The way of the Pilgrim and The pilgrim continues his Way - Part 6

prayer may be effective. For unless we forgive those who have injured us, God will not forgive our sins. Pass on now to the seventh chapter, and you will find in the seventh to the twelfth verses how to succeed in prayer, to be bold in hope—ask, seek, knock. These strong expressions depict frequency in prayer and the urgency of practicing it, so that prayer shall not only accompany all actions but even come before them in time. This constitutes the principal property of prayer. You will see an example of this in the fourteenth chapter of St. Mark and the thirty-second to the fortieth verses, where Jesus Christ Himself repeats the same words of prayer frequently. St. Luke, chapter eleven, verses five to fourteen, gives a similar example of repeated prayer in the parable of the friend at midnight and the repeated request of the importunate widow (Luke 18:1-8), illustrating the command of Jesus Christ that we should pray always, at all times and in every place, and not grow discouraged— that is to say, not get lazy. After this detailed teaching we have shown to us in the Gospel of St. John the essential teaching about the secret interior prayer of the heart. In the first place we are shown it in the profound story of the conversation of Jesus Christ with the woman of Samaria, in which is revealed the interior worship of God 'in spirit and in truth' which God desires and which is unceasing true prayer, like living water flowing into eternal life Q°hn 4:5-25). Farther on, in the fifteenth chapter, verses four to eight, there is pictured for us still more decidedly the power and the might and the necessity of inward prayer—that is to say, of the presence of the spirit in Christ in unceasing remembrance of God. Finally, read verses twenty-three to twenty-five in the sixteenth chapter of the same evangelist. See what a mystery is revealed here. You notice that prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, or what is known as the Jesus prayer—that is to say, 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me'—when frequently repeated, has the greatest power and very easily opens the heart and blesses it. This is to be noticed very clearly in the case of the apostles, who had been for a whole year disciples of Jesus Christ, and had already been taught the Lord's Prayer by Him—that is to say, 'Our Father' (and it is through them that we know it). Yet at the end of His earthly life Jesus Christ revealed to them the mystery that was still lacking in their prayers. So that their prayer might make a definite step forward He said to them, 'Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name. Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name He will give it you.' And so it happened in their 109 case. For, ever after this time, when the Apostles learned to offer prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, how many wonderful works they performed and what abundant light was shed upon them. Now, do you see the chain, the fullness of teaching about prayer deposited with such wisdom in the holy gospel? And if you go on after this to the reading of the Apostolic Epistles, in them also you can find the same successive teaching about prayer. "To continue the notes I have already given you I will show you several places which illustrate the properties of prayer. Thus, in the Acts of the Apostles the practice of it is described—that is to say, the diligent and constant exercise of prayer by the first Christians, who were enlightened by their faith in Jesus Christ (Acts 4:31). The fruits of prayer are told to us, or the results of being constantly in prayer—that is to say, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and His gifts upon those who pray. You will see something similar to this in the sixteenth chapter, verses twenty-five and twenty-six. Then follow it up in order in the apostolic Epistles and you will see (1) how necessary prayer is in all circumstances (James 5:13-16); (2) how the Holy Spirit helps us to pray Qude 20-21 and Rom. 8:26); (3) how we ought all to pray in the spirit (Eph. 6:18); (4) how necessary calm and inward peace are to prayer (Phil. 4:6, 7); (5) how necessary it is to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17); (6) and finally we notice that one ought to pray not only for oneself but also for all men (1 Tim. 2:1-5). Thus, by spending a long time with great care in drawing out the meaning we can find many more revelations still of secret knowledge hidden in the Word of God, which escape one if one reads it but rarely or hurriedly. "Do you notice, after what I have now shown you, with what wisdom and how systematically the New Testament reveals the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ on this matter, which we have been tracing? In what a wonderful sequence it is put in all four evangelists? It is like this. In St. Matthew we see the approach, the introduction to prayer, the actual form of prayer, conditions of it, and so on. Go farther. In St. Mark we find examples. In St. Luke, parables. In St. John, the secret exercise of inward prayer, although this is also found in all four evangelists, either briefly or at length. In the Acts the practice of prayer and the results of prayer are pictured for us; in the apostolic Epistles, and in the Apocalypse itself, are many properties inseparably 110: connected with the act of prayer. And there you have the reason that I am content with the Gospels alone as my teacher in all the ways of salvation." All the while he was showing me this and teaching me I marked in the Gospels (in my Bible) all the places which he pointed out to me. It seemed to me most remarkable and instructive, and I thanked him very much. Then we went on for another five days in silence. My