living prayer

by metropolitan anthony
(anthony bloom)
LIVING PRAYER

by

Metropolitan Anthony
of Sourozh

LJ
Templegate Publishers
Springfield, IL
Published in England by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd.
89 Lillie Road, London SW6 IUD

Published in the United States by:

Templegate Publishers
302 East Adams Street
P.O. Box 5152
Springfield, IL 62705

© Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, 1966

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a

newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of
this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recor-
ding, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 68-16522

ISBN 0-87243-054-5
 CONTENTS

FOREWORD vii

I The Essence of Prayer 9

II The Lord's Prayer 20

III The Prayer of Bartimaeus 46

IV Meditation and Worship 51

V Unanswered Prayer and Petition 70

VI The fesus Prayer 84

VII Ascetic Prayer 89

VIII The Prayer of Silence 95

EPILOGUB 113
METROPOLITAN ANTHONY is widely recognized as one of
the great contemporary masters of the spiritual life. He was
born in 1914 in Lausanne. His father was a member of the
Russian diplomatic service; his mother was the sister of
Scriabin, the composer. He spent his childhood in Russia and
in Persia. Following the Russian Revolution the family
moved to Paris, where he studied science, receiving his
doctorate in medicine from the University of Paris.

During World War II he was an officer in the French Army.

After the fall of France he worked as a surgeon in a Paris

hospital, and participated at the same time in the Resistance

In 1943, while working as a physician, he privately took

monastic vows. He was ordained in 1948, and came to
England in 1949 to serve as Orthodox chaplain to the
Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, a pioneering
ecumenical group. In 1958 he was consecrated Bishop, in
1962 he was made Archbishop of the Russian Church in
England and Ireland, and in 1966 he was elevated to the rank
of Metropolitan.

Metropolitan Anthony is known for his preaching and writing

on the spiritual life. He has taken an active part in the
ecumenical movement in several countries, including work
with the World Council of Churches, and conferences
conducted at the monastery of Taize.
 FOREWORD*

Worship to me means a relationship. I used not to be a

believer, then one day I discovered God and immediately
he appeared to me to be the supreme value and the total

meaning of life, but at the same time a person. I think that

worship can mean nothing at all to someone for whom
there isno object of worship. You cannot teach worship
to someone who has not got a sense of the living God; you
can teach him to act as if he believed, but it will not be

the spontaneous attitude which is real worship. Therefore,

as a foreword to this book on prayer, what I would like to

convey is my certitude in the personal reality of a God with

whom a relationship can be established. Then I would ask
my reader to treat God as a neighbour, as someone, and
value this knowledge in the same terms in which he values
a relationship with a brother or a friend. This, I think, is

essential.

One of the reasons why communal worship or private

prayer seem to be so dead or so conventional is that the

act of worship, which takes place in the heart communing

with God, is too often missing. Every expression, either
verbal or in action, may help, but they are only expressions
of what is essential, namely, a deep silence of communion.
We all know in human relationships that love and friend-
ship are deep when we can be silent with someone. As

* Adaptation of a talk given on the BBC in the 'Ten to Eight'

programme first broadcast in 1965.
Vlll FOREWORD
long as we need to talk in order to keep in touch, we can
safely and sadly assume that the relationship is still super-
ficial ; and so, if we want to worship God, we must first

of all learn to feel happy, being silent together with him.

This is an easier thing to do than one might think at first;

it needs a little time, some confidence and the courage to

start.

Once the Cure d'Ars, a French saint of the eighteenth

century, asked an old peasant what he was doing sitting for

hours in the church, seemingly not even praying; the

peasant replied : 'I look at we are
him, he looks at me and
happy together/ That man had learned to speak to God
without breaking the silence of intimacy by words. If we
can do that we can use any form of worship. If we try to
make worship itself out of the words we use, we will get
desperately tired of those words, because unless they have
the depth of silence, they are shallow and tiresome.
But how inspiring words can be once they are backed by
silence and are infused with the right spirit

'O Lord, open Thou my lips; and my mouth shall show

forth thy praise* (Ps 51:15).
 ;

The Essence of Prayer

the gospel of St Matthew confronts us almost from

the beginning with the very essence of prayer. The Magi
saw the long-expected star; they set out without delay to
find the king; they arrived at the manger, they knelt, they
worshipped and they presented their gifts : they expressed
prayer in its perfection, which is contemplation and adora-
tion.

Often, in more or less popular literature about prayer,

we are told that prayer is an enthralling adventure. It is a

commonplace to hear: 'Come on, learn to pray; prayer is

so interesting, so thrilling, it is the discovery of a new world

you will meet God, you will find the way to a spiritual life.'

In a sense of course this is true; but something very much

more far-reaching is being forgotten when such statements
are made: it is that prayer is a dangerous adventure and
that we cannot enter upon it without risk. As St Paul says,

it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God

(Heb 10:31). Therefore to set out deliberately to confront

the living God is a dread adventure: every meeting with

God is, in a certain sense, a last judgement. Whenever we
10 LIVING PRAYER

come into the presence of God, whether in the sacra-

ments or in prayer, we are doing something which is full

of danger because, according to the words of scripture, God

is a fire. Unless we are ready to surrender ourselves without
reservation to the divine fire and to become that burning
bush of the desert, which burned but was never consumed,
we shall be scorched, because the experience of prayer can
only beknown from the inside, and is not to be dallied with.
Coming nearer to God is always a discovery both of the
beauty of God and of the distance there is between him
and us. 'Distance' is an inadequate word, because it is not
determined by the fact that God is holy and that we are
sinful. Distance is determined by the attitude of the sinner
to God. We can approach God only if we do so with a

sense of coming to judgement. we come having con-

If

demned ourselves; if we come because we love him in

spite of the fact that we are unfaithful, if we come to him,

loving him more than a godless security, then we are open

to him and he is open to us, and there is no distance; the

Lord comes close to us in an act of compassionate love.

