Undistracted Prayer

How correct is your conclusion: “Everything comes down to prayer!” Indeed it does. Prayer is a spiritual barometer for self-observation. A barometer tells how light or heavy the air is, and prayer shows how high or low our spirit has gone in its petition to God. Keep praying in the manner in which you have begun. Stand a little more often in front of your icons during the day, making prostrations both from the waist and all the way to the ground. Getting down on your knees and making prostrations is even better. No one will see this except the Lord. Morning and evening prayers take their normal course. At those times it is necessary to do a little more, just as you have been told to do. Regarding partial prostrations to the Lord, do them slightly, but not in the way we usually do when we meet an acquaintance—nod the head and that is it. Perseverance, which you are encouraging in every way possible, will teach you everything.

Do not ever forget, however, that the essence of prayer is the raising of the heart and mind to God, for God is everywhere. The holy Prophet David taught his soul, In every place of His dominion, bless the Lord, O my soul! (Pss 102:20). As I have already written, remembrance of God, or as you put it even better, love for God, more than anything else inclines us toward this. May the Lord give you a blessing in exceptional love for Him. However, even in love for the Lord there is remembrance of Him, with a deepened awareness of His divine characteristics and activity. You must train yourself in remembrance of God, and the means for doing this, as I have written, is short prayer, in which you continually repeat the thought, Lord have mercy! Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner! You have already begun using this prayer; continue it, whether you are sitting, walking, doing some task, or talking. In every situation and at every moment, keep in mind that the Lord is close by, and call out to Him from your heart, Lord have mercy!

You say that your thoughts stray. This is straightaway forbidden; you must work a little harder until you have firmly established the habit of dwelling inside the heart before the Lord. It seems I have already told you that as soon as you notice your thoughts have wandered off, you must bring them back, and that you must make a deliberate and conscious effort never to let them wander. You must do this; not only when you are praying, but at all times. Make this your rule: Always be with the Lord in mind and heart, never allow the thoughts to wander, but when they do, call them back again and force them to stay at home in the house of the heart and speak with the most sweet Lord. Once you have made this your rule, you must force yourself to carry it out faithfully. You must scold yourself when you violate it, imposing some sort of penalty on yourself, and you must pray to the Lord to help you in this most necessary matter. If you persevere at this, you will soon be successful.

There are conditions for success; these are:

(1) Uninterrupted continuity of such undertaking—persistence in it. Do not keep starting and putting it aside over and over; rather, once you have begun, keep at it until success comes. In any case, success depends on the persistence of labor.

(2) To bring this about, you need to arm yourself with patience and self-discipline. Uncertainty will come, desire will weaken, and even doubt will arise; you must drive all this away, as you set out to do, and force yourself to continue in your labors.

(3) To make this happen, be inspired with the hope that the Lord, seeing your labor over prayer and the diligence with which you seek to make it habitual, will at last grant you this prayer, and that once it has become consolidated in the heart, it will flow from it on its own like a fountain. This most blessed fruit is the fruit of prayerful labor! The expectation of it has inspired all those who pray, and the receiving of it has been for them a source of continual spiritual bliss, joy, and a peaceful heart in God. May the Lord bestow this fruit on you! But without persistent, self-disciplined, patient, and hopeful labor, He will not bestow it. Have courage!

I am sending you a little book about this subject entitled “Letters on the Spiritual Life.” It is directed toward the consolidation of the mind in the heart with attentiveness toward the Lord and prayerful disposition. For the labor of prayer, you need to select and read such books or articles that discuss everything about prayer and prayerful frames of mind.

The more you become confirmed in the remembrance of God, or in mental expression to God in the heart, the calmer you will be, and the less your thoughts will wander. The inner condition and success in prayer go together.

Remember that we have been speaking about the spirit since the very beginning of our correspondence? Now we have the restoration of it to its proper place. Once it has been restored, cleansing activity begins; this is a fundamental re-working of soul, body and outward relationships. Then you will become a real person.

Depression and Fear

Your depression mixed with dread is somehow unclear. What is wrong with you? You have everything in order, both at home and in your soul. You will overcome it; what should you do? Pray to God and entrust your fate and that of everyone close to you to Him. This is the most reliable way to peace! You should have but one concern—to not do anything that would anger God. You will have firm hope and lasting peace from this.

