as long as it has a place in the soul.[1] But when the whole person is sinful, how can grace come to him? It won’t come, just as a bee won’t go where there’s smoke.

The presence of self-love is a sign that the first decision to work for the Lord was formed incompletely and unsuccessfully. This decision has two ends: one – let him deny himself, the other – let him follow after Me… The first requires the complete suppression of egoism, or self-love, and consequently the non-admission of self-indulgence and self-pity – neither great nor small. Consequently, in those who have them, the decision was incomplete.

Such a decision makes a person like those of whom it is said in the Apocalypse: neither hot nor cold… neither one thing nor the other… – They want to be saved, but self-opposition is not permitted. You cannot serve God and mammon.

I bring all this to your attention so that you will examine yourselves carefully and determine what is truly at the center of your hearts: ‘I’ or the Lord. Then sit down and think it through—what is to be done? Ask me to pray for your deliverance from self-indulgence. What would I pray for in that case? God will not hear it. He hears prayer only from those who do not indulge in self-will. God hears any person only when that person is not enslaved by these firstborn daughters of sin.[2] Only when a person is free from self-pity and self-indulgence will the Lord grant grace and spiritual progress. The Lord does not give these things himself, but requires that you yourself acquire them as a pledge—and for this you deserve his mercy.[3]

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘from head to foot’ (inverted from source for English idiom)

[2] Translator’s note: ‘firstborn daughters of sin’ is a metaphorical phrase for self-pity and self-indulgence; the source uses ‘первородными дщерями греха’ (primordial daughters of sin)

[3] Translator’s note: ‘задаток’ (pledge/earnest) suggests a down payment or token of commitment on the human side

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19 On Acquiring the Jesus Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

You wish to acquire the Jesus Prayer according to the pattern set out in that book. (A manuscript from Mount Athos: “The Seeker of Unceasing Prayer”.) There is also a printed book.) Good! God will bless you!

You must complete the prayer rule right away.[1] Begin with a smaller measure. For example: for two or three days, a thousand times; then for two or three days, two thousand times; Then for a week or more, three thousand… You can stay at three thousand for a bit longer. After that, add a thousand at a time, if time permits and your other services allow.

The Wanderer (this is the intercessor—the seeker of unceasing prayer mentioned in that manuscript) was occupied with nothing else and didn’t attend services (he reached from six to twelve thousand Jesus Prayers in a day).

It’s better to say the prayer standing, as one performs one’s rule. If your legs get tired, you can kneel… You can also arrange it so that you complete the appointed number of prayers sometimes standing, sometimes kneeling.

Say the prayer: sometimes the whole thing, sometimes the first half, sometimes the second. “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!” “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

But don’t change it too quickly. Rather, set a number—say, a hundred for each prayer, or some other amount—but no fewer than ten.[2]

Keep your attention in your chest, a little below the hollow beneath your throat. That’s because your heart is constricted. But it won’t be that way. Then the warmth will arise in your heart without constriction. Speak the words of prayer slowly, as if chanting. Make prostrations as you see fit. If the work goes better without them, it’s better not to make prostrations, or to make them only rarely.

When you perform this prayer, which is directed to the Lord Saviour, you must not let slip from your attention that He is one of the Most Holy Trinity, inseparable from the Father and the Holy Spirit. That is why, as you speak those words, you should bring to mind the good pleasure of the Father and the grace of the Spirit. You can do this with a prayer rope…[3]

Don’t confine yourself to words alone, but refresh your contemplation of God as omnipresent, all-sustaining, and caring for all things, and so on. It’s best to do this practice at night.

The fruit of prayer is the gathering of attention in the heart and warmth. This is a natural action. Anyone can attain this. And anyone should say this prayer—not only monks, but laypeople too.

This is not some lofty work, but a simple one. And the Jesus Prayer (by itself alone) is not some miraculous thing, but, like any other short prayer, is vocal and, consequently, external. But it can become noetic and of the heart… all by a natural path. What comes from grace must be awaited, and you can’t seize it by any such method.

What they wrote to you, that you must first purify the passions – that applies to the lofty contemplative prayer; but this is a simple prayer… one that can, however, lead to lofty prayer.

For this practice to go well, you must set everything aside each time you come to it, so that your heart is free from absolutely everything, so that no face, no task, no thing sticks in your attention. You must drive everything out for this time. After you’ve finished this rule, don’t abandon the prayer altogether at any time; as soon as you’re free, go straight to it.

During the divine service you must attend to the service… standing with your attention in the same place where the Jesus Prayer is said. And when they read or sing something unintelligibly, then say this little prayer.

The external techniques (described in the fifth volume of the Philokalia): sitting on a stool, bowing your head, restricting your breathing—you can leave these aside. Direct all your effort to concentrating your attention in the place mentioned.

The fear of God must always be present. Just as even those closest to a king are not so bold before him, how much more should we sinners be before the Lord. If you’re overly familiar with God, that’s bad… completely out of line. You must pray for fear, and God will give it.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: урок молитвенный: a fixed prayer discipline or rule

[2] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘на каждую’ (literally ‘for each’) refers to each form of the Jesus Prayer mentioned in the previous segment.

[3] Translator’s note: четка: prayer rope (a knotted cord used for counting prayers)

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20 On the Essence of the Jesus Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

Labor on. Well, well! Labor on earnestly and with humility. And the Lord will not abandon your labor. Do not forget that you must not limit yourself to mere mechanical repetition of the words of the Jesus Prayer. This will lead to nothing but a mechanical habit of repeating this prayer with your tongue, without even thinking about it. And this, of course, is not a bad thing. But it constitutes only the outermost edge of this work.

The heart of the matter is conscious standing in the presence of the Lord with fear of God, faith, and love. This state of mind is possible even without words. It is this state above all that you must restore in your heart. Words will come afterward, to hold your attention on this one thing and to deepen those feelings and dispositions.

The fact that there was lustful arousal is very bad. This may be an accident; but you shouldn’t allow it; you must cut it off immediately… Otherwise the work, instead of being spiritual, will become sensual and will bring forth evil fruit instead of good. Read about this in the Philokalia, and especially about how to hold attention.

May the Lord bless you!

I congratulate you on your new rank. Do the work with humility and don’t spoil it with pride, or vainglory, or high-mindedness.

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

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21 On Feelings in Prayer and Spiritual Delusion

May the mercy of God be with you!

What you wrote about prayer is all good. As for the movements of the blood that sometimes occur during prayer, these will pass. Don’t strain your heart too much; rather, act in simplicity of heart. Then whatever feelings God sends will produce nothing harmful. When this happens, pray to the Lord and your Guardian Angel about this movement, that they may calm it, and if the enemy is stirring there, that they may drive him away.

There is nothing to fear from spiritual delusion. It happens to those who have grown proud, who begin to think that once warmth of the heart has come, that is already the end of perfection. But this is only the beginning, and perhaps not even a stable one. For both warmth and peace of heart can be natural as well—the fruit of concentrated attention—but you must labor and labor, wait and wait, until what is natural is replaced by what is grace-filled. In any case, it is best of all never to consider yourself as having attained anything, but always to see yourself as poor, naked, and blind, and good for nothing.

Remember the Most Holy Trinity, if you are able, together without division: for God is One. When you pray with prayer beads, at the large knots, say: ‘Most Holy Trinity, our God, glory to You’ or ‘have mercy on us!’ And even that, not always. Act freely, without binding yourself, only so that you remain always in feeling toward the Lord and with the Lord. Pray to Him, and He Himself will teach you.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 21)

22 On the Warmth of the Heart and Attention to Thoughts

May the mercy of God be with you!

It is comforting to hear of your interior life. Warmth of the heart during prayer is a very good sign. Be watchful. Make the effort to go through in thought all our truths more often, following the Creed or simply as they unfold, beginning from the divine attributes and creation… up to the universal judgement and the determination of everyone’s fate… This is especially good in the morning and evening before prayer… It will be like fuel.

You must, of course, attend to yourself constantly and examine the thoughts that appear: where do they come from and why?

May the Lord bless you!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 22)

23 On Slothfulness and Self-Justification

The mercy of God be with you!

I can’t decide your question boldly—it’s about accepting money and things… There are rules for this. In your interior disposition, hold to what the Lord has given. Zealous keeping of this will dispose the Lord to multiply His gifts.

Flee everything that distracts your attention and diminishes your warmth. Slothfulness and claiming rights to indulgences—these are the primary enemies, destroyers of everything spiritual.

Read Holy Scripture more, especially the Gospel… There the Spirit of God moves and drives away spirits that are opposed to God and God-fighting.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

P. S. You don’t need to constrain your breathing or put pressure on your heart; rather, say the prayer with a free mind.[1] Know that true spiritual prayer is grafted in us by grace.[2] Read in the Philokalia the account of the venerable Maximus of Kapsokalyvia (of Mount Athos) and imitate him. For two years he prayed from his heart to the Theotokos, using nothing special, and received what he sought in a single moment. (The grace-filled warmth fell into the heart when I drew near to the icon of the Theotokos.)

Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: натиска: ‘pressure’ or ‘strain’; rendered idiomatically in English

[2] Translator’s note: прививается: ‘is grafted’ or ‘is implanted’; captures the organic, living image of grace working in the soul

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 23)

24 On Overcoming the Coldness of Prayer Through Labor

May the mercy of God be with you!

I congratulate you on the completion of your prayer. May it be for your salvation! We remembered the departed hierarchs: follow in the footsteps of their Christian life.

Prayer that proceeds without recollection, when the soul is cold—you should not set a limit or an end to it.[1] As fallen beings, we have grown cold, and we must endure ourselves for a long time in order to warm up again. Labor, therefore, is unavoidable. And if it continues constantly and wisely, it is always crowned with success—not from us, but from the mercy of God, which has no end.

Whether the Jesus Prayer or some other short prayer—it’s a good thing if it sticks on your tongue. Only take care in this not to be with your attention in your head, but in your heart, and be there not only during the time you stand in prayer, but at all times. Labor to form in your heart something like a sore spot… Constant labor will soon accomplish this.[2] There’s nothing unusual in this. It’s a natural thing (that the sore spot—the ache—will appear). But from this too you’ll gain more recollection. And the main thing is that the Lord, seeing your labor, grants help and His grace-filled prayer. Then proper order will come into your heart.

May the Lord bless you!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

9 January 1871

[1] Translator’s note: The construction ‘не должно полагать предела и конца’ is idiomatic for ‘should not be cut short or abandoned’.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘болячку’ (sore spot) is a vivid metaphor for a tender, sensitive place of attention in the heart.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 24)

25 On the Warmth of the Heart and the Jesus Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

It is good that you have received the Holy Mysteries of Christ. May this be unto your salvation! If your heart grows warm when you read ordinary prayers, then kindle the warmth of your heart toward God in that same way. The Jesus Prayer, if you say it mechanically, gives nothing, just as any other prayer that is merely spoken with the tongue.

Try, when you say the Jesus Prayer, to think more vividly that the Lord Himself is near, and stands before your soul, and attends to what is happening within it. And in your soul awaken at the same time a thirst for salvation and the conviction that apart from the Lord we have nowhere else to look for our salvation. Then cry out to Him, mentally beholding Him before you: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!” Or: “Merciful Lord, save me by whatever means You know!” The whole matter is not in the words, but in the feelings toward the Lord.

Spiritual fervor of the heart toward the Lord is love for Him. It is kindled by the Lord’s touch upon the heart. Since He is entirely love, His touch upon the heart at once kindles love for Him. And from love comes the burning of the heart toward Him. This, then, is what you should seek. The practice of the Jesus Prayer is only an instrument for this, or rather, only a labor that shows the soul’s earnest desire to find the Lord.

On your tongue, let there be the Jesus Prayer; in your intellect, the vision of the Lord before you; in your heart, a thirst for God or communion with the Lord.[1] When all this is in place, and is constant, – then the Lord, seeing how you force yourself, grants what you ask.

Please consider all this and take it as guidance, and read it over more often so that you renew it in your memory—how you ought to act. And explain all this to N… My soul aches for her, desiring that she be more firmly established in the inner man. For then no waves can shake her, like a solid rock!

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

29 November 1884

[1] Translator’s note: ‘I set the Lord always before me’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 25)

26 On Prayer Rule and Progress in Prayer

The mercy of God be with you!

So your situation has become fully settled. May the merciful Lord bless it for you! Prepare yourself to carry out your ministry—as a teacher in the monastery school—with full attention, diligence, and fear of God, as a work that the Lord Himself has laid upon you. Let it be the first object of your prayers and your desires. Put everything else behind it, because in fulfilling it lies your salvation. This work is a small part of apostolic ministry and a continuation of their labor of preaching to children.

You wish to have a prayer rule. A good desire. Your former rule was good too; but since you’ve fallen out of the habit of it, here’s a new one. In the evening and in the morning, say the morning prayers and the prayers before sleep. To these add the short little prayers—the twenty-four of Saint John Chrysostom that are found among the prayers before sleep, repeating each one five times. Then call upon all the saints: apostles, prophets, hierarchs, martyrs and female martyrs, venerable fathers and venerable mothers, and all who in every way have pleased God by pleasing Him. This in general, and by name: the Lord Jesus Christ, the Mother of God, your Guardian Angel, the saint whose name you bear, the saints to whom altars are dedicated in the monastery; the saints whom you venerate according to your circumstances – such as Saint Tikhon… and others. Conclude with remembrance of the living and the departed for whom you pray… Mother abbess and the sisters.

Never rush through your prayers, but recite them unhurriedly, with the thoughts and feelings that are expressed in the prayers you are reading. Before beginning your prayer rule, always prepare yourself a little, gathering your thoughts and trying with your attention to stand before the Lord, to whom you are about to pray. The chief disposition in prayer should be one of repentance, for we all sin much… A contrite spirit, a heart contrite and humble God will not despise… In every rule, pray about your sins, in which you have transgressed… What should we strive to attain through prayer? – That the heart should be warmed by love for God and the feeling toward God should not depart… For this purpose the Jesus Prayer is appointed: ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner’… Repeat this prayer more often and reach the point of habit, so that your tongue repeats it by itself.

Please know that for success in prayer one must strive to adorn the heart with all virtues… especially with: humility, contrition, obedience, and renunciation of one’s own will. One must establish the faith that God sees and hears everything, and knows all our secrets. That’s why one must attend to oneself and drive away everything bad, and as soon as it breaks through in thoughts or feelings – immediately cast it out, and right then repent and ask forgiveness.

Do you have any of my little books? Tell me… I’ll send you what’s most needed.

May the Lord bless you!

Bishop Theophan.

September 20, 1892.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 26)

27 On Prayer and Patience in Afflictions

May the mercy of God be with you!

You have much affliction. I grieve that it is so. But there is no way to help this except through patience, with hope in the mercy of God. Everything comes from God—both what is pleasant and what is unpleasant. We must give thanks for everything. For even what is unpleasant is sent for our good: for purification, for humility, for strengthening a good character and hope in God. But you must not complain. Endure this time, and bright days will come. Be of good cheer…

How should you read the little prayers of Saint Chrysostom? (the twenty-four in the evening prayers before sleep). Read them before your prayer rule, so that your attention gathers into one… But also repeat them mentally at any time. This is the best way to train yourself in the remembrance of God; and this remembrance is the foundation of the spiritual life. Make waist bows, and sometimes full prostrations.

Say the Jesus Prayer in full and in part: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” and in shortened form: “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!” – “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me!” – This great prayer, the most important of the short ones, should be repeated more often than the others, sometimes in full, sometimes in parts.

Should I read the canon to the Guardian Angel? Yes, read it. But when you’re weak or have much to do, instead of reading the canon, offer a little prayer to him: “Angel of God, my holy Guardian, pray to God for me, a sinner” – fifty times, with prostrations as you are able (that is, make full prostrations or waist bows as you choose).[1] In this way you can replace all the canons with these little prayers. But you must hold your attention not merely on the words themselves, but on the corresponding thoughts and feelings that accompany them.

Labor in prayer. Prayer is the source of consolation, the enlightenment of thoughts, and the strengthening of a good character. I am sending you some books: one copy of the Unseen Warfare, which I am enclosing for Mrs. N. I am including several small pamphlets. You may distribute them to whomever you wish. Books: one copy of *The Path to Salvation*, one of *Letters on the Christian Life*, two of *Unseen Warfare*, one of *On Repentance, Confession…*, one collection of ascetic writings, two copies of the lessons of Venerable Simeon the Reverent; pamphlets: *Five Homilies on the Path to Salvation*, *Two Words on Baptism*, *Seven Words on Perfect Conversion…*, *Three Words on Bearing the Cross*, *Four Words on Prayer*, on encouragement to patience, on driving out pride, on the eternity of torments, examples of recording thoughts.[2]

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

God’s blessing upon Mrs. N., Father Protodeacon, and Mother Abbess.

Bishop Theophan.

November 8, 1892.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘пятьдесят’ (fifty) likely refers to the number of repetitions of the little prayer.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘возношение’ rendered as ‘pride’ (lit. ‘exaltation’); refers to spiritual pride or vainglory.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 27)

28 On Prayer Rule and Short Prayers

May the mercy of God be with you!

Most reverend Father, N!…

Because of the weakness of your eyesight, you may limit your prayer rule to a set time, and an hour, as you’re already doing, is quite sufficient for it. Instead of reading prayers from prayer books, you may pray using short little prayers. Here’s how to do it: choose three, four, or five short little prayers suited to your spiritual needs, memorize them, and repeat each one five to ten times during your prayer rule, just as you do with the Jesus Prayer, taking great care that your thoughts and feelings—the very ones the little prayers express—go hand in hand with the words. Labor at this for an hour, and that’s enough. The main thing is that every little prayer you say should come from the heart. To achieve this, you need to think them through deeply when you’re learning them. The content of your little prayers should include: doxology, thanksgiving, petition, and especially repentance. You need to select little prayers like that.

Sit down, read the psalms… and whatever verse strikes your heart, write it down. Then take the Octoechos, which is entirely made up of compunctionate appeals to God, choose the appeals that suit you, and write them down. You can also draw them from prayer books. You’ll gather many… Choose from these the ones most suited to you, and pray with these little prayers.

An example of short little prayers can be seen in the twenty-four little prayers of Saint Chrysostom, which are placed among the prayers before sleep. You can now learn them by heart, think them through, feel them deeply, and use them. It’s clear that Chrysostom prayed with them.

Rework the litany of supplication into short little prayers, like this: ‘Grant me, Lord, a day (or night, evening) that is perfect, holy, peaceful, and sinless,’ and the other six little prayers. Take from: “Have mercy on me, O God” the verses – up to “…Restore to me the joy of your salvation”… All these verses are deeply penitential.

There’s your rule for the first time. Later you can select more little prayers that you need. Remember, it’s not words that pray to God, but the intellect and heart. So never pray with words alone. In the book Unseen Warfare there is mention of short little prayers. See the chapters on prayer.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

April 4, 1891.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 28)

29 On prayer from the heart outside the church.

May the mercy of God be with you!

I give thanks for your prayerful remembrance at the shrine of the Saints, the servants of God.[1]

Lord, bless your solitude. Don’t be troubled that you’re not in church. For God, every prayer from the heart is equally precious, wherever it may be offered. Here the only difference is habit. You can get used to prayer outside church too. Read less from prayer books. Pray more in your own words… you can even manage with just ‘Lord, have mercy’… Replace the services with prostrations and be satisfied with them. That’s what all the desert-dwellers and hermits did. And this is far better than reading. You can’t get by without reading at all. But something from memory, without a book. Bless us, Lord!

I give thanks for the prostration of the Most Reverend Joseph. May he pray for me. Slothfulness has completely overcome me. What would I have done without her, thrice-cursed one.[2] Now it’s become a bit easier, as I told Metropolitan Platon about her.[3] Indeed, he prayed. Oh, when will I be free of her?!

God’s blessing upon you all.

Pray to God for me, a great sinner.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

October 7, 1874

[1] Translator’s note: рак (shrine/reliquary) rendered as ‘shrine’ for clarity in English; ‘угодников Божиих’ (servants of God) clarifies the Saints’ identity.

[2] Translator’s note: треокаянная: ‘thrice-cursed’ (feminine singular, referring to a thought or temptation)

[3] Translator’s note: владыке Платону: ‘Metropolitan Platon’ (dative case, addressing or referring to the metropolitan)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 29)

30 On Prayer Rule and Unceasing Prayer

Your Eminence,[1]

Most reverend Father Archimandrite!

With the fast![2]

May all go well with you. And I’m at a loss as to what to correct. I’m even puzzled as to where you got the idea. Keep to your rule as you’ve established it and grown accustomed to it. If sometimes you can’t manage to complete something because of the weakness of age, scold yourself a little, bring your sorrow before the Lord, and be at peace.[3] If you fall short again and don’t complete it, do the same thing again—and always in this way.

It seems to me that you’re giving yourself very little sleep. You could perform your night rule in the evening and then sleep until Matins. But since you write that you’re accustomed to it, it’s hard for you to change your order.

As for the rule, I think this way about it: whatever rule a person chooses for himself, any is good, so long as it keeps the soul in reverence before God. Again: read prayers and psalms until the soul is stirred, and then pray yourself, laying out your needs, or without anything at all: God, be merciful… Again: sometimes all the time set aside for the rule can be spent reciting a single psalm from memory, making your own prayer out of every verse. Again: sometimes the whole rule can be spent in the Jesus Prayer with prostrations. Or take a little from this, that, and the other… God needs the heart, and so long as it stands reverently before Him, that’s enough. Unceasing prayer consists precisely in this: to always stand reverently before God. But in this case the rule is only a stoking of the fire, or throwing wood into the stove.

I write all this to you in a bookish manner. But how many examples do you have?! From them choose what you find suitable.

I ask for your holy prayers on behalf of my great sinfulness.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

9 March 1880

[1] Translator’s note: ‘Высокопреподобие’ (literally ‘high venerableness’) is a formal honorific title for a high-ranking monastic or ecclesiastical figure; rendered as ‘Your Eminence’ for contemporary English courtesy.

[2] Translator’s note: A liturgical greeting or blessing formula; ‘With the fast’ is a traditional Orthodox salutation during fasting seasons.

[3] Translator’s note: старческой немощи: ‘weakness of age’ captures the sense of infirmity that comes with elderhood

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 30)

31 On the Prayer of the Intellect and Heart to God

The mercy of God be with you!

D… M…

Most honourable mother, as far as I could make out, you wish to shorten your four-hour cell rule, replacing it with a shorter prayer of your own. And you ask: how should you position yourselves?

I cannot answer your question directly without knowing how your life has unfolded, where your rule comes from, and what your interior prayer is like—the very thing you are so zealous about. If you have set your cell rule for yourself, then you have the power to change it in any way you wish. But if it was given to you by someone you consulted with before about your affairs, then you should discuss any change to this rule with that person. You can change it, but propriety requires that you ask first.

A rule is not an essential part of prayer; it is only its outward aspect. The main thing is noetic prayer of intellect and heart to God, offered with doxology, thanksgiving, and petition… and finally with complete surrender of oneself to the Lord. When such movements are in the heart, prayer is there too; but when they are not, there is no prayer either, even if you were to stand through your entire rule for days on end. You have in fact directed proper attention to this very thing. So continue to strive to reach this. Seek, and you will find. The Lord is near. You love the Lord, as you have written, so turn to Him with all your needs, as a child to the Father.[1] If you acquaint me with your life, with your interior life and write to me what your rule consists of, then perhaps I might be able to say something to you.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

February 22, 1888.

[1] Translator’s note: (Lord’s Prayer)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 31)

32 On Feeling Toward God in Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

Dear M…

The prayer you are performing—interior, from the soul, from yourself, according to the feeling of your spiritual needs above all others—is true prayer. And please continue to labor in this kind of prayer above every other. The heart of prayer is a feeling toward God that comes from the heart. The words of prayer will come as they may.[1] A feeling toward God, even without words, is prayer. Words sustain the feeling and sometimes deepen it. The prayer rule for church services must be observed as it is. As for the home prayer rule, it has no fixed form but may be changed in timing, length, and content—the one thing to keep in mind is that everything be done not to indulge slothfulness, but so that prayer comes from the soul. The prayer rule you have is a good one. You can add to it and make changes. The little prayers of Saint Chrysostom are excellent—twelve for the night and twelve for the day. You can select from the psalms those verses that move the heart most deeply. Act in complete freedom in all things. Sometimes you can spend the entire time of prayer praying your own prayers according to your present need; or insert such a prayer into your rule, at the beginning, middle, and end, or without words, only holding the feeling toward God… with the cry: ‘God, be merciful,’ or: ‘By the judgements You know, save me.’ But there is, mother, unceasing prayer, which goes unceasingly to God from the heart. This is a gift of grace. Saint Macarius the Great says: pray and exhaust yourself in prayer, and God, seeing how earnestly you desire to pray, will give you prayer. In the Slavonic Philokalia, the elder Maximus Kapsokalyvis says of himself that he prayed for two years to the Mother of God, that She would give or obtain for him prayer. Once, he says, as I, having prayed, venerated the icon of the Theotokos, – instantly a sweet little flame dropped into my heart and since then it glows there; That’s the gift of prayer! Seek it yourself as well, and express it in prayer with words, keeping in mind that prayer of which Maximus speaks. Sometimes it happens that this little flame descends during the priestly absolution at confession, sometimes at Holy Communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Seek it in every way. But keep the labor of prayer as it is… doing everything you can to warm up your feeling toward God.

It’s as though you don’t read anything; If there’s anything, read everything about prayer. I have some books to distribute. I’m sending them to you—read them little by little. I wish you every spiritual progress in drawing near to God.

You can stop going out altogether, using your many duties as an excuse…

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

March 20, 1888

[1] Translator’s note: подберутся suggests words that naturally arise or present themselves

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 32)

33 On Prayer Rule and Ascesis

The mercy of God be with you!

Most reverend Mother!

Three letters from you lie before me unanswered. But the fault is not mine—it’s my illness. Four weeks before the feast I caught a cold, and I’ve been very weak ever since. The books you asked for I prepared as soon as I received your letter; but my illness prevented me from sending them. I’m sending them now. I do this with pleasure.

I still have one question for you… about your prayer rule. Earlier you asked to finish the rule an hour sooner. Not seeing through the enemy’s cunning, I agreed to this. Now the enemy has crept up to you and talked you into thinking you can shorten your prayer rule even more by adding handwork to it. So your usual prayer rule has been completely ruined. It is not good that way. Make the effort to restore it as it was in the beginning.

If it’s more convenient for you to finish your rule an hour earlier, then start it earlier too. But throw out the handwork altogether… Where did you find such permission?.. no, no…

You must exert yourself, not invent indulgences. This is the broad way… not good…

May the Lord bless you.

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

I am sending you a booklet: “An Outline of Christian Moral Teaching”. The conclusion of this outline is the book “The Way to Salvation”, which you already have.

6 January 1891

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33)

34 On slothfulness in prayer and instruction in noetic prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

In your letter of January 23rd you described what you read during your night rule. It seemed to me then that there was too much reading, and I intended to write to you asking you to reduce the reading and insert noetic prayer in the intervals—prayer arising mentally from your heart and offered to the Lord with petitions for your spiritual needs. But in your letter of January 26 you say that you refuse to read in the evening because of eye trouble. And you resolve to study noetic prayer and, so as not to doze off, you knit socks. It seems that you’re abandoning vocal prayer altogether. You can do that, but you must stop knitting socks. Instead, when drowsiness comes over you, walk about the room, or lift something heavy, or—much better yet—take some prayer beads, thick ones, and strike yourself on the shoulders.

When I wrote to you not to shorten your time of prayer, I did so because it seemed to me that you were growing lazy in your praying. That’s what you must chiefly avoid. Slothfulness means a weakening or cessation of spiritual movements—something deeply to be lamented. But since I see that your zeal for the work of prayer is alive, I think it right to leave to your discretion both the time and the rule of prayer—arrange both as you find best and most fitting for yourself. Only one thing keep as your constant concern: when you stand at prayer, let your prayer come from your heart with feelings toward God—feelings of praise, thanksgiving, and petition, with hope—and let no extraneous matter mingle with it. You wish to learn noetic prayer. You understand, of course, the Jesus Prayer. A good and most excellent work! But without the habit of concentrating in prayer, it’s hard to succeed in the Jesus Prayer. To acquire such concentration, here’s what you should do: gather for yourself from the psalms and other prayers short prayerful invocations that are closer to your interior disposition, memorise them, feel them deeply, and pray with them, repeating each one three, five, or ten times so as to fill the appointed time; and in the midst of them insert the Jesus Prayer, and after all of them add invocations of the Theotokos, the saints, and so on. and remembrance of your living and departed. You can also add the reading of printed prayers, for example: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me…’, ‘Praise the Lord, O my soul’, ‘Who at every season…’, and so on.[1]

For an example, take this: the twenty-four little prayers of Saint John Chrysostom that are found in the prayers before sleep.

Adapt the litany of supplication into little prayers as well… like this: ‘Grant me, O Lord, that the whole day may be holy, peaceful, and sinless…’ and the rest in the same way. Take Psalm 50 from the beginning up to ‘…Restore to me the joy of your salvation…’ In these verses all the feelings of repentance are brought together. Learn them by heart and pray with them.

In this way your whole prayer rule can be put together, and you won’t need books or candles for it.

Each little prayer will give you not just one spiritual contemplation, and these contemplations will produce or sustain spiritual feelings. So seek and you will find the prayer that will then flow like a river from your heart. May the Lord bless you!

Your devoted servant, Bishop Theophan.

February 26, 1891

[1] Translator’s note: ‘внутренняя’ rendered as ‘within’ to preserve the psalm quotation idiom.

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35 On the Jesus Prayer in the Church

The mercy of God be with you!

Most reverend Mother!

I am guilty before you greatly and very greatly. I ask your forgiveness. But do not think that I have forgotten you! No, I have always remembered you and kept meaning to write. I give thanks to you for your greetings and good wishes at Pascha and on my nameday. May the Lord hear your prayers! I wish you all the best. May the Lord give you wisdom and strengthen you! You did well to decline the G. position.[1] position. Put your community in good order, then make it a monastery… There you’ll be abbess… And how much more joyful it will be for you to hear: mother abbess! when everything around you is the work of your own hands. Don’t be angry with the one who envies you. Her enemy troubles her, but she doesn’t see it; pray for her. As for sisters being drawn away, you should rejoice at that, because it means your sisters are so good that others want to have them with them. Let them go. God will send you better ones. Symeon the New Theologian has become dear to your heart. So read it more often. This will refresh and enliven your inner life. You ask: should one force the mind to practice the Jesus Prayer in church when the soul is peaceful and undisturbed, and when the mind in this stillness is attentive to what is being read and sung? You should stand in the presence of God and in feeling toward God, whatever you may be doing… So also in church. In another letter you wrote: “In church, when listening to the prayers, the Jesus Prayer goes better for me.” This prayer enlivens and sustains attention to God with the corresponding feelings. I’m sending you three more books that came out after the one you received. I’m also enclosing the little booklets I have on hand, five copies of each… May the Lord grant wisdom to the sisters.

May the Lord bless you!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

June 11, 1891.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘G. места’ (segments 3–4) likely refers to a specific place or position abbreviated in the original

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36 On Short Little Prayers and Humility

May the mercy of God be with you!

As you prepare for Holy Communion, you’ve been repeating one good verse and asking whether you can continue doing so? You can. Whenever a little prayer falls upon your heart, learn it by heart and repeat it often… No matter how many you collect. From them a many-stringed Psalter will be formed… and strum it, delighting your spiritual hearing. That you’re trying not to give yourself any self-indulgence is a good thing. You must keep yourself taut, like a soldier in formation… But don’t fall into self-conceit and self-esteem! God forbid! Hearing admonitions from above from time to time, you may naturally think that you’re someone exceptional, standing out from the crowd, but in fact this is more a witness to your weakness than to your strength. Humble yourselves with this thought… and remind yourselves more often of your own mistakes, of which we all have plenty. May the Lord keep you in humility! You do well to go often to the common refectory—how good that is! The sisters won’t grumble—and they’ll get used to the order. And it’s good for you yourselves, too—you’ll be less inclined to put on airs.[1]

Written notes are beneficial, but memorising is better… and corresponding practice is better still. But don’t your own good thoughts come to you?.. They come to everyone… They are inspired by the Guardian Angel, and you should write them down… Do you know the story about a certain elder… whose cell walls were all covered with writing? When he was asked what it was? He answered: these are thoughts that the angel of God inspires in me… In the Yelets monastery (Oryol province) not so long ago there labored a nun – Magdalene… who would write down the thoughts that came to her on small pieces of paper and paste them in visible places on the walls… But you start a notebook and write them down as they occur to you. And your handiwork is going well – it’s a great protection from idleness.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

October 6, 1892

[1] Translator’s note: ‘шириться’ (to spread out, expand) rendered idiomatically as ‘put on airs’ in this ascetical context.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 36)

37 On short prayers and unceasing prayer

The mercy of God be with you!

