Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

The Church is the place of meeting, of the union of man with God, and at the same time of the miracle of this union. In this connection it would be right to say that in the life of the believer, and in the Church in general, there are three moments that are absolutely necessary. The first is, of course, God's action, which unites us with Him. Here I have in mind not the Incarnation, but the sacrament — those actions of God which He performs on us, but not without us, because on our side this requires our openness, faith and thirst to meet Him. On the other hand, grace is given us by God, but we must struggle so that this grace becomes for us not only something acquired, but so that we are permeated by it to the depths of the heart. And if we want to be members of the Church, disciples of Christ, then the question of faithfulness arises here too. And faithfulness is a constant ascetic effort, a constant struggle with oneself, with one's own sins, with the evil we meet in life. And finally, on the ground of this struggle, by the grace of God, a quite different meeting takes place mysteriously — constant, ever deepening — which is born in prayer. It is about this prayer that I want to say a little to you.

We often think about the outward or formal side of prayer. People who come to confession often complain that they do not properly carry out the prayers laid upon them. But prayer does not consist only in this. The basic essence of prayer is striving towards God, meeting Him face to face. In the end, prayer is standing before God, which begins with words and then grows, deepens into contemplative silence.

I have read about an ascetic who was a priest in a small church in France. One day he came into the church and saw an old man sitting silently and looking straight ahead. The priest asked him:

— Grandad, what do you do here for hours? You don't move your lips, you don't hold a prayer rope in your hands. What are you doing here?

The old man looked at him and answered calmly:

— I look at the icon. It looks at me, and we are so happy.

This was a true meeting in the depths of contemplative silence.

I remember another, less well-known person, my spiritual father — Father Athanasy Nechaev. Before his death he wrote to me that he had come to know the mystery of contemplative silence and could now die. Three days later he did indeed die.

Going deeper into prayer consists in a person's meeting with God face to face. I do not mean visual perception, but meeting Him in the most secret and mysterious depths of our soul. It is towards this that we must strive, and this that we must learn.

We must learn silence — that is the first thing. To stand or sit before God and learn silence. To still our memories and every thought, to calm every feeling. As an example of this I want to recall something from many years ago: I had only just become a priest and was sent to an old people's home. There I met an old lady of 101, who said to me after the Liturgy:

— Father Anthony, I would like you to advise me what to do. For so long now I have been saying the Jesus Prayer all the time, and I have never felt the Lord's presence beside me. Tell me, what should I do?

Then I gave her this ready-made answer:

— Find someone who has spiritual experience of prayer, and he will tell you everything.

She looked at me and said that in her long life she had met more than one such person, but had received no answer from them.

— Now I have seen you, — she said, — and I thought: “Probably this one doesn't know either, but perhaps by chance (forgive me for putting it that way) he'll blurt out something that will be of use to me.”

Then I thought:

“If that's so, then I am like ‘Balaam's ass,’ on which the prophet rode on business not pleasing to God,” and I concluded: “If the ass managed to speak, I will try to say something too.”

— When do you think God will manage to say anything to you, or let you feel His presence beside you, if you talk all the time?

— Then what should I do?

— This! In the morning, when you get up, tidy your room, light the lamp before the icon, and sit so that you can see the icons and the lamp, the open window (it was summer then) and the photographs of your dear ones arranged on the mantelpiece. Take your needles and knit in silence before God. Don't you dare say a single prayer. Sit quietly and knit.

She looked at me mistrustfully and went away. The next day I was to serve there again. I hoped the old lady would not be at the service, because I was afraid I would get it from her. But there she was. After the service she came up to me and said:

— Father Anthony, you know, it worked.

— What worked?

— I did as you told me. I sat down and kept quiet. It was quiet all around too, and then I heard the sound of the needles as they touched each other. This deepened the sense of silence around me still more. The more I took in this silence, the more I felt that it was not just quiet: at its very heart stood the Lord Himself. Then I felt that prayer with words is the same as prayer without words; and I felt that I was with the Lord. He was looking at me, and I at Him. And we were so happy, the two of us together!

Yes, now she knew that if she wanted to pray or to feel the presence of God, it would be enough for her to fall silent until she felt that through silence she had come out of the disorder of feelings that was in her, and then she could talk with God, because she stood before Him face to face.

This is a very important moment, and all of us must learn to do it. What I am saying is not my own invention. Theophan the Recluse writes about it in detail and clearly.