fellow-pilgrim's feet began to hurt him very much, no doubt because he was not used to continuous walking. So he hired a cart with a pair of horses and took me with him. And so we have come into your neighborhood and have stayed here for three days, so that when we have had some rest we can set off straight away to Anzersky, where he is so anxious to go. The Starets. This friend of yours is splendid. Judging from his piety he must be very well instructed. I should like to see him. The Pilgrim. We are stopping in the same place. Let me bring him to you tomorrow. It is late now. Good-bye. As I promised when I saw you yesterday, I have asked my revered fellow-pilgrim, who solaced my pilgrim way with spiritual conversation and whom you wanted to see, to come here with me. The Starets. It will be very nice both for me and, I hope, also for these revered visitors of mine, to see you both and to have the advantage of hearing your experiences. I have with me here a venerable skhimnik, and here a devout priest. And so, where two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus Christ, there He promises to be Himself. And now, here are five of us in His name, and so no doubt He will vouchsafe to bless us all the more bountifully. The story which your fellow-pilgrim told me yesterday, dear brother, about your burning attachment to the holy gospel, is most notable and instructive. It would be interesting to know in what way this great and blessed secret was revealed to you. The Professor. The all-loving God, who desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, revealed it to me of His great loving-kindness in a marvelous way, without any human intervention. For five years I was a professor and I led a gloomy dissipated sort of life, captivated by the vain philosophy of the world, and not according to Christ. Perhaps I should have perished altogether had I not been upheld to some extent by the fact that I lived with my very devout mother 111 and my sister, who was a serious-minded young woman. One day, when I was taking a walk along the public boulevard, I met and made the acquaintance of an excellent young man who told me he was a Frenchman, a student who had not long ago arrived from Paris and was looking for a post as tutor. His high degree of culture delighted me very much, and he being a stranger in this country I asked him to my home and we became friends. In the course of two months he frequently came to see me. Sometimes we went for walks together and amused ourselves and went together into company which I leave you to suppose was very immoral. At length he came to me one day with an invitation to a place of that sort; and in order to persuade me more quickly he began to praise the particular liveliness and pleasantness of the company to which he was inviting me. After he had been speaking about it for a short while, suddenly he began to ask me to come with him out of my study where we were sitting and to sit in the drawing room. This seemed to me very odd. So I said that I had never before noticed any reluctance on his part to be in my study, and what, I asked, was the cause of it now? And I added that the drawing room was next door to the room where my mother and sister were, and for us to carry on this sort of conversation there would be unseemly. He pressed his point on various pretexts, and finally came out quite openly with this: "Among those books on your shelves there you have a copy of the Gospels. I have such a reverence for that book that in its presence I find a difficulty in talking about our disreputable affairs. Please take it away from here; then we can talk freely." In my frivolous way I smiled at his words. Taking the Gospels from the shelf I said, "You ought to have told me that long ago," and handed it to him, saying, "Well, take it yourself and put it down somewhere in the room." No sooner had I touched him with the Gospels than at that instant he trembled and disappeared. This dumbfounded me to such an extent that I fell senseless to the floor with fright. Hearing the noise, my household came running in to me, and for a full half hour they were unable to bring me to my senses. In the end, when I came to myself again, I was frightened and shaky and I felt thoroughly upset, and my hands and my feet were absolutely numb so that I could not move them. When the doctor was called in he diagnosed paralyis as the result of some great shock or fright. I was laid up for a whole year after this, and with the most careful medical attention from many doctors I did not get the smallest alleviation, so that as a result of my illness it 112 looked as though I should have to resign my position. My mother, who was growing old, died during this period, and my sister was preparing to take the veil, and all this increased my illness all the more. I had but one consolation during this time of sickness, and that was reading the gospel, which from the beginning of my illness never left my hands. It was a sort of pledge of the marvelous thing that had happened to me. One day an unknown recluse came to see me. He was making a collection for his monastery. He spoke to me very persuasively and told me that I should not rely only upon medicines, which without the help of God were unable to bring me relief, and that I should pray to God and pray diligently about this very thing, for prayer is the most powerful means of healing all sicknesses both bodily and spiritual. "How can I pray in such a position as this, when I have not the strength to make any sort of reverence, nor can I lift my hands to cross myself?" I answered in my bewilderment. To this he said, "Well, at any rate, pray somehow." But farther he did not go, nor actually explain to me how to pray. When my visitor left me I seemed almost involuntarily to start thinking about prayer and