St. Gregory of Shlisselburg It’s natural for a living Christian soul to aspire to God. The aspiration for God finds its expression first of all in prayer to God. 
On PrayerWhat should someone do who doesn’t know any prayers, but desires to pray, to save his soul?
“>Prayer is an appeal to God, a conversation with God. Therefore, it’s natural for a seeker to turn to what he seeks, for one who loves to surrender to the one he loves.
But it’s very hard to pray well. What does this mean? You would think that when the soul aspires to God, prayer should flow out of it freely, without any strain, as a natural expression of this aspiration; prayer should be happiness for a man, as natural as it is for a man to turn to his beloved in earthly relationships, and as natural and easy as it is for one who loves. Obviously, if prayer to God has become an unbearable task for a man, this is the result of not having such an aspiration for God or being captured by love, as we see in the earthly relationships of men, when addressing the object of our affection is no labor at all, but happiness and satisfaction.
This is why prayer is laborious. We’re not seized by love, because our soul can’t gather its strength; it’s sick and enfeebled.
What should we do? Wait for love to come, for it to capture us, for the soul to gather its strength? You might think so, but no! If the body’s in pain and disordered, then we treat it to regain its strength. But we tend to think there’s no need for medicine for the soul. For the soul, the one who gives it strength and heals its infirmity is God. The scattered state of the soul, that it’s not seized by love, and the difficulty of prayer must be treated with the same appeal to the Giver of its healing, that is, by the same prayer. That means we mustn’t wait for prayer to come. This is where the art of prayer comes into its own. What a great art it is! Men have dedicated their lives to it. The deepest experiential insights are passed down in order to teach it. And they’re preserved by the Church in the treasury of ascetic works.
One of the greatest enemies of good prayer is Distracting us from the DepthsMan is a creature of great depth, created by God, but after the Fall we are easily distracted from the depths, being enamored with mere surface appearances. What in our world today serves to distract us from the depths, and what can we do about it?
“>distraction, when the human mind, fleeting as a winged horse, doesn’t concentrate on the words of prayer but flitters around from one thought to another. Or it happens that besides the words of prayer, the mind relentlessly pursues some obsessive idea and there’s no escape from it. Or it happens that the words of our prayer barely penetrate into our consciousness, remaining on the periphery of thought and failing to capture the soul; they’re read like a mandatory assignment, and prayer becomes almost mechanical.
How can we struggle against this?
The means of battling the thoughts during prayer fall into two groups. The first includes a list of general conditions that ensure concentration and stability of thought in prayer, which in itself will guarantee a firm order of thoughts and will contribute to the successful fight against unwanted thoughts that have penetrated our consciousness. The second group includes a list of tools that conditionally ensure stability of thought, indicating how to correct our consciousness if the enemy has already broken in and scattered our prayerful thought.
The first condition for well-ordered thoughts and a successful struggle against the turmoil of thoughts is the firmness of one’s Christian ideology.
Of course, Christian ideology is assumed for a Christian, and a believer needs it at every step of his life, especially in good prayer. It’s needed in order to enter more deeply into the words of prayer, to quickly perceive them as your own, as having a connection with everything of yourself. With deep understanding, we’re naturally captured by prayer, at least intellectually, as the consciousness is given food that’s familiar and vital to it, which it cherishes and toward which it’s naturally drawn.
That’s why we’re talking about a firm ideology; that is, a believer must clearly have a complete Christian worldview and have the same clarity about why he personally accepted this worldview and acts according to it, never taking a single step away from it.
The second condition for good prayer is to translate this ideology into life—to cultivate a Christian disposition, Christian habits, the rejection of anything enfeebling; that is, the creation of a Christian life.
Again, it goes without saying that every living Christian should have the desire for a Christian life. This connection between life and faith is felt nowhere more than in prayer. The deeper the divide between the adoption of Christian ideology and reality the more unstable our prayer, and conversely, the closer the connection between faith and life the more whole our prayer.
Fostering a Christian life on the foundation of Christian ideology is a lifelong endeavor, a Christian feat. It has its own ways and means for success. Growth in this labor immediately gives growth in prayer. Without it, there’s no foundation for prayer.
Now about the ways of maintaining stability of thought in the midst of prayer. There are several of them.
1. We must begin prayer with a completely calm spirit (in the everyday sense); that is, when the soul and mind aren’t disturbed, not distracted by some care or urgent matter, aren’t plunged into anger or another passion and aren’t captive to them. Therefore, it’s better for prayer if we appoint a certain hour of the day and a certain amount of time so as not to be tempted by the thought, “When will I have time to do this?” When every activity has its own appointed time, then the thought of everyday cares will have no basis on which to disturb a man at prayer. When the soul itself yearns for God during spiritual agitation, for example in sorrow or joy, then the very aspiration of the soul suggests the possibility and even desirability of prayer.
2. Standing in prayer, you needn’t burden your mind with the thought that you have to complete some specific prayer assignment, task, rule. If such a thought prevails, the enemy will tempt you with the thoughts, “Will I make it? I have to hurry… How much more?…” The enemy thereby brings confusion into our thoughts and superficial haste and distraction.