I am very much at fault before you. I ask you to excuse and forgive me. I kept thinking I’d manage to write in the next post… that is, in a week… But the weeks kept flying by—and look how many have flown past. I will read your letters again and write in response to them whatever God puts on my heart. The first unanswered one is from October 4… Mine to you was from October 11. But that one wasn’t a reply to yours, just a letter that happened to cross in the mail… In that letter you congratulate me on my name day—but October 11 is not my name day. My name day is March 12, Theophanes the Confessor of Sigriane. Then you mention that prayer is always with you and doesn’t allow you to think or talk much about vanity, but you’re still struggling with laziness and weariness. Glory to God! Give thanks to Him for prayer, for all things are from Him… and ask for strength for the struggle against what opposes the good. The second letter is from October 25. This is probably a reply to mine from October 11, since your opening lines contain thanksgiving for the letter. Then you say about yourself: ‘Glory to God that it hasn’t yet occurred to me to value myself’ – that is, that you have no self-esteem… This is very good… And keep yourself in this state. But watch out… self-esteem is cunning, like a demon… May the Lord enlighten you! You write that you have no self-esteem because your soul is entirely striving to glorify the Lord – and you feel how it is drawn to Him with your whole being. This is a very good, normal state… The feeling that your soul is drawn to the Lord is hidden prayer, and it alone can replace reciting prayers… For it is unceasing prayer!

Here is the conclusion from the whole Philokalia for you. Dedicate every breath to pure prayer and watch closely from where the enemy directs his arrows, and act accordingly… This conclusion is the true one… Please be so. In Anastasius of Sinai this forms the first point of his ascetic instructions. Still, you do remind the sisters about spiritual matters, despite their coldness toward them. And so it should be: some don’t pay attention, but others listen with zeal and lay good intentions in their hearts. Handwork should not interfere with prayerful watchfulness. There is a time for everything… When you’re occupied with handwork in its proper time, then let your hands work while your soul prays… But when you’re at prayer… all your members should take part in it… You wish to remember my parents in prayer! I thank you! My father was Father Basil, and my mother was Tatiana. Your last letter was from December 13. I give thanks for your greetings for the feast, which is now already upon us rather than awaited. I congratulate you and your whole monastic community… May the Lord grant all of you to taste of the blessings brought to earth by the Son of God who became incarnate for our salvation. Though you dealt strictly with the sisters, you were just! When you’re very tired, then lie down and pray… keeping your spirit calm… That which happens with you, that draws you to the Lord… guard it… With this one can even live alone and be saved.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

P. S. I’m sending you a book: the ancient monastic rules!

January 3, 1893

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 37)

38 On reciting prayers with little prayers and sobriety

May the mercy of God be with you!

Your two letters are before me—accusers of my slothfulness—I am at fault.[1] Please excuse and forgive me. In your first letter you describe how you fast. The fast is sufficient, and the spiritual fast is in order.[2] What adorns both is your care for the adopted girl and the unfortunate pious lady. May the Lord grant power to your word!

That you’re taking the plan for the church and bell tower from Moscow ones is very pious… From Moscow comes light to us. As you have decided regarding the reading of akathists, do it that way… But little prayers are always better. And besides the ones I’ve pointed out to you, you can gather many more yourself and choose from them the ones that suit you best. You’ll end up with a long series of prayers. Learn them by heart and use them for your prayer rule. You can distribute them into groups like this: doxological, thanksgiving, petitionary, penitential, and whatever else. Praying this way is even better… I don’t know whether you have self-will.[3] But is there anyone who doesn’t have self-will? It’s always good that you present yourself to God as one who is always repenting. And pray to God that He would give you to see tangibly what evils are in your heart… and, whatever you see, find a little prayer against it… and always insert it into your prayer rule. – It’s good that you’re learning the value and necessity of sobriety. And pray for it. Sobriety must be uninterrupted, just as prayer is unceasing. Both will take root in the soul when a feeling toward God is planted in the heart – warm and sweet and reverent, permeated with the fear of God.

Love of the body, indulgence of the flesh, self-indulgence, self-pity – these are different names for one and the same thing… Opposed to them is self-mortification, which begins with a certain hostility toward the body… a desire to torment it and the doing of this with a certain pleasure.[4] It’s good that you read the ‘Reminder to Nuns’ for the sisters. Your rule-writing is very good; please continue to do so; and what you have established regarding the cell-rule for nighttime prayer is commendable. May the Lord bless your labors.

Be sober and watchful.

Bishop Theophan.

May 1, 1893 .

It is May 9.

[1] Translator’s note: The dash and direct admission convey the elder’s humility and self-reproach.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘душевный’ may mean ‘spiritual’ or ‘of the soul’; here rendered as ‘spiritual fast’ to parallel ‘bodily fast’.

[3] Translator’s note: самоцен is rare; likely самость (self-will) or самоцен (self-valuation)

[4] Translator’s note: ‘делание’ here rendered as ‘doing’ in context of self-mortification, not the technical ‘practice’.

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39 On Prayer as a Witness to Spiritual Life

The mercy of God be with you!

I’m very glad that all is going well with you—not in the monastery, but in your soul! For when prayer is present, nothing better is needed. That’s why it’s been noted somewhere that the ancient monks, when they met one another—whether on mutual visits or elsewhere—would first of all ask how their prayer was going. In true prayer all our highest relationships with God are active and working, and they ensure that our spiritual life stands in its proper order at that time… Prayer is the witness to our spiritual being and the measure of it! Why be amazed when we read that one of the Saints stood in prayer and sometimes did not leave off the whole night and part of the day besides?

Prayer lifted him up to his native home, where the Father, Mother, brothers and sisters embrace him with full love, comfort him, and delight him. Grant you, Lord, never to lose the structure of prayer within![1]

You have so many cares for your sisters; it cannot be that not one of them enters into what you are offering. Some in their own measure do assimilate it. But do not cease to act upon them, to the extent you are able, praying unceasingly, so that the Lord, whose daughters they are, may visit them and enlighten their thoughts and hearts.

The fourth volume of the Philokalia contains the teachings of Saint Theodore the Studite, where a great many instructions are offered to those living in community, for all the situations that inevitably arise in this kind of ascetic struggle. There are instructions even for those working in the fields. You should look through them and read them to the sisters… or have the sisters themselves read them. This will be a ready means for the edification and guidance of the sisters. The Lord will instruct you and help you arrange everything; pray to Him more fervently. Your prayer should not be limited to yourselves… but more than for yourselves, you should importune God for the spiritual progress of the sisters.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

August 15, 1893.

[1] Translator’s note: молитвенного строя: ‘structure of prayer’ captures the sense of an inner ordering or discipline of prayer life.

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40 On Prayer, Patience, and Humility

May the mercy of God be with you!

The Lord has delivered you from NN. Thanksgiving to the Lord! Restore and maintain again the ordinary course of your personal and monastic affairs. May the Lord help you to manage well in all these troubling circumstances.

It’s a great blessing for you that, as you say, your prayer is intact… And I can wish nothing better for you than this: hold on to prayer, and for this expect nothing from yourself, from your own wisdom and efforts, but everything from the Lord, who is near and attends to the movements of hearts. You write that you’ve collected some little prayers. I assume that they’re all applied to you and your circumstances, and especially to your interior disposition. Let the little prayers of Saint John Chrysostom be a model for them, in which all the essential spiritual needs are outlined.

But may the Lord grant you unceasing prayer of the heart, which has no need of words but stands by itself and is pleasing to God and fruitful for the soul. Patience and humility are the rulers of the spiritual life. The first governs earthly affairs, the second rules over heavenly things… and holds them, or they hold themselves in it, by their love for it…[1]

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

November 1, 1893.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘держит земные порядки’ rendered as ‘governs earthly affairs’ to capture the sense of ordering/managing temporal matters

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 40)

41 On Guarding Against Self-Love and Angry Words

May the mercy of God be with you!

The Lord has delivered you from NN., but the troubles have not ceased on that account; for others too know how to cause annoyance. But God’s protection is over you. That prayer which works of itself is God’s gift and for you a safe refuge, where you take shelter whenever any trouble comes from without.[1] Guard this gift! And above all, flee self-esteem—that most venomous serpent, yet more honeyed in speech than all the rest![2] Your Guardian Angel, who watches over you, reminds you through your conscience of earnest prayer and of the rage of your unseen enemy. Turn to your holy Guardian Angel, and he will guide you in every circumstance. He is the most reliable spiritual guide. You have rightly decided that nothing is to be expected from N. there is nothing to expect, because while fulfilling toward them what is appointed by God’s commandments, in other matters concerning the arrangements and demands of spiritual life, withdraw into yourself and resolve everything under the influence of noetic prayer according to the promptings you receive in this way.[3] These are your thoughts, and I believe that to act in this way will be good!

Not to speak an angry word is a great perfection. May Elder Hilarion help you! At the root of this lies the absence of irritability of heart, and irritability is extinguished like sparks by surrendering ourselves to the will of God, with the awareness that God permits unpleasantness for our testing and to show us how firm our good interior disposition is… which obliges us to conduct ourselves in such cases with good cheer, believing that God Himself is watching us at that moment. And that thought of yours—that those who cause us unpleasantness are instruments of the enemy—is true. So whenever someone causes you unpleasantness, always assume that the enemy stands behind them, inflaming them and suggesting offensive words and deeds to them. The little book Unseen Warfare has good instructions for this occasion. There are many such examples in Barsanuphius and John, and in the holy Ladder of Saint John Climacus. Read through these books often. Don’t entertain hostile or judgmental thoughts about NN. and her associates—be patient and kind toward them, and pray to the Lord not to withhold His mercy from them on your account, but to strengthen you in patience and in a wise attitude toward them.

The Church that has been entrusted to you is also a concern. But you do well to cover these concerns with hope in the mercy of God. When God’s good pleasure and blessing are present, then everything will be arranged in the best way, for then the almighty gestures of God will be at work, by the power of which—from where could anything come!

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

December 15, 1893 A.D.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘молитва, что сама собою действует’ likely refers to noetic prayer operating spontaneously in the heart

[2] Translator’s note: самоцена (self-esteem, self-regard) is distinct from самость (self-will); rendered as ‘self-esteem’ to capture the prideful sense

[3] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘затворяться в себе’ (lit. ‘shut yourself in’) idiomatically means to withdraw into oneself for discernment.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 41)

42 On Overcoming Slothfulness toward Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

I have greatly wronged you, and since my fault is so great, I do not ask for forgiveness, but only say: I am guilty.[1] You were resting at the dacha. I have greatly desired that you be strengthened and refreshed. If only my desire could be fulfilled! Your companions or hangers-on (lacking patience and meekness, full of pride, irritability, vanity, idle talk, slander, lack of self-control in speech and food, and above all slothfulness toward prayer) certainly cannot be praised; but it is good that their faults are noticed, and not only noticed but exposed—which these ladies cannot bear.[2] Every evening you report on them to the Lord when, having reviewed all that has broken out during the day, you say: ‘Lord! You see all things! Forgive them, and grant me the wisdom not to stumble in this matter.’[3]

If you do this, they’ll forget your door one after another. But one of them you must kill right now, burn it, and scatter its ashes to the wind… That’s slothfulness toward prayer. Get angry at it and destroy it immediately, so that not even its spirit remains.

If it breaks through but is driven away every time, that’s nothing, and there’s no need to talk about it. But if you indulge it, then the mistress of the house is entirely to blame… for not protecting her own good… From frequent self-indulgence, prayer will grow completely weak, and the prayer rule will turn into a lifeless form, and the spiritual life will die. But I think you’re being a bit too hard on yourself here.

God has given you a willing heart, which is and remains in you a source of the active life according to the commandments in relation to your neighbours. Make it your rule: to dedicate every task to God at its very inception, to turn it toward God while you’re carrying it out, and to ask God for strength to complete it; then, when you’ve finished, to give thanks to Him for it… repenting if anything slipped through that distorted the work, or that presents it before God’s eyes as in some way deficient.[4] Acting in this way, you will finally reach by this laborious path what the desert-dwellers who renounce everything reach. But if you don’t, you’ll remain at the same level as the Jews—not the present-day ones, but the ancient ones who lived according to the norm prescribed for them.

Please keep this in mind. The obedience you laid on me to pray for N. N. I fulfil. Only I don’t pray: take this and give that, but rather: do with him, Lord, what is saving for him. Otherwise prayer will look like giving orders to God… which is completely unseemly.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

October 28, 1882

[1] Translator’s note: вящшая: archaic superlative form of ‘greater’; rendered idiomatically as ‘so great’

[2] Translator’s note: ‘приживалки’ (hangers-on) refers to dependent women living in the household; the list of vices is characteristic of Theophan’s pastoral diagnosis.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘уменье’ (wisdom, skill, ability) here means the spiritual capacity or grace to avoid complicity in judgment.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘проторглось’ is a rare verb; rendered idiomatically as ‘slipped through’

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43 On Unceasing Prayer and the Dedication of Works to God

The mercy of God be with you!

I owe you an apology—I’ve been slow to answer your letter. But now the time has come to write, and recently, while writing to N., N. asked me to send you a prostration and to tell you that next time (we send to the city in a week) I will write.[1] And then your package arrived. I give thanks. I see, I see that you want to bribe my slothfulness. Well no, my faithful one is not like that.[2] She cannot be bribed, though you try. N. N. You wrote that things were weighing heavily on you, even to the point of exhaustion. But then you let me know that things have become easier for you and you’re at peace. I’m very glad. May the Lord help you not to step out of this comforting atmosphere.[3] You’re all complaining about yourselves.[4] This is entirely in the order of things—who will boast? Who doesn’t see themselves? Glory to God that you see this and are aware of yourself in this way.

You complain about the scarcity of prayer. But you can pray without standing in prayer. Every lifting of the intellect and heart to God is true prayer. If you’re doing this between your other tasks, then pray as you go. I recall that in Basil the Great, the question of how the apostles could pray unceasingly is resolved this way: they kept God in mind through all their work and lived in unceasing devotion to God. This disposition of the spirit was their unceasing prayer. There’s your example. I think I’ve already written to you that from people of action—and you belong to that sort—we cannot demand the same as we do from those who sit idle. Their chief concern should be to avoid improper feelings in their work and to strive in every way to dedicate all their deeds to God. This dedication will turn your deeds into prayer. It is written that the blood of Abel cries out to God. So too the deeds we dedicate to God cry out to Him. One elder, when someone brought him something to eat, said: how badly this smells… though what had been brought was actually very good. When they asked him: how so? He explained that it had been sent with bad feelings and from a bad source. So every deed is anointed with the feelings with which it is performed. And those who have purified feelings perceive it. So it follows that just as a sweet fragrance comes from good flowers, so from deeds done with good intention comes its own fragrance, and it rises up like incense from a censer. Here is yet another prayer.

Afflictions do not leave you. Is God arranging this for nothing? Why? Because He loves you… He loves and prunes you, so that you may be pure and shine like a diamond in the sun. And He smooths the path into the Kingdom for you, for the chariot by which one reaches there is patience. But how can you endure when there are no afflictions? So they are sent.

May the Lord bless you with every blessing.

Every comfort to you and health to your spouse.

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

26 July 1883

[1] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘передать вам поклон’ is a traditional Orthodox greeting; ‘send you a prostration’ preserves the spiritual sense of the gesture.

[2] Translator’s note: благоверная: ‘faithful’ or ‘pious’; here referring to the recipient’s soul or inner self in a playful, affectionate manner

[3] Translator’s note: благодушествуете rendered as ‘at peace’ to capture the sense of spiritual calm and equanimity.

[4] Translator’s note: жалуетесь can mean ‘complain’ or ‘lament’; context suggests self-reproach or self-complaint.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 43)

44 On the Jesus Prayer and hope in God

May the mercy of God be with you!

I’m very glad that my ‘Reminders to Nuns’ made a good impression on you. I myself read them with pleasure, and they seem so fresh to me that it’s as if I hadn’t written them—and if I were to try writing sermons now, I couldn’t write them the same way anymore. The distinctive mark of my sermons—these and all the others—is that they are not composed. Usually, in the evening after Vespers I’d drink a glass of tea, read the next day’s Gospel, then the Apostle reading… and whatever thought came to mind and took hold of my attention and heart, that I’d take as my theme… and the sermon would build itself inside. An hour, an hour and a half, at most two… and the sermon was ready… in the morning you’d read it through and touch it up a bit. Sometimes external circumstances would give the theme, as used to happen when visiting monasteries… but the process was always the same. These are written improvisations; since they didn’t come from the head, they present something sweetened.[1] Well, we’ll see how other similar booklets strike you. There will be six or seven of them; two or three times as many as that.

I follow after your letter.[2] You’ve painted a beautiful picture of your new dwelling, and it’s especially good that you know how to find the advantageous side even in what seems disadvantageous. We can hope that the disadvantage will vanish entirely before your attention, and what remains—the advantage alone—will turn your life into paradise.[3] Grant it, Lord! The despondency that comes – it’s from lack of habit. Arrange the hours so that not a minute passes without an appointed task. Let reading with reflection, prayer with prostrations, and some simple handwork take up all your time – and there won’t be time to be bored or despondent. That church services are infrequent – that’s a great deprivation. But, God willing, prayer at home will become established… Learn to act this way: as soon as you have no task at hand, immediately take up the Jesus Prayer and begin to say it with attention, whether walking, sitting, or – best of all – standing before the icons. You can set aside special times for this. This will be better, and your skill in this prayer will take deeper root. The thought of moving into eternity fits well with your circumstances; but it always has its place in everything. Bind it to your intellect and heart, and look at everything else through it. Your account of what happened with Aksakov is very instructive. I have heard before about the errors in NN’s judgments. You desire to unite your intellect with the thought of the Lord. The best way to do this is through practice of the Jesus Prayer, as written above. Set aside three or four times a day to stand before the icons to say this prayer reverently and with the vision of the Lord before you, and say it each time a hundred, two hundred, three hundred times, as you are able. Once you’ve set the time for this, don’t cancel it. Your thought all day will see ahead… there, there I must stand.[4] And the Lord will be near Thought about one’s own affairs is also near. The beautiful NN wrote.[5] May the Lord show His mercy to them! The mercy of God shall surround those who hope in the Lord. But do they truly hope? The feeling of hope in God is a great work. It is the sum of all our feelings toward God, especially a deep faith in God’s providence over us.

I give thanks for the news about His Grace Archbishop Leontius.[6] I can barely restrain myself from writing to the bishop. But I’ll wait a bit longer to hear what you have to say.

Do people write to him, and does he reply? In the meantime, I’ll pray all the more earnestly several times a day.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

April 28, 1893

[1] Translator’s note: ‘подслащенное нечто’ rendered as ‘something sweetened’ – the sense is that sermons from the heart have a certain sweetness.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘Иду вслед за’ can mean ‘I follow the thread of’ or ‘I respond to’; here it means the writer is addressing the recipient’s letter point by point.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘пред вниманием’ (before attention) is idiomatic; the sense is that spiritual attention transforms perception.

[4] Translator’s note: The ellipsis and repetition (‘вот, вот’) are preserved to reflect the original’s rhetorical effect.

[5] Translator’s note: NN is a name placeholder in the original; rendered as is.

[6] Translator’s note: The abbreviation В[ысоко]преосвященном] expands to ‘Высокопреосвященном’ (His Grace, Archbishop).

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45 On the Jesus Prayer and Walking Before God

The mercy of God be with you!

Lord, bless you to receive the Holy Mysteries. A most excellent deed!

You are right in your judgment about the labor of caring for the little one—that she has been entrusted to you by God. And the Lord will repay you! And the little one can repay you too. When she grows up, she’ll be attached to you as to a mother… and later she’ll be your novice… and you an eldress. There’s the shadow of a future monastery!

Labor over the Jesus Prayer. God will bless you. But together with the practice of pronouncing this prayer vocally, unite the remembrance of the Lord, with fear and reverence. The main thing, after all, is to walk before God, or under the eye of God, with the awareness that God is looking at you, at your soul – into your heart – and sees everything there… This awareness is the most powerful lever in the movement of the interior spiritual life. You surely have there the ‘Letters on the Spiritual Life’, written in response to Speransky’s letters. Look through more often what is written there about the Jesus Prayer. It’s not at the beginning, but, I think, from the fifteenth or twentieth letter.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 45)

46 On Warmth of Prayer and Spiritual Coldness

May the mercy of God be with you!

Your health, God willing, will return in full strength… Endure for now. And don’t forget to give thanks to God, who humbles your soul through weaknesses. But the feeling that you’ve had enough—drive it away. It is not pleasing to God. Because it means you’re dissatisfied with God’s arrangements for you… and you want to tell Him what to do. Make sure to receive Holy Communion during this fast. May the Lord visit your soul and dwell in it!

That you strive, when you say the prayer, to penetrate the meaning of each word and to pronounce the prayer with feeling—this is the very essence of prayer. Make yourself always do this.[1] But when you pray with feeling, where is your attention, if not in the heart? Feeling always draws attention to itself. The mind is a bustling marketplace.[2] You cannot pray to God there. That sometimes prayer goes well… and by itself… This is a good sign. It means that prayer has begun to take root in the heart. Guard your heart from attachments, strive to remember God, seeing Him before you and acting in His presence, help those who have nothing and those in need… and your prayer will soon take wing. That prayer disappears and leaves coldness… grieve over this… Be contrite and entreat God and the Lady Theotokos not to let warm prayer depart.

True prayer is a gift of God! And pray for this. Spiritual coldness is preceded by the heart’s attachment to something, preoccupation with something, anger and judging others… discontent and some indulgence of the flesh, self-pampering… and the scattering of thoughts! Guard yourselves from these things, and there will be less spiritual coldness…

May the Lord bless your labors upon yourselves!

The heart! But where is life, if not in the heart?

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: The imperative ‘понудьте себя’ (force/compel yourself) is rendered as direct counsel: ‘Make yourself always do this.’

[2] Translator’s note: ‘толкучий рынок’ (literally ‘jostling market’) is rendered idiomatically as ‘bustling marketplace’ to convey the sense of chaos and distraction.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 46)

47 On attention in prayer and warming the heart

The mercy of God be with you!

A penance?!! You should have done this yourselves… But now, when the fault has been corrected, it’s no longer timely…

The order of your affairs throughout the day is good… Keep to it… and more and more, go deeper into the spiritual. To pray with thought about what the words of the prayer say is still prayer, only limping on one leg. Prayer ceases to be prayer when attention departs from the words of the prayer… But when consciousness is present during prayer… that is prayer, though unsatisfactory. Feeling will come… but you must also strain yourself toward it. It’s best to do this by reflecting on the content of the prayers not during the recitation of prayers, then during the recitation of prayers to stir up the heart… But above all, ask God Himself for this, that He would always warm the heart. Also do this: when the whole series of truths has passed, stop at the last point – the judgement and the verdict of the judgement… waiting for the pronouncement: come, or: depart… And in this position cry out: Lord, have mercy! For as the Lord decides, no one can change it.

About sleep and food… If you want to reduce them, reduce them little by little… by the piece and by the spoonful… and by the minute…

Labor! God will give you strength!

Awareness of your powerlessness is the true threshold to receiving God’s help!

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

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48 On the Jesus Prayer and its spiritual action

May the Lord bless you, and grant that Holy Communion may be for you a communion in all spiritual goods! As you prepared by replacing the church services with prostrations and the Jesus Prayer, that’s good… You can do this every day—not just as preparation for Holy Communion, but as a feasible fulfillment of God’s commandment about unceasing prayer—with zeal and a warm disposition toward this practice. The Jesus Prayer strengthens good dispositions, and disperses and suppresses the evil suggestions of bad thoughts and passionate movements. May the Lord bless you in practicing this… This is truly spiritual practice when it is done as it should be. Labor on, don’t be lazy.

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

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49 Lessons of Illness and the Path of Spiritual Restoration

May the mercy of God be with you!

You’ve been ill? But glory to God that you’re recovering or have already recovered. Glory to God also that you didn’t endure the illness without benefit. The lessons you’ve drawn for yourself from these circumstances are very significant in life generally, and all the more so in spiritual life. To expect nothing from people, and to cast all your cares upon the Lord, and also to constantly await death… and, believing that the Lord has left you still to live for the purification of sins, to turn all your attention to that. These points are the levers and guides of spiritual life.

Don’t judge your spiritual father harshly, not knowing for certain why he behaved so inattentively toward you. The Athonite fathers—may the Lord save them! They acted well. But your brother and son… they’re peculiar judges… how does it all fit together for them?

The illness was not caused by your way of life; consequently, you shouldn’t change it on account of the illness. The type of food in restoring strength is a secondary matter… The main thing is fresh food (unspoiled), clean air… and most of all – peace of spirit. Unrest of spirit and passions spoil the blood – and substantially harm health. Fasting and the ascetic life in general are the best means for preserving health and its flourishing. The German Hufeland wrote a science of long life, in which he extols the ascetic life. Scientists ought to listen to him, but we have other teachers, more important than this German. Prayer leads the spirit into God’s realm, in which is the root of life – and from the spirit the body also partakes of that same life… A contrite spirit, feelings of repentance and tears don’t diminish strength, but give it: for they place the soul in a joyful state. You did well not to give in to their suggestions. However, with a view to restoring your health more quickly so that you can work more fully for the Lord, you may without sin make some allowance for the weaknesses of the body—in sleep, labor, standing, and in food. This is after Passion Week.[1]

Now it’s summer… you may sometimes take milk, and even broth, also eggs… go out of town, because in the city there is no clean air. There’s always some impurity in it… The ancient elders wrote that they treated the body harshly—not with the aim of killing it, but through mortifying the flesh to put the passions to death.

You desire that contrition and tears never depart. Better to desire that a spirit of deep humility always reign in you. From it come tears and contrition… and from it also comes the fact that they don’t puff you up… for the enemy manages to produce these harmful weeds even from them. There are also spiritual joys interspersed with contrition… True contrition knows how not to hinder pure spiritual joy and to live peacefully with it, hiding somehow beneath it. Your present compunction and contrition are partly the fruit of your past or passing illness.

The arising of prayer during handiwork is the mercy of God—so pray right there as you work. You regret that the Jesus Prayer is not continuous—that you don’t recite it unceasingly—but this isn’t required… What is required is a constant feeling toward God, which can be present even during conversation, during reading, and during observation and examination of something… But since the Jesus Prayer, when you pray it, is in its proper form, continue to act this way, and this prayer… will expand its domain.

Since you found my little books so much to your liking, go ahead and read them… There are books that have come out, titled *My Life in Christ*, by Fr. John of Kronstadt… of the same sort as mine. But in them there’s much that’s written better than in mine. So it won’t be superfluous if you come across them and read them…

But the main storehouse of spiritual instruction is in the Philokalia. Ask the Athonite fathers to let you read the second volume of the Philokalia. Everything there is about the struggle with the passions, which is extremely important for anyone engaged in ascesis to know well. Read and note the signs by which the passions manifest themselves… Then use these indications to examine and correct yourself.

And how is your self-will?[2] Take up the sword, or rather keep it always at hand—the sword of humility and self-abasement—and mercilessly cut off, continually cut off, the head of our first enemy.

May the Lord bless you!

I give thanks for your prayer for me—and I ask you to continue.

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

March 30, 1893

[1] Translator’s note: страстная refers to Holy Week (Passion Week)

[2] Translator’s note: самоцен (self-will/self-esteem) is a rare term; rendered as ‘self-will’ per glossary

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50 On the Imagelessness of Noetic Prayer

In your last letter you mentioned the action of the Jesus Prayer in everything. May the Lord bless this good beginning! In the practice of this prayer there should be no image mediating between the intellect and the Lord, and the words that are spoken are not the main thing but rather the means. The main thing is noetic standing before the Lord in the heart. That is noetic prayer, not words. The words here are the same as the words of any other prayer. The essence of noetic prayer lies in walking before God; And walking before God is an unwavering conviction that God, being everywhere, is also within you, and sees all that is within you—indeed, sees it even more clearly than you see it yourself. This awareness of God’s eye looking within you should likewise have no form; rather, it should consist entirely in a simple conviction or feeling. When someone is in a warm room, he feels how the warmth envelops him and penetrates him. The same thing should happen in our spiritual inner man from the omnipresent and all-encompassing God, who is fire. The words: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,” are indeed an instrument, not the essence of the work itself, but an instrument of great power and manifold efficacy; For the name of the Lord Jesus is terrible to the enemies of our salvation and a blessing to those who seek Him. Do not forget that this work is simple and has no peculiarities, and should have none. Pray to the Lord about everything, to the Most Pure Sovereign Lady and to your Guardian Angel, and they will teach you all things—either directly or through others.

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51 On the Jesus Prayer and the Preservation of Interior Warmth

Great is the mercy of God toward us sinners! The Lord has called you. It is good that you obeyed and went. You went; so do not look back, and do not be lazy in your work.[1] Your first obedience has laid the foundation, and the end lies ahead. You have boarded a boat and set sail. With fear and trembling pray to the Lord, that he may help you cross your sea and reach the harbor. An abyss beneath us. How long before disaster strikes? The little boat will capsize—and down we go! But the shore—who knows how near it is? The shore is the grave. Until your last breath, you cannot abandon vigilance against the expectation of shipwrecks. Keeping this in mind, never give way to negligence or any relaxation, thinking that you are somehow beyond danger. Know this: whatever you may have accomplished and whatever may have been revealed to you, it is all nothing until you reach the harbor. I write this not to discourage you, but so that you keep your ear sharp. The Lord is your Helper—the Lord almighty and full of mercy. You must not therefore give way to despair, but go forward boldly in hope, even though with fear. But the Lord is a Helper to the zealous, to those who labor.[2]

You have now entered a monastic community—the most suitable place for those who practice ascesis. Do not think that now you can diminish your vigilance over yourself and reduce your labors. No. Rather, this is where you must sharpen your attention and watchfulness over yourself all the more. In the world there are its own temptations; in the monastery there are its own—and the latter, surely, will be far more severe. Be ready to meet it. You say that where you lived, children and servants often angered you. Now that you live alone, you’re safe from that side. But the enemy will find a way to stir up the passion that’s settling. Watch yourself, and train yourself not only to overcome the rising of passions, but to prevent them from arising in the first place.

What you experienced during prayer is the mercy of God toward you. The Lord has made you know by this feeling of His closeness to you that He is not unwilling to receive your labors, if only you keep your covenant with Him. Thanksgiving to the Lord! But don’t think that this is the summit or the end. This is only the beginning, and a weak one at that. You must now, following this sign, enter ever more deeply within, and become so firmly established there that you remain there without ceasing day and night. And that state which was then present—warm, peaceful, unmoved—you must take care to make your constant condition. So hold fast now to this one goal and pursue it, while strictly fulfilling all the requirements and proper order of your outward life. From the moment you wake in the morning, take care to gather yourself inwardly and kindle the warmth. Consider this your normal state. Whenever this is absent, know that something is amiss within you. Once you’ve established yourself in the morning in this collected and warmed state, then—all your obligatory duties must be carried out in such a way that they don’t disturb your inner disposition, and from what is voluntary, do what sustains this state; but whatever would disrupt it, do not do under any circumstances—for that would mean warring against yourself. This is a general rule for you. How it can then be carried out in different circumstances—the practice itself will teach you. Look to yourselves and grow wise. An outsider has no way to determine this. Make it your law to preserve recollection and warmth of the heart, standing with your intellect in your heart before the Lord. Then this itself will show you what you ought to do, or what you should allow yourself and what you should not.