But if we stand before God wrapped in our pride, in our

assertiveness, if we stand before him as though we had a

right to stand there, if we stand and question him, the dis-

tance that separates the creature and the creator becomes

infinite. There is a passage in the Screwtape Letters in which
C. S. Lewis suggests that distance, in this sense, is a relative

thing: when the great archangel came before God to

question him, the moment he asked his question, not in
order to understand in humility but in order to compel
God to give account, he found himself at an infinite dis-

tance from God. God had not moved, nor had Satan, and
 ;

THE ESSENCE OF PRAYER II

yet without any motion, they were infinitely tar apart

(Letter XIX).
Whenever we approach God the contrast that exists
between what he is and what we are becomes dreadfully
clear. We may not be aware of this as long as we live at a
distance from God, so to speak, as long as his presence or

his image is dimmed in our thoughts and in our perceptions

but the nearer we come to God, the sharper the contrast
appears. It is not the constant thought of their sins, but the
vision of the holiness of God that makes the saints aware
of their own sinfulness. When we consider ourselves with-
out the fragrant background of God's presence, sins and
virtues become small and somewhat irrelevant matters; it

is against the background of the divine presence that they

stand out in full relief and acquire their depth and tragedy.
Every time we come near God, it is either life or death

we are confronted with. It is life if we come to him in the

right spirit, and are renewed by him. It is death if we come

to him without the spirit of worship and a contrite heart;
it is death if we bring pride or arrogance. Therefore, before
we set out on the so-called thrilling adventure of prayer,
it cannot be too strongly stated that nothing more signifi-

cant, more awe-inspiring, can occur than meeting the God

we set out to meet. It is essential to realise that we will lose

our life in the process: the old Adam we are must die. We
are intensely attached to the old man, afraid for him, and
it is very difficult, not only at the outset but years after we
have begun, to feel that we are completely on the side of
Christ, against the old Adam.
Prayer is an adventure which brings not a thrill but new
responsibilities: as long as we are ignorant, nothing is asked
12 LIVING PRAYER

of us, but as we know anything, we are answerable

soon as

for the use we make of that knowledge. It may be a gift,

but we are responsible for any particle of truth we have
acquired; as it becomes our own, we cannot leave it dor-
mant but have to take it into account in our behaviour,
and in this sense we are to answer for any truth we have
understood.
It is only with a feeling of fear, of adoration, with the
utmost veneration that we can approach this adventure of
prayer, and we must live up to it outwardly as completely
and precisely as possible. It is not enough to lounge in an
armchair, saying: now, I place myself in an act of venera-
tion in the presence of God. We have to realise that if

Christ were standing in front of us, we would comport

ourselves differently, and we must learn to behave in the
presence of the invisible Lord as we would in the presence
of the Lord made visible to us.

This implies primarily an attitude of mind and then its

reflection upon the body. If Christ was there, before us,

and we stood completely transparent to his gaze, in mind

as well as in body, we would feel reverence, the fear of
God, adoration, or else perhaps terror, but we should not
be so easy in our behaviour as we are. The modern world
has to a great extent lost the sense of prayer and physical
attitudes have become secondary in people's minds, al-

though they are anything but secondary. We forget that

we are not a soul dwelling in a body, but a human being,

made up of body and soul, and that we are called, according

to St Paul, to glorify God in our spirit and in our body;
our bodies as well as our souls are to be called to the glory
of the kingdom of God (I Cor 6:20).
 THE ESSENCE OF PRAYER 13

Too often prayer has no such importance in our lives

that everything else fades away to give it room. Prayer is

additional to a great many things; we wish God to be

present, not because there is no life without him, not be-
cause he is the supreme value, but because it would be so
nice, in addition to all the great benefits of God, to have
also his presence. He is additional to our needs, and when
we seek him in that spirit we do not meet him. Yet not-
withstanding all that has just been said, prayer, dangerous
as it appears, is the best way to go ahead towards the ful-

filment of our calling, to become fully human, which

means in full communion with God and, ultimately, what
St Peter calls partakers of the divine nature.
Love and friendship do not grow if we are not prepared

to sacrifice a great deal for their sake, and in the same way
we must be ready to put aside many things in order to give

God the first place.

'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all

thy mind' (Lk 10:27). This seems to be a very simple

command, and yet those words contain much more than

one sees at a first glance. We know what it is to love

all

someone with all one's heart; we know the pleasure, not

only of meeting but even of thinking of the beloved, the
warm comfort it way that we should try
gives. It is in that

to love God, and whenever his name is mentioned, it

should fill our heart and soul with infinite warmth. God
should be at all times in our mind, whereas in fact we think
of him only occasionally.
As for loving God with all our strength, we can only

do it if we cast off deliberately everything that is not God's

14 LIVING PRAYER

in us;by an effort of will we must turn ourselves constantly

towards God, whether in prayer, which is easier, because
in prayer we are already centred on God, or in action,
which requires training, because in our actions we are
concentrated on some material achievement and have to
dedicate it to God by a special effort.
The Wise Men travelled a long way and nobody knows
the difficulties they had to overcome. Each of us 'also

travels as they did.They were loaded with gifts, gold for

the king, frankincense for the God, myrrh for the man who
was to suffer death. Where can we get gold, frankincense
and myrrh, we who are indebted for everything to God?
We know that everything we possess has been given us by
God and is not even ours for ever or with certainty. Every-
thing can be taken away from us except love, and this is

what makes love unique and something we can give.

Everything else, our limbs, our intelligence, our possessions

can be taken by force from us, but with regard to love,
there is no means of getting it, unless we give it. In that
sense we are free with regard to loving, in a way in which
we are not free in other activities of soul or body. Although
fundamentally even love is a gift of God, because we cannot
produce it out of ourselves, yet, once we possess it, it is the
only thing that we can withold or offer.
Bernanos says in the Diary of a Country Priest that we can
also offer our pride to God, 'Give your pride with all the
rest, give everything/ Pride offered in that context becomes
a gift of love, and everything which is a gift of love is well
pleasing to God.
'Love your enemies, bless them that hate you* (Mt 5 144),

is a command that may be more or less easy to follow; but

 THE ESSENCE OF PRAYER 15

to forgive those who inflict suffering on one's beloved is

altogether different, and it makes people feel as if taken in

disloyalty. Yet, the greater our love for the one who suffers,
the greater our ability to share and to forgive, and in that
sense the greatest love is achieved when one can say with
Rabbi Yehel Mikhael 'I am my beloved'. As long as we say
T and 'he' we do not share the suffering and we cannot
accept it.The mother of God at the foot of the cross was
not in tears, as shown so often in western paintings; she

was so completely in communion with her son that she had

nothing to protest against. She was going through the
crucifixion, together with Christ; she was going through
her own death. The mother was fulfilling now what she
had begun on the day of the presentation of Christ to the

temple, when she had given her son. Alone of all the child-
ren of Israel he had been accepted as a sacrifice of blood.
And she, who had brought him then, was now accepting
the consequence of her ritual gesture which was finding
fulfilment in reality. As he was then communion with
in

her, she was completely in communion with him now and

she had nothing to protest against.

It is love that makes us one with the object of our love

and makes it possible for us to share unreservedly, not only

the suffering but also the attitude towards suffering and

the executioner. We cannot imagine the mother of God or
John the disciple protesting against what was the explicit

will of the son of God crucified. 'No one is taking my life

from me, I lay it down of myself (Jn 10: 18). He was dying
willingly, of his own accord for the salvation of the world;

his death was this salvation and therefore those who believed
in him and wanted to be at one with him could share the
16 LIVING PRAYER

suffering of his death, could undergo the passion together

with him; but they could not reject it, they could not turn
against the crowd that had crucified Christ, because this

crucifixion was the will of Christ himself.