about its power and its effects, calling to mind the instruction I had had in religious knowledge long ago when I was still a student. This occupied me very happily and renewed in my mind my knowledge of religious matters, and it warmed my heart. At the same time I began to feel a certain relief in my attack of illness. Since the book of the Gospels was continually with me, such was my faith in it as the result of the miracle; and as I remembered also that the whole discourse upon prayer which I had heard in lectures was based upon the gospel text, I considered that the best thing would be to make a study of prayer and Christian devotion solely upon the teaching of the gospel. Working out its meaning, I drew upon it as from an abundant spring, and found a complete system of the life of salvation and of true interior prayer. I reverently marked all the passages on this subject, and from that time I have been trying zealously to learn this divine teaching, and with all my might, though not without difficulty, to put it into practice. While I was occupied in this way, my health gradually improved, and in the end, as you see, I recovered completely. As I was still living alone I decided in thankfulness to God for His fatherly kindness, which had given me recovery of health and enlightenment of mind, to follow the example of my sister and the prompting of my 113 own heart, and to dedicate myself to the solitary life, so that unhindered I might receive and make my own those sweet words of eternal life given me in the Word of God. So here I am at the present time, stealing off to the solitary skeet in the Solovetsky monastery in the White Sea, which is called Anzersky, about which I have heard on good authority that it is a most suitable place for the contemplative life. Further, I will tell you this. The holy gospel gives me much consolation in this journey of mine, and sheds abundant light upon my untutored mind, and warms my chilly heart. Yet the fact is that in spite of all I frankly acknowledge my weakness, and I freely admit that the conditions of fulfilling the work of devotion and attaining salvation, the requirement of thoroughgoing self-denial, of extraordinary spiritual achievements, and of most profound humility which the gospel enjoins, frighten me by their very magnitude and in view of the weak and damaged state of my heart. So that I stand now between despair and hope. I don't know what will happen to me in the future. The Skhimnik. With such an evident token of a special and miraculous mercy of God, and in view of your education, it would be unpardonable not only to give way to depression, but even to admit into your soul a shadow of doubt about God's protection and help. Do you know what the God-enlightened Chrysostom says about this? "No one should be depressed," he teaches, "and give the false impression that the precepts of the gospel are impossible or impracticable. God who has predestined the salvation of man has, of course, not laid commandments upon him with the intention of making him an offender because of their impracticability. No, but so that by their holiness and the necessity of them for a virtuous life they may be a blessing to us, as in this life so in eternity." Of course the regular unswerving fulfillment of God's commandments is extraordinarily difficult for our fallen nature and, therefore, salvation is not easily attained, but that same Word of God which lays down the commandments offers also the means not only for their ready fulfillment, but also comfort in the fulfilling of them. If this is hidden at first sight behind a veil of mystery, then that, of course, is in order to make us betake ourselves the more to humility, and to bring us more easily into union with God by indicating direct recourse to Him in 114: prayer and petition for His fatherly help. It is there that the secret of salvation lies, and not in reliance upon one's own efforts. The Pilgrim. How I should like, weak and feeble as I am, to get to know that secret, so that I might to some extent, at least, put my slothful life right, for the glory of God and my own salvation. The Skhimnik. The secret is known to you, dear brother, from your book The Philokalia. It lies in that unceasing prayer of which you have made so resolute a study and in which you have so zealously occupied yourself and found comfort. The Pilgrim. I fall at your feet, reverend Father. For the love of God let me hear something for my good from your lips about this saving mystery and about holy prayer, which I long to hear about more than anything else, and about which I love reading to get strength and comfort for my very sinful soul. The Skhimnik. I cannot satisfy your wish with my own thoughts on this exalted subject, because I have had but very little experience of it myself. But I have some very clearly written notes by a spiritual writer precisely on this subject. If the rest of those who are talking with us would like it, I will get it at once and with your permission I can read it to you all. All. Do be so kind, reverend Father. Do not keep such saving knowledge from us. The Skhimnik.The Secret of Salvation, Revealed by Unceasing Prayer. How is one saved? This godly question naturally arises in the mind of every Christian who realizes the injured and enfeebled nature of man, and what is left of its original urge toward truth and righteousness. Everyone who has even some degree of faith in immortality and recompense in the life to come is involuntarily faced by the thought, "How am I to be saved?" when he turns his eyes toward heaven. When he tries to find a.solution to this problem, he inquires of the wise and learned. Then under their guidance he reads edifying books by spiritual writers on this subject, and sets himself unswervingly to follow out the truths and the rules he