It's my second reading of this book. I like it, not only for the strange (to my tradition) Orthodox prayer tradition, but by the captivating way it's exposed through Russian peasant stories.
Quotes:
By the grace of God I am a Christian, by my actions a great sinner, and by calling a homeless wanderer of the humblest birth who roams from place to place. My worldly goods are a knapsack with some dried bread in it on my back, and in my breast pocket a Bible. And that is all.
He was silent for a while and looked at me closely. Then he said, “Ceaseless interior prayer is a continual yearning of the human spirit towards God. To succeed in this consoling exercise, we must pray more often to God to teach us to pray without ceasing. Pray more, and pray more fervently. It is prayer itself which will reveal to you how it can be achieved unceasingly; but it will take some time.” So saying, he had food brought to me, gave me money for my journey and let me go. He did not explain the matter.
“The continuous interior Prayer of Jesus is a constant uninterrupted calling upon the divine Name of Jesus with the lips, in the spirit, in the heart while forming a mental picture of his constant presence and imploring his grace during every occupation, at all times, in all places, even during sleep. The appeal is couched in these terms, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.’
“Now I give you my permission to say your Prayer as often as you wish and as often as you can. Try to devote every moment you are awake to the Prayer, call on the Name of Jesus Christ without counting the number of times, and submit yourself humbly to the will of God, looking to him for help. I am sure
I gave up saying the Prayer with my lips. I simply listened carefully to what my heart was saying.
“If you do not understand the Word of God, the devils understand what you are reading and tremble,”
“The holy book is full of profound wisdom,” he was saying. “It is a secret treasury of the meaning of the hidden judgments of God. It is not everywhere and to everyone that it is accessible, but it does give to each such guidance as they need, to the wise, wise guidance, to the simple-minded, simple guidance.
Lord! what mysterious things humans are!
“Everyone has their own gift from God,” I answered. “There have been many preachers, Father, but there have also been many hermits.
a secret prayer lies hidden within the human heart. The individuals themselves do not know it, yet working mysteriously within their souls it urges them to prayer according to each one’s knowledge and power.
The Apostle says, “Pray without ceasing.” That is, he teaches us to have the remembrance of God in all times and places and circumstances. If you are making something you must call to mind the Creator of all things, if you see the light, remember the Giver of it, if you see the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, wonder and praise the Maker of them. If you put on your clothes, recall whose gift they are and thank the one who provides for your life. In short, let every action be a cause of your remembering and praising God, and lo! you will be praying without ceasing and therein your soul will always rejoice.’
“The trouble is that we live far from ourselves and have but little wish to get any nearer to ourselves. Indeed we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves and we barter the truth for trifles.
“The one who has attained to true prayer and love has no sense of the differences between things: they do not distinguish the righteous person from the sinner but love them all equally and judge nobody, as God causes the sun to shine and the rains to fall on the just and the unjust.”
“You have no right, friend,” said the starets, “to abuse and curse the Jews like this. God made them just as God made us. You should be sorry for them and pray for them not curse them. Believe me, the disgust you feel for them comes from the fact that you are not grounded in the love of God and have no interior prayer as a security and, therefore, no inward peace.
“Why, of course I know that Prayer. I used to say it sometimes to keep my courage up when I was going to do a robbery.”
Everything seems particularly desirable to us from a distance. But we all find out by experience that every place, though it may have its advantages, has its drawbacks too.
Therefore, when one happens to remember one's neighbor, or at the time appointed for doing so, it is well to bring a mental view of the neighbor into the Presence of God, and to offer a prayer in the following form: “Most merciful God, Thy will be done, which will have all persons to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth, save and help thy servant N. Take this desire of mine as a cry of love which thou has commanded.”
No comments:
Post a Comment