That you have some family amusements is fine. Just do not get carried away. Do not forget God, and thank Him for every comfort, accepting such comfort as coming from His hands. Then when you seclude yourself, fall down before the Lord more diligently, asking Him to give you understanding and indicate life’s paths. It happens that amusements, especially pleasant ones, give rise to depression, because while they are not sinful, they are unable to content the heart. Generally speaking, the inconstancy of the emotions is characteristic to us. It is necessary to discard and overcome this, being concerned that one thing does not change; that is, that your most important decision, the goal of life you chose for yourself, always remain in force.

Can this really be? God is asking your heart once and for all, and the heart desires God. For without God it is never satisfied, it is bored; examine yourself from this aspect. Maybe you will find the door to the peace of God there.

That you broke off with one of your friends is a very good thing; her charming and ingratiating manner influenced you in a way that was not at all conducive to the goal of life you planned for yourself. You made mention of this influence at one time, but I neglected to tell you to watch out. Well, thank God! Now the affair has taken a turn for the better of its own accord. It is not proper, of course, to allow all kinds of hostile things into the heart. Do not permit yourself to trust her any more or take her pleasant words to heart. Behave equably, and do not upset peaceful relations.

Falsehood

You ask what to think about some English “apostle.” Your own words tell what to think about him. He says that the Lord appears to him and tells him what to do and what to say. Don’t you and those around you see that he is a deceiver? If the Lord appeared to him, He would not have sent him to us, but to the Turks, for instance, or some other nonbelievers. The Lord Himself has repeatedly confirmed and continues to confirm our faith through miracles, the holy relics and the appearances of Him and His saints. There is nothing to teach us. On the contrary, he needs to learn from us.

This “apostle” does not come from the traditional English church, but from some peculiar one that appeared recently. A Pentecostal sect recently appeared there. Someone got it into his head that what happened to the Apostles must be repeated in the church of Christ; that is, that the Holy Spirit descended visibly and acted visibly in believers. Some people, mostly women, believed him. They began thinking how to achieve this. They thought and thought, and came up with something. Somehow they became convinced that the Holy Spirit was acting in them specifically, and they began convincing others of this. They fabricated a few suspicious miracles and began trumpeting them everywhere. Quite a few gullible people gathered around them. They separated from the others and established their own ecclesiastical order. There is a sect for you!

This is the sort of milieu your “apostle” comes from. He explains everything about the Holy Spirit, that everyone must without fail be filled with His grace to be saved. This idea is totally correct. I revealed this to you in our first letters. But this is the only true thing he says. Everything else is a lie! He cries, “Believe, believe, and the Holy Spirit will come.” This is his biggest lie! Faith is indeed an indispensable condition for receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, but the very receiving of the gift comes about not from faith alone, but from faith through the divinely-established Mysteries. This is how it was even in Apostolic times.

Here is a case in point. St. Paul arrived in Ephesus, and after encountering several believers there, he asked them whether they had received the Holy Spirit. They answered they had not even heard of the Holy Spirit. It turned out that they were baptized only with the baptism of John. St. Paul then baptized them with the baptism of Christ, and after that he laid his hands on them and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. They had been renewed by Baptism, but they had not received the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was imparted to them through the apostolic laying on of hands, while Baptism only gave them the ability to receive the gift and made them worthy of it. As it was with these believers, so has it been for all believers, both during Apostolic times and afterward. That is how it has been to this time in the Divine Church, namely through Holy Chrismation, which the Apostles themselves introduced in place of the laying on of hands.

All of us who have been baptized and chrismated have the gift of the Holy Spirit. Everyone has the gift, but it is not active in everyone. How to make it active is explained in my previous letters. Take some time to review them again. I would add here only that there is no other way to this gift.

Go and ask the English “apostle” whether he himself has the gift of the Holy Spirit. He does not. For the English do not have the Mystery of Chrismation, without which, just as without the laying on of the Apostolic hands, the Holy Spirit never descended and never will. The English have only two “Mysteries,” that of Baptism and Communion, but they have no Mystery of Chrismation. Consequently, they also do not have the gift of the Holy Spirit. This “apostle” also does not have it. Therefore, he is talking about something he does not know about and preaches about receiving something that he himself does not have. You will not observe in his speeches even a mention of how the Holy Spirit is received. He talks only about the necessity for having Him, and then Cries out, “Believe!” This is like saying, “Open your mouth and the Holy Spirit will fly in.”

How appropriate are the Lord’s words for this apostle, Physician, heal thyself!

Be convinced, if you will, and pass my ideas on to others, especially that fellow who enjoys discussing religious subjects at your place. Such a view of the apostle may become more widely dispersed through him.