Metropolitan Anthony (of Sourozh)

Before I begin talking with those who are now setting out on the way of prayer, I want us to agree very clearly on one point: our aim is not at all to explain or expound academically why it is necessary to learn to pray. In these talks I want to show what someone who wants to pray should know, or what he should do. Since I myself am a beginner, I will assume that you are beginners too. So let us try to begin together. I am not speaking for those who strive for mystical prayer or the highest degree of perfection. For them “prayer will find its own way” (St Theophan the Recluse).

When God Himself knocks at our door, or when some special occasion makes us turn to Him ourselves, when everyday life opens up before us with a depth we could not imagine before — one we had not noticed — when we discover in ourselves a depth in which prayer lives, then there is no longer a problem. When we sense God, we stand before Him face to face, we worship Him, we speak with Him. So one of the most important problems to start from is a person's attitude when it seems to him that God is not there. That is what I want to dwell on now. We are not talking here about God's objective absence — in reality it is impossible for God not to be — but about the feeling of His absence that arises in us; we stand before God and cry out into an empty sky from which we get no answer. We turn in every direction, and God is nowhere. What are we to do about this? First of all, it is important to remember that prayer is a meeting. It is a deep relationship, which cannot be forced either on oneself or on God. The very fact that God can let us feel His presence clearly, or leave us with a sense of His absence, is already part of this real, living relationship. If it were possible to summon God mechanically to meet us, to force Him to meet us simply because this was the time we had fixed for meeting Him, then there would be neither a meeting nor a relationship. In that way you can meet a fiction, a product of the imagination, the various idols you can set up before yourself in place of God. But you cannot do the same in communion or a relationship with the living God. Just as it is impossible in dealing with living people. A relationship can begin and develop only on the basis of free will on both sides.

If we are fair and look on this relationship as a mutual one, it becomes clear that God has far more grounds to grieve over us than we have to complain of Him. We complain that He does not make His presence known to us in the few minutes we set aside for Him in the whole day; but what shall we say about the other twenty-three and a half hours, when, who knows how many times, God knocks at our door and we answer: “Sorry, I'm busy!” — or do not answer at all, because we do not even hear Him knocking at the door of our heart, our mind, our consciousness or conscience, of our life as a whole. So: we have no right to complain of God that He is not there, because far more often it is we who are not there.

The second important point is that meeting God face to face is always a judgement for us. A meeting with God, whether in prayer, in the knowledge of God or in contemplation, ends either in our justification or in our condemnation. By this I do not mean that at that moment the sentence of our eternal punishment or final salvation is passed; but a meeting with God is always a critical time, a crisis. “Crisis” is a Greek word and means “judgement.” Meeting God face to face in prayer is a critical moment, and thank God that He does not always show Himself to us when we try irresponsibly and carelessly to bring about a meeting with Him. For we might not have the strength for such a meeting. Remember how many times Holy Scripture warns us that it is dangerous to be face to face with the Lord, because God is power, is truth, is holiness; and so, when we have no hope, when we do not tangibly experience God's presence, our first movement should be thankfulness. God is merciful… He will not come to us before the time. He gives us the chance to look at ourselves, to study ourselves; and let us not try to meet God at a time when the meeting would bring us condemnation and punishment.

Let us take an example: many years ago a man came to me and asked: “Show me God!” I answered that I could not do this, and added that even if I could, he would not see God anyway. Because I thought then, and think now, that in order to meet God and see Him we must have something in common with Him, something that gives us eyes — to see, the power of perception — to grasp and to sense. Then this man asked me why I thought this of him. I suggested that he think and tell me which episode of the Gospel touched his heart most, so that in this way I might somehow grasp his relationship with God. He answered: “Yes, there is such a place: in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John, where it tells of the woman taken in adultery.” “Good,” I said, “it is one of the most beautiful and moving episodes; now sit down and think: who are you in this scene? Are you on the Lord's side, looking with mercy and faith at this woman who is able to repent and become a new person?! Or are you that woman who was caught in the sin of adultery?! Or perhaps one of those elders who went away one after another because they remembered their own sins?! Or perhaps one of those young ones who hesitated and were slow to leave?!” He thought and said to me: “No, I am the only one of those Jews who did not go away, and who began to throw stones at the woman.” Then I said to him: “Thank God that He does not let you meet Him now!”