We can protest against someone's suffering, we can
protest against someone's death, either when he himself,
rightly or wrongly, takes a stand against it, or else when
we do not share his intention and his attitude towards death
and suffering; but then our love for that person is an in-
complete love and creates separation. It is the kind of love
shown by Peter when Christ, on the way to Jerusalem,
told his disciples that he was going to his death; Peter 'took

him and began to rebuke him', but Christ answered: 'Get

thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest not the things
that be of God, but the things that be of men' (Mk 8:33).
We can imagine that the wife of the thief on the left of
Christ was full of the same protest against her husband's
death as he himself was; in this respect there was complete
communion between them, but they were sharing a wrong
attitude.

But to share with Christ his passion, his crucifixion, his

death, means to accept unreservedly all these events, in the
same spirit as he did, that is, to accept them in an act of

free will, to suffer together with the man of sorrows, to

be there in silence, the very silence of Christ, interrupted
only by a few decisive words, the silence of real commun-
ion; not just the silence of pity, but of compassion, which
allows us to grow into complete oneness with the other so
that there is no longer one and the other, but only one life

and one death.

On many occasions throughout history people witnessed
 THE ESSENCE OF PRAYER 17

persecution and were not afraid, but shared in the suffering

and did not protest; for instance, Sophia, the mother who
stood by each of her daughters, Faith, Hope and Charity,
encouraging them to die, or many other martyrs who
helped one another but never turned against the tormentors.
The spirit of martyrdom can be brought out by several

examples. The first expresses the spirit of martyrdom in

itself, its basic attitude : a spirit of love which cannot be
defeated by suffering or injustice. A very young priest, who
was imprisoned at the beginning of the Russian revolution,
and came out a broken man, was asked what was left of
him, and he answered: 'Nothing is left of me, they have
burnt out every single thing, love only survives/ A man
who can say that has the right attitude and anyone who
shares his tragedy must also share in his unshakeable love.

There is the example of a man who came back from

Buchenwald and, when asked about himself, said that his
sufferings were nothing compared to his broken-hearted-

ness about those poor German youths who could be so

cruel, and that thinking about the state of their souls, he

could find no peace. His concern was not for himself, and
he had spent four years there, nor for the innumerable
people who had suffered and died around him; but for the

condition of the tormentors. Those who suffered were on

the side of Christ, those who were cruel were not.

Thirdly, there is this prayer written in a concentration

camp by a Jewish prisoner:

Peace to all men of evil will! Let there be an end to all

vengeance, to all demands for punishment and retribution . . .

Crimes have surpassed all measure, they can no longer be

grasped by human understanding. There are too many martyrs
B
l8 LIVING PRAYER

. . . And so, weigh not their sufferings on the scales of thy

justice, Lord, and lay not these sufferings to the torturors* charge
to exact a terrible reckoning from them. Pay them back in a
different way! Put down in favour of the executioners, the
informers, the traitors and all men of evil will, the courage, the
spiritual strength of the others, their humility, their lofty
dignity, their constant inner striving and invincible hope, the
smile that staunched the tears, their love, their ravaged, broken
hearts that remained steadfast and confident in the face of death
itself, yes, even at moments of the utmost weakness . . . Let all

this, O Lord, be laid before thee for the forgiveness of sins, as a

ransom for the triumph of righteousness, let the good and not
the evil he taken into account! And may we remain in our
enemies' memory not as their victims, not as a nightmare, not
as haunting spectres, but as helpers in their striving to destroy
the fury of their criminal passions. There is nothing more that
we want of them. And when it is all over, grant us to live
among men as men, and may peace come again to our poor
earth - peace for men of goodwill and for all the others .* . .

There was also a Russian bishop who said that it is a

privilege for a christian to die a martyr, because none but a

martyr can, at the last judgement, take his stand in front of
God's judgement seat and say, 'According to thy word and
thy example, I have forgiven. Thou hast no claim against
them any more.' Which means that the one who suffers
martyrdom in Christ, whose love is not defeated by suffer-
ing, acquires unconditional power of forgiving over the

one who has inflicted the suffering. And this can be applied
on a much lower level, on the level of everyday life; any-
one who suffers a minor injustice from someone else can
forgive or refuse to forgive. But this is a two-edged

* Found in the archives of a German concentration camp and

published in the Suddeutsche Zeitung.
 THE ESSENCE OF PRAYER 19

sword; if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven

either.

Roman Catholics, with their acute sense of

French
justiceand the honour of God, are very conscious of the
victory which Christ can gain through the suffering of
people: since 1797 there has existed an Order of Repara-
tion, which by perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
asks forgiveness for the crimes of the world and the for-
giveness of individual sinners by their victim's prayers.

This Order is also educational and aims to give children

and adults the spirit of love.
Typical also is the story of the French general Maurice
d'Elbee during the revolutionary wars; his men captured
some Bleus and wanted to shoot them; the general, un-
willingly, had to consent, but he insisted that they should
first read the Lord's Prayer aloud, which they did, and
when they came to the words 'Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive them that trespass against us', they under-

stood, they wept and let the prisoners go. Later on, in 1794,
General d'Elbee was himself shot by the Bleus.
Jean Danielou, the French Jesuit writer, says in Holy
Pagans that suffering is the link between the righteous and
sinners, the righteous man who endures suffering and the
sinner who inflicts it. If there were not that link, they would
drift apart and sinners and righteous would remain on
parallel lines that never meet. In that case, the righteous

would have no power over the sinner because one cannot

deal with what one does not meet.
 II

The Lord's Prayer

although it is very simple, and is used so constantly,

The Lord's Prayer is a great problem and a difficult prayer;

it is the only one which the Lord gave, yet, reading the

Acts, one never finds it used by anyone at all, which is not

what one would expect from the words that introduce the

prayer in Luke 11:1, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John also

taught his disciples/ But not being quoted does not mean
not being used, and in a way the Lord's Prayer is not only
a prayer but a whole way of life expressed in the form of a
prayer: it is the image of the gradual ascent of the soul from
bondage to freedom. The prayer is built with striking
precision. Just as when pond we can
a pebble falls into a
observe the ripples spreading from the place where the
pebble fell, farther and farther towards the banks, or on
the contrary, we may begin with the banks and work back
to the source of the movement, in the same way the Lord's
Prayer can be analysed either beginning with the first

words, or else with the last. It is infinitely easier to begin

the progression from the outside towards the centre of the
prayer, although for Christ and for the Church it is the
other way which is right.
 THE LORD S PRAYER 21

This is a prayer of sonship - 'Our Father* - and in a

certain sense, although it may be used by anyone who
approaches the Lord, it expresses adequately only the rela-
tionship of those who are in the Church of God, who, in
Christ, have found their way to their father, because it is

only through Christ and in him that we become the sons

of God.
This teaching of a spiritual life can best be understood
when set in parallel with the story of Exodus and within
the experience of the beatitudes. Starting with the last

words of the prayer and moving towards the first, we see

it as a way of ascent; our starting-point at the end defines

a captivity, the last word at the beginning defines our state
of sonship.
The people of God, who had come free to the land of
Egypt, had gradually become enslaved. The conditions of
their life brought home to them their state of slavery work :

was heavier and heavier, the conditions of living more and

more miserable; but this was not enough to make them
move towards real freedom. If misery increases beyond a
certain point, it may lead to rebellion, to violence, to
attempted escape from the painful, unbearable situation;
but essentially neither rebellion nor flight make us free,

because freedom is first of all an inner situation with regard

to God, to self and to the surrounding world.