has heard and read. In all these instructions he finds constantly put before him as necessary conditions of salvation a devout life and heroic struggles with himself which are to issue in decisive denial of self. This is to lead him on to the performance of good works, to the constant fulfillment of God's laws, and thus witness to the unshakableness and firmness of his 115: faith. Further, they preach to him that all these conditions of salvation must necessarily be fulfilled with the deepest humility and in combination with one another. For as all good works depend one upon another, so they should support one another, complete and encourage one another, just as the rays of the sun only reveal their strength and kindle a flame when they are focused through a glass on to one point. Otherwise, "He that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." In addition to this, to implant in him the strongest conviction of the necessity of this complex and unified virtue, he hears the highest praise bestowed upon the beauty of virtue, he listens to censure of the baseness and misery of vice. All this is imprinted upon his mind by truthful promises either of majestic rewards and happiness or of tormenting punishment and misery in the life to come. Such is the special character of preaching in modern times. Guided in this way, one who ardently wishes for salvation sets off in all joy to carry out what he has learned and to apply to experience all he has heard and read. But alas! even at the first step he finds it impossible to achieve his purpose. He foresees and even finds out by trial that his damaged and enfeebled nature will have the upper hand of the convictions of his mind, that his free will is bound, that his propensities are perverted, that his spiritual strength is but weakness. He naturally goes on to the thought: Is there not to be found some kind of means which will enable him to fulfill that which the law of God requires of him, which Christian devotion demands, and which all those who have found salvation and holiness have carried out? As the result of this and in order to reconcile in himself the demands of reason and conscience with the inadequacy of his strength to fulfill them, he applies once more to the preachers of salvation with the question: How am I to be saved? How is this inability to carry out the conditions of salvation to be justified; and are those who have preached all this that he has learned themselves strong enough to carry it out unswervingly? Ask God. Pray to God. Pray for His help. "So would it not have been more fruitful," the inquirer concludes, "if I had, to begin with and always in every circumstance, made a study of prayer as the power to fulfill all that Christian devotion demands and by which salvation is attained?" And so he goes on to the study of prayer: he reads, he meditates, he studies the teaching of 116: those who have written on that subject. Truly he finds in them many luminous thoughts, much deep knowledge, and words of great power. One reasons beautifully about the necessity of prayer; another writes of its power, its beneficial effect—of prayer as a duty, or of the fact that it calls for zeal, attention, warmth of heart, purity of mind, reconciliation with one's enemies, humility, contrition, and the rest of the necessary conditions of prayer. But what is prayer in itself? How does one actually pray? A precise answer which can be understood by everybody to these questions, primary and most urgent as they are, is very rarely to be found, and so the ardent inquirer about prayer is again left before a veil of mystery. As a result of his general reading there is rooted in his memory an aspect of prayer which, although devout, is only external, and he arrives at the conclusion that prayer is going to church, crossing oneself, bowing, kneeling, and reading psalms, kanons, and acathists.29 Generally speaking, this is the view of prayer taken by those who do not know the writings of the holy Fathers about inward prayer and contemplative action. At length, the seeker comes across the book called Philokalia, in which twenty-five holy Fathers set forth in an understandable way the scientific knowledge of the truth and of the essence of prayer of the heart. This begins to draw aside the veil from before the secret of salvation and of prayer. He sees that truly to pray means to direct the thought and the memory, without relaxing, to the recollection of God, to walk in His divine presence, to awaken oneself to His love by thinking about Him, and to link the name of God with one's breathing and the beating of one's heart. He is guided in all this by the invocation with the lips of the most holy name of Jesus Christ, or by saying the Jesus prayer at all times and in all places and during every occupation, unceasingly. These luminous truths, by enlightening the mind of the seeker and by opening up before him the way to the study and achievement of prayer, help him to go on at once to put these wise teachings into practice. Nevertheless, when he makes his attempts he is still not free from difficulty until an experienced teacher shows him (from the same book) the whole truth—that is to say, that it is prayer which is incessant which is the only effective means for perfecting interior prayer and for the saving of the soul. It is frequency of prayer that is the basis, that holds together the whole system of saving activity. As Simeon the new theologian says, "He who prays without ceasing unites 117: all good in this one thing." So in order to set forth the truth of this revelation in all its fullness, the teacher develops it in the following way: For the salvation of the soul, first of all true faith is necessary. Holy Scripture says, "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb. 6:6). He who has not