The all-powerful aid to this is the Jesus Prayer. You must become accustomed to it so that it reads unceasingly there, in the place of the heart. But to become accustomed to it, you must labor. Now then, take up this work. Or are you already familiar with it? It seemed to me that you say this prayer only according to your rule.[3] Say it according to your prayer rule in turn, but you should also say it unceasingly—sitting, walking, eating, working. If it doesn’t take firm hold in your heart, you can set everything else aside and occupy yourself with it alone until it becomes rooted there. This work is simple. Stand before the icons in a prayerful posture (you may sit), and, bringing your attention down to where the heart is, say the Jesus Prayer there slowly, remembering the presence of God. Do this for half an hour, an hour, or longer. At first it will be difficult, but once you acquire the habit, it will happen naturally, as breathing does. With your interior life arranged in this way, there will begin in you a noetic life, or as they say, noetic activity. The first requirement here is purity of conscience, its blamelessness not before God alone, but also before people and before yourself, even before things. So whenever even the slightest thing slips into your thought or word that troubles your conscience, you must at once repent inwardly before the Lord, who sees all things, and he will bring peace to your conscience.

It helps greatly to establish a regular order of life and activities, so that you don’t have to think each time what to do, but so that it’s already decided and known beforehand. You’ve done that now; what remains is the struggle with thoughts, which will buzz around constantly like persistent mosquitoes. Learn for yourself how to deal with them. Experience is the teacher. One thing I’ll say. Usually thoughts circle in the head. These are empty. But watch for those that pierce the heart like an arrow and leave a mark there, like a scratch. At once take hold and erase that mark with prayer, raising up in its place the opposite feeling. When the warmth of the heart is preserved, these cases are rare and weak.

Keep to your prayer rule as it is for now, until circumstances show you that something needs to be changed. I believe that after what you have experienced, prostrations will suit you better than reciting prayers. And give more attention to this part, taking care not merely to complete a set number of prostrations and recite the Jesus Prayer as many times as you have determined, but rather that sighs toward God may come forth from your heart.[4] Regarding the recitation of prayers, take this one rule to heart: when your attention becomes fixed on something while you are reading prayers, so that it no longer follows the further reading, then stop reading and pray wordless prayer, under the influence of the feelings awakened by the subject that has held your attention. If this might cause your prayer rule to extend too long, you can shorten it, but don’t skip such moments and don’t sin against yourself by allowing the good impression from your prayers to be scattered through the mechanical completion of the appointed prayers. But the practice of prayer itself will teach you everything, if you perform it as you should—not, that is, to get through the prayers, but to pray truly.

In prayer you must free yourself from all images, establishing yourself most firmly in contemplation, or awareness of the presence of God in your heart—formless. When reflecting on the works of God, images do no harm; but to clothe the very being of God in an image and to pray to Him under that image—that should not be done.

To picture Christ the Saviour crucified—or as you pass through His whole life and pray to Him in keeping with those memories—there is nothing wrong with that. It’s good to do this and warm your soul that way. This is saving meditation on God—the soul’s most natural food. You must nourish the soul with truths, setting aside each day its own time for prayerful immersion in the Christian sacraments. It’s good to do this in the morning. Open the Gospel, read a little—something brief, rather than lengthy daily reading—and dwell in it until what you’ve read is received by your heart and fills it, occupies it. You can read from the apostle and from the Psalter, but always just a little. The whole point is that the truth be received by your heart, fill it, and warm it. This means that the soul has tasted truth; if it has tasted, then it has also been nourished. Reading salvific books—that has its own place.

May the Lord bless you! Pray to the Lord, and to the Sovereign Lady, and to all the Saints, that they themselves may teach you how things should be with you. Still, you must return to this: to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’

[2] Translator’s note: rendered as ‘Helper’ per the psalm’s sense.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘творить молитву’ rendered as ‘say the prayer’ per glossary

[4] Translator’s note: ‘sighs toward God’ (воздыхания к Богу) captures the sense of yearning prayer from the heart.

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52 On Measure in Ascesis and Humility

You fear my indulgence—but it seems I’m not very inclined to self-indulgence.[1] My rule is to keep measure in all things. Especially in bodily ascesis, measure is necessary so that the flesh may endure. The Holy Fathers maintained great austerities with respect to the body, or, as they said, lived a harsh life. But they came to this gradually. They didn’t begin too strictly, but then grew ever more rigorous with themselves. Remember how Saint Abba Dorotheus dealt with Saint Dositheos.[2] By this rule we too must live. And the holy fathers possessed another wisdom too: not to invent austerities, but to take them upon themselves for some reason or other, more often according to the needs of the interior life. You should do the same. But now that everything has begun, may the Lord bless your labors. Hold fast!

Love and honor the abbess, and the treasurer, and all the monastic authorities. They are appointed by God, even though through the agency of people.[3] Listen to everyone and give thanks to all for everything. And not only them, but all the sisters too—you must honor them and regard them as far above yourself. You look at them as though they were walking on a mountain or on a roof, while you are down below—far, far below. And if your soul begins to see any sister as beneath you, then you must rebuke yourself severely and hasten to ask the Lord’s forgiveness. The worst of all things are pride, vainglory, and judging others. This is hellish smoke and stench! Train yourself in every way to rejoice more when you are treated with contempt, rebuked, or even wronged than when you are shown kindness and greeted. This is the surest path to humility!

You have an inclination to replace the reading of prayers with the Jesus Prayer. You may do as you have proposed. Reduce the reading of prayers and stand more in prostrations. When you grow weary of making prostrations, then stand, and say the Jesus Prayer. The deeper you go into this prayer, the less you’ll want to read prayers. You can reduce your reading even more than you’ve planned. You can even stop reading altogether; only not out of slothfulness and lying about, but so that you speak with the Lord in your own words, not another’s, and remain noetically with Him, like Mary sitting at the feet of the Saviour.

What do you need supplies for? Prepare everything you need, and your worries are over! Since we bear flesh, we serve the flesh. What should we do? – We must eat and drink: let the materials for that be ready. If the Lord grants patience, you can abstain from certain foods; but if you cannot endure, eat, giving thanks to the Lord. Surplus is good to give to those in need and those who ask, only quietly, so as not to boast of your generosity.

If it happens that you break your rule of self-control in the presence of others, don’t be troubled. You’re not doing it to please yourself, but out of obedience to the duty of love. That you had tea and dined at NN’s when your sister was with you—that’s as it should be. If you’d done otherwise, it would have been worse: you’d have offended them, and you yourselves would have had no peace. It’s good to have preserves on hand for any occasion. Use wine sometimes with water, as a medicine, not for the sake of sweets. And you ought to mark a feast day in some way, however small, to set it apart from ordinary days. Let the flesh also have its rest, not the spirit alone.

[1] Translator’s note: The dash marks a shift from the addressee’s concern to the author’s gentle correction.

[2] Translator’s note: Abba Dorotheus and Dositheos are historical figures from the Palestinian monastic tradition; the relationship is documented in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God’

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53 On the Remembrance of Death and the Guarding of the Intellect

You are setting out on a journey from which there is no return. But for me it is nearer. So watch yourself—you could fall at any moment. Cholera is all around us. But you can die without it too. So if it’s possible, you must prepare yourself. You must always be preparing yourself—not just preparing, but truly ready. But our great misfortune is this: the living creature guesses at living things, and this very life drives away the remembrance of death that stands before us.[1] And it is forgotten that death stands at our shoulder. That is why some made coffins and kept them in plain sight; but, I suppose, one can grow accustomed to that as well. Others made it their practice to ask themselves whether they would be ordered to finish the coffin or dig out the grave. One elder had the custom of frequently looking out the door to see if death—that is, the angel—was coming.

All of this shows that, however certain it is that we shall die, the remembrance of death must be deliberately cultivated and rooted in the soul. Guard this saving thought so that it never leaves you. From the moment you wake in the morning, turn your mind to that final moment and to what comes immediately after it—God’s judgment. Stand in this thought, and walk in it throughout the whole day. Consider what your soul promises itself: enter into the joy or: bind him hand and foot, and cast him into outer darkness. There must be some foretaste here and now of what will come then. But it is better to cry out: “Spare your creation, Master!”

You are reading the Philokalia; that’s good. In the articles of Ignatius and Callistus, Gregory of Sinai, and Nicephorus, don’t get tangled up.[2] Try to find whether anyone has a life of the elder Paisius of Neamț.[3] There are placed prefaces to certain articles of the Philokalia, compiled by the elder Basil. These articles greatly clarify the significance of the mechanism in the practice of the Jesus Prayer. They will help you understand everything as it should be understood. I’ve already mentioned that you don’t need that mechanism. What it would give you already have from the moment you were called.[4] Don’t come to the wrong thought that your prayer work is already finished. The growth of prayer has no end. If this growth stops, it means life has stopped. May the Lord save you and have mercy on you! It’s possible to fall away from the proper state and take mere memory of it for the state itself.[5] Deliver me, Lord!

If you notice your thoughts scattering, be on your guard! This is very dangerous. The enemy wants to drive you into some dark corner and kill you there. Thoughts begin to wander when the fear of God diminishes and the heart grows cold. Spiritual coldness of the heart has many causes. The chief among them is self-satisfaction and self-conceit. These are very much akin to you. Be on your guard, and make haste to restore the fear of God and warm your soul. Otherwise distraction and spiritual coldness will continue to grow. The enemy is right there, and will start throwing pebbles at you, and heap them on. A scattered mind is like a house with open windows and no master. Anyone who wants to throws stones there and all manner of rubbish. When the master returns, he is struck by the heap of all sorts of filth that has been thrown in; so that he cannot live there without cleaning it all out. So too the soul, when it returns from distraction to itself, finds within itself sometimes much filth—from thoughts that have assailed it, leaving their traces even on the heart. Sit and purify yourself. But it’s good when the desire takes you; otherwise it will all remain as it is. There’s the trouble! May God save you and have mercy on you!

[1] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘живое гадает’ is idiomatic; literally ‘the living guesses at living things’, expressing how the living mind speculates about life itself rather than facing mortality.

[2] Translator’s note: Игнатия refers to Ignatius of Antioch; Каллиста, Григория Синаита, and Никифора are other Church Fathers whose teachings on prayer are discussed in the Philokalia.

[3] Translator’s note: Нямецкого refers to the Neamț Monastery in Moldavia, where Paisius was a prominent elder.

[4] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘как призваны’ (literally ‘as called’) refers to the moment of one’s calling or vocation.

[5] Translator’s note: The passage warns against confusing the recollection of a spiritual state with the actual presence of that state.

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54 On Prayer Made and Given

Give thanks to God for all things; and give thanks even for sickness. It’s easy for me to speak this way from the outside; But for you in practice it may not be easy to feel this way. In any case, when I speak of patience, I pray that the Lord will grant you to bear your illness with equanimity and to learn something from it.[1] Why the Lord has bound you—who can say? But this much is certain: that this too has been permitted to you for the sake of furthering the aims of the life you have chosen and in which you are striving, however imperfectly, to hold fast. From this perspective, there’s no need to inquire further into the cause of your illness. For courage in patient endurance, when your sufferings grow heavy, seek it—besides what has been said—in remembering the patience of all the Saints, and especially the martyrs.[2] How much and in what ways they endured! It’s hard even to imagine. And for everyone alike – through many afflictions we must enter the Kingdom of God. And what the Lord has promised is called a crown. Why is that? Because one cannot enter there without suffering. There is only one road there—the cross, whether chosen or unchosen. May your Guardian Angel bring you comfort and equanimity!

Don’t be troubled that the noise in your head keeps you from holding your thoughts steady. God judges the soul by what depends on the soul itself, not by what lies beyond its power. Keep the intention in your heart not to depart from the Lord, and He will accept this as your deed. Now you must set aside your fasting rule. After you break the fast, if God is willing He will raise you up; but now, while you are ill, you may eat anything as medicine, according to your doctor’s advice. You wish to hear something about prayer. What can I tell you that you don’t already know? There is prayer that a person says himself; and there is prayer that God gives to the one who prays. Who doesn’t know the first? You ought to know the last one too, at least in its beginnings. At first, when someone approaches the Lord, the first thing is prayer. He begins to go to church and to pray at home, using prayer books and without them. But his thoughts scatter in all directions. He can’t manage them at all. The more one labors in prayer, the more thoughts settle down and settle down, and prayer becomes purer. Yet the soul’s atmosphere is not cleansed until a spiritual flame is kindled in the soul. This flame is the work of the grace of God, but not a special grace—rather, the common grace given to all. It appears as a result of a certain measure of purity in the entire moral character of the person who seeks. When this flame is kindled, or when a constant warmth of the heart is formed, then the turmoil of thoughts is stilled. What happens to the soul is like what happened to the woman with the issue of blood: the flow of her blood stopped. In this state, prayer—whether more or less—approaches unceasing prayer. The Jesus Prayer serves as the means by which it does so. And this is the limit to which prayer made by the human being himself can reach! I think all this is very clear to you.

Beyond this point, in this state, prayer comes to us—not made by the human being himself, but given. The spirit of prayer comes upon you and draws you inward into the heart—it’s as if someone took you by the hand and forcibly drew you from one room into another. The soul is bound here by an external power and willingly remains within, as long as the spirit that has come upon it is present. I know two degrees of this visitation. In the first, the soul sees everything, is aware of itself and its outward condition, and can reason and govern itself; it can even destroy this state of its own, if it wishes. This should be clear to you.

Among the holy Fathers, and especially in Saint Isaac the Syrian, there is indicated another degree of prayer that is given, or that comes upon us.[3] Above the prayer shown before stands, in his teaching, a prayer which he called ecstasy, or rapture. And there too the spirit of prayer finds its place; but the soul, drawn by it, enters into such contemplations that it forgets its outward condition, does not reason, but only contemplates, and has no power to govern itself or break free from its state. Remember, it’s written in the Paterikon that someone stood in prayer before his evening meal, and came to himself only in the morning. That is what prayer in rapture, or contemplative prayer, is. In some it was accompanied by a brightening of the face, with light all around; in others by being lifted from the ground. The holy apostle Paul in this state was caught up into paradise. And the holy prophets were in this state when their spirit was taken up.

Marvel at what great mercy of God is shown to us sinners. How few will labor, and what do they receive? To all who labor you can boldly say: labor on; there is reason enough! Recover as quickly as you can, and set your sights on the distant path ahead!

[1] Translator’s note: благодушно rendered as ‘equanimity’ to capture the sense of gracious endurance

[2] Translator’s note: мучеников rendered as ‘martyrs’ per glossary

[3] Translator’s note: Isaac the Syrian is the traditional English name for this Church Father.

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55 Patience and Affliction as the Path to the Kingdom

I wish you every good thing from the Lord. That is why I write—to say only this. The first good for the sick is recovery. Grant it, Lord! Get well soon, so that you may live a while longer—not for the sake of sinning, as the common saying goes, but so that, comforted together by the common faith and love of all who love the Lord, you may be nourished by it and grow. Whether here or there—we must all grow, to the measure appointed for all, the fullness of the stature of Christ. What is prayer? I turn to you with the question that Abba Dorotheus asked Dositheos. Have you read that life to them?[1] It is similar to yours. Grant, Lord, that the end be the same.

Grant you, Lord, peace of soul, patience, magnanimity, so that the consolation given to us in the Lord may never cease. Through affliction, look also to what can bring great joy.[2] Hold fast in faith that by patience the soul is acquired and that afflictions open the way into the Kingdom.[3] Remember the Lord as He was in the garden of Gethsemane. He suffered to bring relief to our deathbed sufferings. Let us take from Him the spirit of submission to God’s will: Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.

May the will of God be upon you and for you!

Written on March 18, 1869.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘that life’ refers to the life (vita/biography) of Abba Dorotheus

[2] Translator’s note: ‘Прозревайте’ suggests both ‘see through’ and ‘perceive’; rendered as ‘look’ for natural English flow in a pastoral exhortation.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘In your patience possess ye your souls’ (KJV); rendered idiomatically as ‘by patience the soul is acquired’.

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56 On Haste in Prayer Rules

The mercy of God be with you!

I owed you a reply.[1] I didn’t answer—there was a reason, which I won’t mention.

You are well, and your soul is as lively as your letter testifies. Glory to God! – I cry out together with you. May the Lord keep you! May the Lord bless your ninetieth year! You could be my grandmother, because I still have another year and a half or two to go before I reach my eightieth year… You’ve already crossed the boundary of the years of life we can bear (if by reason of strength they be eighty). Now you live by the mercy and gift of the Lord – and no measure has been set for that.

So may the Lord grant you to live and live! But everyday cares are all like a mountain on your shoulders. Well, there’s nothing to be done when there’s no one to delegate them to. So labor, hoping in God’s help for the successful completion of your work.

Your conscience is troubled by the hasty recitation of your prayer rule… And rightly so. Why do you listen to the enemy? It’s the enemy driving you… faster, faster… That’s why you don’t feel any fruit from prayer… But make it your rule not to hurry… Instead, say your prayers so that not a single word is spoken without awareness of its meaning and, as far as possible, feeling… Impose this labor on yourself with the decisiveness of a commander-in-chief, so that absolutely no objection to it arises… The enemy whispers—this is necessary and that is necessary—but you answer: I know without you, get away… See how prayer goes then… Otherwise you have only a prayer rule, but no prayer. But prayer alone nourishes the soul… That’s why you feel unsatisfied… Check by the clock how much time will pass if you don’t hurry… and you’ll see it’s only a few minutes. But what harm comes from rushing through the prayers?

The Lord bless you!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

And I nearly forgot! I give thanks for the liturgical cloths.[2]

They’re very fine. May the Lord save you!

8 June 1872

[1] Translator’s note: Rendering ‘Ответ вам был за мной’ idiomatically as ‘I owed you a reply’ rather than the wooden ‘A reply was owed by me to you’.

[2] Translator’s note: воздухи: liturgical term for the veils covering the chalice and paten

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57 On Self-Condemnation and Salvation in the Lord

The mercy of God be with you!

And that’s wonderful! That’s exactly as it should be. You scold yourself thoroughly and address yourself with the most unattractive names.[1] And that’s as it should be. That’s ruin—when someone says of himself that he’s right in everything and has nothing to repent of. Excellent, excellent! Go on doing this, and go deeper and deeper into self-condemnation.[2] Only be careful about two things: first, that your self-condemnation is not merely in words while your heart remains self-satisfied; and second, that even as you acknowledge your worthlessness, you do not lose your hope of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. The second point is more important than the first. You must feel about yourself as a drowning man feels when he has grabbed hold of a plank—a strong plank that can lift him up and carry him over the abyss. He constantly feels that he is about to perish, but at the same time he feels the life-saving plank beneath him. This is the true image of every soul that is genuinely saved in the Lord. It feels that by itself it is perishing; but at the same time it feels that there is salvation through the Lord—by faith in Him. I urge you to restore this feeling in yourself, if it has grown weak. For in this lies the essence of personal Christianity—that is, of the faith living in every soul.[3]

Deepen yourself in the Jesus Prayer with all the strength you have. It will gather you, make you feel the power in the Lord, and bring it about that you remain inseparable from Him—whether you are alone, or in the company of others, whether you are managing your household or reading or praying. Only do not place the power of this prayer in the mere repetition of familiar words, but in turning your intellect and heart toward the Lord as you speak them. Both together.

You do not have permission to withdraw into solitude. Be willing to live as you have been living, only in all things with fear of God, to the glory of the Lord, in simplicity of heart.

The conversations held in the evenings are a good thing. I’ll give you an example. One beauty (seventy-two years old) (they used to say about her) had a habit, whenever a monk or priest came to visit her, of opening a book and saying: ‘Come on now, read this and tell me what it’s all about – I just can’t seem to make sense of it.’ And she would listen to what he said. And she wouldn’t bat an eye, even if he was talking nonsense, because she understood the whole matter perfectly well. Please keep a spirit of humility in all this.

And less giving orders… More prayers for enlightenment; The Egyptian elders, when they held conversations, would always first seek absolution from those who were weaker, in order to encourage them and spur them on to greater dedication to the work.

Forgive me for not answering sooner. It’s all slothfulness! You don’t know how much slothfulness I have… Oh! Oh! I call her my faithful one—she’s taken me in hand and won’t let me utter a peep.[4]

I wish you every blessing from the Lord.

Pray to God for me. And I ask all of you to pray for my sinfulness.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

With fasting!

I wish you to spend your time in a way that is salvific for the soul.[5]

13 February 1873

[1] Translator’s note: ‘браните’ (scold/revile) and ‘чествуйте’ (honor/address) create a paradoxical effect: you dishonor yourself with harsh names—rendered to preserve the ironic tension.

[2] Translator’s note: самоосуждение rendered as ‘self-condemnation’ (judging oneself) rather than ‘self-judgment’ to preserve the pastoral tone

[3] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘личного’ (personal) modifies the understanding of Christianity as lived in the individual soul, not as institutional structure.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘пикнуть’ (to peep/squeak) is colloquial; rendered idiomatically as ‘utter a peep’ to capture the affectionate, playful tone.

[5] Translator’s note: The adverbial form ‘душеспасительно’ modifies the infinitive ‘провести’ (to spend/pass); rendered idiomatically as an adverbial phrase.

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58 On the Jesus Prayer and Interior Order

May the mercy of God be with you!

I am very glad that you are alive, well, and as before running well, not like the Galatians, of whom it is written: you were running.[1] Glory to God! We cannot free ourselves from the fluctuations of our life as it ordinarily flows. Immutability is a gift of God, and it is an attribute of God alone, the One with whom—by His mercy—He sometimes shares this attribute with us for a time.[2] We cannot entrust anything to ourselves forever; we would consume it from hunger—that is, we would become vainglorious about it, and so destroy both ourselves and the gift.[3] God manifests His goodness in us so that we do not despair, and then He hides it again so that we do not become vainglorious or exalted.

What is praised brings no harm.[4] It’s clear that the taste for goodness in those around you hasn’t been completely corrupted. That’s to their credit. But what about us? We have a lesson in humility, which we should take care to put into practice. You know this;[5] I believe you’re already doing it. Keep the old, good, Christian practices. Look within, so that what should be there doesn’t grow weak; for that is where the essential work lies. There, I confess, sometimes not everything is in order, or not everything is as it should be. What should we do, you ask—how can we help ourselves? We have the Lord—the one Teacher, the one Helper, without whom we cannot do anything as we should. He is near always. Turn to Him. Have you read about the Jesus Prayer? And you know it in practice. It alone can establish the proper order firmly within, and it will not let external household distractions upset that order. It alone will make it possible to fulfil the fathers’ instruction: hands at work, but intellect and heart with God. When it takes root in the heart, then there are no interruptions within, but all is one and the same… To establish something systematic within is hardly possible, but to maintain one thing—or the same thing—amid the variety of unavoidable tasks is possible, and the Jesus Prayer will give you that when it takes root in the heart. How does it take root?! Who knows how? But it does take root. The one who labors becomes aware of it, without knowing how it happened. Labor… walking in the presence of God with frequent repetition of this prayer, as much as possible. As soon as there’s freedom, immediately take it up… And it will be given…

Reading belongs among the means of renewal and quickening of the Jesus Prayer. But it is advised that you read more about prayer.

And meditation is an activity of the same kind. The merciful Lord meets all who seek Him in whatever manner with His mercy, and does not withhold His gifts when He sees the vessels prepared to receive them.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

June 12, 1892

[1] Translator’s note: quoted in two forms: present tense ‘running well’ and aorist ‘you were running’ to match the source’s rhetorical contrast.

[2] Translator’s note: The pronoun ‘whom’ refers to God; the parenthetical ‘by His mercy’ clarifies the Russian genitive construction.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘From hunger’ is a Russian idiom meaning to squander or misuse through spiritual weakness.

[4] Translator’s note: The aphoristic form suggests a spiritual principle: praise itself (as opposed to vainglory) is not dangerous.

[5] Translator’s note: Archaic Russian ве́сте (2nd person plural perfect of ‘to know’); rendered idiomatically in modern English.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 58)

59 On Conscience and What Is Necessary for Salvation

May the mercy of God be with you!

Most reverend Father. N.![1]

Having been under the guidance of the elder for so long, you have certainly heard all that is required. Remember and do it—don’t put it off until tomorrow.

The monks of Mount Athos have books: “The Way to Salvation” (a sketch of ascetical theology); What is the spiritual life?… Letters on the Spiritual Life Unseen Warfare… Acquire them and learn from them… not to know, but to do.

Also: whatever troubles your conscience, all of that must be abandoned immediately. I think everything you’ve imposed on yourself since the elder’s death belongs to this category.

What is considered necessary in the work of salvation and spiritual progress cannot be avoided in any way—no matter how you try to cover it up, it must be fulfilled.

The Jesus Prayer, in its power, appears not at the beginning but at the end of spiritual progress, as a flower and fruit. It is preceded by an inward drawing.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

I ask you to pray for my many sins.

Bishop Theophan.

December 22, 1886.

[1] Translator’s note: Source text appears to be a marker or placeholder (possibly a name initial or editorial mark) rather than substantive content. Confidence is low due to ambiguity of intent.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 59)

60 On the Remembrance of God and the Jesus Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

Prayer is an inner work. Everything done outwardly in connection with it does not belong to the essence of the matter, but is merely external form.

Whatever appears to be good from this outward form only seems good, but is not. So you should pay no attention to this at all.

What you’re doing, it’s better to abandon. The chief thing you must practice is remembrance of God, or walking before God in his presence. Strive to acquire the habit of always being in the awareness and feeling that you stand under God’s eye, which penetrates the whole depth of your heart and sees all your inner movements.

The Jesus Prayer stands among the means to success in acquiring the habit of walking before God. Everything you need to know about the practice of this prayer is found in the book on Unseen Warfare. Look there and see.

The main thing here is to stand with attention in the heart and cry out to the Lord, who is present everywhere.

It’s better to stand than to sit. It’s better not to think at all about breathing, the position of the head, and so on… But turn all your attention to the interior disposition.

The root of a good interior disposition is the fear of God. You must make it constant… It will keep everything in tension and won’t let either the limbs or the thoughts grow lax, building up a vigilant heart and a sober thought. But you must always remember and feel that success in spiritual life and in all its manifestations is the fruit of the grace of God. Spiritual life in its entirety comes from the Most Holy Spirit of God. We have our own spirit too, but it is powerless. It comes into power when grace overshadows it.[1]

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

26 February 1887

[1] Translator’s note: осенит: ‘overshadow’ captures the sense of divine grace descending upon the human spirit

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61 On the Jesus Prayer and living communion with the Lord

The mercy of God be with you!

Ask, and you will receive, the Lord promised. You ask, and be assured that you will find. What should you seek? Living, tangible communion with the Lord. The grace of God gives this, but we ourselves must also labor for it. Where, then, should you direct your labor? To remembering the Lord always, as near and even in your heart. To succeed in this, you are advised to grow accustomed to the Jesus Prayer: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me”—repeating it unceasingly with the thought of the Lord as present in your heart or near your heart. Stand with your attention in your heart before the face of the Lord and say: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That is the whole work, and by its very nature nothing more is required.

Everything else that is devised is devised as an aid to this, the principal thing. The elders say: keep your attention in your heart or at the tip of your tongue, and hold your hand at your chest; the eldress says: imagine the crucified Lord and, as to one who is alive, speak your little prayer to Him. If it helps them, let them do it, only let them not consider this the main thing. Others did it this way: they’d sit on a little stool, the kind you put under your feet, press their head to their chest, bend down to their knees, and breathe: saying one half of the prayer while inhaling, and the other while exhaling… Laboring in this way, they acquire skill in prayer, and then advise others to do the same… And let them, only they shouldn’t think that this is the whole thing. But all this and things like it are not the thing itself, but accessories. The thing itself is: to stand with your intellect in your heart before the face of the Lord and speak the prayer to Him. In this connection, know that noetic prayer is standing with the intellect before the Lord with sighing toward Him, while the Jesus Prayer – ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me…’ – is vocal, outward prayer.

By this means the remembrance of God will be established in the intellect, and the face of God will be in the soul like the sun. Place a cold object in the sun, and it will be warmed. So too the soul will be warmed by the remembrance of the Lord, who is the noetic sun. And what will happen after that, you’ll see later.

The first labor is to acquire the habit of repeating the Jesus Prayer unceasingly… So begin, keep repeating and repeating, but always with your thought on the Lord.

And that’s all there is to it…

Where is the heart? Where sorrow, joy, anger, and so on are felt and experienced—that’s where the heart is. Stand there with your attention… The bodily heart is a muscular pump—flesh… but it’s not the flesh that feels, but the soul, for whose feeling the fleshly heart serves only as an instrument, just as the brain serves as an instrument for the intellect.

Do not judge the elders. Most likely they begin by holding their attention at the tip of the tongue, and then move to the heart. But let them be; just so long as they don’t consider this noetic activity, any more than saying the Jesus Prayer. Both are external things, bodily… The noetic work is one thing only: to ascend with intellect and heart to the Lord.

Is imagining the crucified Lord an essential thing? – No, it too is auxiliary, not primary. The eldress speaks the truth when she says that to keep the intellect from wandering it’s good to imagine an object in image form… This is possible… But there’s no reason to become attached to one image alone. The Lord is now in glory, sitting at the right hand, and all the Saints are around Him. And so one can imagine. But it’s better to do without images, because imagination is a crude faculty. It’s better to stand in faith alone, that the Lord is near, than to imagine. The eldress has grown accustomed to it, and the image of the crucified Lord has become one with her prayer of the heart, in which all the work consists. That the eldress is absorbed in prayer to the point of forgetting all else—this truly is the mercy of God, on account of her humility, without which this would not have been given.

She is not in spiritual delusion, but in truth.

You can’t stop idle talk. Idle talk is the most destructive thing. An equal evil is when people walk around without guarding their feelings… Both things greatly hinder progress in prayer… When the Jesus Prayer begins to establish itself in the heart, then the tongue will be bound… It will be bound by reverence before the Lord who is present.

Know also that you must conduct your affairs so that conscience condemns you in nothing, and if it does condemn you, you must immediately pacify it with repentance. And the body must be lightened by eating little, sleeping little, and working hard…

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

P.S. S. Do you have a copy of the Unseen Warfare? There the work of prayer is set out in detail… Please read and reflect on it.

October 22, 1887

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 61)

62 On Noetic Standing Before the Lord

May the mercy of God be with you!

I’m very glad that your perplexities have been cleared up. Press on more toward noetic standing before God than toward bodily practices and postures in this matter.

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

28 November 1887

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 62)

63 On Prayer Without Images and Attention of the Heart

May the mercy of God be with you!

What the eldress said about visible objects as necessary for prayer—I think you didn’t understand it that way. You must strive in every way, thinking about God, to think of Him as the purest Spirit, having no form or image whatsoever. But to hold such a thought is given only by grace, when a feeling toward God is formed in the heart. Until then our thought of God remains imperfect, mixed with some form or other. For example, the prophet says: I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand.[1] This is an image. Another similar one: Where shall I go from your Spirit?[2] and from your face where shall I flee?[3] If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I descend to Hades, you are there.[2] ‘If I take my wings early and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me and Your right hand shall hold me.’ And this is an image of the omnipresence of God… So it is with every other thought about God and divine things… The eldress’s thought is that it’s hard for us to free ourselves from images when thinking about God; but you understood that one must always have an image and that without such an image one can’t even pray. This is your mistake, not the eldress’s. So please make every effort to pray without images of God… Stand in your heart with faith that God is right there too, but don’t try to figure out how He is there. Pray and seek that the grace of God may finally give you a feeling toward God.

Who came up with this idea—keeping your attention on your lips or the tip of your tongue?! It’s a bad idea: drop it. Strive to be attention in your heart, and nowhere else.[4] That the intellect flees from the heart after a few prayers and falls away from the remembrance of God—this comes from weakness of attention and indifference to prayer. The soul doesn’t treasure prayer and hurries to get through it as quickly as possible, mumbling it carelessly. Seek the fear of God and with it approach prayer and pray, keeping your attention on the meaning of the words of prayer. Then short little prayers and the Jesus Prayer are used to instill in the heart a feeling toward God and thereby fix your attention. But if we treat prayer carelessly, we will never make progress in it. Remember also that prayer never reaches perfection by itself, but only together with all the virtues. As the virtues are perfected, so prayer is perfected. The chief ones are: fear of God, chastity, humility, contrition, mortification of the flesh, patience, love… When these are present, all the others will appear as well, and with them prayer.