Every time they attempted to leave the country, new

and heavier tasks were given to the Jews. When they had
to make bricks, they were refused the necessary straw, and
Pharaoh them go and gather straw for them-
said: 'Let

selves (Ex 5:7), and 'Let more work be laid upon them,

that they may labour therein.' He wanted them so

22 LIVING PRAYER

completely exhausted, so completely concerned with the toil

that they should have no thought for rebellion or deliver-

ance any more. In the same way there is no hope for us
as long as we are enthralled by the prince of this world, the
devil, with all the powers at his disposal to enslave human
souls and bodies and keep them away from the living God.
Unless God comes himself to deliver us, there will be no
deliverance, but eternal slavery; and the last words we
find in the Lord's Prayer are for this very thing : 'Deliver
us from Evil/ Deliverance from evil is exactly what was
done in the land of Egypt through Moses, and what is

achieved at baptism by the power of God, given to his

Church. The word of God resounds in this world, calling
everyone to freedom, giving the hope that comes from
heaven to those who have lost their hope on earth. This

word of God is preached and resounds in the human soul,

making a man a learner of the Church, making him one
who stands as an outsider in the porch, one who has heard
the call and has come to listen (Rom 10:17).
When the learner is
determined to become a free man in
the kingdom of the Lord, the Church undertakes certain
actions. What would be the good of asking a slave, who is

still in the power of his master, whether he wants to be

free? If he dares ask for the freedom which is offered, he

knows that he will be cruelly punished the moment he is

left alone again with his master. Through fear and from a
habit of slavery a man cannot ask for freedom until he is

delivered from the authority of the devil. Therefore, before

any question is asked of the one who stands there, with a

new hope in divine salvation, he is made free from the

power of Satan. This is the meaning of the exorcisms
 THE LORD'S PRAYER 23

which are read at the outset of the baptismal service both

in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. It is only
when a man is free from the bonds of slavery that he is
asked if he renounces the devil and if he wants to join
Christ. And only after a free answer does the Church
integrate him into herself, into the Body of The
Christ.
devil wants slaves, but God wants free men in harmony of
will with him. The evil one in terms of Exodus was Egypt
and Pharaoh, and all the values attached to them, namely,
to be fed and kept alive, on condition that they were sub-
missive slaves. And for us the act of prayer, which is a more
essential, final act of rebellion against slavery than taking
up arms, is at the same time a sort of return into our sense
of responsibility and relatedness to God.
So the first situation with which Exodus begins, and we
begin, is the discovery of slavery and that it cannot be
resolved by an act of rebellion or flight, because whether
we flee or whether we rebel we remain slaves, unless we
re-establish ourselves, with regard to God and to all the
situations of life, in the way taught by the first beatitude:
'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of
Heaven/ In itself, poverty, the state of a slave, is no pass-

port to the kingdom of heaven; the slave can be deprived

not only of earthly goods but also of heavenly goods; such
poverty can be more overwhelming than simple depriva-
tion of what we need for earthly life. St John Chrysostom
says that the man is not so much he who does not
poor
possess, but he who wants what he does not possess.

Poverty is not rooted in what we have or have not, but

in the degree to which we long for what is out of reach.

When we think of our human condition wc can discover

24 LIVING PRAYER

quite easily that we are utterly poor and destitute because

whatever we possess is never ours, however rich and

wealthy we seem to be. When we try to grasp anything
we discover quite soon that it has gone. Our being is
rooted in nothing except the sovereign creative word of
God who called us out of total, radical absence into his
presence. The life we possess we cannot
and health that

keep, and not only health but so many of our psychosomatic

qualities: a man of great intelligence, because a minute

vessel has burst in his head, becomes senile and is finished

intellectually. In the realm of our feelings, for some
accountable or unaccountable reason, say 'flu or tiredness,
we cannot moment, and at will, feel the sym-
at the right

pathy for someone which we wish so much to feel, or we

go to church and we are of stone. This is the basic poverty,
but does it make us the children of the kingdom? It does
not, because if at every moment of our life we feel in a
state of misery, that all things escape us, if we are aware

only of the fact that we do not possess them, it does not

make us the joyful children of a kingdom of divine love,

but the miserable victims of a situation over which we have

no power and which we hate.

This brings us back to the words 'poor in spirit' ; the poverty

that opens the kingdom of heaven lies in the knowledge
that if nothing that is mine is really mine, then everything

that is mine is a gift of love, divine or human love, and

that makes things quite different. If we realise that we have
no being in ourselves, and yet we exist, we can say that
there is a sustained unceasing act of divine love. If we see

that whatever we have, we can in no wise compel to be

ours, then everything is divine love, concretely expressed
 THE LORD S PRAYER 25

at every single moment; and then poverty is the root of

perfect joy because all we have proves love. We should
never attempt to appropriate things to ourselves because
to call something 'ours', and not a constant gift of God,
means less and not more. If it is mine, it is alien to the

relationship of mutual love; if it is his and I possess it from

day to day, from split second to split second, it is a continu-

ously renewed act of divine love. Then we come to the

joyful thought: 'Thanks be to God, it is not mine; if it

were mine, it would mean possession, but alas without

love/ The relationship to which this thought brings us is

what the gospel calls the kingdom of God. Only those

belong to the kingdom who receive all things from the
king in the relationship of mutual love and who do not
want to be rich, because to be rich means to be dispossessed

of love while possessed of things. The moment when we

discover God within the situation and that all things are

God's and everything is of God, then we begin to enter

this divine kingdom and acquire freedom.
was only when the Jews, guided and enlightened by
It

Moses, realised that their state of enslavement had some-

thing to do with God, and was not simply a man-made
situation, it was only when they turned to God, when they
re-established a relationship which is that of the kingdom,
that something could happen; and that is true for all of us,
because when we realise that we are slaves, when
it is only
we realise that we are destitute, but when we also realise
that this happens within the divine wisdom and that all

things are within the divine power, that we can turn to

Him and say, 'Deliver us from the evil one.'