This may even be an extreme case, but does it so rarely fit us?! We may not reject the Lord's example and word directly and crudely, but we often do behave like those soldiers at the Passion of Christ… We want to cover Christ's eyes, so that we can strike Him unhindered and He will not see us. Is this not what we do when we hide from God's presence and act wilfully — according to our moods and wishes, regardless of what God's will is! We try to put a blindfold over His eyes, but in fact we only blind our own. How then can we sense His presence at such moments? Probably through repentance and contrition of heart! But you cannot go to Him counting in advance on His receiving you at once with love — as a friend.

Remember various places in the Gospel: people of far greater soul than we did not dare to receive Christ. Remember the centurion who asked Christ to heal his servant. Christ said: “I will come,” but the centurion answered: “There is no need; speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” Do we act like this?! Do we turn to God with these words: “Do not make Your presence plain, perceptible to me; it is enough if You only say the word, and what is needed will be done; for now I need no more…” Or remember Peter in the boat after the great catch of fish: he fell on his knees and said: “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” He asked the Lord to leave his boat, because perhaps for the first time a sense of humility had taken hold of him. And the sense of humility came to him because he suddenly saw the greatness of Christ. Will this ever happen in us?! When we read the Gospel and the inexpressible beauty and majesty of Christ's image appears before us, when we pray and a sense of the majesty and holiness of God takes hold of us, do we ever say: “I am not worthy that You should come to me?!” Or what shall we say about the case when we ought to understand that He cannot come to us because we ourselves are not there to receive Him; we want to receive something from Him, and not Him Himself. Can this really be called a relationship?! Is this how friends are treated?! Do we seek what friendship gives, or do we love the friend himself?!. And what quality of faithfulness is this in our relationship with the Lord?

Now let us think about prayer — your prayer and mine; let us recall how strong, fervent and deep prayer is when you pray for someone you love, or for something that matters to you. The heart is open, our whole being is concentrated and gathered in prayer. Does this mean that the whole meaning of the prayer, all its power, is directed towards meeting God?! No!.. It only means that the one you are praying for matters to you. Because when, after such intense, fervent and deep prayer for a loved one or for an event that matters to us, we pass on to another subject that does not touch us so much, we somehow grow cold… What has changed?.. Has God grown cold and gone away from us?! No… It means that our uplift and fervour in prayer were not called forth by God's presence. Not by my faith, not by my longing for God — not by tenderness towards Him, but only because my heart aches for someone or something, but not for God. So why are we surprised that we do not sense God's presence?!. It is not He, but we ourselves who are absent at the time of the “meeting.” It is not He, but our heart that has grown cold, because He means so little to us.

Sometimes God is absent for another reason. When we are natural, when we are simply ourselves, God can take part in the meeting and can do something for us. But as soon as we try to be something other than what we really are, then nothing can be said to us and nothing can be done for us.

In order to be able to pray, we must enter into a relationship that is defined as the Kingdom of God. We must realise, we must remember, that He is God, that He is King, and give ourselves up to Him. We are bound at least always to remember His will, even if for now we cannot carry it out. Otherwise, if we treat God as the rich young man did, who could not follow Christ because he was too rich — how then shall we be able to meet Him?!. How often it happens that through prayer and the deep relationship with God that we long for, we are simply looking for a little joy for ourselves; we cannot sell everything in order to buy the pearl of great price. But how else shall we acquire this pearl?! Are we looking for it?.. Something similar happens in human relationships too: when a woman or a man falls in love with someone, other people no longer matter so much; this state is expressed in an old saying: “When a young man has a bride, he is surrounded not by women and men, but by people.”