“Should I set myself a rule by the quantity of prayers and prostrations, or should I care more about attention?” – Without attention, prayer is not prayer. Consequently, this is the main thing. But you must also set a rule for the number of prayers and prostrations. This is for your prayer rule at home. The best way to make progress in prayer is to attend church for all the services and there strive to pray with reverence. Look in the Slavonic Philokalia at the account of Maximus of Kapsokalyvia and imitate him. When you attain what he attained, then you will have true prayer. Lying on your side, you’ll gain nothing…

You’re asking about a certain brother. Tell him everything that’s written here, and that’s enough… Let him leave aside lips and tongue, and do as the fathers have written, that is, stand with attention in the heart. You can advise him: leave aside all these additions, just be in the heart and with feeling, falling to the ground, cry out: ‘Lord, have mercy!’ Just like Maximus Kapsokalivis. And let him labor in this way entirely. Let him go to church without fail, make more prostrations at home, and let him unceasingly repeat some prayerful verse with attention and reverence, especially the Jesus Prayer. The goal of the labor is an abiding feeling toward God, or what Maximus Kapsokalivis received. You must especially refine the flesh through fasting, vigils, and bodily labor, and keep it constantly under tension, like a soldier on parade. Flee from distraction, idle talk and laughter, and empty reading. And all will go well.

You must labor and overtax yourself without mercy.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

24 March 1888

[1] Translator’s note: source text uses Old Church Slavonic liturgical form

[2] Translator’s note: source uses Old Church Slavonic liturgical form

[3] Translator’s note: ‘face’ (лица) is a patristic image for God’s presence

[4] Translator’s note: The Russian ‘быть вниманием’ (to be attention) is rendered idiomatically in English.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 63)

64 On the Essence of Prayer and the Feeling of Contrition

May the mercy of God be with you!

The essence of prayer is noetic standing before the Lord with a cry to Him in some feeling—whether of thanksgiving, or doxology, or petition, or contrition, or fear, or hope, or some other feeling directed toward the Lord—so that as soon as there is no feeling toward the Lord, there is no prayer. When someone is in a feeling, he has no time to attend to external posture—whether of the whole body or of its various parts, lips, tongue, fingers. Your attention must stand in the heart, but not before the heart; before the Lord. If the Lord is not in your attention, there is no prayer.

You make many prostrations. That is good; but make sure that along with this there is also attention to the Lord, and feeling. The feeling most fitting for us is contrition: A contrite spirit—a heart contrite and humble God will not despise. This comes from the fear of God, and the fear of God is awakened by the remembrance of death and God’s judgement. Every time you approach prayer, kindle in yourself the fear of God and contrition, and then pray, not allowing these feelings to weaken. It is easiest to be in the fear of God and contrition in the church. Make it your care to be in the church always with these feelings. And then at home you’ll be in them too… And God’s blessing on you!

I’ve reviewed the elders’ letter and their reply to your question. There are good thoughts in the letter—you should keep them in mind. As for what shouldn’t be agreed with, I’ve crossed that out.

Have you replied to their response? If not, answer them this way: since you couldn’t justify your prayer practice by patristic guidance, I’m declining to follow you, fearing I might fall into error. Innovations are destructive.[1] Through them the enemy digs a pit for us.

Tell that young brother to whom you’ve passed on the practice of eldership to abandon it.[2] Let him stir up in himself a contrite spirit and humility, and with these feelings let him pray to the Lord, standing with attention in his heart and always walking in the presence of God and in remembrance of death. Let him seek and pray for what Maximus Kapsokalivis sought and found. That is the straight path. He showed no special methods, but had only one longing for the good that he finally received. That spiritual fire and warmth is a good thing… But it’s completely different from what is produced by old-age techniques or any other such methods.[3] When the Lord grants that gift, then everything will go differently, and the Jesus Prayer will sound differently too.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

I ask for your prayers.

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

7 May 1888

(A question. “Is this how I understand prayer: if I were to ask you for something, would you require me to keep my intellect on my lips or at the tip of my tongue or to control my breathing and so forth, or only to attend to your person?[4] – So too my Lord.”)

[1] Translator’s note: новшества пагубны: lit. ‘novelties are destructive’; rendered idiomatically as ‘Innovations are destructive’

[2] Translator’s note: ‘прием старческий’ (the practice/method of eldership) rendered as ‘the practice of eldership’ for clarity in English.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘старческими приемами’ (lit. ‘old-age techniques’) may refer to physical methods or techniques associated with aging bodies, contrasted with genuine spiritual gifts.

[4] Translator’s note: The passage presents a rhetorical question about the nature of prayer; the speaker is asking whether the Lord requires technical practices or simply attention to His person.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 64)

65 Guidance for Prayer and Interior Work

May the mercy of God be with you!

I see that you’ve understood what the work of prayer is. Now please act accordingly. In the morning, when you wake, go through in your mind all the divine truths according to the Creed: about the consubstantial Trinity and the boundless attributes and perfections of God—His omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and so on; about creation, providence, the incarnation of God the Word for our salvation and redemption, His sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension; about the descent of the Holy Spirit, about the foundation of the Holy Church of God through the holy apostles, about the end of the world and the judgement of God, and about the eternal lot of each according to his deeds; about the mercy of God toward us, that we belong to the one true Church and have hope through her to be granted the promises of God both here, and in death, and after death. This examination will give rise to a feeling toward God and to corresponding prayers to God that flow from that feeling. And there you have prayer. Then throughout the whole day, strive to remain in this feeling, whether you are at home or in church, standing continually in your heart before the Lord. The thought of death, of judgement, and of the final determination of our eternal lot is more effective than all other thoughts. Hold fast to this thought. From this will be born a contrite spirit, and a heart contrite and humble, which God never despises. So there you have the whole programme for interior work. Be such, then.

What books should you read? Buy from the Athonites the collection ‘On Sobriety and Prayer’… A great deal of patristic teaching on prayer is gathered there, and read a little each day to sustain a prayerful disposition through it. Get from them also the Psalter of Saint Ephrem, where his cries of prayer to God are collected. Reread often the book ‘What Is the Spiritual Life?’… and the chapters on prayer in the book Unseen Warfare… the Russian Philokalia. These are books I compiled, but there’s nothing of my own in them: everything is patristic.

Only the book ‘What is the spiritual life?…’ is entirely mine, but the teaching in it is not mine—only the words are mine. In the other books listed here, even the words aren’t mine: everything is patristic. Whoever wishes to learn prayer should read only about prayer.

Concerning the Midnight Office after the all-night vigil, you should consult the typikon. I think it’s better to read it with heartfelt attention… Instead of the kathisma you can do a hundred prostrations with the Jesus Prayer.

Be saved!

Your devoted servant, Bishop Theophan.

June 17, 1888

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 65)

66 On the Remembrance of God and Prayer of the Heart

May the mercy of God be with you!

Your humble feelings—that after living so long in the world and in the monastery, you see no progress at all, as if you’d never even begun—are blessed, and always remain in them, and when you wake up, let your first word to God be: Grant me, Lord, to make a good beginning!

That’s said, of course, about everything in general, but you need to look closely at what exactly is lacking, and try to acquire that.

After all, you’re not a thief, not a robber, not a drunkard, not a fornicator, not a brawler… and in general—your conduct is good. So what is lacking? And why is your conscience restless and dissatisfied? Here you answer yourselves: it is because I do not remember God. That is true: without remembrance of God, without fear of God, without feeling toward God, it is impossible to make the soul content. If that is so, then all your concern must now be directed to this. Prayer, which we all speak of, is the direct path to this. You labor in this. May the Lord bless your labor!

The thought that it’s not yet time for you to engage in prayer is false. Everyone must pray with heart and intellect. Any other prayer is not prayer. So be willing to labor and not grow lazy.

Do you have Symeon the New Theologian? Take him and read him again, if you’ve already read him. If you don’t have one, buy a copy from the monks of Mount Athos and read it—at least the first volume. It teaches the fear of God very well.

Send me the letters of the elders. I’d like to know how they understand prayer.

You ask whether one should pray for those of other faiths? For those who have taken their own lives? Do as the Church commands. So answer those who ask about this in the same way.

May the Lord bless you!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

August 22, 1888

(A question. Tell me, for the Lord’s sake, am I continuing in prayer correctly: whether I am in the church, in my cell, or wherever I happen to be, I strive to gather my feelings and to present the Lord before myself without form, and at this my lips close, my tongue remains without movement, and only with my intellect and heart do I speak the prayer;[1] Then all the members of my body come into order, a feeling of reverence toward the Lord takes hold of me, and I clearly see my own nothingness.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘необразно’ (without form/image) refers to non-iconic contemplation of God; ‘собрать свои чувства’ (gather my feelings) is a technical ascetical term for collecting the dispersed faculties.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66)

67 Establishment in Noetic Prayer and the Struggle Against Distraction

May the mercy of God be with you!

I’ve fallen behind in answering your letters. Please forgive me. I’m setting out to make up for this omission.

I don’t remember whether I answered your letter in which you mentioned the elder of the monastic community of P… – But I’ll write a reply to it. Let it be a repetition, then. The letter of August 9.

First you describe how you pray noetically and with what feelings, and you ask whether this is acceptable? I answer: it is acceptable. May the Lord bless you to always pray this way, if you remember what you wrote. Then you add: ‘I grieve that I rarely pray with such prayer… the prayer departs, and again I become scattered…’ It is very necessary to grieve over this. But you shouldn’t blame anyone else: it’s your own fault. To become established in such prayer, first, pray to the Lord, the Giver of every good gift, that He may grant you to pray this way, and second, approach such prayer more often. The habit will come, by the grace of God. ‘I’m scattered’… Who’s to blame? Do not scatter your thoughts. And as soon as you notice that your thoughts have begun to wander, immediately turn them back again.[1] Accustom yourself to abide in the remembrance of God and the remembrance of death. There will be contrition, and it will not allow your thoughts to scatter. After this you ask: ‘Should I continue such prayer, or should I descend with the intellect into the heart?’ – But what you’ve just described, where does it happen? It can’t happen anywhere but within. You stand before the Lord, without images, in the presence of the Lord… and you experience good feelings. What more do you need? That’s everything. Unless you’re doing this only in your head?! No, you must stand in the heart. But not to remember the heart—only to behold the Lord.[2] You can put it this way: ‘Stand in the heart with your intellect before the Lord and pray.’

The question—‘When I stand in the heart, must I form any images there: the Trinity or something else?’—answers itself. If you stand before the Lord without His image, what other images could be fitting there? They cannot appear at all: God the Trinity has no image. It is neither possible nor right to represent Her in an image. The Lord Saviour, according to the incarnate divine economy, has a human form; but we must stand before Him without an image, in the consciousness of His presence alone. The monk from the monastic community of P… does well to labor in the Jesus Prayer. But doesn’t he forget that the point is not in the words and not in the quantity of Jesus Prayers, but in the habit of always being in the memory of the Lord. It’s good to maintain a set quantity so as not to grow lazy, but the main thing is that one’s thoughts and feelings should be holy. The fruit of prayer—the principal fruit—is not warmth and sweetness, but fear of God and contrition. You must kindle them constantly and live with them, and breathe them.[3]

This monk sees the Holy Trinity in image in his heart. The Holy Trinity, God, is invisible and hidden, and has no image. You must stand in the awareness of God’s omnipresence, and you should not construct images.[4] He says he found this thought among the Fathers. Ask him—which ones? I don’t recall any of them mentioning this. Those who construct their thoughts about spiritual matters in order to give them weight appeal to the fathers. Without verification, one cannot accept such words as truth.

This brother said that he doesn’t even understand what reverence and fear of God are. That’s very bad. Who can stand before a king without fear?! How much more so before God?! In Kiev, in the Lavra, there was a brother who used to say: “Look, don’t be disrespectful with God.”[5] Isn’t that the very trouble with that brother? It’s no wonder that the fruit of his prayer is determined only by warmth and sweetness. That is spiritual self-indulgence. The main thing is the fear of God and a contrite spirit… Warmth and sweetness are good in spiritual work; but we shouldn’t measure the value of spiritual practices by them.

You say that sometimes you forget the count of prayers on the prayer rope. It’s no great trouble. When there is a falling down before the Lord as one present, with fear and hope, this is better than any completion of a number of prayers.

Can you sometimes fulfill the prayer rule of Saint Pachomius? – And it’s very possible. I have nothing more useful to tell you, as you ask. «Seek always to be with the Lord, and you will find Him».

The letter of September 9 speaks again of Brother P…, who sees the Holy Trinity in his heart in images. – Proofs from the fathers have been cited in his support. The first is from Abba Dorotheus in Russian. He is not a father, and his book is forbidden. It contains much that is edifying, but it also has objectionable thoughts, among which is the idea that the Holy Trinity does not dwell in a person all at once, but over the course of years: in the first year the Holy Spirit dwells, in the second year the Son of God, in the third year God the Father. There are other things as well. Toward the end of the book he lists unlucky days, which is empty superstition… But he doesn’t speak about the image of the Most Holy Trinity, only that the persons of the Holy Trinity dwell one after another, year by year. His error consists in the fact that he divides the persons of the Holy Trinity, whereas they are confessed to be indivisible. The same is true in Barsanuphius, answer one hundred twenty-one: it doesn’t speak about the image, but only that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwell in a pure heart—indivisibly. So it turns out your brother doesn’t prove his opinion with anything – he just imagines it arbitrarily. Remind him that he’s angering God.

On prayer, read the collection ‘On Sobriety and Prayer’: everything the Fathers said about this is gathered there. It’s not a bad idea to look through those chapters in the book on spiritual warfare that speak about prayer… And that’s quite enough. It’s better to labor in the practice of prayer than to theorise about it and read theories. The matter is very simple…

May the Lord bless you!

Your well-wisher.

October 2, 1888

(A question. Until now I understood the fathers’ saying that the intellect must stand in the heart to mean that during prayer one must remember only the heart, and I was puzzled about what external object one must give to the intellect in this case.[6] Now I explain it to myself this way: when I stand with my intellect before the Lord, without any images, but only in the awareness of His presence, then my intellect is in my heart. – And so, when I turn all my attention to being in the feeling of God’s omnipresence and, immersing myself in the thought of David’s words: Where shall I go from Your Spirit; and from Your face, where shall I flee? … and: I have set the Lord always before me – to stand noetically before Him, I feel a certain special liveliness of spirit, in contrast to that deadness which possessed me when I tried to remember only the heart and bring the intellect into such a position that it would be, in the expression of the fathers, above or over the heart, thinking that this alone constituted true prayer. I ask you, please explain to me whether my understanding is correct and whether I am praying rightly?)

[1] Translator’s note: мысли пошли блуждать: ‘have begun to wander’ captures the perfective sense of the Russian construction

[2] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘сердца не помнить’ is idiomatic; it means not to be preoccupied with the heart itself, but rather to focus on the Lord’s presence.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘Breathe them’ captures the Russian idiom дышать (to breathe) in the sense of living by or embodying something.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘Omnipresence’ renders вездеприсутствие; ‘awareness’ captures сознание in the sense of conscious recognition or standing in awareness.

[5] Translator’s note: запанибрата: colloquial Russian idiom meaning overly familiar or disrespectful

[6] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘умом надо стоять в сердце’ is a classical patristic formula; rendered idiomatically as ‘the intellect must stand in the heart’.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 67)

68 On the Remembrance of God and the Fear of God

The mercy of God be with you!

I greet you on the feast day. May the Lord fill your soul with every spiritual consolation!

Everything you wrote about the manner in which you strive to pray is good. Keep laboring in this way, and continue forward. Guard the remembrance of God and the remembrance of death. From them the fear of God will be in strength.[1] From fear comes attention to yourself and to all your deeds, thoughts, and feelings. From this comes a sober and reverent life. From that comes the suppression of the passions. From this comes purity. From purity comes dwelling with God—not in thought alone, but in feeling as well. Labor. Labor overcomes all things with God’s help.

When you perform the rule of Saint Pachomius, do this at home only; in church, the rule—that is, the service—is already underway. And you shouldn’t mix your own practice in with it.[2] In church, attend to what is being read and sung, and keep your thoughts and feelings in harmony with it. When the reading is unclear, offer your own prayer to the Lord, or simply lift your mind to Him with reverence and prostrations. Strive during every service to bring your heart to warmth, and after leaving the church, guard it.

You’re already doing all this. I’m only reminding you, confirming that this is indeed how it should be.

You’re asking about prostrations.[3] You must make prostrations. You must use them to warm the heart when it begins to grow cold.

Prostrations are bodily work. You must join with them thought of God and feeling toward Him.

The form of self-control you have when you prepare for the service is not bad. But don’t forget in this to prepare your soul above all: faith, fear of God, a contrite spirit, surrender of yourself to the Lord, and expectation of help from Him for this work… it is fitting to adorn yourself with these things.

You mention slothfulness. Where there is zeal for salvation and fear of God, slothfulness cannot exist: there is no place for it. Tell me, who sees that his house is on fire and then lies sprawled out on the stove?! So too, whoever has fear of God and fear of death cannot grow lazy in negligence. Drive out slothfulness by this means.

The Holy Church does not know those of other faiths and does not remember them, but while they live, she prays together for their conversion. Those of other faiths have their own commemorators. Let those who wish to commemorate them turn to that. Private individuals—relatives and friends—may pray for them in their own homes, doing so as an act of love, and relying on something worthy in those being commemorated.

May the Lord direct your path!

Your well-wisher.

27 December 1888.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘In strength’ preserves the Russian idiom; could also render ‘will be strong’ or ‘will prevail’.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘своим’ (one’s own practice) rendered idiomatically rather than literally as ‘one’s own’

[3] Translator’s note: поминаете про: ‘asking about’ or ‘mentioning’; context suggests the recipient has raised a question about prostrations.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 68)

69 An Apology for the Delay in Replying

The mercy of God be with you!

I haven’t managed to reply to your first letter, and now here comes a second one…

I give thanks for your remembrance of me, and I would be ready to reply, but I have no time. So much work has piled up! Meanwhile, I must write to you about all the important matters…

Wait a little while until I free myself. Then we’ll begin our discussion.

I can work only in the morning. In the evening my mind is fit only for idle chatter about simple things.[1]

The Lord bless you!

Your well-wisher.

17 March 1889

[1] Translator’s note: тараракание is colloquial/dialectal; rendered as ‘idle chatter’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 69)

70 On confession and disclosure of thoughts

May the mercy of God be with you!

I have not written to you because I was hurrying to finish the Philokalia; and when it’s finished, I rest.

Please repeat the questions you left unanswered. As for the new questions you’ve put to me, I’ll answer them this way.

There’s nothing to prevent you from having a brother with whom you practice disclosure of thoughts. But confession you should keep according to monastic practice. From time to time, though, you can confess to whoever you wish.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher.

June 14, 1889

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 70)

71 On Beginning Spiritual Prayer and the Contrite Spirit

The mercy of God be with you!

Spiritual prayer does not depend on any bodily strain—for instance, pressing your attention toward the heart or constricting your breathing, and the like. It is accomplished by a noetic path. You should begin it by placing yourself in the presence of the Lord, and then, having given yourself wholly to the Lord in faith and hope, turn your prayer to him simply, like a child. Whatever feelings God sends, be content with those. Spiritual practice is not about rapture: its finest expression is a contrite spirit, a heart contrite and humble. As you wrote, when you represent the Lord as present, it goes better—so always do this.

There is nothing sinful in your hearing the confession of the novices. In the document given to priests at their ordination, it is stated that they are granted the power to hear confession and to absolve penitents, as well as to perform all other church services. This power has been given to you as well at your ordination. But its use in the monastery is subject to the monastic rule. In our monastery, anyone may confess to anyone they wish, though there is an appointed spiritual father. Wouldn’t it be better to ask the abbot quietly?

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher.

June 14, 1889

(Question. When I mentally go through the Creed, images unwillingly form in my intellect, and since despite all my effort I cannot free myself from them, I become troubled and afraid that I might fall into spiritual delusion in this way.[1] How am I to understand all that is written about prayer in Symeon the New Theologian in Discourses Eight and Nine?)

[1] Translator’s note: мысленно: ‘mentally’ or ‘in thought’; here rendered as ‘mentally’ to convey the interior, noetic character of the prayer practice.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 71)

72 On Attentive Prayer and Images in Prayer

The mercy of God be with you!

I’ve been meaning to write for a whole month, and I’ve barely managed to do it. Are you afraid of images? You shouldn’t fear all images, but only fanciful ones—and particularly those that relate to God’s nature, which is invisible and utterly beyond any image. Everything that relates to creatures is capable of being imaged and imagined. And the Lord Saviour, according to His human economy, may be imagined. Moreover, during prayer one should not hold images in the intellect, but, standing noetically before the invisible God, utter a reverent word to Him. This must be sought, and it will be found.

According to the Psalter with Appended Offices, one can conduct the service, and when it is necessary to serve. And it can be shortened by, for example, substituting prostrations for the kathismas, as indicated in the same Psalter. One can also perform all the services with prostrations, as again indicated in the same Psalter… There two measures are given: for laymen and lazy monks, and for zealous monks. If the last measure seems too great, you can take a middle course between it and the first. Don’t indulge slothfulness. Fervent prayer is never long—that is, it doesn’t seem long.

It’s possible to go through the Jesus Prayer with the intellect in the heart, without moving the tongue. This is better than vocal prayer. Let vocal prayer serve as an aid to noetic prayer… Sometimes vocal prayer is needed to make noetic prayer firm.

When after prayer with attention and feeling the intellect wanders away from prayer and becomes distracted, you must bring it back to its place, rebuke yourself, be contrite before the Lord, and pray again with attention and feeling. Good prayer is always the mercy of God and a gift of grace… You mustn’t boast but give thanks to the Lord.

What Saint Symeon the New Theologian wrote about defective prayer is completely true… What’s to be done? You must pray properly, driving away inattention, indifference, and negligence: for these are in our hands.

Seek, and you will find.

Be saved!

September 1, 1889

September 5, 1889

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 72)

73 On Prostrations, the Reading of Psalms, and Prayer of the Heart

May the mercy of God be with you!

You’ve grown fond of prostrations… And that’s good. But don’t forget that beneath the prostrations there must be prayer from the heart – to glorify God from the heart, to give thanks from the heart, to ask from the heart, whether in your own words – which is better – or in memorised ones, only let the heart be present everywhere…

If you want the psalms not to distract you, read a commentary on them and clarify their meaning… Then, never read too many… and read unhurriedly, pondering each word. When the heart grows warm from this, you can leave the psalms aside… Remember the story about a certain elder who would read only one ‘Glory’, and then would withdraw into his heart and contemplation… and so he prayed.

About prostrations – whether to make waist bows or full prostrations – what’s there to discuss? But what you’re doing is good: ten waist bows and one full prostration… You can freely make them, sometimes to the waist, sometimes to the ground.

Prostrations are prostrations, but the main thing is a life lived rightly. A life lived rightly proceeds with fear and trembling, from the remembrance of God that never departs and accompanies every step. From this comes sobriety. But before everything else—zeal for salvation, strong and unsparing.

The fourth volume of the Philokalia is entirely addressed to cenobites, and there prayer is not discussed. Volume Five concerns the hesychasts more, and there—on prayer. But throughout the entire Philokalia there are no explanations of my own: it is all patristic writings. It seems to me that you ought not to turn away a brother who is a scholar. But what you know, tell him plainly; and what you do not know, say about it: I do not know. Whether anything comes of this or not, you need not concern yourself with it. Fasting is a saving work, and the service of the Liturgies is beneficial. – What will people say about N if nothing comes of it, or if something bad comes of it… N is not responsible for that. As God blesses. God loves those who labor, as long as they are humble and don’t think too much of themselves. We can do nothing truly good without the Lord and His grace.

A nun’s question about N. is answered by the opening words: ‘To pray sometimes with words, sometimes with the intellect.’ – But it needs to be clarified that one cannot pray with the intellect without words either; it’s just that these words are not heard aloud, but are pronounced mentally there, inside, in the heart. It’s better to put it this way: pray sometimes with audible words, and sometimes with inaudible, silent words. The only thing you need to care about is that both audible and inaudible prayer come from the heart. The rest that’s added here is nonsense, namely: ‘Closing your eyes, clenching your lips and teeth, pronounce the words of the prayer without touching your tongue to your teeth… hold your breath… through nasal breathing it’s even better…’ These and similar additions are no good at all… When prayer comes from the heart, everything else is forgotten. But the inexperienced will read this and start doing it that way and believe that this is real prayer.

The question, surely, was about the Jesus Prayer. – How much nonsense has been heaped up about this holy prayer?!! – But the matter is simple: do you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is your only Saviour? – If you believe, cry out to Him: «Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me». But the clever scholars forgot about faith and focused all their attention on the words; so they started spinning tales about the tongue, and the lips, and breathing, and the head with the beard, and sitting posture. Prayer alone isn’t enough, but also a strong zeal for salvation… When this zeal is present, it will teach you how to proceed. And you must keep your conscience pure: that’s the main thing…

May the Lord bless you! Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

October 15, 1889.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 73)

74 On Receiving Penitents and the Struggle Against the Passions

The mercy of God be with you!

A brother came to you for counsel, and something unfortunate happened to him.[1] You sent him to Father N.[2] and from that he received benefit. If that one is more helpful, then let him go to him.

Another brother like this one still comes to you, and doesn’t leave—let him come. And speak to him always what is profitable with humility and love. And then, when he leaves, stand and pray for him with greater warmth.

Remember the word of the apostle: If a man falls into some transgression, you who are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness.

You are thinking of giving up eldership. Father N. He spoke well to you—not to turn anyone away. It’s good that they come and repent. And don’t turn anyone away, even if seventy times seven someone comes and repents of the same sin. Receive everyone warmly and paternally, as the father in the parable. Don’t frown, don’t speak harshly, but grieve and mourn together with them. Don’t rebuke or judge, but regard them as sick and oppressed by the enemy. Encourage them in the struggle by promising mercy and deliverance from the passion if they strictly keep themselves in check and use the means you propose. Against the passion of lust – fasting and prayer, and unceasing remembrance of God with the fear that the arrow of God’s righteousness may strike at the very moment of the sinful deed, and so on. – Bodily labor to the point of exhaustion is good… But the main thing is a firm resolve to resist sinful urges.

There’s a proverb: if you’ve taken hold of the shaft, don’t say you’re not strong enough.[3] – And bear this, your brother’s burden, without shrinking back.

Should one read the writings of Bishop Ignatius? Read it… Only don’t read the section on death – and even then, not all of it, but just a few pages, I think at the beginning, where he says that the soul and the angel are corporeal, and tries to prove it. It’s better to tear those pages out of the book. The whole article is very edifying, but those pages spoil it. The enemy provoked him. One may think (and I do think) that the soul and the angel are spiritual by nature, but clothed in a subtle ethereal body; but to think that they are body by nature – that’s impossible.

About Father’s lessons.[4] N., – what I called tricks – they’re listed in your note – here they are: closing the eyes, pressing the lips and mouth, pronouncing the words of the prayer without the teeth touching, holding back the breath, directing the nasal breath upward; whoever is stronger, let him pronounce the words of the prayer more forcefully, so that the heart may feel it.

May the Lord bless you!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

27 November 1889 year.

[1] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘что-то сделалось недоброе’ could also mean ‘something went wrong’ or ‘something bad befell him’; the sense is of a spiritual or personal difficulty.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘о.’ is an abbreviation for ‘отец’ (father); ‘N.’ represents an unnamed person.

[3] Translator’s note: Russian proverb about commitment; idiomatic rendering

[4] Translator’s note: The sentence is incomplete; ‘о.’ is an abbreviation for ‘отец’ (Father).

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 74)

75 On errors in the practice of the Jesus Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

Accept from me as well my greetings on the feast days and on the new year. May all things work toward your salvation!

What was written about the elder. N from the words of others—I think it’s better to let that be forgotten.[1] The one who passed it on added something of her own to it, and it’s impossible to separate that from the words of the elder. N it’s impossible.[2] Nowadays, people don’t know how to approach the Jesus Prayer. How many embellishments they’ve invented! And yet they’ve forgotten the heart of the matter entirely. That’s why some people stop at the words alone and just repeat, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me’ – but without any thought or feeling. I call them whisperers, or mutterers. Others stop at nostril-breathing and just snort. These are the snorters. There have also appeared some who, as if unable to stop the inner movement, start shouting: ‘Jesus… Jesus… Je… Je…’. These are the shriekers.[3]

But the practice of this prayer is simple: stand with your intellect in your heart before the face of the Lord and cry out: ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,’ or simply: ‘Lord, have mercy, merciful Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner…,’ or with any other words. The power is not in the words at all, but in the thoughts and feelings… Stand on this, and reject all the embellishments, and teach others to do the same.

That you’ve been freed, though not entirely, from the harassments—that’s the mercy of God. Make use of it and take care to order your inner life well, to walk unceasingly in the remembrance of God and the remembrance of death, and by this to stir up a vigilant and zealous thought about salvation.

I ask you to pray to the Lord for this blessing for me as well.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

January 3, 1890

[1] Translator’s note: Fragment rendered idiomatically; source text appears incomplete or elliptical.

[2] Translator’s note: Fragment; appears to continue from s2.

[3] Translator’s note: кликуша: a folk term for someone who shrieks or wails uncontrollably; rendered as ‘shriekers’ to match the pattern.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 75)

76 Errors in the Practice of the Jesus Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

I spoke about prayer as I did because people have made something unrecognizable out of the Jesus Prayer.[1] They think that as soon as someone begins to say this prayer, they’ve already done everything. For them, this prayer has become like some kind of incantation: say it, add to it those bodily postures that are mentioned elsewhere, and you’ll get everything.[2] And so they mumble away, while the heart remains empty, thoughts wander, even shameful impulses arise, and they don’t mind—as if all this is just how things are supposed to be.[3] Some experience a slight warmth, and they cry out: ‘There’s grace! There’s grace!’ And they don’t remember what the experienced say: watch out, a light warmth will come—don’t be amazed by it, it comes from nature, not from grace.

What do people seek through the Jesus Prayer? That a grace-filled fire would sink into the heart and unceasing prayer would begin—and that is how a grace-filled state is defined.[4] You should know that the Jesus Prayer, when a spark of God falls into the heart, fans it into flame; but the prayer itself does not give that spark—it only helps to receive it. How does it help? By gathering the thoughts into one and giving the soul the ability to stand before the Lord and walk in His presence. The main thing is standing and walking before God with a cry to Him from the heart. That’s how Maximus Kapsokalivis did it… So let all who seek the grace-filled fire do the same, and not worry about the words or bodily postures. God looks upon the heart.

I’m speaking against the fact that some people completely forget about crying out from the heart… All their care is about the words and bodily posture, and having recited a certain number of Jesus Prayers in this posture, with prostrations, they rest content with that, with a certain self-conceit and judging those who go to church for the common liturgical prayer. Some people live their whole lives this way, and remain empty of grace.

If someone were to ask me how I should conduct my prayer life? – I would tell him: learn to walk in the presence of God, or keep the remembrance of God and be reverent; to sustain this remembrance, choose several short little prayers or simply take the twenty-four little prayers of Chrysostom and repeat them often with corresponding thoughts and feelings. As you grow accustomed to it, your mind will be enlightened by the remembrance of God and your heart will be warmed. In this state, a spark of God will finally fall into your heart – a ray of grace. You can’t produce it by any means; it comes directly from God… Then you can remain with the Jesus Prayer alone and use it to fan the spark of prayer into a flame.

This is the straight path.

As for Fr. N, I have nothing to tell you.[5] Deal with him as God will give you understanding.