As the Jews were called by Moses to escape from the

26 LIVING PRAYER

country of Egypt, to follow him in the dark night, to cross

the Red Sea, so also is each individual brought into the
wilderness, where a new period begins. He is free, but not
yet enjoying the glory of the promised land, because he
has taken with him, out of the land of Egypt, the soul of a
slave, the habits of a slave, the temptations of a slave ; and
the education of a free man takes infinitely more time than
the discovery of his enslavement. The spirit of slavery
remains very close, and its standards are still there and very
potent: a slave has somewhere to rest his head, a slave is

assured of food, a slave has a social standing, however low,

he is secure because his master is responsible for him. So
to be a slave, however painful, humiliating and distressing

the situation, is also a form of security, while to become a

free person is a state of utter insecurity; we take our destiny
into our own hands and when our freedom is
it is only
rooted in God that we become secure in a new way, and a
very different one.
This sense of insecurity is brought out in Samuel, when
the Jews asked the prophet to give them a king. For
centuries they had been led by God, that is by men who,
being saints, knew God's ways; as Amos says (3:7), a
prophet is one with whom God shares his thoughts. And
then in the time of Samuel, the Jews discover that to be
under God alone is, in a worldly sense, total insecurity

because it depends on saintliness, on dedication, on moral

values which are hard to get, and they turn to Samuel and
ask him to give them a king, because 'We want to be like

every other nation with the security which every nation

has/
Samuel does not want to agree to what he sees is an
 :

THE LORD S PRAYER 27

apostasy; but God tells him 'Hearken to the voice of thy

people ... for they have not rejected thee, but they have
rejected me, that I should not reign over them' (I Sam 8:9).
And a whole picture follows of what their life will be
'This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over

you: he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself,
for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run
before his chariots . . . And he will take your daughters
to be confectionaries, and to be cooks and to be bakers/
'Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of
Samuel and they Nay; but we
said, will have a king over
lis' (I Sam 8: 19). They want to buy security at the cost of
freedom. It is not what God wills for us, and what happens
is exactly the reverse of the events of Exodus: God's will is

that the security of slaves is to be forsaken and replaced by

men in the making. This is a difficult
the insecurity of free
situation because while we are in the making we do not

yet know how to be free and we do not want to be slaves

any more. Remember what happened to the Jews in the
wilderness, how often they regretted the time when they
were enslaved in Egypt, but fed. How often they com-
plained that now they were without a roof, without food,
dependent on the will of God, which they had not yet
learned to rely upon completely; for God gives us grace,

but leaves it to us to become new creatures.

Like the Jews in Egypt we have spent all our lives as

slaves; we are not yet in our souls, in our wills, in our whole
selves, real free men: left to our own powers we may fall

into temptation. And these words 'Lead us not into tempta-

tion' - submit us not to the severe test - must remind us

of the forty years the Jews spent crossing the short expanse
28 LIVING PRAYER

of territory between the land of Egypt and the promised

land. They took so long because whenever they turned
away from God, their path turned away from the promised
land. The only way in which we can reach the promised

land is to follow in the steps of the Lord. Whenever our

heart turns back to the land of Egypt, we retrace our steps,

we go astray. We have all been set free by the mercy of

God, we are all on our way, but who will say that he does

not retrace his steps constantly, or turn from the right

path? 'Lead us not into temptation', let us not fall back into
our state of slavery.
Once we have become aware of our enslavement, and
have passed from mere lamentation and a sense of misery
into a sense of brokenheartedness and poverty of spirit, our
imprisonment in the land of Egypt is answered by the
words of the next beatitudes : 'Blessed are they that mourn,
for they shall be comforted', 'Blessed are the meek, for
they shall inherit the earth'. This mourning that is the
result of the discovery of the kingdom, of one's own re-

sponsibility, of the tragedy of being a slave, is a more bitter

mourning than that which is the lot of the simple slave.

The slave complains about an outer situation; this mourner,
who is blessed by God, does not complain, he is broken-
hearted, and he is aware that his outer enslavement is the
expression of something far more tragic : his inner enslave-

ment, his severance from the closeness of God. And nothing

can be done to escape this situation unless meekness is

attained.

Meekness is a difficult word which has acquired various

connotations and since it is extremely rare in practice, we
cannot turn to our experience of meek people, which would
 THE LORD'S PRAYER 29

give us a clue to the meaning of the word. We find in

J.
B. Phillips' translation: 'Happy are those who claim
nothing', meaning 'Blessed are those who do not try to
possess'. The moment you do not want to possess, you
become free because, whatever you do possess, by that
you are possessed. Another interpretation of the word
meek is found in the translation of the Greek word into a
Slavonic word meaning 'made tame'. A person or an animal
that has been tamed is not simply terrified of punishment
and subject to the authority of the master; it is someone in
whom the process has gone farther, someone who has
acquired a new quality and who by this tameness escapes
the violence of coercion.
At the threshold of our salvation from the slavery of
Egypt stands the condition that we should be tamed; in
other words, that we should recognise in the situation in

which we are, depth, significance, the presence of the

divine will, and it should be neither flight nor rebellion,
but amovement guided by God, which begins with the
kingdom of heaven that is within us and develops into the
kingdom on earth. It is a period of wavering and of inner
struggle: 'Lead us not into temptation O Lord, Protect us
in the trial, help us in the fight which has begun for us.'

And now we are at the point when a move can be made.

Look back at Exodus, at the Jews' awareness that they arc
not simply slaves but the people of God that had become
enslaved because of their moral weaknesses. They had to

take risks, because no one is ever freed by a slave owner,

and they had to cross the Red Sea; but beyond the Red Sea
it was not yet the promised land, it was the burning desert

and they were aware of it and knew that they would have
30 LIVING PRAYER

to cross it in the face of great difficulties. And so are we

when we decide to make a move that will liberate us from
our enslavement: we must be aware that we shall be
attacked by violence, by beguilement, by the inner enemies
that are our old habits, our old craving for security, and
that nothing is promised us, except the desert beyond.
Beyond that is the promised land, but far beyond, and we
must accept the risks of the journey.
There is one thing that stands as a line of demarcation
between Egypt and the desert, between slavery and free-

dom; it is a moment when we act decisively and become

new people, establishing ourselves in an absolutely new
moral situation. In terms of geography it was the Red Sea,
in terms of the Lord's Prayer it is 'Forgive us our trespasses
aswe forgive*. This 'as we forgive' is the moment when
we take our salvation into our own hands, because what-
ever God does depends on what we do and this is tremend- ;

ously important in terms of ordinary life. If these people

who moving out of Egypt into the promised land take

are
with them, out of the Land of Egypt, their fears, their
resentments, their hatreds, their grievances, they will be
slaves in the promised land. They will not be freemen,
even in the making. And this is why at the demarcation
line between the trials of fire and the beguilement of old
habits, stands this absolute condition which God never
relaxes: as you forgive, the measure which you use will

be used for you; and as you forgive, you will be forgiven;

what you do not forgive will be held against you. It is not

that God does not want to forgive, but if we come unfor-
giving, we check the mystery of love, we refuse it and
there is no place for us in the kingdom. We cannot go
 THE LORD S PRAYER 31

farther if we are not forgiven, and we cannot be forgiven

as long as we have not forgiven everyone of those who have

wronged us. This is quite sharp and real and precise and no
one has any right to imagine that he is in the kingdom of
God, that he belongs to it, if there is still unforgiveness in
his heart. To forgive one's enemies is the first, the most
elementary characteristic of a christian; failing this, we arc
not yet christian at all, but are still wandering in the
scorching wilderness of Sinai.
But forgiveness is something extremely difficult to
achieve. To grant forgiveness at a moment of softening of
the heart, in an emotional crisis is comparatively easy; not
to take it back is something that hardly anyone knows how
to do. What we call forgiveness is often putting the other
one on probation, nothing more; and lucky are the for-
given people if it is only probation and not remand. We
wait impatiently for evidence of repentance, we want to

be sure that the penitent is not the same any more, but this

situation can last a lifetime and our attitude is exactly the

contrary of everything which the gospel teaches, and indeed
commands us, to do. So the law of forgiveness is not a little

brook on the boundary between slavery and freedom: it

has breadth and depth, the The Jews did not

it is Red Sea.