Could not the same thing happen, and should not the same thing really happen, to all our wealth when we turn to God?!. Should not this wealth become a kind of pale, grey background against which the one most important Person will stand out in full relief?! We would probably like, for the completeness of the picture of our life, to add to it with one stroke of the brush the azure of heaven, because there are too many dark sides in it. God is ready to enter our life; He is ready to take it upon Himself with all its weight — as a cross. But He is not ready to be merely one — ordinary — event in our life.

So, when we have come to the conclusion that God is not there, should we not put the question to ourselves — whom are we blaming for this? We always blame God. Sometimes we blame Him directly, sometimes we complain to others that He is not there, that He is never there when we need Him, that He does not answer when we turn to Him. And sometimes we are more “pious” — in inverted commas, precisely! — and say: “God is testing my patience, my faith, my humility…” And we find a great many ways of turning God's justice to the side we prefer: “I am so patient that I even put up with God Himself!” Is this not so?!

I remember, when I was a young priest, after a sermon in church a girl came up to me and said: “Father Anthony, you must be a very bad person.” I answered: “Alas, that is really so; but how did you guess?” She explained: “You described our sins so well that you must have committed all of them yourself.” Of course, the evil thoughts and evil inner states I intend to speak about here are undoubtedly my own; but it may turn out that, at least to some extent, they are yours too.

If we want to pray, first of all we must be convinced that we are sinners. That we need salvation, that we are separated from God, that we cannot live without Him. And the only thing we can offer Him is our heartbreaking, sorrowful desire to become such that God would accept us — accept us with our repentance, accept us with mercy and love. And here is prayer — even at its very first stage. It is our effort to set out towards God. The moment of turning to God, when we do not dare come near, because we know that if we meet Him before the time, before we are ready to meet His grace, the meeting will be to our condemnation. All we can do is to turn to Him — with reverence, with as humble a bending of the knee and worship as we are capable of, with all our attention and seriousness — and ask Him to do something for us, to give us the strength to meet Him face to face: not for judgement, nor for condemnation, but for eternal life.

Here I wanted to recall the parable of the publican and the Pharisee. The publican comes into the temple and stands at the back, by the entrance. He knows he is standing to be judged. He knows that by the categories of justice he has nothing to hope for, because he has no share in the Kingdom of heaven; he does not belong to the kingdom of right and justice, or of love. But from the ugly, cruel existence of violence that his life has been, he has learned something — the very thing of which the righteous Pharisee has not the slightest idea. He has learned that in life there are confrontations, predatory relationships, cruelty and heartlessness, and that the only thing one can hope for is a sudden breaking-in of mercy, a breaking-in of compassion — sudden and unimaginable… which flows neither from duty nor from everyday relationships, and which, within those everyday relationships, would suspend the rule of cruelty, heartlessness and violence. The publican, who had been an extortioner, a usurer and a predator, knew from personal experience that there are moments when, in spite of his own outlook — simply because his heart has been moved and become sensitive — he will not send someone to prison, just because the person's face reminded him of something, or his voice reached his heart. There is no logic in this. It belongs neither to his way of thinking nor to his behaviour. Here, against and contrary to everything, something breaks in that he cannot resist; and probably he knows too that he himself has often been saved from disaster by this sudden breaking-in of mercy, compassion and forgiveness. And so he stands at the entrance to the church, knowing that inside the church is the realm of divine truth and love. A realm to which he does not belong and into which he cannot enter. But he knows from experience that the unbelievable can happen, and so he says: “Have mercy! I have broken the laws of justice, I have broken the laws of religion… Come down in mercy to us — to those who have no right to ask forgiveness and entry into this realm.” And I think that this is precisely the starting point from which we must begin again and again — endlessly.

You will surely remember an episode with the apostle Paul, when Christ says to him: “My strength is made perfect in weakness…” This weakness is not the feebleness we discover in ourselves when we sin and forget God. It is a weakness that means suppleness, complete transparency, complete surrender of oneself into God's hands. Usually we try “with all our might” and so prevent God from showing His strength.