May the Lord bless you! Be saved![6]

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

26 February 1890

[1] Translator’s note: ‘не знать что сделали’ (lit. ‘don’t know what they made’) rendered idiomatically as ‘made something unrecognizable out of’

[2] Translator’s note: ‘заговор’ (incantation/spell) captures the sense of treating prayer as a magical formula

[3] Translator’s note: ‘мурлычут’ (mumble/murmur) conveys the mechanical, soulless recitation

[4] Translator’s note: ‘канон’ here means ‘measure’ or ‘mark’ (defining characteristic), not the liturgical canon.

[5] Translator’s note: ‘N’ appears to be a placeholder or abbreviation for a name; the phrase ‘ничего не умею сказать’ literally means ‘I am unable to say anything’ but is idiomatically rendered as ‘I have nothing to tell you.’

[6] Translator’s note: The imperative ‘Спасайтесь’ can mean ‘Save yourselves!’ or ‘Be saved!’—the latter is more idiomatic in English pastoral address.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 76)

77 On the Jesus Prayer and Its True Fruit

May the mercy of God be with you!

Everything you wrote in your last letter (18 February) was well written. The Jesus Prayer, said with faith in simplicity of heart, is always salvific for the soul. What can prove harmful is the technique that people attach to it. That’s what we need to warn against… One shouldn’t rush headlong into this prayer; at first let everyone learn to pray from the heart with the appointed prayers and with the prayers in church. Then, when you notice that someone is beginning to go deeper into prayer, you can suggest that he say the Jesus Prayer unceasingly, and in doing so guard the remembrance of God with fear and reverence. Prayer is the first thing. The main thing sought through prayer is to receive that little flame which was given to Maximus Kapsokalivis… This little flame is not attracted by any technique, but is given freely by the grace of God. This is why the labor of prayer is required, as Saint Macarius writes… If you want to acquire prayer, he says, labor in prayer… God, seeing how earnestly you seek prayer, will give you prayer (Homily 1, chapter 13). This is the way of Maximus… For two years he struggled from the heart, seeking prayer—and he received the gift of prayer… Teach this to everyone… But add that the house of prayer is a pure heart, and a peaceful conscience, and zeal for every virtue, and the sowing of these in the heart…

Don’t be troubled that people reproach you. Because of this, God will give strength to your teaching. Only humble yourselves and do everything in simplicity of heart.

The elder or brother who told you, ‘Morning and evening prayers are enough.’ Of course, this is understood for a cell rule, with attendance at all the services—certainly, it’s enough. But it’s essential that both the church prayers and the prayers at home be said with attention and from the heart. All the intervals between them should be filled with remembrance of God—with fear of God and contrition of heart. But in all this you must remember, or keep in mind, the ultimate goal—to obtain that flame which was given to Maximus of Kapsokalyvia…[1]

Revealing your thoughts, as you know from experience, is very beneficial. Reading books is also good; and it can provide instruction when the occasion arises. But books give general guidance; whereas for particular cases it’s better to seek clarification from someone who knows the work firsthand… Getting addicted to reading is bad. It doesn’t lead to anything good – and it sets up a kind of wall between the heart and God. It develops a pernicious curiosity and inquisitiveness.

Madness from the Jesus Prayer can happen when, while saying this prayer, a person doesn’t turn away from certain sins and sinful habits that conscience condemns. In this state a deep discord arises within, driving away all peace of heart… From this the head can become clouded and thoughts can fall into confusion and entanglement.

Be strong, and conduct your work with fear and firm hope in God’s help, which is always ready. When people come to you, you can’t just drive them out with a stick. They don’t come for evil or with evil. To refuse them a word when you know what to say is just as bad as not giving alms when you have something to give.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

With the salvific fast, I forgot to greet you.[2] I greet you and wish you to observe it entirely as you should, so that you might meet the Bright Resurrection with greater joy!

Your devoted Bishop Theophan.

4 March 1890

[1] Translator’s note: Maximus of Kapsokalyvia: a 19th-century hesychast monk; ‘огонька’ (little flame) refers to the grace of the Jesus Prayer

[2] Translator’s note: ‘salvific fast’ renders ‘душеспасительным постом’ idiomatically; the adjective modifies the fast itself.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 77)

78 On Prayer and the Interior Fire

May the mercy of God be with you!

Christ is risen!

I’ve been slow to answer you—please forgive me.

Your first question about this little flame… what is it? Answer: when God grants it, then you will know. Without tasting the sweetness of honey, one cannot know what that sweetness is. It’s the same here! It reveals itself through constant feeling toward God.[1]

You’ve explained well with the burning glass how the interior fire is kindled. So do that. How does one stand before the Lord with intellect and heart? As one stands before a sovereign—so it must be here too. The prophet says: I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand and so forth.[2] . In its present form, this foresight appears already after the fire has been received. To ask for this gift is not contrary to God. That this work ended badly for some is not the fault of grace, but of the one who received it and did not preserve it.

On money. As you have your own needs, satisfy them, and give the rest to the poor, and remain with nothing. The main thing is not to place your hope in money. Monasteries will survive, but the poor have a hard time of it.

You ask: “Isn’t it that little flame when you stand at prayer with reverence and a sense of your own nothingness?” – Yes, it is connected with that flame;[3] but in his presence it is inseparable. The inner fire comes without deliberation.[4] And always, almost entirely through the sacraments of confession and holy communion.

The fathers describe the artistic form of prayer practice as an external aid, and it is subordinate to the inner work.[5] But nowadays most people adopt only the outward side, not caring about the inward. The moment some warm movement appears in the heart, they decide: ‘God has given it’… and they give themselves over to fantasies about themselves. Then they condemn everyone who doesn’t follow the technical method of prayer, and not only that, but also the church prayer rules and those who strictly keep to them, trying not to omit anything.[6] Because of this their spiritual progress in interior prayer stops, and they’re left with only the outward practice—and the spiritual life ceases.

Please take more care for interior prayer, drawing your attention away from the outward…

The labor of prayer leads to receiving the gift of prayer.

Be saved!

Your well-wisher.

6 May 1890

[1] Translator’s note: ‘Feeling’ (чувство) here means an inner sense or awareness, not emotion; the glossary requires ‘feeling’ as the standard rendering.

[2] Translator’s note: rendered in standard English Bible form.

[3] Translator’s note: The dash marks a shift from the question to Theophane’s affirmative response; rendered idiomatically in English.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘Огонек’ (diminutive of ‘огонь’) in the context of prayer and inner life refers to the warmth or fervor of prayer; ‘без усмотрения’ means without conscious effort or deliberate striving—a spontaneous grace.

[5] Translator’s note: ‘Художественный образ’ rendered as ‘artistic form’ to capture the sense of a structured, methodical approach to prayer rather than a literal ‘artistic image’.

[6] Translator’s note: ‘художественного образа молитвы’ rendered as ‘technical method of prayer’ to capture the structured technique being referenced.

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79 On the Disclosure of Thoughts and Spiritual Guidance

The mercy of God be with you!

Everything you have said and done regarding those who come to you for counsel is entirely correct. And there is nothing to add to that. It is written: To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.[1] Is it not good to give necessary counsel when you know what is needed? Of course it is good. So we must act accordingly.

At the tonsure there are sponsors. And so they become elders to those being tonsured. It is a great pity that in our monasteries such guidance has not been established as a canonical practice—that there should be eldership and the revelation of thoughts with questioning. This is how the enemy works wickedness: for questioning, counsel, and the revelation of thoughts are terrible to the enemy.[2] Yet although this has not been formally instituted, in practice it exists and is carried out everywhere. When there is a need, those who are in need go right away to those from whom they hope to receive what they’re looking for.

N. A novice should endure, otherwise he’ll get used to wandering about, and nothing good will come of it. I don’t involve myself in monastery affairs. The archimandrite Father conducts affairs according to his own judgment. He is a wise administrator.

May the Lord bless you with every blessing!

For guidance, always keep at hand the book of Barsanuphius and John, the Ladder, and the writings of Abba Dorotheus. Many cases are resolved there… By them you can decide others as well.

Your well-wisher

13 June 1890

[1] Translator’s note: Scripture quotation rendered in traditional English (KJV style) to match the Church Slavonic source.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘An enemy has done this’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 79)

80 On prayer from the heart and its gift

May the mercy of God be with you!

I haven’t answered your two letters, out of slothfulness. Please forgive me—and don’t scold. In your first letter you write well about prayer—namely, that the techniques used in prayer, such as how to maintain attention and what position to give the body and some of its members, are not the essential thing in prayer… but let each person hold himself as is best for him.

The chief concern in prayer is that it should come from the heart. True prayer of the heart is a gift of grace, given through the sacraments of confession or Holy Communion. And once such a gift has been given, it is warmed and sustained by those same sacraments. The distinguishing mark of this gift is the continuity of prayer, which expresses itself as a feeling toward God—sometimes with words of prayer, and sometimes without words.

What grace gives, your own labor can never give. It only prepares you to receive the gift—and once you have received it, it sustains it together with the sacraments.

The holy fathers made it a rule: to compel yourself to prayer—at home, in church, while working, on walks, and in every free moment. That’s all you need to know about prayer.

Should noetic prayer be assigned to the young—to novices?

Prayer without the intellect and heart turned toward God is not prayer. This needs to be explained to a novice. Let him perform prayer from a prayer book, striving in every way to ensure that thoughts and feelings accompany the words. By this labor the novice will become accustomed to the turns of phrase of prayer… and then he will himself begin to accomplish prayer with his own words, when it advances from the heart. But a novice should never be left without a prayer book… except in the case where he became acquainted with noetic prayer to God before his novitiate.

In the second letter – more about a certain young brother… who is falling. Do as the Lord instructs: forgiving and absolving seventy times seven. Does not the Lord say: The one who comes to Me I will never cast out? Therefore receive everyone who comes with repentance… comfort them, encourage them… and impose a penance – a small one, according to their strength… frequent prostrations, even if not many… with the publican’s prayer: God, be merciful to me, a fallen one! Merciful Lord, have mercy on me, fallen one!

The Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

And I forgot about spiritual fatherhood.

If it’s better for you that it passed you by, then there’s nothing to think about it. The Lord knows what He is doing.

September 10, 1890

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 80)

81 On the Work of Salvation and the Jesus Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

May the Lord bless you to guide such a son well, like Fr. N…. N…. The work of salvation is one for all – sincere repentance and a resolve, strong as death, to walk rightly from now on, in thoughts, in feelings, and in deeds…

May the Lord direct his path! Give him the little book ‘The Path to Salvation’ and ‘What is the Spiritual Life?’ to read.

That you’re deciding to prepare for your prayer rule – this is the real work. There are ‘Three Words on Prayer’ – from the Athonites. Among other things, there’s discussion there about what you’ve thought up for yourself. Learn by heart the twenty-four little prayers of Saint Chrysostom… And you can begin your prayer rule with them. And so—repeat them often throughout the day. They contain everything necessary. Through them it’s easier to pass over to unceasing prayer with the Jesus Prayer. This is especially fitting for beginners. The whole thing is to learn to keep your attention always on the omnipresent Lord who sees all, who desires all to be saved, and who is ready to help toward that end.

This habit won’t let you be troubled—whether interior or exterior affliction disturbs you: for it gives the soul complete satisfaction, which, filling the soul, leaves no room for any feeling of scarcity or insufficiency, casting yourself and all that is yours into the Lord’s hands and giving birth to a feeling of His unceasing protection and help.

You are a spiritual father. Buy a knife—a very sharp one—place it before your eyes, and look at it often, always bringing to memory the law by which a spiritual father is to have his tongue cut off if he reveals to anyone the sins confessed to him or by any hint lets them be guessed at. I have reason to think spiritual fathers neglect this… Such people don’t remember what evil comes from this—that is, if the thought spreads that spiritual fathers are indiscreet: confessions will become incomplete, and then they’ll stop altogether.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher.

October 5, 1890

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82 On the Prayer of Novices

May the mercy of God be with you!

I don’t recall what prompted me to write to you about prayer for novices. Surely something in your letter gave me reason to do so.

My thought is this: novices should first be taught to pray properly using ready-made prayers, so that they may take into themselves the thoughts, feelings, and words of prayer. For the word we offer to God must be befitting God. When the teacher notices they have made sufficient progress in this, then let him teach them how to pray not with words that belong to others, but with their own words—bringing their own personal spiritual needs before God in prayer and asking Him to be merciful to them and to help them. At the same time, you can offer them short little prayers, showing them examples in the twenty-four little prayers of Saint John Chrysostom, and allowing them to gather other similar little prayers from the psalms, from church prayers, and to compose them themselves.

With these short little prayers they will learn well to keep their attention undistracted during prayer. Then finally you can teach them about the Jesus Prayer, without burdening it with any external methods, and instilling only one thing—to bring forth this prayer from the heart.

Every prayer must come from the heart, and any other kind of prayer is not prayer at all. Both prayers from a prayer book and your own prayers and short little prayers—all must come from the heart to the Lord, whom you see before you. All the more must the Jesus Prayer be this way.

I mean the practice of cell-rule prayer. Let church prayer flow according to what is read and sung in the Church. In the midst of it you may insert your own prayer and short prayers, especially during the litanies or when what is being read and sung cannot be heard or understood.

Beyond this, resolve all your questions about prayer as you see fit. Only require that they not be lazy and that prayer always come from the heart. Never allow them to sit during prayer. Let them stand reverently. Sitting while praying the Jesus Prayer is a bad habit.

With a brother who keeps falling—yet at times experiences spiritual movements—manage him as you see fit.[1] Pray for him and make him pray for himself, showing him mercy sometimes and strictness at other times. The book of Barsanuphius and John is very necessary for spiritual fathers and spiritual guides. Read and learn.

N speaks the truth when he says there are no true spiritual guides nowadays. Yet one must not remain with Scripture and patristic teachings alone. Questioning of a guide is necessary.[2] Paisius of Neamț decided thus: let two or three of one mind form a union and guide one another or question one another, living a life of mutual obedience, with fear of God and prayer, in moderate ascetic strictness.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher.

October 29, 1890

[1] Translator’s note: ‘падает и падает’ rendered as ‘keeps falling’ to capture the iterative sense in natural English.

[2] Translator’s note: вопрошение: seeking counsel or instruction from a spiritual guide

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83 On the Writings of Hierarch Ignatius and Spiritual Delusion in Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

You write that you’ve acquired a little book: “The soul and the angel are not body, but spirit.” Good! Read it, and share it with others or encourage them to get a copy. Here the truth is set forth plainly; but there are people who hold to the opposite falsehood—and it’s not harmless. For if the soul is body, why should we abstain from bodily things? Eat, drink, and be merry.

But you would be wrong if you thought badly of all the writings of Bishop Ignatius. They set forth the straight truth about the spiritual life, and all in the words of the Fathers, though it isn’t indicated everywhere where the thoughts are taken from. So you should read him without turning up your nose.

Placing a wet towel on the chest… someone among those now engaged in ascesis does this. And he wrote to me. This doesn’t concern the practice of prayer itself, but rather those cases when the blood of the heart becomes heated through artificial practice of prayer—in order to diminish the heat of the blood. This heat is not a spiritual manifestation, but a physical one, and it arises from immoderate use of artificial techniques in the Jesus Prayer. Hidden in this is also the fact that they regard the artificial practice of the Jesus Prayer as the principal work, and the physical warmth of the heart in this as genuine spiritual prayer of Jesus. Whoever thinks this way is in spiritual delusion.

That you’ve been released from the roster means you’ve been numbered among the elders. Yet this is not done in order to indulge laziness, but so that you might devote yourselves more earnestly to spiritual practices and to noetic sacred action before God in the heart. Your sorrow that you serve rarely is groundless, because it was not chosen by you, and the brothers are wrong to reproach you for not fulfilling your turn at the services. Tell them: my friends, not my will; for the very reason that I humbly submit to the arrangements of our fathers, I should not be reproached. It is better not to think about solitude. If it is necessary for you, God will arrange it for you when the time comes. It must be preceded by a strong inner longing.

May the Lord bless you!

I ask for your prayers.

Be saved!

Your well-wisher.[1]

July 5, 1891.

[1] Translator’s note: доброхот: a traditional Russian epistolary closing meaning ‘one who wishes you well’ or ‘your well-wisher’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 83)

84 On the Jesus Prayer and its true practice.

May the mercy of God be with you!

May God help you in your spiritual fatherhood!

Proceed with the sick and elderly residents of the almshouse in confession and Holy Communion just as you have been doing. Advise the residents of the almshouse and the sick to pray to the Lord with their intellect from the heart.

As for what you wrote about certain practitioners of the Jesus Prayer who place their hand on a table and gather their attention under their fingers—these are unseemly affectations.[1] It’s also a quirk that someone would strike the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right hand, and in this way gather his intellect and pray. You’re asking me to explain the work of prayer… But there’s nothing to explain here. Stand with your intellect in your heart before the face of the Lord and cry out to Him: ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’ This will be the labor of prayer. According to how diligently someone labors, the Lord, seeing the labor, will give him spiritual prayer, which is the fruit of the grace of the Holy Spirit. That’s all that should be said and understood about the Jesus Prayer. Everything else that’s invented has nothing to do with the work—it’s the enemy distracting from true prayer.

To the elder who hears noise and feels touches… there’s nothing more to say except what you’ve already said: pay no attention. Let him add the prayer each time: ‘Our Father…’; he can even pronounce a rebuke over the enemies in the name of the Lord with faith!

That his forehead was red—that’s surely because he’s banging it on the floor. Let him stop doing that… It’s good to make prostrations… All the prayer books advise doing that, but there’s no need to bang on the floor.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

31 July 1891

[1] Translator’s note: мысленно rendered as ‘with their intellect’ (ум), following Orthodox noetic prayer terminology

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 84)

85 On the Jesus Prayer and a Contrite Spirit

May the mercy of God be with you!

I have been slow to answer you. I’m to blame! And yet you’ve raised some very important questions. The first concerns the Jesus Prayer. I think the elders do well not to impose the rule of this prayer on novices. One must wait until the one who has begun the work has labored in church prayer and home prayer; and only instruct him to pray always from the heart with remembrance of the omnipresent God to whom he prays, and with understanding of the words of prayer, believing that the Lord is near, attends to his prayer, and is ready to fulfill his petition if he prays as he ought… Keep him in this order a good while longer. Then, when he has become accustomed to praying attentively in this manner, hand on to him the rule of the Jesus Prayer as well.

In the practice of this prayer, teach those who are learning not to limit themselves to memorizing the words alone, but always to have the Lord before the eyes of their intellect and, directing the words of the prayer to Him, to conduct themselves as they would conduct themselves if they were standing before the emperor and asking him for something. Let there be a contrite spirit and a heart contrite and humble.

That novice who was writing the Jesus Prayer on his heart evidently placed all the power of prayer in the words. Let him learn to walk in the presence of God and to perform every act of obedience in the best possible way, knowing that the Lord is watching him… and that for good fulfillment of obedience He is preparing a reward for him, but for carelessness (just to get it off his hands) – either nothing, or something punitive… In this way he will become accustomed to praying noetically and with recollection.

What one should seek through prayer is the establishment in the heart of a quiet but warm feeling toward God that does not depart; but one should not strive for raptures or special movements, and when God does send special prayerful feelings, give thanks for them but not appropriate them to oneself, and not grieve when they depart, as though over some great loss, but always descend humbly from them to the quiet feeling toward the Lord.

The second – about absolution. You do well to absolve the contrite person directly, without imposing a penance; but say to him: brother, preserve this contrite spirit and renew it when it grows weak. And to the one who confesses coldly—to him, after you absolve him, say: brother, take care to acquire and establish in yourself a contrite spirit, and for this—make three full prostrations in the church or at home, with the prayer: a contrite spirit, a heart contrite and humble grant me, Lord!

May the Lord bless you!

September 20, 1891

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86 On Brief Prayers and Noetic Prayer

The mercy of God be with you!

You congratulated me on the beginning of Great Lent, and I congratulate you on its end. And now comes the Passion![1] May the Passion of the Lord be imprinted on your heart, awakening in you the corresponding feelings of contrition and humility!

In your previous letter – the one from January – you wrote that you allow everyone to approach the Holy Mysteries… This is very merciful and, I think, not contrary to the all-merciful Lord. But it also seems to me that you shouldn’t let this make those who come grow lax. Sincere repentance always deserves leniency; but those who come to confession with indifference can be stirred up somehow… Ask one of them whether his absolution could be postponed for a while… Would that cause him difficulty in any respect?… If it can be done, then postpone it, imposing a penance for that time – prostrations, self-control in food and sleep… and above all, contrition. When he has fulfilled it sincerely, then absolve him. And exhort them to abstain from sins.

You also wrote about voices heard by certain people. The thought of the ancient fathers is not to pay attention to this, without delving into the causes. Think this way yourselves and teach others the same… Inattention will shame the enemies, and they will stop performing such wonders.

What books should one advise novices to read? Whichever are most accessible. Such as: Saint John Chrysostom, Ephrem the Syrian, Abba Dorotheus, Saint Tikhon. Is it permissible to allow reading any stories? Yes, it is. Let them read the Menaion.[2] Stories and novels are also narratives. But they are all of a worldly character. It is better not to touch them. – You can stumble upon scandalous ones.

When you are worn out by conversations with visitors, don’t immediately begin your prayer after they leave, but first calm your spirit… then carry out your prayer rule… and drive away slothfulness… It’s a bad guest… and it doesn’t come alone.

From the fact that the Jesus Prayer is not mentioned, one cannot conclude that it was not in use. The point is not in the words, but in the little prayer. It was not the only one in use. Saint Cassian writes that in Egypt they used this little prayer: “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me”. In other places other little prayers were in use, such as: ‘My hope is the Father, my refuge the Son, my shelter the Holy Spirit…’ And also: ‘I as a man have sinned, but You as a merciful God have mercy on me, seeing the weakness of my soul.’ – Among them is the Jesus Prayer. But later, preference was given to the Jesus Prayer.

The purpose of little prayers is to help gather the thoughts and maintain sobriety. The power is not in the words, but in the feeling toward God. This feeling is quickly formed in those who labor at prayer.

This, then, is noetic prayer. The intellect, standing in the heart, beholds God and noetically confesses to Him by calling upon Him… Feeling toward God is unceasing prayer without words.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

14 March 1893

[1] Translator’s note: страстная (elliptical) refers to Passion Week; rendered idiomatically as exclamation.

[2] Translator’s note: Четь-Минея is the Slavic liturgical calendar of saints’ lives; ‘Menaion’ is the standard English patristic term.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 86)

87 On the difference in the manner of the prayer rule

May the mercy of God be with you!

I congratulate you on the safe completion of your pilgrimage to the holy places, and on the good fruit you have gathered from the elders, those who have ripened in the spirit of new life.[1]

A certain elder, who prays to the point of sweating, seems to be a question for you: is it permissible? Is it good? Is it allowed to pray in this way? If he receives tangible benefit from this for himself, then it is good for him to act in this way. But that he attempts to impose this same manner of prayer rule on everyone else—that is unjust and unsafe. Not everyone is made the same way; each person has their own nature. Again: if he thinks that everyone should be obliged to pray this way, then he considers his own manner of praying essentially necessary – but it cannot be so, since it is external and bodily. If the elder receives benefit from his prostrations to the point of sweat… it’s not from that, but from the fact that inwardly – with intellect and heart – he ascends to God in the proper way, and not because he grows tired and sweats. With other elders, prayer is lofty and powerful not from making prostrations in this way, but from interior dispositions of prayer. In some it was inimitably lofty even without prostrations… There was an elder – and probably he was not the only one – who, lifting up his hands to heaven, before taking food… at three o’clock – began to pray and prayed thus, standing, until morning, when the sun rose and by its action awakened him.

That the elder rebuked N for something is healing medicine for N… And let him make use of it.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

I ask for your prayers.

November 1, 1893

[1] Translator’s note: ‘святопоклонного путешествия’ rendered as ‘pilgrimage to the holy places’ for idiomatic English.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 87)

88 On the Jesus Prayer: Vocal, Noetic, and Prayer of the Heart

The mercy of God be with you!

1. On vocal prayer. In its shortened form it is said thus: “Lord, have mercy”; “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner”, and in its full form thus: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”.

At first it is pronounced mostly by force and reluctantly, but as you practice it and compel yourself to it (if only you have a firm intention to diminish all-encompassing passions through prayer with the help of God’s grace), then from frequent practice of it, as the passions diminish, it will gradually become easier, more pleasant, and more desirable.[1]

In vocal prayer, you must do everything you can to keep your intellect in the words of the prayer, speak slowly, concentrating all your attention on the thoughts expressed by the words. And when your intellect is drawn away into extraneous thoughts, without distress bring it back again to the words of the prayer. Undistracted attention is not given to the intellect quickly, nor whenever we wish, but when we humble ourselves and when God is pleased to grant it. This gift of God is not determined by time, nor by the number of prayers, but by heartfelt humility and the grace of Christ, and by constant effort toward it. From vocal attentive prayer comes a transition to noetic prayer, which is called by this name when we are drawn to God by the intellect alone, or when we behold God…

2. On noetic prayer. In noetic prayer it is absolutely necessary to hold your attention in the heart before the Lord. In proportion to our zeal and humble effort in prayer, God grants the first gift to our intellect—recollection and concentration in prayer.[2] When attention to the Lord becomes constant, then it is grace-filled attention; but our own attention is always forced. From such noetic prayer there is a transition to prayer of the heart, to interior prayer, if only there is an experienced teacher, very skilled and free.[3] When we are with God through the feelings of the heart, and love of God fills the heart, then such prayer bears the name of prayer of the heart.

3. On interior prayer of the heart. In the Gospel it is written: If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross. If we apply these words to the practice of prayer, they will mean the following: whoever wishes to struggle ascetically lawfully in the labor of prayer must first deny his own will and his own reasonings, and then bear the cross—that is, the labor both of soul and body which is unavoidable in this ascesis. Having given yourself wholly to the unwearying care of God, you must humbly and with equanimity bear this labor for the sake of the true good which is granted to the diligent one who prays by God in his own time, when God by His grace sets bounds to our intellect and establishes it immovably with the remembrance of God in the heart.[4] When such a standing of the intellect becomes as it were natural and constant, the Fathers call it the union of the intellect with the heart. Once the intellect is established in this way, it no longer desires to be outside the heart. On the contrary, if circumstances or much conversation keep it away from the attention of the heart, it experiences an irresistible longing to return inward again with a certain spiritual thirst and renewed zeal to continue building its interior dwelling. When the heart is established in this way, everything from the head descends into the heart, and then a certain noetic light illuminates his whole interior, so that whatever he does, says, or thinks is done with complete consciousness and attention. He can then clearly see what thoughts, intentions, and desires come to him, and willingly compels his intellect, heart, and will to obedience to Christ, to the fulfillment of every commandment of God and the fathers. Any deviation from them he wipes away with the feeling of heartfelt repentance and contrition, with sincere sorrow and with tender, humble prostration before God, asking and awaiting help from above for his weakness. And God, seeing such humility in him, does not withhold His grace from him.

Know that the prayer of the intellect and heart comes to the heart quickly for some and slowly for others. I know of three people: one of them received it as soon as it was spoken, in that very hour; another received it after six months; a third after ten months; and one great elder received it after two years. And why it happens this way—only God knows.

Know also that before the passions are destroyed, prayer is one thing, and another after the heart is purified of passions: the first is a help in the purification of the heart from passions;[5] and the second is, as it were, a certain spiritual pledge of future blessedness. Do this: when you feel the intellect entering the heart and the working of prayer, then give full freedom to such prayer, removing everything that hinders it; and while it continues, do nothing else. When you don’t feel such a drawing, then pray with vocal prayer and prostrations, striving in every way to keep your attention in the heart before the face of the Lord. Your heart will grow warm even in this manner of prayer.

Be sober and watchful, especially during the prayer of the intellect and heart. No one is so pleasing to God as the one who engages rightly in the prayer of the intellect and heart. When it’s inconvenient for you or you don’t have time to practice prayer, then by every means keep within yourself during all your occupations the spirit of prayer—that is, hold God in your memory and in every way strain to see Him before you with the eyes of the intellect, with fear and love, and, feeling Him present before you, commit yourself with reverent submission in all your affairs to His sovereignty, omnipotence, all-seeing gaze, and omniscience, so that in your every deed, word, and thought you remember God and His holy will. That, in short, is what the spirit of prayer consists of! The lover of prayer must necessarily have this spirit, and, as far as possible, by constant attention of the heart bring his understanding under God’s understanding and submissively and reverently submit to Him; likewise, bring his own desires and wishes under God’s will and wholly surrender himself to God’s understanding and God’s will. In every way one must stand against the spirit of self-will, or the desire and impulse to act without any restraint. This spirit whispers to you: this is beyond my strength, I don’t have time for it; or: I’m not ready to take this on yet, I need to wait; or: my duties of obedience get in the way, and many other such excuses. Whoever listens to it will never learn to pray. Working alongside this spirit is the spirit of self-justification, which steps in and begins to act after someone, carried away by the spirit of self-will, has done something that troubles his conscience. Then the spirit of self-justification employs various tricks to deceive the conscience and make its wrongdoing appear as righteousness. May God keep you safe from these evil spirits!

[1] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘всесторонние страсти’ (all-encompassing passions) could also be rendered as ‘passions on all sides’ or ‘manifold passions’, but the sense is of the comprehensive nature of the passions that afflict the soul.

[2] Translator’s note: собранность и сосредоточенность rendered as ‘recollection and concentration’ to capture the progression from initial gathering of attention to sustained focus.

[3] Translator’s note: сердечной rendered as ‘prayer of the heart’ to clarify the transition from noetic to cardiac prayer; внутренней молитве rendered as ‘interior prayer’ per glossary.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘благодушно’ rendered as ‘with equanimity’ to convey the virtue of steadfast composure in bearing difficulty.

[5] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘истребления страстей’ (destruction/eradication of passions) is rendered as ‘the passions are destroyed’ to maintain natural English flow.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 88)

89 On the Essence of the Jesus Prayer and the Grace of God

May the mercy of God be with you!

The power lies not in the words of the Jesus Prayer, but in spiritual disposition, fear of God, and devotion to God, and in constant attention to God and noetic standing before Him.[1]

The Jesus Prayer is only an aid, not the very essence of the work itself. Make it your aim to live in the remembrance of God and to walk in the presence of God, and this alone will lead you to a good end. All of this is from the grace of God. Without the grace of God, you cannot acquire anything spiritual in any other way.

Once grace enters the heart, then everything will proceed as it should.

We have the Lord Saviour, who desires all to be saved; you must importune Him—and He will give. Receive humble self-renunciation, knowledge of your own failings, faults, and omissions, and the cry of prayer from your heart: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And the grace of God will never withdraw its overshadowing and protection from you.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘умном’ rendered as ‘noetic’ per glossary; ‘предстоянии’ as ‘standing before’ per glossary.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 89)

90 On the Prayer Rule and Unceasing Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

Here I myself have offended you by my slow reply.[1]

I ask your forgiveness.

What you wrote about yourself regarding the deceptive image of self-denial is good.[2] The most sensible way to conduct yourself toward others is not to resist, so that everything goes smoothly.[3] There’s no avoiding struggle, because our self gets in the way and, like a hedgehog, bristles up with its quills. These quills are what we have to trim or pull out.

How you’ve decided to approach prayer is good. Take care to arrange things this way and to grow accustomed to it. The prayer rule is a safe boundary for prayer… Prayer is an inner work, while the prayer rule is external.

But just as a person without a body is not a complete person, so prayer without a prayer rule is not complete. You need to have both and to fulfil them according to your strength. The unbreakable law is to pray inwardly, and to pray always and everywhere. But the prayer rule cannot exist without a definite time, place, and measure. Defining these three things constitutes the prayer rule. And here the guide is prudence: when, where, how long to stand in prayer and what prayers to use… everyone can determine according to their circumstances—to increase, decrease, shift the time and place… all directed toward ensuring that interior prayer is performed as it should be. As for interior prayer, there is one rule: pray unceasingly.