faith will be judged. But from the same holy Scriptures one can see that man cannot himself bring to birth in him faith even as a grain of mustard seed; that faith does not come from us, since it is the gift of God; that faith is a spiritual gift. It is given by the Holy Spirit. That being so, what is to be done? How is one to reconcile man's need of faith with the impossibility of producing it from the human side? The way to do this is revealed in the same holy Scriptures: "Ask, and it shall be given you." The Apostles could not of themselves arouse the perfection of faith within them, but they prayed to Jesus Christ, "Lord, increase our faith." There you have an example of obtaining faith. It shows that faith is attained by prayer. For the salvation of the soul, besides true faith, good works are also required, for "Faith, if it hath not works, is dead." For man is judged by his works and not by faith alone. "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments: Do not kill; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness; honor thy father and mother; love thy neighbor as thyself." And all these commandments are required to be kept together. "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" Games 2:10). So the Apostle James teaches. And the Apostle Paul, describing human weakness, says: "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified" (Rom. 3:20). "For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin... . For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.... But the evil which I would not, that I do. . . . With the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin" (Rom. 7). How are the required works of the law of God to be fulfilled when man is without strength and has no power to keep the commandments? He has no possibility of doing this until he asks for it, until he prays about it. "Ye have not because ye ask not" (James 4:2) the Apostle says is the cause. And Jesus Christ Himself says: "Without Me ye can do nothing." And on the subject of doing it with Him, He gives this teaching: "Abide in Me and I in you. He that abideth in Me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." But to be in Him means continually to feel His presence, continually to pray in His name. "If ye shall ask Me anything in My 118: name, that will I do." Thus the possibility of doing good works is reached by prayer itself. An example of this is seen in the Apostle Paul himself: Three times he prayed for victory over temptation, bowing the knee before God the Father, that He would give him strength in the inner man, and was at last bidden above all things to pray, and to pray continually about everything. From what has been said above, it follows that the whole salvation of man depends upon prayer and, therefore, it is primary and necessary, for by it faith is quickened and through it all good works are performed. In a word, with prayer everything goes forward successfully; without it, no act of Christian piety can be done. Thus, the condition that it should be offered unceasingly and always belongs exclusively to prayer. For the other Christian virtues, each of them has its own time. But in the case of prayer, uninterrupted, continuous action is commanded. Pray without ceasing. It is right and fitting to pray always, to pray everywhere. True prayer has its conditions. It should be offered with a pure mind and heart, with burning zeal, with close attention, with fear and reverence, and with the deepest humility. But what conscientious person would not admit that he is far from fulfilling those conditions, that he offers his prayer more from necessity, more by constraint upon himself than by inclination, enjoyment, and love of it? About this, too, holy Scripture says that it is not in the power of man to keep his mind steadfast, to cleanse it from unseemly thoughts, for the "thoughts of man are evil from his youth," and that God alone gives us another heart and a new spirit, for "both to will and to do are of God." The Apostle Paul himself says: "My spirit [that is, my voice] prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful" (1 Cor. 14:14). "We know not what we should pray for as we ought" (Rom. 8:26), the same writer asserts. From this it follows that we in ourselves are unable to offer true prayer. We cannot in our prayers display its essential properties. Such being the powerlessness of every human being, what remains possible for the salvation of the soul from the side of human will and strength? Man cannot acquire faith without prayer; the same applies to good works. And finally, even to pray purely is not within his power. What, then, is left for him to do? What scope remains for the exercise of his freedom and his strength, so that he may not perish but be saved? 119 Every action has its quality, and this quality God has reserved to His own will and gift. In order that the dependence of man upon God, the will of God, may be shown the more clearly, and that he may be plunged more deeply into humility, God has assigned to the will and strength of man only the quantity of prayer. He has commanded unceasing prayer, always to pray, at all times and in every place. By this the secret method of achieving true prayer, and at the same time faith, and the fulfillment of God's commandments, and salvation, are revealed. Thus, it is quantity which is assigned to man, as his share; frequency of prayer is his own, and within the «province of his will. This is exactly what the Fathers of the church teach. St. Macarius the Great says truly to pray is the gift of grace. Isikhi says that frequency

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The way of the Pilgrim and The pilgrim continues his Way - Part 6

Desert Fathers

Desert Fathers (251 AD - 500)

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