When a child is just learning to write and does not know what will come of it, his hand is completely timid and wholly surrendered to his mother's hand; but as soon as he “realises” that he has understood and tries to help her, all the lines go crooked: this is what I mean when I say that God's strength is shown in weakness. Or take a sail: the wind can fill it so that it carries the whole ship along… — only because the sail is supple; if we put a broken board in place of the sail, nothing will come of it. An iron gauntlet (glove) is strong, but how little we can do with it… A surgeon's glove is far more sensitive, far more delicate; no force is needed to pull it on, but thanks to it the doctor's skilled hand works miracles… And here is one of the things the Lord is constantly trying to teach: in place of our anarchic, imaginary and powerless “strength” — this delicacy, suppleness, complete surrender of oneself into God's hands.

I will give you an example. Twenty-five years ago a friend of mine, who had two children, was killed during the liberation of Paris. His children did not like me; they were jealous that their father had such a close friend; but when their father died, they became attached to me, because I had been their father's friend… And one day his daughter, a girl of fifteen, came to see me in my consulting room (before I became a clergyman I was a doctor) and saw that next to the medical instruments on my desk lay the Gospel. With all the self-assurance of youth she said to me: “I don't understand how an apparently educated man can believe such nonsense.” Then I asked: “Have you read it?” “No,” she answered. “Then remember: only very foolish people pass judgement on what they do not know.” Afterwards she read the Gospel, and it so captured her heart that her whole life changed, because she began to pray, God revealed Himself to her, and for some time she lived by this. Then she fell ill with an incurable disease, and when I was already a pastor and living in England, she wrote me a letter. She said: “Since my body began to weaken and die, my soul is more alive than ever, and I experience God's presence so easily and with such joy…” I wrote back to her: “Do not expect this state to last; when your strength gradually fails you, when you no longer have strength of your own to strive towards God, then it will seem to you that reaching God is impossible.” Some time later she wrote to me again: “Yes, you were right; I am now so weak that I have no strength left to strive towards God, or even to long for Him, and it is as if God were not there…” Then I advised her to try to act differently: to learn humility — in the real, deep sense of the word.

In Latin the word humilitas — humility — comes from the word humus, “fertile earth”; and humility does not consist in what we constantly do… thinking and saying bad things about ourselves and assuring others that our unseemly manners are precisely humility. Humility is the state of fertile earth; the earth is always beneath our feet. It is taken for granted, it is forgotten; we walk on it and never remember it. It is open to everything; we throw rubbish on it, everything we do not need; it is untroubled and receives everything; even dung and refuse it receives creatively and turns into living and life-giving wealth. It gives new life even to a rotting corpse. It opens itself to the seed, it opens itself to the rain, and as a result it brings forth fruit tenfold and a hundredfold.

And I advised this woman: “Learn to be like this before God too: giving everything, resisting no one, and receiving from God and from people alike whatever they give you.” And indeed she had to endure a great deal from people. In the sixth month of her illness her husband grew tired of looking after a sick wife and left her. She went through the greatest rejection, but God too poured out His light on her abundantly and sent her a cooling dew. Later she wrote to me: “I have become completely helpless and no longer have any strength to strive towards God, but now God Himself comes to me.” This story here is not merely an illustration; it underlines the main idea: this is precisely the weakness in which God reveals Himself. This is the situation in which God's absence turns into His presence. We cannot take possession of God by force; but if, like the publican or this woman, we stand at the boundary of what is right, yet within the bounds where mercy reigns, we can meet God. Now try to think through the “absence” of God, and realise with your whole being that before you knock at the door, you need to understand that we are not inside. If in our folly we imagine that we are already in the Kingdom of God, then where are we to knock? All that remains is to look around to see the angels, the saints and the dwelling prepared for us. And then, when we see nothing but darkness and walls, we may well be seized by an entirely justified surprise at how uninteresting paradise has turned out to be… We must be able to feel that we are not yet in paradise, not yet in the Kingdom of God. And then we shall ask ourselves: where is the door, and how are we to knock on it?

To be continued…