What does it mean to pray unceasingly? —To be unceasingly in a prayerful disposition. A prayerful disposition is thought of God and feeling toward God together. A thought of God—a thought of His omnipresence, that He is everywhere, sees all things, and sustains all things. A feeling toward God—fear of God, love of God, zealous desire to please Him alone, with the same desire to avoid all that displeases Him, and above all, the surrender of yourself to His holy will without resistance and the acceptance of all that happens as coming directly from His hand. A feeling toward God can be present in all our works, occupations, and circumstances, if it is not merely sought after, but is already established in the heart.

The thought can be drawn away by various objects; but even then it is possible to develop the habit of not departing from God, and to engage in all things in the light of remembrance of God. So your whole concern should be with these two—with thought of God and feeling toward God. When these are present, there is prayer, even though there are no words of prayer. The morning prayer rule is appointed precisely to establish these two things in the consciousness and heart… And then with them to go out to one’s work and labor. If you raise this up in your soul in the morning, then you have prayed as you should, even if you don’t read all the prayers…

Let’s say that in the morning you’ve set yourself in this disposition and have gone out to your work. From the first step, impressions from affairs and things and people will begin, pulling the soul away from God… What’s to be done? You must renew the thought and feeling… by an interior turning of the intellect and heart to God. And to make this easier – you need to get used to some little prayer and repeat it as often as possible. Any little prayer will do for this. But the most fitting of all is the prayer to the Lord Saviour: ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!’ Labor to get used to it, and don’t give up until you’ve mastered it… Once it takes root, it will be a constant mover both of standing before God in thought and of feeling toward Him. There you have the whole program of the work of prayer! In the book ‘What is the spiritual life?…’ all this is described. You do well to read through it. Everything written there was written to a beautiful soul, and depicts the work of the spiritual life as it really is. Look carefully there at what is spiritual, soulish, and bodily, or animal.

It’s good that you’ve decided to drive away morning drowsiness… By giving yourself alertness at this hour, it will be easier for you to keep yourself alert the whole day.

For times when you can’t read all the prayers in the morning or evening, choose from among the prayers those that are more substantial in content… and read them… but most importantly, take greater care to establish in your intellect and heart the thought of God with the corresponding feeling.

The spiritual coldness you speak of comes either from weariness of soul, or from the fact that the soul has been overfed with what is soulish (see the book ‘What Is the Spiritual Life?’ on this), or from giving the body too much rest and every kind of comfort, or from self-conceit and other passions that have agitated and occupied the soul. All such things are contrary to the spiritual life, in which prayer is queen; they clog and block the wellspring of prayer. But it also happens by God’s permission, and by the withdrawal of grace. When your soul burns with zeal, this is the action of grace, God’s touch upon the soul. It happens that when this continues for a long time, the soul begins to think what a master it is at prayer, forgetting that the liveliness of the prayerful movement is not its own doing, but the work of the grace of God dwelling in us. For such thinking grace withdraws and leaves the soul alone… and the soul by itself is immobile toward spiritual things… so there you have spiritual coldness and slothfulness… So what’s to be done? The main thing is to try to remove the causes of such a state. And then act as you are acting – fulfil your rule, despite the slothfulness, trying both to gather your thoughts and to reproduce feelings toward God. For patience and humility grace will return… and will immediately dispel slothfulness, as wind disperses fog.

Memorising the Psalter is a good thing. Fill yourselves with prayerful thoughts and feelings… The Holy Fathers urged this on everyone. And they advised reading the psalms not only during your prayer rule, but at other times too. You can read them even in the midst of tasks, and especially when you’re moving from one place to another. But for maintaining thoughts of God and feeling toward Him between tasks, it’s best of all to become accustomed to a short little prayer.

You can serve the Lord with everything you happen to do, think, and experience from waking up until your eyes close again in sleep… This happens – by doing everything in accordance with the commandments and for the glory of God, in obedience to God, and by keeping your thoughts and feelings in check so that nothing displeasing to God breaks through into them.

That you love to listen to the singing in church – there’s nothing blameworthy in that, unless you limit yourself to mere delight and forget about God and all things divine. It’s not the delight that’s blameworthy, but the fact that God and divine things are forgotten in the process. If you follow in your mind everything that is sung and read in church, you won’t grow weary – on the contrary, you’ll feel when the Liturgy ends… how quickly the service has passed.

Reading the Gospel and so on. – good and very good… When doing this – whatever verse or thought lodges in your soul, dwell on it longer, and during the day remember it more often… and expand those thoughts.

What is ‘a mercy of peace’? Listen to what the deacon proclaims! ‘Let us stand aright… Let us offer the holy oblation in peace…’ This is an invitation to offer the bloodless sacrifice. The priest performs the sacrifice. Those present must have feelings corresponding to it… fear of God, undistracted thought, peace with God and with all, praise and thanksgiving to God… These are spiritual sacrifices… this is what the words ‘a mercy of peace’ mean… The deacon invites them to offer the sacrifice… Those present respond: yes, we are ready… and we offer ‘a mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise.’ When they sing ‘It is meet and right…’, the priest recalls all God’s blessings – in creation, providence, especially in redemption, and in the very permission to offer the sacrifice… All those present should remember this too.

The phrase ‘mercy of peace’ in Greek is ‘oil of peace’. Peace is indeed oil for the soul and the greatest mercy, which we show one another mutually and which God grants to us.

Be saved!

May the Lord bless you!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

November 4, 1885.

[1] Translator’s note: нескорым отвечанием: ‘slow reply’ captures the sense of delayed or tardy response; could also be ‘tardy answer’

[2] Translator’s note: прелестный here means ‘deceptive’ or ‘illusory’ in the sense of spiritual delusion (прелесть); the phrase describes a false appearance of self-denial

[3] Translator’s note: не скрипеть (lit. ‘not to creak/squeak’) is an idiomatic expression meaning not to resist or complain

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 90)

91 On unceasing prayer and spiritual practice

May the mercy of God be with you!

I received your October letter and kept meaning to write… It’s good that you wrote again. I write to you with pleasure, but now several matters have come up…

Your description of the order of your life is pleasant to read… The very best remedy for our weaknesses is to have no idle time.

You danced… Did the sky not fall on you?! So it seems this is tolerable in some sense… But what you’ve added to this about the rights of youth, I don’t know whether that can stand firm. Can youth say to death: don’t come near! – But death can come during the dancing… and settle everything… for it settles everything… The soul will arrive from the dance floor to the next world. – Who’s there, they’ll ask? – A dancer! Well, throw it out there. You’re measuring youth by youth… That won’t do. You must measure everything by the final goal. Why do we live? To prepare ourselves for eternal life… How can you fit dancing into that?! and much else besides.

It’s good to spend time in company. There’s a science of self-knowledge in that… But still, you have to make choices… The company you keep is good, as you write… And glory to God.

That you can’t manage the little prayer yet – it’s nothing. It will come in time. Your frequent turning to God during the day, with every task and after each task – that’s a very good thing. – This is part of the general rule – to walk before God. The short little prayers have the same purpose… In them, sacred words express what you express in your own words. But the other, higher purpose of the short little prayer is to deepen thought and feeling toward God. What you have—these appeals—scatters at the first impression; besides, despite the appeals… thoughts swarm in your head… like gnats… To cut off this swarming, you must bind the intellect to one thought, or to the thought of the One… The aid for this is the short little prayer. With its help the intellect is simplified, unified, and grafts or develops feeling toward God… When this feeling comes, the soul will be established in the consciousness of God… and will begin to do everything according to God. With the short little prayer you must hold the thought of God and attention to Him… But to limit yourself to words alone… a clanging cymbal.

A journal is a good thing… But you have only one good side. You should pay more attention to your weaknesses… Otherwise you’ll turn out a braggart.

‘I don’t know how to pray for long’ – But how then did the apostle command: pray unceasingly?! Remembrance of God with fear of God, love of God with hope, and submission to the will of God make up the interior religious life… Whoever has this in motion… is always with God… And it’s not tedious for him to pray for a long, long time. – You have the seed of this in the way you turn to God for help at every occasion, and then give thanks. Develop this… wider and wider.

Your perplexities about the thoughts in Unseen Warfare come from the fact that you’re looking at the lessons there from the wrong point of view… Unseen Warfare has in view a person who is struggling with the passions and straining to drive out everything bad from himself and to strengthen everything good… When he becomes established in the good and grows strong, then many of the rules will either take on a different form or be set aside. In the period of struggle the law is this: everything that can set in motion the evil lurking within us, whether small or great, must be kept away from our attention, and all the more from our feeling… and we must act the same way toward whatever weakens the practices that help strengthen the good. Go through your notes with this thought in mind, and you’ll see for yourself in what way they don’t hold up… What is written in this book isn’t just for monks, but applies to everyone who wants to purify his heart. What’s in view is not the outward position, but the soul.

You made some remark about self-activity… Everything good is built up in us by the interaction of freedom and grace… Generally it’s expressed this way: begin to labor at something and labor at it… God will see that you sincerely desire what you’re seeking, and He’ll give it… You want to acquire prayer? Labor in prayer, and the Lord will give you prayer… You want to be rid of anger? Labor at it, and God, seeing your zeal, will give you freedom from anger… A person by himself will build up nothing good in himself if grace does not come; and grace gives nothing to a person if the person himself does not labor… Learn this little point by heart.

I won’t write any more for now. I’m sending you some booklets on renunciation of the world.

Be saved!

May the Lord bless you!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

27 January 1888.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 91)

92 On the Jesus Prayer and attention of the heart

May the mercy of God be with you!

How pleasant it was to read that the emptiness of your soul drew you to prayer, and you turned to the very best one—to the Jesus Prayer—and began to say it with such success. May the Lord bless you to make progress in it, and in such a way that nothing can distract you from it any longer. You ask what is needed… The way you’re saying it is good. Remember this and do it. Let me remind you of one thing: you must descend with attention into the heart and stand there before the face of the Lord, who is omnipresent – in you too – and all-seeing – in you too… This is how you thought – upward to the throne of God, and downward to yourself, a sinner.

Standing before the face of the Lord, don’t let in other thoughts… but only gaze upon the Lord with the feelings due to Him, knowing that He sees, hears, is ready to attend and to fulfil. – Don’t leave the word without thoughts about the Lord and about what He is for us, but have simple thoughts: that He is near, guards, upholds, teaches, guides…

When you begin, specific needs will reveal themselves concerning this prayer… and you can ask. Look to the end of the matter… Thought and feeling will become so united with the Lord that they will be inseparable – there will be an unceasing feeling toward the Lord – warm and sweet… Everything else will stand outside, as something foreign.

When you are humble, the grace of God will quickly bring this prayer to power.

The Lord bless you!

In the book ‘What is the spiritual life?…’ there is something about this prayer, I think…

Take care that everything comes from the heart. Don’t think about external postures.

What you thought at first: it seemed to you that it had become established… but then everything flew apart… this will happen often… So, as soon as such a thought arises, know in advance that it’s lying – and don’t dwell on it.

Stability will begin when a little flame forms in the heart.

May the Lord bless you and all your loved ones who are with you!

You didn’t stop in Kozelshchino on the way, did you?

That would be a sin if you didn’t. There lives now an elderly woman of high spiritual life—almost immobilized by illness, yet abiding in the Lord![1]

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

December 13, 1892

[1] Translator’s note: ‘высокой жизни’ rendered as ‘high spiritual life’ to convey the ascetic sense in context.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 92)

93 On the Difference Between Noetic Prayer Among the Latins and Among Us

May the mercy of God be with you!

I have written to you in response to your questions. By now you have surely received it. And you should repent of your premature distress.

I congratulate you on your safe journey and the settling of your affairs.

I’m sure you’ve already rested… and with a calm spirit you’re preparing for the matter that is so decisive for you.

I’m very glad that you’re back in your old groove. This means you can be considered ready…

Today is Thursday. You’ve already been living with Father[1] Cassian at the skete. If you’re in good health, that’s very good.

What you need, Father, Cassian will explain it better than anyone. And you yourselves understand it a little. I can only pray that the Lord will arrange everything for you in the most saving way.

Tell Mother Nadezhda Kronberg that there is no cure for my eyes. And surgery is not permitted. But even if it were permitted, I would not consent to it; for it is very painful, and I have little time left to live.[2]

I give thanks to her for her zeal. But I won’t write to her. Tell her it’s because of slothfulness.

Mother Cleopatra, writing on the occasion of a letter to Barsanuphia, mentioned your visit with her and that you read the Philokalia together, which delights her—and even delights little Cleopatra.

I’ve really become slothful. I wrote to you that I’d taken on translating something… I got to the articles on prayer… What a dark muddle! And I stopped… The Latins don’t understand noetic prayer the way we do. For them it’s meditation on God, concluded with prayer… But though that is a very fruitful exercise, it is not prayer… Prayer is a distinct exercise from meditation on God. Chapter twenty-two is also all about this. I don’t know whether you’ll feel inclined to rework it. In Unseen Warfare (which is also a translation of a Catholic book) I made the change.

May the Lord bless you with every blessing. Greetings to Father Cassian and company.[3] To Mitrophan. I ask for your prayers.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

6 March 1886 year.

[1] Translator’s note: о. is the abbreviation for отец (father); context suggests a monastic superior or spiritual father.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘жить немного’ rendered idiomatically as ‘have little time left to live’ rather than wooden ‘live little’

[3] Translator’s note: ‘и о.’ (и прочим) = ‘and company’ or ‘and the rest’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 93)

94 On the Frozen Soul and the Rearrangement of the Prayer Rule

May the mercy of God be with you!

I never have time. I’ll write a few lines, though.

Your soul has grown numb… You know how dangerous this is from what was written on the occasion of previous numbings… So make the effort to rouse yourself.

From certain signs one can believe that life is alive; but he doesn’t feel satisfied. Why? Because you’ve abandoned your former standing in prayer… and you’re not returning to it…

It seems to me that you need to replace this falling-away with something… and here’s what I propose… Replace all seven of our daily services with the Jesus Prayer with prostrations. Take as your model the Psalter with Appended Offices, at the end where the cell rules for each day are outlined… There, for each service, a number of Jesus Prayers and a number of prostrations are specified; there are two sets there… one for the slothful, another for the zealous. You should have taken the last one… But since you are weak, you may choose the middle one or a little more than the middle… and please write down… how many prayers – 1) for the Midnight Office; 2) for Matins; 3) for the first Hour… and the other Hours – the third, sixth, and ninth; 4) for the Typika; 5) for Vespers; 6) for Compline; 7) as a rule for him.[1] The main thing is the number of prayers… prostrations… you can leave to your discretion – waist bows and full prostrations… Do the prayer… standing… on your knees, – and sitting, if you get tired…

Having determined this, also set the time when you’ll carry out what’s been appointed… And then – carry it out without fail…

Stand in your heart before the Lord and carry it out. Some troparia can be recited from memory. There are such ones in all the services… like, for example, ‘Behold the Bridegroom…’ and similar ones.

Every service you perform should feel like labor… Throughout the day—and you will often—bear labor for the Lord… and satisfaction, I think, will come.

May the Lord bless this work for you!

Be saved!

I’m hurrying with the translation… and laboring to the point of exhaustion.

There’s a pressing need to finish… It will still take another two or three weeks!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

January 18, 1888

[1] Translator’s note: Context suggests this fragment refers to assigning a prayer rule; ‘for him’ may refer to the spiritual child being counseled.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 94)

95 On meditation on God in prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

You have all manner of infirmities.[1] It’s getting to the point where now one thing, now another makes itself known. It seems you’ve already taken the tonsure and become an eldress.[2] I congratulate you. That’s an honourable title. But do bear the marks of old age as well.[3] My eyes are failing me, my legs twitch (always from midnight for an hour or two), and just recently I’ve noticed an irregular pulse.[4] I don’t think that’s anything to worry about. The whole thing comes down to this: the heart skips a beat (thus: [Incomplete source text] [Incomplete source text] [Incomplete source text] [Incomplete source text] ● .[5] ● .).[5]

That you remain with the Jesus Prayer alone is to be counted a good state of affairs. But the fact that its effect is not what it was before – I think this depends on your remaining with this practice alone. Add meditation on God – at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end – or… since this goes on unceasingly with you… frequently, as you wish. Meditation on God is deepened reflection on the economy of salvation – either in general, or on some one subject that forms part of it. As soon as you wake up, survey everything: from creation to the Second Coming, the judgement, and the decision of everyone’s fate. – This is quick… And keep the prayer going while you get ready. – Then take one subject and go deep into it until it embraces your heart… And in that embrace say the prayer afterward… And so all day long… mix meditation on God with prayer. The Lord is near to all who call upon Him.

Dunya, perhaps, when she’s left alone after you, will manage herself the way you’re leading her now. Who wants harm for themselves?! So she too will understand what’s bad… and will avoid it. Then life itself will teach you.

You have something like an epidemic there. May the Lord save you! But here we have nothing but frost—and it’s been that way for a long time. Anything rotten wouldn’t dare show its face to us.

Be of good courage!

May the Lord bless you, and Dunia, and your entire monastic community.

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

November 27, 1889

[1] Translator’s note: ‘Немощи’ can mean ‘infirmities’, ‘weaknesses’, or ‘illnesses’; context suggests spiritual/physical ailments

[2] Translator’s note: постриг (tonsure) and старица (eldress) are canonical glossary terms

[3] Translator’s note: принадлежности старости: the ‘attributes’ or ‘marks’ of old age—rendered idiomatically rather than literally

[4] Translator’s note: часа два rendered as ‘an hour or two’ for natural English; перемежающийся пульс is ‘irregular pulse’ or ‘intermittent pulse’

[5] Translator’s note: Source appears to be a bullet point with only punctuation; no translatable content.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 95)

96 On Wordless Prayer

Christ is risen!

May the Lord send joy to your spirit—and establish it in you forever!

Our Father Archimandrite is traveling again to Moscow and Petersburg. I’m writing with him, not knowing whether he’ll find you at home.

You ask about the prayer of the poorest prayer book user.[1]

How do I pray?! In every way I try, during the hour of prayer, to be convinced that God, who is omnipresent, is here too, where my consciousness is, and that He sees and hears not only the word, whether spoken or not, but also every movement of thought, and especially feeling. But I avoid every image, difficult as that is. When prayer comes with feeling, then there is no labor at all in maintaining imagelessness in prayer—this makes it clear that imagelessness in prayer is the real work—and that to attain this one must strive for the prayer of the heart—and so, descend from the head into the heart. How to attain this is written out in the letters concerning Speransky’s letters… (I asked Askochensky to get them to you. Did he?)

Likewise—one must not imagine in one’s soul either the Theotokos, or the saints, or the angels. And they too should pray in the same conviction that they are heard. How are they heard? Why reason about it? They are heard, and that’s all.

Let’s say there is this distinction… that for works of the intellect images are needed; and they are present in Scripture concerning God Himself and all divine things. And imagination is a faculty of the intellect – a cognitive one. Imagination – the faculty of forming and holding images – is a menial faculty… the very lowest! For this reason alone, it shouldn’t be allowed to appear with its images in the higher realm, such as prayer is… Intellectual contemplation is lofty… and the spiritual activity manifested in prayer is even higher… How can imagination possibly reach there… Here’s where it’s fitting: Friend, how did you get in here?!!

So when you get angry, imagine away, but when you pray, drive away all images. If you allow images, there’s a danger – you’ll start praying to a fantasy. Can you say that the image you hold in your intellect expresses the truth? There you are, you can’t… therefore, you must learn imagelessness… but there’s only one way – the prayer of the heart… The intellect without images can hardly exist.

It wouldn’t be bad to compile a little book on prayer for the people… but this subject – you must leave it out. I think that when someone from the people prays with feeling, he has no images… In any case, it’s better not to speak about this. God enlightens minds, and when someone in prayer draws near to Him, He Himself will teach him how to hold the intellect in prayer.

I remember something said about an elder who always represented God in images. When they explained to him that he shouldn’t do that, he said: you’ve taken my God away from me… But they hadn’t taken God away from him, only his fantasy.

By the way – a Paterikon is being published in *Dushepoleznoe Chtenie*, and it seems similar to ours… Compare them… Also: Troitsky has written a good article on the sources of the history of Eastern monasticism. But it seems he hasn’t seen the Paterikon you have. Could you show it to him?

I wish you every blessing from the Lord.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

April 16.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘самого плохого молитвенника’ could also mean ‘the worst at praying’ or ‘the most inadequate person at prayer’; context suggests self-deprecation.

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97 On the Jesus Prayer and Its Technique of Practice

The mercy of God be with you!

I hasten to tell you what is needful. In those articles that will appear in the first issue, there is nothing about noetic activity.[1]

The discussion of the technique of the Jesus Prayer began with Gregory of Sinai in the thirteenth century and after – before that it goes far back. Then we’ll decide whether to print about this! But I’ll tell you in advance that it has already occurred to me to omit those articles in which this is discussed… and to end the collection with Symeon the Theologian…

To say the Jesus Prayer, as we all learn to do, is a good thing. In monasteries this is imposed as a duty. Would they really impose it if it were dangerous?! What is dangerous is the technique that people have invented and adapted to this prayer. It plunges one person into delusion of fantasy – and another, strange to say, into a constant lustful state. That’s why it must be discouraged and forbidden. But everyone should be taught to call on the sweetest name of the Lord in simplicity of heart, and everyone should be encouraged to do so…

I’m very glad that the printing is going ahead.

The second issue can also be printed… without Cassian, whose work is still pending – and who by himself will make up a large book. Moreover, the rules of Basil the Great, Pachomius, and Benedict in my manuscripts take up about two hundred pages. Consequently, almost as much as the first edition.

With the Bright Feast. Greet the elders on Mount Athos.

I ask for their prayers.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

April 1, 1876

[1] Translator’s note: The bracketed reference [82] is a footnote marker in the source and is preserved in the translation context.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 97)

98 Noetic Prayer and the Technique of the Jesus Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

I’m sending you offprints of the article that appeared in Dushepoleznoe Chtenie. Give Stepan Onisimovich 5 or 10—for distribution… and distribute them yourselves… to whomever you know. I also wrote more extensively about the same subject in the Church Herald. If only it would be published! How has noetic prayer existed since the ninth century? Noetic prayer has existed from time immemorial. There is no other prayer than noetic prayer. Our conversation was not about noetic prayer, but about the technique of the Jesus Prayer—which is wrongly called noetic prayer.[1] – When the intellect converses with God in the heart, that’s noetic prayer! But you shouldn’t mix any technique into this work. And you must leave this article aside completely.[2] Don’t argue about it or bring it up.

The Philokalia is moving very slowly… And this ought to shame Saint Petersburg. For me, though, it’s all the same. – It’s hot here, and I’m being lazy. – Still, I’ve written something from Psalm 119 for conversation, and now I’m working bit by bit on Romans.

The Citizen is being sent. Yes, he’s a good man. God grant him health… If only he’d dash off something – about the Bible… Or you could extract whatever comes to mind from the article in Edifying Reading and pass it on to him. – He mentioned something about that. But nothing came of it. He must speak in an Orthodox way.

About the schismatics – or concessions to them! Perhaps it’s for the best. There will be someone through whom to work on them. We must allow them to establish their own seminary and academy; a few drops will come out of these institutions – and they’ll turn everything upside down… I mean the schismatic world. The schism is sustained by sheer ignorance. Once the conditions of salvation become clear, it will also become clear that all the schismatic dogmas are not dogmas at all, but rubbish. And the schism will end. It is wrong to count the Molokans and Shundists among the schismatics.[3] They are our Protestants!

The difficulties you encounter serve as proof that your work is sound and a thorn in the enemy’s side.[4] He even lifts up mountains of obstacles. Be strong and courageous!

Be well and cheerful! But why didn’t you tell me anything about the Greek Bible—the Alexandrian edition, published here by the Lazarides—in the twenties! Where can one get it? Of course! It was, I believe, in the Synodal bookshops. Look into it.

May the Lord bless you with His all-merciful blessing!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

June 9, 1876

[1] Translator’s note: неправедно: ‘wrongly’ or ‘unjustly’; context suggests ‘wrongly’ (incorrectly).

[2] Translator’s note: ‘статью’ (article) may refer to a written text or a particular topic/subject of discussion

[3] Translator’s note: Molokans and Shundists are Russian sectarian movements; proper nouns left untranslated.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘солоны врагу’ is an idiomatic expression meaning to be troublesome or unwelcome to the enemy.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 98)

99 On the labor of engaging in the Jesus Prayer

The mercy of God be with you!

You have done well to resolve to practice the Jesus Prayer as you should. Zeal and labor will overcome all things. Pray to the Lord that He may help you in this. By your own labors, you can only learn to repeat this prayer unceasingly. And the Lord will plant it in the very heart. This last is the principal work; and the first is only a vestibule.

God’s blessing upon the nun. Give her the commandment to take up the Jesus Prayer without delay. Let her work, and let her turn the name of the Lord, hold it on her tongue, in her intellect and heart.[1]

I received the booklets. Here is the August issue of Profitable Reading.[2]

You’re planning on Vysha.[3] Not a bad idea, if it’s God’s will. Keep your heart in the heights… and you will always be on the heights.

My health is in order.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: The construction ‘вращает, держит’ (turns, holds) suggests continuous, active engagement with the prayer.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘Душеполезное чтение’ is the title of a periodical publication

[3] Translator’s note: Vysha is a place name, likely referring to a monastery

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 99)

100 On Prayer and Boredom in the Lord’s Presence

May the mercy of God be with you!

The fact that you all had to stay at home could have been turned to profit for the soul. If you didn’t turn it to profit, you’ve only yourselves to blame that the time passed rather tediously. With the Lord – how can you be bored?! And how can you even desire any distractions?!

And do not pray[1] You’ve gotten angry at the Lord, then… or self-satisfaction has taken hold of you. You’re full! And you don’t want to ask.

When you’re exhausted by evening… start praying on your knees or even sitting, then standing. But you must pray all the same. Give thanks to the Lord for the day, ask for a good night, repent of what was bad.

The parable is clear. The King is the Lord, His Kingdom is the Church of those being saved. The inviters are the apostles, and now all who occupy their place. The evil and the good—these are all kinds of people, both in outward and in inward condition. Whatever they may have been before their calling, this doesn’t prevent them from being called: for, having responded to the calling, they don’t remain as they were before, but are remade by grace in the font of baptism.

That Chernichka became Belichka—this means that the former resolution was not deep, was play-acting… and didn’t enter the heart.[2] She only provoked the enemy—and for this he’ll press down on her all the harder, as on a traitor. But if there was something of God in the former resolve, the enemy will not overcome the Lord. He will still snatch His chosen one from him.

May the Lord bless you!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

February 3, 1878

[1] Translator’s note: context suggests ironic rebuke.

[2] Translator’s note: Chernichka and Belichka are diminutive nicknames, likely referring to the same person’s change of disposition

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 100)

101 On Prostrations and the Jesus Prayer

The mercy of God be with you!

You are at peace.[1] It is very pleasant to find in you—often, if not always—those who feel themselves weighed down.[2] Grant them, Lord, to have a joyful heart always!

I’m very glad that Belichka is finally comforted. I expected as much—that something there would come loose by accident. Glory to God!

That your husband is concerned, fearing he’ll leave you in a difficult position—he does well. It is his duty to arrange things so that, once he’s gone, you’ll at least be able to live comfortably in your corner. But why give in to despair? You need to arrange it, taking the matter firmly in hand… and that’s the end of it. And to set your mind at ease, it will be enough to say to him then: you see—everything is in order… And I won’t be in trouble!

But who is this little fellow?! I’ve completely forgotten. I thank him for his prayer. Lord, bless him and teach him everything good!

If your head prevents you from making prostrations, pray without them. Prostrations are a help to prayer, not prayer itself. Prayer is what the intellect and heart have toward God.[3] Make prostrations from time to time. When you pray, stand on your feet at times, and at times kneel. If you are saying the Jesus Prayer, don’t begin with three thousand repetitions, but with a thousand, or even five hundred—and then increase from there. Don’t go beyond three thousand. Unless there’s a need. But it’s better to complete the appointed number all at once – and at night. During the day, though, in between things… say the same little prayer frequently, not counting.[4]

May the Lord bless Chernichka to advance spiritually.

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

I’m sending you the October issue of ‘Spiritually Beneficial Reading’.

I give thanks for your care in warming my feet.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘Благодушествуете’ (from благодушие, magnanimity or equanimity) is rendered as ‘at peace’ to convey the sense of spiritual composure and tranquility.

[2] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘в тяготе сущими’ (literally ‘being in heaviness/burden’) conveys spiritual heaviness or oppression; rendered as ‘weighed down’ for idiomatic English.

[3] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘что ум и сердце имеют к Богу’ is rendered idiomatically as ‘what the intellect and heart have toward God’ rather than a wooden ‘that which the intellect and heart have to God’.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘не в счет’ indicates the prayer is said outside the formal rule

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 101)

102 On the Warming of the Heart in Prayer

The mercy of God be with you!

Good that you have received communion. Let this be unto your salvation!

Give rest, O Lord, to the eldress Alexandra as well![1]

If your heart grows warm when you read the usual prayers, then kindle the warmth of the heart toward God in this very way. The Jesus Prayer, if you say it mechanically, gives nothing, just as any other prayer that is merely spoken with the tongue.

When you pray the Jesus Prayer, try to think more vividly that the Lord Himself is near and stands before your soul and attends to what is happening within it. And in your soul awaken a thirst for salvation and the conviction that there is no other source from which we can expect salvation except the Lord. Then cry out to Him, mentally beholding Him before you: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us!” or “Merciful Lord, save me by whatever means You know!” The whole matter is not in the words, but in the feelings toward the Lord.

Spiritual fervor of the heart toward the Lord is love for Him. It is kindled by the touch of the Lord upon the heart. Since He is wholly love, His touch upon the heart immediately kindles love for Him. And from love comes the burning of the heart toward Him. This is what should be the object of your seeking. The practice of the Jesus Prayer is only an instrument for this, or rather, only a labor that shows the soul’s strong desire to find the Lord.

On your lips, let there be the Jesus Prayer; in your intellect, the vision of the Lord before you; in your heart, a thirst for God or communion with the Lord.[2] When all this becomes constant, then the Lord, seeing how you press yourself forward, will grant what is asked.[3]

Please arrange all this in your mind and take it as your guidance, and read it often so as to refresh your memory of how you should act.

And explain all this to Chernichka. My soul aches for her, desiring that she be more firmly established in the inner man… For then no waves can shake her, like a solid rock.

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

November 29, 1884.

[1] Translator’s note: The Russian ‘и’ here means ‘also’ or ‘as well’, indicating the eldress is included in the prayer for rest alongside others mentioned earlier.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘I have set the Lord always before me’

[3] Translator’s note: ‘the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 102)

103 On Prayer Before Sleep and at Night

The mercy of God be with you!

May your arrival at our monastic community be for your good! And to the nun!

If you push yourselves a little, you will encounter no insurmountable obstacles, even from your own slothfulness, in receiving the Holy Mysteries of Christ. This is what I wish for you with all my heart.

When I wrote to you about praying more at night, I meant prayer before sleep; and when you wake up, pray lying down—this is no bad thing—but a good substitute for empty daydreaming in the intervals of sleep. It’s good to know several psalms by memory so you can read them at such times.

The weather is indeed fine. May your soul be just as bright as it is bright outside! And let your sun—Christ the Lord—shine brightly in your soul, as this sun shines in the sky!

I wish all of this for the nun as well.

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 103)

104 On Prayer and the Right Disposition of One Who Prays

The mercy of God be with you!

A. I.!

You did well to come on foot, and with so many companions! Both the Lord and the Mother of God will graciously receive the sacrifice of your labor, and will reward you with the gift of what you need for your salvation—not what your will desires.

May the Lord bless your desire to confess and receive Holy Communion by granting you the grace to fulfill this desire![1]

Make your confession to the monastery’s spiritual father, Fr. Hilarion, or to someone else. The Lord Himself receives confession, and the spiritual father is only a witness… his ears, tongue, and blessing hands—but it is the Lord who acts and absolves; just as it is the Lord who communes us.

What good companions you have—in your soul. But behind them all stands one sin… they make a prostration or two… and then expect to get what they want… right here and now.[2] But if they don’t get what they want, they raise a murmur and blaspheme God’s providence. So they receive nothing at all. This ‘hand it over right now’ attitude means commanding God.[3] Don’t pray like that, but like this: ‘Lord, You see that I need such-and-such, that such-and-such weighs on me. Help me and arrange things for me as Your holy will pleases, not as my will desires!’