We cannot pray like this unceasingly all our lives; there are other moments too. For the most part we read prayers, and we cannot but read them, because with our little spiritual experience we are not able to remain constantly in such a contemplative state. We cannot reach it all at once; for that we need support. That is why we have been given the morning and evening prayers, the services, the akathists and so on. How are we to combine what we were speaking of above with all this? People often say to me:

— I read the morning and evening prayers, and I cannot do everything that is written there.

I always say to whoever says this:

— But why do you think you will be able to do all that? Look, each prayer has the name of some saint written over it: Basil the Great, Symeon the New Theologian, John Chrysostom and so on. Can you really, passing from prayer to prayer, live through and join in the experience of each of them, merge with your own the experience of those who wrote or composed these prayers?!

I deliberately used the words “wrote or composed.” No one wrote the psalms and prayers. No one sat down at a table and composed them. These prayers are the cry of the soul, which pours out like blood from a wound at a time of rapture or repentance, despair or pain, or hope. And which the saint afterwards set down on paper, so as not to forget what had once happened to him. And if we want to pray with the prayers of the saints, then first of all we must be able to read them with a sincere heart, and before reading them we must turn to the saint and say:

— Saint Basil, Saint John, Saint Symeon, I will use your prayers, but I cannot contain them. I will repeat them with all sincerity, with all my mind and understanding, and you raise them up to the throne of God.

In this way we shall begin a relationship with the saint and with what he put into this prayer. And into this prayer he put everything: his knowledge of God, his knowledge of himself, his experience of life — he merged with this prayer.

When we begin to read the prayers, some places are understandable and close to us, while some of them are hidden from us and incomprehensible. We are not able to say from ourselves certain words which the saint spoke out of the depth of his experience.

When I was young I quarrelled with a friend. I went to Father Athanasy and said:

— What am I to do? I have quarrelled with Kirill and I cannot forgive him.

Father Athanasy looked at me calmly and said:

— When you read the “Our Father” and come to the place “and forgive us our debts,” say this: “Lord, do not forgive me my debts, because I cannot forgive Kirill.”

— I can't say that.

— You must say it like that; otherwise you may not say it at all.

Then I tried to say it like that; I came to that place, and when I could not say those words, I went back to Father Athanasy.

— Well, if you cannot say these words, leave them out.

I tried this too and could not, because this very forgiveness is the borderline that lies between my salvation and my perdition. Again I went back to Father Athanasy.

He says to me:

— What, are you afraid of perishing? Then say it like this:

— Lord, I very much wanted to forgive Kirill, but I couldn't. You can forgive me, though, because I wanted to.

When I tried this, it worked, and when I saw how I was gradually sinking into these feelings, I sensed how senseless my anger was. And this made me think:

“I can forgive Kirill; he is not so very guilty before me. We are both guilty.”

After this I made peace with him, and then I was able to say freely and calmly those divine words on which a person's salvation depends.

The words of prayer must be spoken with a sincere heart. And if we cannot say something sincerely, let us at least say this to the Lord:

— I am only saying the words written in these prayers. From myself I cannot say this to You. Help me so that some day I may be able to.

But we will indeed never be able to do this unless we return to the words of the prayer and go deeper into them. And for this it is very important to do two things: first, what St Theophan the Recluse teaches us — we should feel and ponder the words not while reading the prayers, but when we are able to sit quietly and reflect on them. We can put the question like this:

— Here are the words the saint lived through as he stood before God, the way he saw himself and life. But what would I be living through as I say them?! We must feel them, bring them into our own sensing, into our heart, and, as it were, from the depths of our memories, from the experience of our life, bring up to the surface everything that corresponds to the words of the prayer, so that as I read it I summon all my spiritual and human experience with the words of the prayer. Then each prayer will gradually come alive, will become my prayer; and then every word will be charged with my personal experience. Secondly, there are prayers that can also shape the way a person lives. For example, the 24 short prayers of St John Chrysostom, one for each hour of the day. They are read at bedtime. But each day we can choose one of these prayers, and if not for the whole day, then at least for a few hours, give room to thinking about it. For example, these words from the prayer:

“Lord, teach me repentance!”

Think, feel what repentance means. When you have grasped and felt this, try for at least a few hours to learn repentance.

There are other prayers too:

“Lord, give me tears and the remembrance of death! Lord, give me chastity, obedience and humility!”

Or let us take one of the virtues from this prayer and devote at least one whole day to it. Let us try for at least a few hours not to sin against this word. Then every prayer will come alive. And when we stand to pray before God, we will not simply repeat the words of the saint, but with his own words offer prayer before God, like that little boy who said to his mother, after she had made him read his bedtime prayers:

— Mummy, now let's pray properly. Let's ask God in our own words.

Shouldn't we too begin with this…