get over it by their own effort in man-made boats, the

Red Sea was cut open by the power of God; God had to
lead them across. But to be led by God one must commune
with this quality of God which is the ability to forgive.

God remembers, in the sense that, once we have done

wrong, he will for ever, until we change, take into account
that we arc weak and frail; but he will never remember in

terms of accusation or condemnation; it will never be

32 LIVING PRAYER

brought up against The Lord will yoke himself together

us.

with us, into our lives, and he will have more weight to
carry, he will have a heavier cross, a new ascent to Calvary
which we are unwilling or incapable of undertaking.
To be able to say the first sentence that we have discussed
- 'Deliver us from the evil one' - requires such a reassess-

ment of values and such a new attitude that we can hardly

begin to say it otherwise than in a cry, which is as yet

unsubstantiated by an inner change in us. We feel a longing

which is not yet capable of achievement; to ask God to
protect us in the trial is to ask for a radical change in our
situation. But to be able to say 'Forgive as I forgive* is even
more difficult ; it is one of the greatest problems of life.

Thus, if you are not prepared to leave behind you every

resentment that you have against those who were your
overlords or slavedrivers, you cannot cross. If you are
7
capable of forgiving, that is of leaving behind in the land
of slavery, all your slavish mentality, all your greed and
grasping and bitterness, you can cross. After that you are in

the scorching wilderness, because it will take time for a

free man to be made out of a slave.

All that we possessed as slaves in the land of Egypt we

are deprived of- no roof, no shelter, no food, nothing but
the wilderness and God. Earth is no longer capable of
feeding us; we can no longer rely on natural food, so we
pray 'give us day by day our daily bread*. God gives it
even when we go astray, because if he did not we should
die before we could reach the border of the promised land.

Keep us alive, O God, give us time to err, to repent, to

take the right course.

'Our daily bread' is one of the possible ways of trans-
 THE LORD S PRAYER 33

lating the Greek text. This bread, which in Greek is called

epiousion, may be daily, but it may also be the bread that
is beyond substance. The Fathers of the Church, beginning
with Origen and Tertullian, have always interpreted this

passage as referring not only to our human needs but also

to the mysterious bread of the eucharist. Unless we are
fed in this new way, mysteriously, by divine bread (because
we depend now for our existence on God alone) we will
not survive (Jn 6:53). God manna
sent to his people the

and gave them water from the rock, struck by the

rod of Moses. The two gifts are images of Christ: 'Man
shall not live by bread alone but by every word that pro-

ceedeth from the mouth of God/ This is what Christ

recalled from the Old Testament (Dt 8:3) to confound

Satan. This 'word* is not simply words but first of all the
Word that resounds for ever, upholding all things created,
and then also the Word incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth;

furthermore, it is the bread of which manna was the image,

the bread which we receive in communion. The waters
that ran and filled the brooks and the rivers at the command
of Moses, are the image of that water which was promised
to the Samaritan woman and of the blood of Christ which
is our life.

Exodus is a complex image in terms of the Lord's Prayer;

in the beatitudes we find the same progression: 'Blessed are

they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for

they shall be filled', 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall

obtain mercy'. First a simple bodily hunger and thirst, a

deprivation of all possessions, which were a gift of corrup-

tion, a gift of the earth from the overlord, a stamp of
slavery, and then exactly in the way in which the mourning
c
34 LIVING PRAYER

of the second beatitude is increased, the moment we are

turned Godwards, so this thirst and hunger are turned
towards righteousness. A new dimension has been disclosed
to men, one of longing, of craving, a dimension which is

defined in one of the secret prayers in the liturgy as 'The

Kingdom for to come', when we thank God that he has
given us his kingdom for which we are longing. In the
liturgy the kingdom is there, but in the journey through the
desert it is ahead, in a germinal state, still beyond reach.
It is within us, as an attitude, as a relationship, but certainly
not as something which is already life, on which we can
feed and by which we can be kept alive. There is the bodily
hunger, born of our past and of our present, and the spiritual
hunger, born of our future and of our vocation.
'Blessed are the merciful.' This journey is not a lonely
one; in terms of Exodus it was the whole people of God
who were launched out, side by side, as a unit ; in terms of
the Lord's Prayer and our vocation, it is the Church, it is

mankind, it is everyone who is on this journey; and there

is one thing of immense importance that we must learn,

namely, mercy for our brothers who are journeying to-

gether with us. Unless we are willing to bear one another's
burdens, to carry one another's weight, to receive one
another as Christ receives us, in mercy, there is no way
across the wilderness. This journey in the scorching heat, in
the thirst and hunger, in the exertion of becoming a new
man, is a time of mercy, of mutual charity; otherwise none
will come to the place where God's law is proclaimed,
where the tables of the law are offered. Thirst for right-

eousness and fulfilment goes hand in hand with mercy for

the companions who walk side by side through the heat
 THE LORD S PRAYER 35

and the sufferings ; and this thirst and hunger imply more,
now, than just absence of food. When the Jews arrive one
day at the foot of Sinai, they are capable of understanding
and of being they have been tamed and have become one
;

people with one consciousness, with one direction, one

intention. They are God's people, in motion towards the
promised land. Their hearts that were darkened have be-
come more transluscent, more pure. At the foot of the
mountain it will be given them, to each according to his

strength and capabilities, to see something of God (because

'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God'), to

each of them in a different way, exactly as the disciples saw

Christ transfigured on Mount Tabor, according to what
they could comprehend.
At this point a new tragedy occurs: Moses discovers
that the Jews have betrayed their vocation and he breaks
the tables of the law; those which are afterwards given are

the same, yet not the same: the difference is perhaps shown
in the fact that when Moses brought the law the second

time, he had a shining on his face which no one could bear

(Ex 34:30); neither could they bear the Lord revealed in
all his glory and fragrance. What they are given is what

they can bear, but it is a law written by Moses (Ex 34*27)

and not simply a divine revelation of love, 'written by the
finger of God' (Ex 3 1 : 18). The law stands halfway between
lawlessness and grace; one can trace three steps in striking

progression: in Genesis we see the violent Lamcch, who

says that if he is offended he will avenge himself seventy
and seven fold (Gn 4:24); when we come to Sinai,we are
told, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; and when
we hear Christ, we are told 'seventy times seven shalt thou
36 LIVING PRAYER

forgive thy brother'. These are the measures of human

revolt against equity and against grace.