Having set yourself in this frame of mind, you must pray for a long time—not long all at once, but long over time… today, tomorrow… a week, a month, a year. Just keep crying out: ‘Lord, deliver me! Lord, help me! Yet not my will, but Yours be done!’ That’s how the Lord spoke in the garden of Gethsemane, and the widow in the parable… pestered the judge—and received what she asked for. The saints even have a saying: we must pester the Lord and His saints.

May the Lord bless you!

Here are the little books—Olga herself designated them… for you, Lydia, and Elizabeth—three: 1) ‘Collection…’; 2) ‘Soul and Angel’; 3) ‘Paterikon’… divide by lot… The little books… whichever one appeals to whom…[4]

Three more ‘Paterikon’ copies: for N. I. – for Chernichka… and Mother Leonida.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

29 November 1884

[1] Translator’s note: ‘Святых Таин’ (Holy Mysteries) rendered as ‘Holy Communion’ to match the context of receiving the sacrament.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘вынь да положь’ is an idiomatic expression meaning ‘hand it over immediately / give it to me now’

[3] Translator’s note: ‘вынь да положь’ is an idiomatic demand for immediate delivery

[4] Translator’s note: ‘Митерикон’ (Miterikon) is likely a variant spelling of Paterikon, a collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 104)

105 On Learning Noetic Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

It has been so long since I last wrote to you. I’m at fault! I grew slack, and the work suffered.

I think you’ve grown accustomed by now to the work of your obedience, and the work itself is flowing along reasonably well with you. Grant, Lord, that all may go better and better. There’s no great wisdom in it! Don’t make a fuss, endure, and gradually advance everything forward little by little.[1] The Lord desires this, and in these works He is always the all-powerful Helper. Only you must never allow yourself to say, ‘I want to,’ but rather, ‘the circumstances require it;’ I am your servant.

You wanted to learn noetic prayer. Good! But what kind of prayer did you have before?! Prayer is by its very nature a noetic activity, and if you have not prayed noetically, then you have not truly prayed at all. But I tell you, there is no one who does not pray noetically. Everyone prays noetically. When everyone prays, they mentally represent God as present and speak their needs to Him. Even when they recite prayers, everyone strives to lift their mind to God. If anything needs to be said, it’s that people do this imperfectly—not continuously, even during the recitation of their prayer rule—and above all, without genuine feeling.[2] So your desire will be: how to attain perfection in prayer—noetic prayer offered to God? The answer to this: Ask, and you will receive.

How did you learn to write? Through the labor of writing, with the desire to write correctly according to models. Do the same in prayer—and you will learn. It will not come by itself; You must learn.

1. Accustom yourselves to walk in the presence of God, before the eyes of God, with feelings that correspond to this.

2. Whenever you have the freedom, make prostrations with feelings of contrition and humility.

3. Read all the books on prayer, and reflect on it.

4. But above all: strive with all your strength to conduct the church service in remembrance of God, and then your home rule as well.

You must rub the soul, and it will grow warm.[3] When warmth comes, then the thoughts will settle, and prayer will become pure.

Yet all things are from the grace of God. That’s why we must pray to the Lord to give us prayer.

The Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: подвигать rendered as ‘advance’ per glossary; the imperative form подвигать вперед means to move forward or make progress in spiritual work.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘молитвословия’ (prayer rule recitation) rendered as ‘recitation of their prayer rule’ to clarify the liturgical context.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘Rub’ (тереть) is idiomatic Russian for persistent spiritual effort; the metaphor of friction producing warmth is deliberate.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 105)

106 On the Power of Prayer and Spiritual Disposition

The mercy of God be with you, most reverend Father. Agapius!

Beyond what you see in the book you mentioned about the Jesus Prayer, I have nothing more to add for you. If that is not enough for you, then take the trouble to look through it yourself in that book, the one to which that book points.

And whatever seems insufficient even after that—ask your spiritual guides, whom God has given you: the abbot of your monastic community, your spiritual father, your godfather, and your brothers in faith.

I will say only this: the power lies not in the words of prayer, but in spiritual disposition—in the fear of God and in devotion to God, and in constant attention to God, and in noetic standing before God. The Jesus Prayer is only an aid, not the very essence of the matter.

Make it your aim to live in the remembrance of God and to walk in the presence of God—and this will lead you to a good end. Everything comes from the grace of God; without the grace of God, there is no way to acquire anything spiritual. Once grace touches the heart, then everything will proceed as it should.[1]

We have the Lord Saviour, who desires all to be saved; you must pester Him—and He will give. I read in the Philokalia how a certain man struggled for two years and succeeded in kindling a little flame in his heart.

May the Lord bless you!

I won’t settle your questions. Your spiritual guides, whom God has given you, must settle them for you.

Be saved!

I ask for your prayers.

Bishop Theophan.

August 7, 1884.

[1] Translator’s note: уканет: rare verb; ‘touch’ or ‘strike’ captures the sense of grace’s sudden, vivifying action

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 106)

107 On Attention in Prayer and the Spirit of the Labor of Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you, most reverend Father. Agapius!

I’m very glad to begin our conversation again—may God bless your brotherly love in the Lord! It’s very comforting to see that your zeal for interior work remains strong in you and holds your attention.

Within my ability, I will resolve your perplexities and questions.

‘Can one stand in prayer to the Theotokos and the Saints with attention in the heart?’ Yes, one can. Where else should one stand, if not there? Every prayer must come from the heart. Therefore, attention must be there as well. The difference in prayer consists only in the understanding and faith with which we pray. It’s all the same, like a prostration: we bow before an icon of the Saviour—to the Saviour; before an icon of the Mother of God—to the Mother of God. A prostration is a prostration—there’s no difference in the outward form. The difference lies entirely in the spirit and meaning of the prostration.

“Is there any difference between praying with attention inwardly in the heart, or attending to the words of the prayer with lips, with a humble and repentant feeling? And with constant remembrance of God, omnipresent and all-seeing, with fear and reverence?”—These last words (which I have underlined) constitute the spirit of prayer.[1] And whoever possesses this stands in the heart: he has no time to think about words or lips, and such thoughts don’t even occur to him. These words – ‘attending at the lips’ – are a new invention; they’re found nowhere in the holy Fathers. Someone else has come up with this: to stand with attention at the tip of the tongue. Long ago there were clever people who held their attention on the navel – and they were called ‘navel-gazers,’ and these fashionable folk of ours should be called ‘tongue-gazers’ and ‘lip-gazers’… Look, your own underlined words constitute the essence of prayer;[2] all the rest – bowing the head, restricting the breath, sitting on a chair, drawing the words of prayer in through the nostrils, and these – the tip of the tongue and the lips – whether they’re there or not, it’s all just external trappings with nothing essential about them.

Maximus Kapsokalivis (in the Philokalia) gave the model for the labor of prayer. He prayed for two years before a little flame kindled in his heart. This was a gift of grace: and from that point on, he had unceasing prayer, truly spiritual. Until then he had warm and earnest prayer, but true prayer came to him after that spark.[3] This, fathers and brothers, you must keep in attention, care, and concern. The setting of the labor of prayer is not essential. And in this setting, a certain warmth comes into the heart; but this is our own labor, not the gift of grace. To consider even this grace-filled is spiritual delusion. So says Nikephoros, so Ignatius and Kallistos… and others.

I don’t understand the second question. You say something about the help of lips and tongue, yet the words are spoken in the heart… If in the heart, then why this thought about lips and tongue? You must throw out everything external… Have what is underlined above, and that’s all. Stand like that and make prostrations, crying out: ‘Lord, have mercy!’ and so on…

“Can one say: Lord, Jesus Christ, through the Theotokos have mercy on us”? Yes, one can. But where did the question come from? Don’t we cry out in church: “Holy, Holy, Holy are you, O God, through the Theotokos have mercy on us!”—Can one say “us” instead of the word “me”? Yes, one can. When the prayer is for oneself: “me”; when it is for all or many: “us”.

A thought about silence and solitude—that’s a good thought. But you’re already sitting alone, and when you’re alone, who is there to talk to? Yet sometimes it’s quite good to have a word with a brother who shares your mind.[4] Besides, you’re in the church… If at that moment, as you’re leaving, a brother asks you something, would you really snap at him like a lion?[5] So here’s what I think you should do: church and cell—that’s the binding law; don’t go anywhere without real necessity; Don’t visit the brothers’ cells, but you may take a walk through the forest so that together with every breath you may praise the Lord. Especially, though, to test whether your soul stands firm in attention within the heart. And this is not bad for your health either. Don’t push yourself into conversation, but when someone brings up a spiritual need, you should speak with him kindly. It’s the same as putting capital to work. But to remain silent when people even ask you is the same as hiding money in a chest and keeping it without any profit from it.

When tears come of their own accord in compunction, let them flow; but when they don’t come, compunction of the heart alone is enough. You can stir yourself up to tears and weep; but you shouldn’t count this as anything, even though tears always soften the heart.

O. A-lu.[6] One thing is disclosure of thoughts, and another is confession. The first is an ascetic rule of eldership; the second is a sacrament of the Church. In what sense have disciples been assigned to you—to hear their confessions, absolve them, and impose penances on them, or simply to listen to their disclosure of thoughts, give them guidance, scatter their confusion, clarify their doubts, and comfort them? Only in the latter sense. According to the sayings of the Fathers, the disclosure of thoughts itself is salvific for the soul, without any additions. The one receiving the disclosure may say, ‘Well, it’s nothing, God will forgive,’ and add, ‘Do a few prostrations’… But this is not what happens in the sacrament of confession – this is a fatherly blessing. This way of handling things applies to venial sins; here the disclosure itself grants forgiveness. But an open violation of a commandment is absolved by the action of the sacrament of confession.

Which sins can be dealt with by disclosure alone, and which require confession – let the elders decide this among themselves, by common counsel. You, as a hieromonk, may perform the sacrament of confession for your disciples, and this will be true absolution, and if you impose a penance, it will be cleansing. But should you do this on your own, or ask the abbot? In the monastery there is a common spiritual father—a penitent.[7] Confession apart from him is something new in the monastery. But no one in the monastery can introduce anything new without the abbot’s will. So you should ask the abbot. But if you should find it convenient at some point to celebrate the sacrament of confession, there will be no sin in that—for you have the authority to do so—but only a breach of monastic order. How you should proceed is up to you to decide.[8] I would say: if it won’t cause any disorder in the monastery, perform the sacrament of confession for your disciples when necessary… according to the Trebnik – but it’s better to ask the abbot for permission.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved![9] I ask for your prayers.

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

March 23, 1886.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘omnipresent’ renders вездесущего; ‘all-seeing’ (всезрящего) is not in the glossary but is the natural English pairing.

[2] Translator’s note: ‘язычниками’ (tongue-gazers) is a wordplay on ‘язычники’ (pagans); the author is coining satirical labels for misguided practitioners.

[3] Translator’s note: огонька (diminutive of огонь, ‘fire’) rendered as ‘spark’ to capture the warmth and intimacy of the original metaphor.

[4] Translator’s note: единомысленный: ‘of one mind’ or ‘like-minded’; rendered as ‘who shares your mind’ for natural English

[5] Translator’s note: ‘рыкнуть’ (roar/snap) rendered idiomatically as ‘snap’ rather than the archaic ‘roar’

[6] Translator’s note: Abbreviation or transliteration of unclear meaning; possibly a name or abbreviation in the original text.

[7] Translator’s note: The dash here marks apposition: the spiritual father is identified as the penitent (the one who hears confessions).

[8] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘вы имеете на то власть’ (you have authority for that) refers to the recipient’s right as a lay person or non-monastic to seek confession; the tension is between personal right and communal obedience.

[9] Translator’s note: Idiomatic Orthodox farewell meaning ‘work out your salvation’ or ‘pursue salvation’

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 107)

108 On the Essence of Prayer and Its Forms

May the mercy of God be with you!

Well, that’s good! May the Lord bless you to be just as you have written. And forget entirely about the tip of your nose and your holy lips.[1] Rather, be a keeper of the rule spoken by Philotheos of Sinai: ‘In the morning, stand at your heart and strike the enemies with the name of Jesus.’[2] In prayer, why be so concerned about the words and how you pronounce them? Everything should be absorbed in feeling toward God—whether contrition, or thanksgiving, or doxology, or petition for what the soul and body need and for your outward circumstances, all with faith and hope. Let such feelings and feelings like them give rise to a cry to God, and that cry will be true prayer—indeed, the only true prayer. Before you begin your prayer rule, you must awaken these feelings through reflection, through inner effort directed toward them, and through prayer for them. And then remain with them throughout the whole day. And this will be unceasing prayer. Seeking from the Lord with faith, hope, and contrition draws forth every spiritual good from God’s hands and obtains prayer as it ought to be.[3] Keep Maximus of Kapsokalyvia in mind. He cried out with all his soul and with all his thought, and the Lord granted him… And this gift became for him a source of spiritual life. Seek this and cry out for this. Don’t seek spiritual sweetness, but rather to stand before the Lord with fear and trembling, offering Him divine worship. May this be yours according to the riches of the mercy of the Lord!

Speaking of the state of your prayer, in third place you put a bad state, which you describe this way: ‘It becomes so constricting that neither intellect nor heart can pronounce the words of prayer, but, as if exhausted and beaten down, they remain in motionless stillness within, in a feeling of their own nothingness and repentance.’ I don’t understand why you call such a state bad?

To stand inwardly still and, of course, before the Lord is a good state.

If along with this there is also a feeling of your own nothingness and repentance, then there is nothing better to wish for. A contrite spirit, a heart contrite and humble God will not despise.

A feeling of nothingness – the tax collector’s saving cry; a feeling of repentance – the door to the Kingdom. If your state is precisely such, then there is nothing for you to be burdened by; Rather, you must cultivate a sense of your own nothingness and repentance, and kindle it to a burning flame. Perhaps you haven’t described it accurately, but judging by what you’ve said, it shouldn’t be considered bad. In any case, you shouldn’t turn to the lips and the tip of the tongue for help in this matter.[4]

Nothing material or bodily can produce what is spiritual.

Rather, you should turn to meditation on God and reflect on the attributes of God, his works, and his sacraments. If that is difficult, read some prayers from memory, or some psalm, or compose your own prayer according to your state of heart: for as Scripture says, “The Lord is near.” And this will guide your condition more surely, if it is indeed not good.

You write further: “I had some doubt, thinking that noetic prayer is higher than vocal prayer before God,” but my previous letter assured you of the opposite. One cannot speak this way without some foundation. But I don’t remember what train of thought led me to say such a thing. I repeat to you the definition of prayer. Prayer is the lifting up of the intellect and heart to God, or a cry from the heart to God. This lifting up and this cry of prayer can take place in the soul and be drawn from the heart without words—that is, without being clothed in words—or, as is more common, they are clothed in words and expressed through them. In the first case, prayer is wordless; in the second, it is vocal. Such a word expressing prayer is either interior—formed within the heart—or not merely interior but also exterior, spoken by the tongue and throat. The first is noetic and mental; the second is vocal. Vocal prayer is either one’s own—spoken in one’s own words—or another’s, learned by heart or read from a prayer book. Every vocal prayer, whether expressed in interior or vocal words, one’s own or another’s, is of equal worth before God, so long as it expresses prayerful feelings and thoughts toward God or is accompanied by them. The interior word always proceeds from the heart and intellect, and so prayer through the interior word is always true prayer. But prayer in memorized words may not be accompanied by corresponding thoughts and feelings, and therefore may not be prayer at all, but only the sound of prayer. By these definitions, please distinguish when noetic prayer may be lower than vocal prayer.

First, this can happen only with vocal prayer—not one’s own words, but memorized words of another, pronounced mentally—and second, when the soul lacks the corresponding prayerful feelings.

I am sending you answers to your questions:

1. It’s enough to be present at the Liturgy in church once, and you can replace it, as well as the Vespers rule, with cell-rule prayer. About the latter, it seems, you should ask the abbot for absolution. And about the former too, if it’s established among you that people like you should be present at every church gathering.

2. Is it better to recite prayers quickly or slowly? You’ve already answered this question yourselves. You say: “I try to bring every prayerful word to feeling, and I experience great benefit from this.” Keep doing this always—and the question of whether it happens quickly or slowly will simply never arise.

3. “I love to read, but I hesitate to abandon prayer for the sake of reading.” Prayer is higher than reading; therefore it is unlawful to abandon prayer for the sake of reading. So that these spiritual practices don’t interfere with one another, you need to define your cell prayer rule precisely by measure and number, and always carry it out in a true spirit of prayer—never omitting it, shortening it, or rushing through it for any reason. Also: if the spirit of prayer comes upon you while you’re reading or doing some other task, you should leave everything and pray. You can do this sitting or walking, but it’s better to stand in your usual place and make prostrations until your soul is satisfied. Our main task is drawing near to God, which happens chiefly in prayer. Everything must therefore yield to prayer.

4. “What is wordless prayer?” It is an unmoving abiding in prayerful feelings toward God, without uttering any words either in the intellect or with the lips. This is the highest degree of prayer. Only such prayer can be unceasing prayer. What you called an unworthy state of prayer comes close to this.

Let the spirit be contrite, the heart contrite and humble… and prayer will be in the soul…

Fr. A-lu. It’s good that after the bustle of overseeing the building work, you turn to reading when your thoughts have scattered and your soul has emptied. Reading gathers them together and fills the soul with divine things. But then you must also pay your debt to prayer. Pray more fervently and with collectedness in church. Strengthened by that, remain in remembrance of God and of His presence with the corresponding feelings throughout the whole time you’re supervising the building work. In this way prayer won’t be suppressed, but only slightly interrupted at most… and all will be well… Set aside a time for cell-rule prayer and keep it without fail.[5] Arrange the rest of your cell-rule practices as you see fit, including reading in this schedule.

On the Selection of Abbots. Who, then, can confidently say that he is fit for the office of abbot? For this reason, it’s better not to look at the matter of selecting an abbot from that angle. Rather, one should regard it as an assignment of obedience—let them receive it as an assignment in the monastery for gate-keeping, water-carrying, bread-baking, and every other monastic obedience. And let them fulfill it with all diligence, with careful discernment and attention. To say that something is unsuitable and to ask to be relieved of it is not a sin. But you shouldn’t be stubborn about it. That is all that needed to be explained to you.

Please do me this humble favour: copy this letter and all the previous letters, and send me the copies so that I may know what has been written to you. My memory is weak.

May the Lord bless you!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

June 6, 1888.

[1] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘holy lips’ is ironic—the elder is gently mocking the recipient’s self-conscious attention to physical posture during prayer.

[2] Translator’s note: This is the famous invocation of the Jesus Prayer attributed to Philotheos of Sinai; ‘strike the enemies’ refers to spiritual warfare against demons.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘Искание’ (seeking) is the subject; ‘исторгает’ (draws forth) and ‘испросит’ (obtains) are the verbs.

[4] Translator’s note: ‘Lips and tip of the tongue’ is an idiom for mere external speech without inner substance.

[5] Translator’s note: ‘келейной молитвы’ rendered as ‘cell-rule prayer’ to distinguish private prayer-rule from spontaneous prayer.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108)

109 On Sobriety, Noetic Prayer, and Patience

The mercy of God be with you,

Venerable Father,[1] Agapius!

I received both of your letters at once, and I give thanks for your remembrance and good wishes. I ask that you not forget me in your prayers. You said so many things against yourself in your letter that, unable to believe them, I found it best to understand them in the opposite sense – namely this: when you say you don’t have something, I take it to mean that you do have it, and I say, ‘Glory to God’…

All the weaknesses you wrote about, I have them too… I see them and try to overcome and heal them. Sometimes there’s success, but then the old pattern returns. I’ll tell you, though, how I go about it. My chief concern, which I share with you, is sobriety and noetic prayer; they go together, and one doesn’t exist without the other. Noetic prayer is very simple in form and seems very accessible. Here’s how: descend with your intellect into your heart and, standing there before the face of the Lord, cry out for what you seek. Cry out: ‘Lord, grant me prayer!’ If you seek sobriety, cry out: ‘Lord, grant me sobriety!’ If you seek patience, cry out: ‘Lord, grant me patience’… and so on, and all in the same way…

The best of all cries is: ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’ Do this, and you will have noetic prayer. But our trouble is that our thoughts scatter, attention follows them, and the intellect begins to wander outside and doesn’t know where it’s going. Prayer is cut off, even though we’re standing at prayer. So what’s to be done? I don’t see any instructions anywhere; Everyone says the same thing: when you come to yourself, return again to your heart and begin again to cry out from your heart. Cry out also that your intellect may not flee outward. Again your intellect will flee, again bring it back and again begin to cry out—and so on and on. What will come of it? Will there be an end to this fleeing? There ought to be, but with us it never quite comes together.[2] It seems to me that if we add to this struggle self-condemnation and a petition to the Lord for sobriety, then the Lord, seeing our patient seeking and sincere desire for sobriety, will grant it to us according to His mercy.

Sobriety is a gift of grace, and it is impossible to attain it by yourself alone. You must only labor in seeking it and ask the Lord for it, trusting in God’s visitation. How to seek it? Do you notice that when there is a feeling in the heart, attention doesn’t leave the heart? So I conclude that if you do it this way—that is, don’t begin noetic prayer until you’ve first stirred up some feeling in your heart—then attention won’t leave the heart; with attention, the intellect will be there too, and so will noetic prayer. Try it this way; maybe things will go well.

What kind of feeling? Any holy one. Doxology, thanksgiving, contrition, fear of God, self-abasement, and so on… After you’ve prayed this way, sit down and read something spiritual—best of all, something about sobriety and prayer. Then go for a walk and think about it, or else talk it over with someone about the same thing… But what about the wandering of thoughts? When there is feeling in the heart, they will not wander. When the tap on the samovar is turned, water flows unstoppably; but when you turn the tap shut, the water stops; so it is with thoughts: they all flow and flow, but turn the tap shut and they will stop. This turning of the tap shut is the awakening of holy feeling in the heart and holding it fast.

This will be all your seeking; the Lord will see it and give you what you seek. You must clothe yourself in the garment of humility and hold a deep feeling of your own nothingness and poverty in all things… When there is no such feeling, the Lord will not give the gift of sobriety. I don’t know what more to say about this.

You also complain about a lack of patience—patience simply won’t settle in you; if you don’t hold a deep feeling that everything you encounter comes to you by the will of God. So meet it with complete submission to the will of God, as if God were standing before you and commanding you to endure. Then humility will come, and poverty of spirit… and all your anxieties will cease.

Rushing through memorized prayers is certainly not good, but that’s within your power to change. When you notice this happening, stop and begin reading slowly.

The measure for reading prayers from a prayer book or from memory is this: have understanding and awareness of what you are reading. So read in such a way that everything you read is consciously understood. Let this determine your pace. Do you remember the twenty-four little prayers of Saint John Chrysostom? Read them often, add to them other psalms or church hymns and memorize those as well—and read them with corresponding thoughts and feelings. You could use them to replace your entire prayer rule, but you have no need for that.

You mentioned something about your relationship to the monastery. You have nothing to do with it—there is an abbot there, and there are enough other people in authority; they do as God instructs them. You simply pray:

Help them, Lord! Enlighten them, strengthen them!

Be saved!

Your well-wisher, Bishop Theophan.

September 22, 1893 A.D.

[1] Translator’s note: о. is the standard abbreviation for отец (father); достопочтенный conveys both respect and the monastic title.

[2] Translator’s note: Russian idiom ‘не клеится’ (lit. ‘does not glue together’) rendered idiomatically

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 109)

110 On the Jesus Prayer and the Guarding of Attention

The mercy of God be with you!

My letter will not reach you in time; so regarding your ward, decide as you find best. I speak God’s blessing to you in the wake of your undertaking, not at its beginning.[1]

As for the Jesus Prayer, it is good that you use it as you do. It is the best way to establish attention and to keep it before the Lord. This is a precious practice. But its value can be diminished by irreverence in the presence of the Lord whose name is invoked. Whether walking, sitting, or standing, you can say this little prayer, but always with a movement of reverence in some measure. Through it the soul is kept in order, and the body is held alert, like a soldier in formation. That’s why I asked about it—to point you toward doing what you’re already doing… One thing only is lacking in you. Our trouble often comes from this: when we finish one task and there’s no other at hand, or we have no desire for it, we let the soul wander off and rest, not keeping it strictly on one thing… From this the wandering soul often stumbles upon bad things, which find an echo inside. And so a struggle arises, brought on involuntarily by inattention. So to avoid this struggle the best remedy is to take up the Jesus Prayer at once… That’s what I’m urging you to do.

But attend to yourselves. It seemed to me there was a certain boastfulness in your words… Watch out, the enemy will notice… he’ll jump on your shoulders and start driving you around… and it’s no wonder if he drives you somewhere you don’t want to be, yet where it’s scandalous to be. May the Lord direct your path and instruct you in deeds, words, and thoughts!

Be saved!

I ask for your prayers!

Bishop Theophan.

August 9, 1893.

[1] Translator’s note: ‘Божие изрекаю’ (lit. ‘I speak God’s’) is rendered idiomatically as ‘I speak God’s blessing’ to clarify the sense in English.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110)

111 On Surrendering Yourself to God and Unceasing Prayer

May the mercy of God be with you!

There’s that old worry of yours again: but how am I to manage, and how am I to arrange things?[1] A worry not without foundation; But what else can you do? Entrust everything to God. Let His holy will be done. Indeed, such a lot is the very best for you! And receive it with gratitude. A soul is never poor.[2] Settle this property business as quickly as you can, and then it will be clear what to do next. Perhaps everything will work out so that you’ll have a secure existence without want… Then you can simply let it all go. A little corner somewhere, a task, and the labor for the salvation of the soul – and that’s all there is to it.

The season of the fast has come – and here is a wide field for the labors of prayer. Labor on; but still with wisdom. Above all, avoid turning your prayer into mere form or into a rote recitation of a prayer rule. Every time you approach prayer, compel your soul to pray itself—that is, to pray with your own words, your own feeling, and your own thought. And do this every time—so that the read prayer comes as an aid, as a support, and not as the main work. Direct all your labor, or turn it, toward walking unceasingly before God, with your thought on God, on His omnipresence and all-knowing nature. And frequently from your heart direct your cries to Him. This kind of practice finally forms unceasing prayer, accomplished in the heart by the intellect. Make that your goal, the one you must strive toward. Some use a mechanical method of saying the Jesus Prayer for this purpose. You too can do this. Do it this way. Bring your intellect down from your head into your heart and remain there in attention, and say: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”—as though pouring it directly into your heart.[3] While doing this, constrict your breathing somewhat and keep your whole body in tension. You can do this sitting down, but standing is better. Say the prayer slowly, as if you were savoring every word. Direct your attention to the left of the heart—inwardly.[4] Say the prayer as a prayer rule. And you can even say it all day long, standing with the same attention. Then, let your attention never depart from the heart, whatever you may be doing. Whether you’re reading, walking, or working—be present in all of it. There’s your law! When the burning of the heart begins to show itself, then the interior life will begin! And that’s everything!

The 101st psalm, which you ask about—how it applies to your circumstances![5] Prayer of the poor. This is everyone who is afflicted, distressed, and suffering! Up to verse 12, the feelings of the one who is afflicted are depicted. Then the thought shifts to the restoration, as it were, of Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. The commentators understand it this way: that the thoughts of the psalm can be applied to everyone who is afflicted—to the sinner soul turning to God, to the Jewish people awaiting deliverance from the Babylonian captivity, and to the building of the Church of Christ. Interpret the particular passages however you like. And verse 6… from the voice of my groaning my bone clings to my flesh. – The affliction is so strong, and the sighs from it, that my skin has clung to my bones from exhaustion.

Verse 13 – But You, O Lord… – is clear in itself. Here there’s a turn to other thoughts that give hope. Everything passes, only God is unchanging and His word – the Jews who were in captivity took comfort in that. Everything is lost, as it were, and we are exhausted – but You, our Lord, abide forever… and Your word will be fulfilled… – the promise about the restoration of Jerusalem and the return from captivity. – A sinful soul – at this word, repenting, can also encourage itself with hope that the Lord will restore and rebuild it too, devastated by sin… Likewise pagan humanity could turn with hope to the Lord, that finally it too would be called to the knowledge of God… and all nations with their kings will begin to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ (verse 23).

To ‘enrich with mercy’ means to overwhelm with mercies, or with merciful gifts. Mercy and love—the word ‘enrich with mercy’ can mean, therefore, the verse ‘they enrich the dust’ means they love the dust.[6] The prophet says: and the stones, and the very dust of Zion—or Jerusalem—are precious to the Israelites. You have risen—having risen, that is, having awakened, having stirred, having turned your attention—as in verses 19 and 20.[7] Now you, apply all of this to yourselves—either to your outward condition or, better still, to your soul. Take each verse separately and, having thought about it, determine what it might mean for you. And if anything is unclear, ask me—I’ll answer you. You can’t figure it out on your own—you won’t know exactly what’s needed—so ask about everything, all your thoughts.[8]

May the Lord Saviour save you and have mercy on you. May the Lord grant you to keep a salvific fast in a way that is salvific for the soul.[9] Practice prayer as I have instructed you.

I wish you every good thing from the Lord.

Your intercessor, Bishop Theophan.

March 11.

[1] Translator’s note: туга: ‘sorrow’ or ‘worry’; rendered as ‘worry’ to match the speaker’s anxious tone

[2] Translator’s note: The aphorism is elliptical in Russian; rendered as a complete English sentence for clarity.

[3] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘помилуй мя грешную’ uses the feminine form, indicating the letter is addressed to a woman.

[4] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘над левым сосцем’ refers to the left side of the chest, traditionally associated with the heart in hesychast practice.

[5] Translator’s note: The Russian ‘как идет’ can mean ‘how it goes’ or ‘how it applies/fits’; context suggests the latter.

[6] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘щедрость и из любви’ is elliptical; I render it as ‘Mercy and love’ to preserve the rhetorical structure while making it idiomatic in English.

[7] Translator’s note: The Russian uses appositive clauses to unpack the meaning of ‘воскрес’; I render them as a series of participial phrases to preserve the exegetical tone.

[8] Translator’s note: The Russian ‘все подряд и все мысли’ is elliptical; rendered idiomatically as direct address.

[9] Translator’s note: ‘Спасительный пост’ and ‘душеспасительно’ form a deliberate wordplay on salvation; rendered with ‘salvific’ and ‘salvific for the soul’ to preserve the connection.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 111)

112 On Unceasing Prayer and the Order of the Day

May the mercy of God be with you!

As soon as you wake and it’s time to get up, get up right away, without lingering in bed. After getting up, sit for a little while, making the sign of the cross and saying: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!’ Then put on your shoes, get dressed, wash yourself; but all this time keep God in your thoughts, saying: ‘Lord, have mercy…’, or: ‘Glory to You, our God, glory to You!’ Don’t fidget, don’t let your mind wander… Then stand for prayer… First make three full prostrations, saying: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ Then read the appointed prayers… ‘O Heavenly King… Holy God… (the Trisagion) Our Father… Having risen from sleep… From bed and sleep… In vain the Judge… Having risen from sleep, I give thanks to You, Holy Trinity… Have mercy on me, O God… I believe… Theotokos and Virgin, rejoice… Guardian Angel…’ and at the end… make three full prostrations… venerate the icon or cross… and then—sitting or standing—say the Jesus Prayer twenty times. And if you feel inclined, even more. – Read the prayers unhurriedly, entering into the words, reading with the intellect, not just with the tongue.

During the day often read: “Our Father…” and “Theotokos and Virgin…” and all the time try to remember God. And before the icons you can make a prostration, a second or third, so that no one sees.