Given the business of everyday life, it’s better to think of our How Should We Build Our Prayer Rule?It is impossible to imagine a meaningful Christian life without a daily prayer rule. But what should this prayer rule be? How long or short, and consisting of which prayers? How can we prevent our daily prayer rule from becoming purely a formality? What should we pay particular attention to, and what mistakes should we avoid? And what is the most important thing in a prayer rule?
“>prayer rule in terms of a certain amount of time rather than the number of prayers being read. That is, you should do it like this: After careful reflection and consultation with your spiritual father, establish a daily rule for yourself to read during your evening prayer. Let’s assume that an attentive, unhurried fulfillment of this rule requires an hour, so you allocate this hour in your daily routine.
Try to begin prayer with the thought that you must weep before the Lord during prayer, and it doesn’t matter how many prayers you manage to read. If you don’t get tempted by the thought of, “Will I manage to read so many prayers?” then you’ll see that your prayer will be deeper, and you’ll be able to do everything, and even say your own prayers from yourself.
3. When your thoughts are scattered or you’re overwhelmed by some thought, when your consciousness poorly assimilates the words of prayer and it becomes mechanical, it’s good to strive for complete awareness by repeating the same phrase and thought of prayer, forcing the consciousness to be imbued with this thought. Moreover, we must repeat the same thought with focused attention on it until our entire consciousness enters into this thought, which brings the soul the satisfaction that it has mastered the mind, subdued it, and that it’s obedient in its hands.
When you achieve this by repeating a phrase, then you can continue reading your prayers. This happens more than once during prayer. We have to immediately stop our thoughts from leaping off somewhere, and forcing the consciousness through persistent repetition of one phrase, one thought, thereby forcing our thought to return to the correct path and then subjugate it again.
4. When there’s a prolonged, persistent assault by some thought, for example, when the thought of some deviation in your behavior, of an interest in someone or something, of all sorts of plans for the future persistently arises, you can give apparent satisfaction to the thoughts, as if yielding to them, but in reality you disarm them and strengthen yourself. Then you can interrupt your prayer and give your thoughts a go, as if entering into conversation with them. “Okay, and then what? And then?” And the thought will lead itself to self-destruction, because if the believer’s ideology is strong and his disposition is determined by the ascetic struggle of life, then of course the further the thought and what it’s suggesting as something new and enticing progresses, the more obvious the contradiction between what’s being suggested and the tested way of life that the Christian maintains.
Thus, the thought set free will lead itself into a dead end, revealing its inner falsehood, and thereby weaken itself. Then, both the forbidden nature of the thought (it’s been satisfied) and its allure will disappear. All that will remain of the thought is its falsehood, promising the moon and stars but destructive in its essence. We as if gave in to the enemy, but with the “cunning” purpose of exposing his “resources” and putting him to shame, while strengthening ourselves even more in what is eternal and unshakable for us.
5. For mental discipline during prayer, it’s good to use the method that, in your experience, provides the greatest concentration and elevates your prayer; that is, if you can better concentrate when you have the text of the prayers before your eyes, then always pray with a prayerbook. If you pray better when there’s nothing to distract you, not even your faculty of sight, then close yourself up in your mind and only use the book occasionally to recall the words of the prayers (especially when the prayers are familiar).
6. In order to instill concentration in prayer, it’s also worth following this order: If you begin to sense warmth of heart during prayer, the soul’s longing for God, then you should focus on those words of prayer that have especially touched and captured your soul and add your own words of prayer to them; when the burning of the soul is satisfied, continue with the written words of prayer. However, here you should be guided by this consideration: If you’re following a prescribed prayer, then when you switch to a prayer from yourself, you mustn’t jump to other subjects. Thus, avoid disorder in your prayer, but rather deepen with the sighs of your soul the thought that the prayer has evoked in you.
It’s another matter when after completing the prescribed prayer the soul has become inflamed and asks for its own prayer. Then you must give it complete freedom to pray with such signs as God places on your heart. Heartfelt prayer, not from a book, but from yourself, must always be satisfied, not constrained by either subjects or time, because this is a prayer of complete concentration, when the Lord is invisibly felt. The soul then as if stands before Him and gives itself to Him without distraction.
These are the ways, with God’s help, by which you can direct yourself in prayer and battle both with scattered thoughts and an obsessive thought. However, we must always remember that we mustn’t look at these means as medical remedies, which will inevitably bring the desired result even when applied mechanically.
It should be clarified that prayer is always an ascetic struggle, accomplished with great difficulty and only with God’s help.
It’s our duty to pray humbly, to pray with all possible spiritual skill, without weakening or being troubled by the fact that, with our human infirmity, our prayer will always be insufficient and inconsistent.
There are days when the Lord, seeing our sincere labor, gives us great consolation in prayer, when the soul overflows and takes to flight, leaving the body and earth behind. And there are days when the infirmity of Adam asserts itself… Sometimes there’s spiritual fatigue, sometimes physical illness and fatigue, and then the mind is fettered and can’t enter deeply into prayer and our sighs are lifeless and our words sluggish. But we must never grieve or lose heart! We must still persistently offer prayer to the Lord, trusting that with God, no word raised in faith will fail.
Amen.