Khomiakov, a Russian theologian of the nineteenth

century, says that the will of God is a curse for the demons,
law for the servants of God and freedom for the children
of God. This seems so true when we examine the gradual
progression of the Jews from Egypt to the promised land.
They departed slaves, who had just become aware of their

potentialities as prospective children of God; they had to

outgrow the mentality of slaves and attain the spirit and
stature of sons ; this took place gradually in the course of a
long and extremely painful process. We see them slowly
being built into a community of servants of God, of people
who recognised that their Lord was no longer Pharaoh
but the Lord of Hosts, to whom they acknowledged that
they owed allegiance and unconditional obedience; they
could expect from him both punishment and reward,
knowing that he was leading them beyond what they
then knew, into something which was their final voca-
tion.

It is a very common thought in the writings of the

early christian ascetics that man must go through these
three stages - slave, hireling and son. The slave is one who
obeys for fear, the hireling is one who obeys for reward
and the son is one who acts for love. We can see in Ex-
odus how gradually the people of God had become more
than slaves and hirelings and the law stands at the threshold,

geographically speaking, of the promised land.

At this threshold they discover, each with the ability
that is his, with the depth of spirit that is his, God's
own will, God's own mind, for this law can be seen in
 THE LORD S PRAYER 37

several ways: if we take it formally, sentence by sentence,

it is a series of commandments: 'Thou shalt, thou shah
not/ in that sense it is law in the mentality of the Old
Testament. But on the other hand, if we look at it with
the eyes of the New Testament, with the eyes of our human
vocation, as an increasing number were able to look at
this law in the course of time after Exodus, we see that

these various commandments, these imperatives, coalesce

into two commandments : the love of God and the love of
man. The first four of the ten are the love of God expressed
concretely; and in the six other commandments we have
the love of man, also made concrete, tangible, workable.
The law is discipline and rule for those who are still in the

making, who are still in the process of becoming sons, but

at the same time it is already the law of the New Testa-
ment. The problem between man and man and between
man and God is that of establishing divine peace, peace in
the name of God, peace which is not built on mutual
attraction or sympathy, but which is built on more basic

facts; our common sonship, our common Lord, our human

solidarity and our narrower church solidarity. Divine and
human love must be summed up first of all in the establish-

ment of the right relationships, the right relationship with

God, with men and also with one's self.

We have seen that to exist in the desert, the absolute

prerequisite is mutual forgiveness, now another step must

be taken; whereas we find in Exodus the imperative law
which expresses the mind and will of God, we find in the

Lord's Prayer 'Thy will be done'. 'Thy will be done' is not

a submissive readiness to bear God's will, as we often take-

it to be. It is the positive attitude of those who have gone

38 LIVING PRAYER

through the wilderness, who have entered the promised

land and who set out to make the will of God present and
real on earth as it is in heaven. St Paul says that we are a
colony of heaven (Phil 3:20; Moffat's translation). He
means a group of people whose mother city is heaven, who
are on earth to conquer it for God and to bring the kingdom
of God if only to a small spot. It is a peculiar type of con-
quest, which consists in winning over people to the realm
of peace, making them subject to the prince of peace and
making them enter into the harmony which we call the
kingdom of God. It is indeed a conquest, a peacemaking
that will make us sheep among wolves, seeds scattered by

the sower, which must die in order to bear fruit and to feed
others.

'Thy will be done' seen in this way from within our

situation as sons is something quite different from the
kind of obedience, submissive or resistant, which we have
seen in the beginning of Exodus, when Moses tried to put
his countrymen in motion towards freedom. Now they
have,we have, the mind of Christ, now we know the will
of God, we are no longer servants but friends (Jn 15:15).
He does not mean a vague relationship of goodwill, but
something extremely deep that binds us together. This is

the situation in which we walk into the promised land,

when we say in a new way 'Thy will be done', not as an
alien will, not as a will strong and able to break us, but as,

a will with which we have become completely harmonious.

And we must, the moment we do this, accept all that is

implied in being sons of God, in being members of the one

body. As he came into the world to die for the salvation
of the world, so are we elect for this purpose; and it may
 THE LORD S PRAYER 39

be at the cost of our own lives that we are to bring peace

around us and establish the kingdom.
There is a difference between God the king, perceived
in the land of Egypt, or in the scorching wilderness, and in

the new situation of the promised land. First, his will would
prevail anyhow, whatever resistance one opposed to it

would be broken: obedience means subjection. Secondly,

a gradual training shows that this king is not an overlord,

a slavedriver, but a king of goodwill, and that obedience
to him transforms all; that we can be not just subjects but
his own people, his army in motion. Lastly, we discover
the king in the full sense of this word as summed up by
St Basil: 'Every ruler can rule, only a king can die for his

subjects/ There is here such identification of the king with

his subjects, that is with his kingdom, that whatever happens
to the kingdom happens to the king; and not only identi-

fication, but an act of substitutive love which makes the

king take the place of his subjects. The king becomes man,
God is incarnate. He enters into the historical destiny of
mankind, he puts on the flesh that makes him part and
parcel of the total cosmos, with its tragedy caused by the
human fall. He goes to the very depth of human condition,
up to judgement, iniquitous condemnation and death, the
experience of having lost God and so being able to die.
The kingdom of which we speak in this petition is the
kingdom of this king. If we are not at one with him and
with all the spirit of the kingdom, now understood in a
new way, we are not capable of being called the children
of God, or of saying 'Thy Kingdom come'. But what wc
must realise is that the kingdom we ask tor is a kingdom
which is defmed by the last beatitudes: 'Blessed are they
40 LIVING PRAYER

which are persecuted/ 'Blessed are ye, when men shall

revile you, and persecute you and shall say all manner of
evil against you, for my sake/ If the kingdom is to come,
we are to pay the cost which is defined in these beatitudes.
The kingdom of which we are speaking is a kingdom of
love and it would be superficially, seemingly, so nice to
enter it; yet it is not nice, because love has got a tragic
side, it means death to each of us, the complete dying out
of our selfish, self-centred self, and not dying out as a

flower fades away but dying a cruel death, the death of the
crucifixion.