In the evening, going to sleep, pray like this. – Before prayer sit down, and, making the sign of the cross, say the Jesus Prayer up to ten times, until your thoughts gather. Stand up and make three prostrations, saying: ‘God! be merciful to me, a sinner.’ Then the opening prayers – from ‘O Heavenly King’ through ‘Our Father.’ Then – the prayers before sleep: ‘Have mercy on us, Lord… Lord, have mercy on us… The doors of mercy… O eternal God…’ and also: ‘Have mercy on me, O God… I believe… Theotokos and Virgin… Guardian Angel…’ Remember what wrong you’ve done, and repent… and give thanks to God for the good. And finish… Three prostrations. Then venerate the icons… then, sitting or standing, say twenty Jesus Prayers or more… Undress modestly and lie down… Once you’re lying down, don’t let your thoughts wander, but remember God and say the Jesus Prayer until you fall asleep.

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112)

113 On Noetic Prayer for Laymen

In an article published in issue 33 of the Domestic Conversation, certain thoughts appeared that have caused you perplexity. I consider it my duty to clarify them both for you and for your readers.

You say that noetic prayer is scarcely possible for laymen. “How could we ever attain to noetic prayer?” you write. But if you do not have noetic prayer, then you have nothing at all: for only noetic prayer is true prayer, pleasing and acceptable to God. It must form the soul of both domestic and church prayer, so that whenever it is absent from them, the prayer rules have only the name of prayer but are not prayer itself. What is prayer? The lifting up of intellect and heart to God for glorification, thanksgiving, and petition for necessary goods. So the essence of prayer is noetic ascent to God in the heart. When the intellect stands in awareness before the face of God and, filled with reverent fear, begins to pour out its heart before Him—that is noetic prayer![1] External prayer, whether domestic or church, provides it only with words, or form; But the soul, or the very substance of prayer, each person carries within themselves, in their own intellect and heart. Our entire church order, all the prayers composed for domestic use, are filled with noetic turning toward God. Whoever performs them should not stop at their external form alone, but should pass through it inwardly, and according to what is hidden within them, should attune their own interior life. Without noetic prayer no one can exist. In it one can make only this distinction: there is noetic prayer alongside vocal or external prayer—whether domestic or church prayer; and there is noetic prayer in itself, without any external form of word or bodily posture. And the last is also binding for laypeople. The Saviour commanded: Go into your room and pray in secret. This room, as the hierarch Dimitry of Rostov says, and as the nature of the matter itself shows, is the heart. To whom did the apostle command to pray unceasingly? To all Christians. Therefore, to laypeople as well. But to pray unceasingly is impossible in any other way than through noetic prayer, in the heart. What is this hidden person of the heart that the other apostle speaks of? About our spirit, standing before God, receiving power from Him and accomplishing all in His presence—which is precious in His sight.[2] Therefore, noetic standing before God is obligatory; and if it is obligatory, then no one has the right to say that it is scarcely possible. God does not command the impossible. It’s difficult—yes, that’s true. But to say it’s impossible is unfair. But of course everything good is difficult, and prayer especially so—it is the source of all good for us and our faithful support. Someone will ask: how is this to be done? Very simply: cultivate fear of God. Fear of God, as a feeling, will draw your attention and awareness to the heart; and as fear, it will hold your attention and awareness standing in the heart before God. There you have it—noetic standing before God, and prayer! As long as the fear of God remains in the heart, noetic standing before God will not depart from the heart. So here is one thing—the all-powerful means for noetic prayer! But you’ll say—work distracts us! They won’t distract you if you only have the fear of God. It is not work that hinders noetic standing before God, but idleness and evil work. Set aside what is evil and empty, keep only what is obligatory—and not according to worldly obligation, but according to the Gospel’s obligation—and you will see that fulfilling your duties not only does not turn the intellect and heart away from God, but draws them toward Him.[3] Both are of the same kind and require the same ordering of the soul. Whatever you undertake from this circle, you will always turn to God to ask for His help and to dedicate your work to the glory of God. Rising in the morning, establish yourself more firmly before God in your heart through your morning prayers, and then go out to your work, entrusted to you by God, without withdrawing your feeling and awareness from Him. And this will be what is written in the second point: ‘Remaining in God with your intellect and heart, fulfill with the powers of your soul and body the duties laid upon you.’ Those who think that the essence of noetic prayer consists in sitting somewhere in hiding and contemplating God in that way misunderstand it. The prophet David expressed its essence: I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.[4] So hiddenness does not constitute the essence of noetic standing before God, and a multitude of activities does not hinder it.

You write that solitude is scarcely possible for laymen. There are two kinds of solitude: one complete and constant, when someone withdraws to a hermitage and lives alone; the other is partial, occurring at certain times. The first is indeed not the work of laymen; but the second is both possible for them and even something they already have. Everyone finds some time when he is alone, even if he doesn’t deliberately arrange hours of solitude for himself. Turn those hours—or that hour—to the benefit of your spiritual edification. Instead of empty daydreaming, turn inward and examine your deeds—are they done well, and can they be pleasing to God if you set Him before you? Anyone, no matter how busy, can set aside such hours each day if he truly cares about the salvation of his soul. If people don’t set aside such time, it’s because they don’t have this concern, or it’s not strong enough to outweigh all their other cares. But for someone who doesn’t care, there’s no point in writing down the means to establish a saving way of life. In this way, you need to set aside solitary hours every day. And when it comes time for preparation for Communion, you should set aside all your work for the entire period of preparation, so that your preparation for Communion may be fully salvific for the soul. This is what was meant, with regard to laymen, in pointing to solitude as a means to a life pleasing to God and leading to salvation. But there is one more thing you must keep in mind: there is, besides external solitude, an interior solitude. Outside there may be noise and turmoil, but a person can be alone in his heart with himself. When someone’s heart is troubled by something, even if he is in the most cheerful and talkative company, he hears nothing and sees nothing. There, at his own heart, he sits with his affliction. Everyone knows this from their own experience. If this happens in worldly affairs, why shouldn’t something similar happen in the spiritual order? There are afflictions here too, and they are even stronger and deeper than all worldly ones. When affliction settles upon the heart in this order of life, what will be able to draw a person’s awareness out of his solitary dwelling in his own heart?[5] Here is solitude of another kind—the kind that comes even to laymen as soon as concern for the salvation of their soul visits them! The fear of God penetrates the soul then and assures it most sincerely that even if it gained the whole world, it would not be able to ransom itself when it comes time to answer for the course of the life it has lived. This most sincere conviction penetrates the whole soul and produces in it such a painful concern for the one thing needful that the soul no longer wants to look at anything else. She is wholly one with this one thing of hers, even though outwardly and externally she may be occupied with much.[6] This is the kind of solitude that is possible even for laypeople!

You say that having a spiritual father with whom one could consult at any time about all the circumstances of one’s external and interior life is impractical for laypeople. It’s true—such people are becoming rarer, those to whom one could turn with full confidence for counsel about spiritual life. Somehow everyone limits themselves to propriety of conduct and the faithful performance of duty, and they don’t think it necessary to pay attention to what is happening in the heart during all this. Outward life takes precedence over interior life. Yet it cannot be said that the venerable have altogether disappeared.[7] Those zealous for interior life have always been rare among the spiritual living in the world; but they have always existed, they exist now, and they will exist in the future. But those who begin to be troubled about their salvation develop a sensitivity by which they seek out a worthy spiritual father.[8] To this we must add that at the outset we have guidance in the order of the Church, which any spiritual father can point out, and does point out. So God has ordained it that no one will be left without proper guidance. This guidance can be further enriched by reading the holy Fathers, conversation with those of like mind, and even by your own experience. All of this together makes up the guidance without which there is no way to get by in the spiritual life. Even a small thing can trouble the soul. A soul that fears God becomes troubled and, praying to God for understanding, hastens to a spiritual father—and it often happens that from an unexpected quarter comes the most reassuring explanation of the matter. The spiritual life is God’s life; God guards it. Of course, you can’t rush into following just anyone without discernment; you need to exercise your own judgment too. But if your judgment wavers, there’s nowhere better to turn than to your spiritual father. In outward life too there are such tangled complications that it’s hard to figure out how to act rightly in a given situation; how much more so in the interior life. Go to your spiritual father—one, another, a third—and you’ll find someone who will set your mind at rest. If someone hasn’t yet reached a thing through his own experience, then the science of God will do the work.[9]

Bishop Theophan.

[1] Translator’s note: similar; the allusion is to pouring out the heart before God.

[2] Translator’s note: The phrase ‘еже есть пред Ним многоценно’ is rendered as a relative clause; the antecedent is the noetic standing itself.

[3] Translator’s note: ‘обязательность’ rendered as ‘obligation’ to preserve the theological contrast between worldly and Gospel-based duty

[4] Translator’s note: English text follows the Psalter tradition.

[5] Translator’s note: ‘уединенного пребывания’ rendered as ‘solitary dwelling’ to preserve the sense of isolated, inward presence.

[6] Translator’s note: ‘She’ refers to the soul (душа, feminine in Russian); the pronoun shift to ‘she’ is natural in English.

[7] Translator’s note: ‘оскуде’ (become scarce/impoverished) applied to the venerable as a collective; rendered as ‘have altogether disappeared’ for natural English

[8] Translator’s note: ‘болезновать’ (to be troubled/distressed) captures the spiritual concern; ‘чутье’ (sensitivity/instinct) rendered idiomatically

[9] Translator’s note: наука Божия: refers to spiritual knowledge or wisdom imparted through teaching and tradition

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.

Genesis

Genesis 1:27Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.12.2)

Genesis 4:10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 42) (43.4.11)

Genesis 17:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.6.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 75) (76.6.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 104) (105.7.2)

Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 6:5Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 107) (108.3.13)

1 Samuel

1 Samuel 16:7Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.7.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 75) (76.4.9)

Psalms

Psalms 1:2Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 50) (51.4.6)

Psalms 5:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 80) (81.4.1)

Psalms 10:14Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.13.10)

Psalms 15:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 101) (102.8.1)

Psalms 16:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.4.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 24) (25.6.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 62) (63.3.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.16.6); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 77) (78.6.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.45)

Psalms 16:11Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.21.9)

Psalms 20:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 34) (35.4.6)

Psalms 22:6Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.7.12)

Psalms 24:4Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.9.30)

Psalms 26:11Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.20.2)

Psalms 32:10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 43) (44.4.26)

Psalms 33Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 5) (6.10.1)

Psalms 33:15Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 84) (85.5.2)

Psalms 34:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.13.3)

Psalms 37:27Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 5) (6.6.2, 6.7.2)

Psalms 50Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33) (34.6.2)

Psalms 51:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 4) (5.4.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 27) (28.7.2)

Psalms 51:12Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 4) (5.4.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 27) (28.7.2)

Psalms 51:17Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.6.3, 2.7.6); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.5.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 25) (26.5.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 63) (64.4.4, 64.7.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 64) (65.3.9); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.8.9); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 67) (68.9.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 70) (71.3.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 84) (85.4.2, 85.7.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 107) (108.6.2, 108.17.1)

Psalms 62:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.8)

Psalms 65:9Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.20.2)

Psalms 68:11Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 37) (38.3.6)

Psalms 69:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10) (11.13.3)

Psalms 70:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.5.21); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 85) (86.8.4)

Psalms 84:5Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.21.8)

Psalms 90:10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 55) (56.4.5)

Psalms 101Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110) (111.5.1)

Psalms 102:5Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110) (111.5.8, 111.5.9)

Psalms 102:14Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110) (111.7.3)

Psalms 102:22Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110) (111.6.5)

Psalms 104:23Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 89) (90.9.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.42)

Psalms 105:4Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.5.10)

Psalms 118Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 14) (15.4.1)

Psalms 118:7Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 50) (51.2.20)

Psalms 118:25Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.3.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 52) (53.4.15)

Psalms 119Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 97) (98.4.3)

Psalms 139:1–2Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 59) (60.5.3)

Psalms 139:1–4Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 25) (26.6.2)

Psalms 139:7Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 62) (63.3.7, 63.3.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.16.4, 67.16.5)

Psalms 139:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 62) (63.3.9)

Psalms 139:9–10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 62) (63.3.10)

Psalms 141:2Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 42) (43.4.18)

Psalms 142:7Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.20.2)

Psalms 143:6Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 86) (87.4.8)

Psalms 145:18Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 94) (95.4.7)

Psalms 146:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33) (34.4.12)

Psalms 150:6Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 106) (107.10.7)

Proverbs

Proverbs 1:7Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10) (11.3.6)

Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 3:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 36) (37.4.7)

Ecclesiastes 8:15Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 82) (83.3.6)

Ecclesiastes 9:10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.4.1)

Ecclesiastes 12:13Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.16.2)

Isaiah

Isaiah 6:3Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 106) (107.9.4)

Lamentations

Lamentations 5:19Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110) (111.6.4)

Malachi

Malachi 4:2Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 102) (103.6.3)

Sirach

Sirach 23:19Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.8.2)

Matthew

Matthew 3:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.15.5)

Matthew 5:7Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.13.5)

Matthew 5:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 90) (91.10.3)

Matthew 5:11–12Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 51) (52.3.9)

Matthew 5:42Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 51) (52.5.8)

Matthew 6:2–4Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 51) (52.5.8)

Matthew 6:6Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.17)

Matthew 6:9Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 30) (31.6.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 83) (84.6.2)

Matthew 6:9–13Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 111) (112.3.3, 112.4.1, 112.5.5)

Matthew 6:10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.6.6); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.11.6)

Matthew 6:12Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.11.7)

Matthew 6:24Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 17) (18.8.2)

Matthew 6:33Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.3.7)

Matthew 7:7Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.13.12); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 16) (17.4.11); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 30) (31.6.6); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33) (34.8.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60) (61.3.1, 61.3.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.10.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 71) (72.3.7, 72.8.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 104) (105.5.11); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108) (109.9.1)

Matthew 8:25Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 4) (5.4.5)

Matthew 9:13Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 3) (4.12.4)

Matthew 9:20Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 53) (54.3.22)

Matthew 11:12Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.4.3)

Matthew 11:28Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 3) (4.12.3)

Matthew 11:29Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.3.3)

Matthew 11:29–30Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.4.4)

Matthew 14:30Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.20.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 15) (16.5.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 103) (104.8.3)

Matthew 16:24Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 17) (18.7.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 87) (88.7.3)

Matthew 16:26Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.4.24)

Matthew 18:10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.6.6)

Matthew 18:18Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 4) (5.8.5)

Matthew 18:20Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 81) (82.10.4)

Matthew 18:22Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 73) (74.6.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 79) (80.9.2)

Matthew 22:12Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 95) (96.8.5)

Matthew 22:13Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 52) (53.3.5)

Matthew 25:21Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 52) (53.3.5)

Matthew 25:25Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 106) (107.10.12)

Matthew 25:31–46Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 94) (95.4.5)

Matthew 25:40Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.13.6, 2.13.7)

Matthew 26:36Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 54) (55.3.4)

Matthew 26:39Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 54) (55.3.6)

Mark

Mark 10:21Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 109) (110.4.7)

Mark 11:25Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33) (34.4.5)

Mark 16:19Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60) (61.10.4)

Luke

Luke 1:48Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.9.3)

Luke 8:15Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 36) (37.4.5)

Luke 10:39Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 51) (52.4.8)

Luke 10:42Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 12) (13.3.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.4.25)

Luke 11:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 88) (89.6.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 105) (106.7.2)

Luke 15:11–32Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 73) (74.6.6)

Luke 15:18Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 34) (35.4.1)

Luke 18:1–8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 103) (104.8.4, 104.8.5)

Luke 18:10–14Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 11) (12.3.4)

Luke 18:13Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 4) (5.4.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.20.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.5.20); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10) (11.13.6); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 29) (30.7.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 31) (32.4.15); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60) (61.3.9); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 72) (73.9.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 74) (75.4.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 79) (80.9.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 83) (84.5.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 87) (88.3.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 88) (89.6.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 107) (108.7.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 111) (112.3.2, 112.3.3, 112.5.4)

Luke 18:38Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 18) (19.7.2)

Luke 21:19Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 54) (55.3.3)

Luke 21:34Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.6.3)

Luke 22:42Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 103) (104.8.4)

Luke 23:39–43Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.14.4)

Luke 23:43Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.14.5)

John

John 1:14Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.12.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 36) (37.4.12)

John 4:24Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 62) (63.3.2)

John 6:37Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 79) (80.9.3)

John 14:6Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.12.5, 2.12.8)

John 14:23Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.11.9)

John 15:2Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 42) (43.5.4)

John 15:5Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 57) (58.4.13)

John 17:21Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.7.5)

Acts

Acts 2:15Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 93) (94.6.6)

Acts 4:12Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 24) (25.4.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 101) (102.6.2)

Acts 14:22Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 53) (54.2.12)

Acts 16:31Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 72) (73.9.2)

Acts 24:16Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.15.7)

Romans

Romans 1:1–16:27Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 97) (98.4.3)

Romans 10:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60) (61.3.7)

Romans 13:14Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 17) (18.4.25)

1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 6:9–10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 65) (66.5.1)

1 Corinthians 10:27–28Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 3) (4.10.2)

1 Corinthians 10:31Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.19.1, 7.19.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.6.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 89) (90.15.1)

1 Corinthians 10:33Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 31) (32.4.24)

1 Corinthians 11:12Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 36) (37.3.10)

1 Corinthians 13:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 90) (91.7.10)

1 Corinthians 15:10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 16) (17.10.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 104) (105.12.1)

1 Corinthians 15:32Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 51) (52.5.5)

2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians 7:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.11.5)

2 Corinthians 8:21Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 50) (51.5.14)

2 Corinthians 10:5Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 87) (88.10.5)

2 Corinthians 11:28Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 40) (41.5.1)

2 Corinthians 12:4Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 53) (54.5.9)

Galatians

Galatians 5:7Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 57) (58.3.1)

Galatians 6:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 73) (74.5.1)

Galatians 6:2Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 73) (74.7.2)

Ephesians

Ephesians 2:4Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 107) (108.3.16)

Ephesians 2:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.5.4)

Ephesians 2:14–16Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.12.5)

Ephesians 3:16Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 24) (25.7.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 101) (102.10.2)

Ephesians 4:13Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 54) (55.2.6)

Ephesians 4:29Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 73) (74.4.2)

Ephesians 6:10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 56) (57.4.2)

Philippians

Philippians 1:6Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.4.1)

Philippians 2:12Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 50) (51.10.3)

Philippians 3:13Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.11.3)

Philippians 4:5Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 24) (25.4.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 30) (31.6.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 43) (44.4.22); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60) (61.10.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 84) (85.3.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 101) (102.6.1)

Colossians

Colossians 3:1–2Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 98) (99.6.3)

Colossians 3:3Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.7.6)

Colossians 4:2Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 14) (15.3.6)

1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians 3:11Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 67) (68.12.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 109) (110.5.3)

1 Thessalonians 5:17Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10) (11.15.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 12) (13.4.11, 13.4.15, 13.4.16); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 38) (39.5.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 39) (40.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 89) (90.7.7, 90.8.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 90) (91.9.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.19, 113.3.22)

1 Thessalonians 5:18Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 26) (27.3.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 53) (54.2.1)

1 Timothy

1 Timothy 2:4Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 80) (81.5.9); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 88) (89.6.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 105) (106.7.1)

1 Timothy 2:5Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.12.9)

1 Timothy 4:15Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.11.4)

1 Timothy 5:23Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 51) (52.6.5)

1 Timothy 6:17Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 77) (78.7.3)

2 Timothy

2 Timothy 1:16Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 43) (44.4.25)

2 Timothy 4:14Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 44) (45.4.2)

Hebrews

Hebrews 4:13Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.18.12)

Hebrews 6:10Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 19) (20.3.4)

Hebrews 11:5–6Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 25) (26.4.6)

Hebrews 13:6Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 50) (51.2.18)

James

James 1:17Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.5.6)

James 4:17Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 78) (79.3.3)

1 Peter

1 Peter 2:9Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.13.2)

1 Peter 3:4Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.23)

1 Peter 5:5Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108) (109.9.2)

1 Peter 5:7Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 48) (49.3.5)

1 Peter 5:8Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 37) (38.6.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 106) (107.10.4)

1 John

1 John 3:1Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 53) (54.6.1)

Revelation

Revelation 3:15Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 17) (18.8.1)

Revelation 21:27Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.3.7, 3.14.6)

Persons and Places

Persons and places mentioned in this book, with short notes and back-links to every occurrence.

Persons

St Antony the Great

Egyptian desert father (c. 251–356), founder of monastic eremitism. Feast day 17 January.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.11.1).

St Basil the Great

Cappadocian Father (c. 330–379), Archbishop of Caesarea, monastic legislator and theologian; one of the Three Hierarchs. Author of the Longer and Shorter Rules and the Liturgy bearing his name. Feast day 1 January.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.14.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 12) (13.4.16); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 42) (43.4.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 96) (97.7.2).

David

King of Israel (c. 1010–970 BC), traditional author of the Psalms; a central figure of Old Testament typology in patristic exegesis.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.7.12); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.16.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.45).

St Dimitry of Rostov

Metropolitan of Rostov (1651–1709), compiler of the great Slavonic menologion (Chetyi-Minei, Lives of the Saints in twelve volumes) and author of liturgical dramas and theological works. Canonised 1757. Feast day 21 September.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.14.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.18).

St Ignatius of Antioch

Bishop of Antioch and Apostolic Father (c. 35–c. 108), martyred in Rome; author of seven letters written en route to martyrdom, foundational texts on the Eucharist, episcopacy, and Christian unity. Also known as Theophoros (the God-bearer). Feast day 17 October (West) / 29 January (East).

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.13.18); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 52) (53.4.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 73) (74.8.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 82) (83.4.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 106) (107.7.10).

Jesus Christ

The incarnate Son of God, second Person of the Holy Trinity; his name forms the centre of the Jesus Prayer and of all Orthodox spiritual life.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.3.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 3) (4.13.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.18.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.5.23, 8.5.30); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 18) (19.7.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 24) (25.4.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 25) (26.4.7, 26.5.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 26) (27.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 49) (50.2.12); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 56) (57.3.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60) (61.3.8, 61.3.9, 61.4.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 74) (75.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 83) (84.5.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 87) (88.3.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 89) (90.10.6); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 101) (102.6.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 106) (107.9.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108) (109.6.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110) (111.4.14).

St John Chrysostom

Archbishop of Constantinople (c. 347–407), one of the most prolific homilists of the early Church; one of the Three Hierarchs. Exiled twice for challenging imperial corruption; died in exile. Feast day 13 November.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.14.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 4) (5.4.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 15) (16.7.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 26) (27.4.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 27) (28.6.1, 28.6.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 31) (32.4.11); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33) (34.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 39) (40.4.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 80) (81.5.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 81) (82.4.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 85) (86.6.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108) (109.12.4).

St John Climacus

Abbot of Sinai (c. 579–649), author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, the standard manual of monastic ascesis in the Eastern Church. Feast day 30 March.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.3.9); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10) (11.21.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.9.26); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 40) (41.4.7).

St Macarius the Great

Egyptian desert father (c. 300–391), abbot of Scetis; attributed author of the Homilies on the heart and spiritual fire central to the hesychast tradition. Feast day 19 January.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 31) (32.4.18).

St Paisius Velichkovsky

Ukrainian-born monk (1722–1794), abbot of Neamț Monastery in Moldavia; compiler and translator of the Philokalia into Slavonic (the Dobrotolubiye), transmitting hesychast spirituality to the Slavic world. Feast day 15 November.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 3) (4.7.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 52) (53.4.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 81) (82.10.4).

Solomon

King of Israel (c. 970–931 BC); traditional author of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.16.2).

St Symeon the New Theologian

Byzantine monk and mystic (949–1022), abbot of St Mamas in Constantinople; one of only three teachers honoured with the title ‘Theologian’ in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. His Hymns of Divine Love and Catecheses are primary texts of the hesychast tradition. Feast day 12 March.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.15.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 34) (35.4.19); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 65) (66.7.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 70) (71.9.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 71) (72.7.1).

St Tikhon of Zadonsk

Russian bishop and ascetic writer (1724–1783), Bishop of Voronezh; retired to Zadonsk Monastery in 1769, devoting himself to prayer, writing, and works of mercy. A formative spiritual influence on Theophan the Recluse and on Dostoyevsky’s Elder Zosima. Canonised 1861. Feast day 13 August.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.14.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.11.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 5) (6.12.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 25) (26.4.8).

Places

Kiev

Capital of Kievan Rus’ and historic centre of East Slavic Christianity; home of the Kiev Caves Lavra and the Metropolitan seat of the Russian Orthodox Church before the see moved to Moscow.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.6.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.8.5).

Moscow

Capital of the Russian state from the 15th century; seat of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia; spiritual and administrative centre of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Mentioned in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.15.7, 2.15.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 14) (15.5.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 37) (38.4.1).

Glossary

Theological and spiritual terms used in this book, with short definitions and back-links to every occurrence.

contemplation

Direct apprehension of divine reality, distinguished by the Fathers from rational knowledge (γνῶσις) and conceptual reasoning; the highest degree of prayer in the hesychast tradition.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2) (3.7.5, 3.7.8, 3.7.15, 3.7.18, 3.9.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10) (11.4.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 18) (19.11.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33) (34.8.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 53) (54.5.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 72) (73.4.2).

fear of God

Reverent awe before God’s holiness; in patristic usage, the disposition that opens the heart to grace, distinct from servile dread.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.8.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.8.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 18) (19.18.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 52) (53.5.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 62) (63.4.10); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 63) (64.4.5, 64.4.6); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 65) (66.5.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.8.1, 67.8.9); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 67) (68.4.4, 68.9.2, 68.10.2, 68.10.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 89) (90.8.5, 90.18.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108) (109.8.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.31, 113.3.32, 113.3.34, 113.3.37, 113.4.24).

Jesus Prayer

The short prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’, repeated continuously as a means of cultivating ceaseless inner prayer; central to Eastern Orthodox hesychast practice.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.6.2, 1.6.3, 1.8.1, 1.10.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 3) (4.9.9, 4.13.1, 4.14.1, 4.14.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.5.23, 8.5.24, 8.8.3, 8.9.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 8) (9.2.12); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 9) (10.3.1, 10.6.3, 10.8.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10) (11.6.1, 11.9.1, 11.11.1, 11.13.6, 11.14.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 18) (19.13.2, 19.16.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 19) (20.3.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 24) (25.3.4, 25.5.6, 25.6.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 26) (27.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33) (34.4.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 34) (35.4.24); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 43) (44.4.9); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 47) (48.2.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 48) (49.8.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 49) (50.2.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 50) (51.5.1, 51.5.10); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 52) (53.4.6); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 53) (54.3.24); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 57) (58.4.19, 58.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 58) (59.8.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 59) (60.6.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60) (61.4.8, 61.9.4, 61.12.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 63) (64.7.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 75) (76.3.1, 76.4.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 76) (77.3.2, 77.7.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 81) (82.6.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 82) (83.5.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 83) (84.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 84) (85.3.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 85) (86.8.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 88) (89.3.1, 89.4.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 96) (97.4.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 97) (98.3.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 101) (102.5.2, 102.7.6, 102.8.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 105) (106.5.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 109) (110.4.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110) (111.4.11).

noetic prayer

Prayer of the nous (the spiritual intellect), held in the heart in unceasing remembrance of God. The Greek nous is not ‘mind’ in the modern sense but the deepest faculty of spiritual perception.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.8.3, 1.9.6, 1.10.4, 1.11.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.5.11, 8.5.25, 8.5.27, 8.5.31, 8.8.1, 8.9.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 15) (16.5.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 30) (31.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 31) (32.4.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33) (34.3.4, 34.4.6, 34.4.12); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 40) (41.3.11); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 49) (50.2.5, 50.2.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60) (61.4.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 77) (78.9.5, 78.10.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 80) (81.6.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 85) (86.10.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 87) (88.6.2, 88.6.3, 88.6.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 89) (90.7.6, 90.7.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 92) (93.12.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 97) (98.3.5, 98.3.6, 98.3.8, 98.3.9); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 104) (105.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 107) (108.10.1, 108.10.14); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108) (109.5.4, 109.5.5, 109.6.1, 109.7.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110) (111.4.24); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112) (113.3.1, 113.3.2, 113.3.3, 113.3.8, 113.3.13, 113.3.14, 113.3.15, 113.3.35, 113.3.44).

prayer rule

A daily structured set of prayers observed at fixed times, both from established liturgical texts and from personal prayer; a central theme in Theophan’s correspondence.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.3.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.11.9, 7.21.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 12) (13.4.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 25) (26.4.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 31) (32.4.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 32) (33.5.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33) (34.7.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 41) (42.5.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108) (109.12.6).

Psalter

The book of Psalms, central to monastic and lay daily prayer in the Eastern tradition; read through in full each week in the monastic typikon.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.4.6, 2.4.8); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.8.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 35) (36.3.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 50) (51.9.7); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 71) (72.4.1, 72.4.2, 72.4.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 89) (90.14.1).

remembrance of death

The constant awareness of one’s mortality cultivated as a spiritual discipline; in Orthodox ascetic theology, paired with the remembrance of God as a foundation of inner life (cf. John Climacus, Ladder, Step 6).

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.8.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.6.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 63) (64.7.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.5.11); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 67) (68.4.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 74) (75.6.2).

remembrance of God

Continuous awareness of God’s presence cultivated by all forms of inner prayer.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.6.1, 1.6.2, 1.8.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.6.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.5.23); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10) (11.16.1, 11.21.1, 11.24.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.8.14); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 16) (17.9.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 59) (60.5.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60) (61.5.1); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 65) (66.5.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66) (67.5.11); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 67) (68.4.3); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 72) (73.6.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 73) (74.6.10); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 74) (75.6.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 75) (76.6.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 76) (77.3.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 88) (89.4.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 104) (105.10.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 105) (106.6.1).

Sacraments

The Holy Mysteries of the Church: Baptism, Chrismation, Eucharist, Confession, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Anointing of the Sick; channels of grace that unite the believer to Christ and his Body.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1) (2.12.6, 2.12.10); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10) (11.4.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 50) (51.9.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 77) (78.8.4); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 79) (80.4.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 106) (107.12.12).

Theotokos

Greek ‘God-bearer’; the title of the Virgin Mary affirmed at the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus (431), asserting that the one she bore is truly God incarnate.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6) (7.20.5); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 45) (46.4.9); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 111) (112.3.3, 112.4.1, 112.5.6).

warmth of heart

The interior fervour that arises in the heart during prayer; in the Russian ascetic tradition, regarded as a natural fruit of inner attention rather than a sign of grace in itself.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1.8.2); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13) (14.8.21); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 21) (22.3.2).

watchfulness

Sober vigilance over one’s thoughts; a precondition for noetic prayer and a fundamental discipline of the hesychast tradition.

Occurs in: Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7) (8.5.11); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 37) (38.4.11, 38.4.13); Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108) (109.5.6, 109.7.1, 109.9.2).

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. Symeon the New Theologian

Photograph by Unknown authorUnknown author.

Licence: Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

2. The Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost

Image by AnonymousUnknown author.

Licence: Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

3. St. Macarius the Great

Photograph by Солнцев, Фёдор Григорьевич.

Licence: Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

4. The Theotokos, Mother of God

Image by Daderot.

Licence: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

5. St. Basil the Great

Photograph by AnonymousUnknown author.

Licence: Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

6. St. Ignatius of Antioch

Photograph by Anonymous (Byzantine Empire)Unknown author.

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

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life
by Saint Theophan the Recluse.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
Praying Monk
by Jacob Maris (Dutch, 1837–1899), Rijksmuseum, 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
Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life
Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 2)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 3)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 4)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 5)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 6)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 7)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 8)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 9)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 10)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 11)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 12)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 13)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 14)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 15)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 16)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 17)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 18)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 19)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 20)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 21)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 22)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 23)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 24)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 25)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 26)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 27)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 28)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 29)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 30)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 31)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 32)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 33)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 34)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 35)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 36)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 37)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 38)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 39)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 40)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 41)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 42)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 43)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 44)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 45)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 46)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 47)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 48)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 49)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 50)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 51)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 52)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 53)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 54)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 55)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 56)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 57)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 58)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 59)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 60)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 61)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 62)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 63)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 64)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 65)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 66)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 67)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 68)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 69)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 70)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 71)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 72)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 73)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 74)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 75)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 76)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 77)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 78)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 79)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 80)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 81)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 82)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 83)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 84)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 85)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 86)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 87)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 88)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 89)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 90)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 91)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 92)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 93)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 94)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 95)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 96)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 97)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 98)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 99)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 100)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 101)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 102)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 103)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 104)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 105)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 106)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 107)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 108)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 109)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 110)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 111)

Letters on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (1, 112)

Scripture Index
Persons and Places
Glossary
Illustration Credits
The Author: Saint Theophan the Recluse
Colophon