Only within the situation of the kingdom can the Name

of God be hallowed and receive glory from us; because it
is not our words and our gestures, even liturgical, that give
glory to the name of God, it is our being the kingdom,
which is the radiance and the glory of our maker and our
saviour. And this name is love, one God in the Trinity.
As we see it now, the Lord's Prayer has a complete uni-
versal value and significance, expressing, though in reverse
order, the ascent of every soul, from the captivity of sin to
the plenitude of life in God; it is not just a prayer, it is

the prayer of christians. The first words 'Our Father* are

Matthew 11:27 the Lord

characteristically christian. In St

says: 'No man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither

knoweth any man the Father, save the Son and he to

whomsoever the Son will reveal him/ To know God as
our father in an approximate way is given not only to
christians but to many people, yet to know him as our
father in the way in which Christ revealed it to us, is given
only to christians in Christ. Outside the biblical revelation
God appears to us as the creator of all things. A life attentive
 THE LORD S PRAYER 41

and worshipful may teach us that this creator is merciful,

loving, full of wisdom, and by analogy may lead us to
speak of the creator of all things in terms of fatherhood; he
deals with us in the way in which a father deals with his

children.

Even before the revelation of Christ we find in scripture

one striking example of a man who was strictly speaking
a pagan, but was on the verge of this knowledge of God
in terms of sonship and fatherhood; it is Job. He is termed
a pagan because he does not belong to the race of Abraham,
he is not one of the inheritors of the promises to Abraham.
He is one of the most striking figures of the Old Testament
because of his contest with God. The three men who argue
with him know God as their overlord: God is entitled to
do what he has done to Job, God is right in whatever he
does because he is the Lord of all things. And that is just the
point which Job cannot accept, because he knows God
differently. In his spiritual experience he knows already
that God is not simply the overlord that is above all. He
cannot accept him as one wielding arbitrary power, as an
almighty being who can and has a right to do anything he
chooses. Since, however, God has not yet said anything

about himself, all this is a hope, a prophetic vision and not

yet the very revelation of God in his fatherhood.

When the Lord appears to Job and answers his questions,

he speaks in terms of the pagan revelation, which is typified

by the words of the Psalm: 'The heavens declare the glory

of God and the firmament sheweth his handywork' (Ps

19:1). Job understands, because, as Paul says, repeating

Jeremiah (31:33), 'The Law of God is written 111 our hearts'

(Rom 2:15). God confronts Job with a vision of all the

42 LIVING PRAYER

created world and reasons with him; then, in spite of the

fact that Job is apparently found wrong, God declares that
he is more right than his gainsayers, than those who regard
God as an earthly overlord. Although he fell short of a
real knowledge of the divine fatherhood he had gone
beyond what his friends knew about God. One may say
that in the Old Testament we find in Job the first prophetic
vision of the fatherhood of God and of that salvation of
mankind that can be achieved only by someone who is the
equal of both God and man. When Job turns accusingly
towards God, and says, *
Neither is there any daysman
(mediator) betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us
both' (Job 9: 33), we see in him one who has outgrown the
understanding of his contemporaries, but who has as yet
no ground to affirm his faith and his knowledge, because
God has not yet spoken through Christ.
The mystery of sonship and the mystery of fatherhood
are correlative: you cannot know the father, unless you

know the son, neither can you know the son, unless you
are the father; there is no knowledge from without. Our
relationship with God is based on an act of faith, supple-

mented by God's response, that brings this act of faith to

fruition. The way in which we become members of Christ

is an act of faith, fulfilled by God in baptism. In a way
which is known only to God and to those who have been
called and renewed, we become, by what
participation,

Christ is by birth. It is only by becoming members of

Christ that we become sons of God. What we must not
forget is that the fatherhood of God more than an attitude
is

of warmth and affection, it is more real and more sharply

true: God becomes in Christ, the father of those who
 THE LORD S PRAYER 43

become members of the body of Christ, but one does not

get linked with Christ by any kind of loose sentimentality:
it is an ascetical effort which may take a lifetime and cost
far more than one guessed at the start.
The fact that Christ and we become one, means that what
applies to Christ applies to us, and that we can, in a way
unknown to the rest of the world, call God our father, no
longer by analogy, no longer in terms of anticipation or
prophecy, but in terms of Christ. This has a direct bearing
upon the Lord's Prayer: on the one hand, the prayer can
be used by anyone, because it is universal, it is the ladder
of our ascent towards God, on the other hand, it is abso-
lutely particular and exclusive: it is the prayer of those who
are, in Christ, the sons of the eternal father, who can speak
to him as sons.

When the prayer is envisaged in its universal meaning,

it is safer to study and analyse it in terms of an ascent, but

it is not the way in which Christ has given it to those who,

in him and together with him, are the children of God,
because for them it is no longer an ascent that is spoken of,

it is a state, a situation; we are, in the Church, the children

of God, and these first words 'Our Father' establish the fact

and make us take our stand where we belong. It is no good

saying we are unworthy of this calling. We have accepted
it, and it is ours. We may be the prodigal son and we will

have to answer for it, but what is certain is that nothing

can transform us back into that which we no longer arc.

When the prodigal son returned to his father, and was

about to say: 'I am no more worthy to be called thy son,

make me as one of thy hired servants' (Lk 15:19), the

father allowed him to pronounce the first words: 'I have

44 LIVING PRAYER

sinned against heaven and in thy sight and am no more

worthy to be called thy son', but there he stopped him.
Yes, he is not worthy, but he is a son in spite of his un-
worthiness. You cannot cease to be a member of your
family, whatever you do, whether worthy or not. What-
ever we are, whatever our life is, however unworthy we
we are to be called the sons of God, or to God our
call

father, we have no escape. That is where we stand. He is

our father, and we are answerable for the relationship of
sonship. We are created by him as his children and it is

only by rejecting our birthright that we become prodigal

sons. Imagine that the prodigal son did not come back, but
settled and married in the strange land, the child born of
this marriage would be organically related to the prodigal's
father. If he went back to his father's native land he would
be received as one of the family; if he did not go back he
would be answerable for not returning and choosing to

remain a stranger to his father's family.

It is baptism which is the return of the children of many

generations to the household of the father. And we baptise

a child in the same spirit in which we cure a baby born

with a on he wrongly comes to think that
disease. If later

it would have been more convenient to have kept his

infirmity, to be of no use to society and to be free from the

burden of social obligations, that is another matter. The
Church, in baptising a child, heals it in order to make it a

responsible member of the only real society.

Rejection of one's baptism amounts to the rejection of

an act of healing. In baptism we not only become healthy
but we become organically members of the body of Christ.
At that point, calling God 'Our Father' we have come
 THE LORD S PRAYER 45

to Zion, to the top of the mount, and at the top of the

mount we find the Father, divine love, the revelation of the
Trinity; and just without the walls the small hill which we
call Calvary, with history and eternity blending there in
this vision. From there we can turn round and look back.
This is where the christian should begin his christian life,

having fulfilled this ascent, and should begin to say the

Lord's Prayer in the order in which the Lord gives it to us

as the prayer of the only begotten Son, the prayer of the

Church, the prayer of each of us in our togetherness with
all, as a person who is a son within the Son. And it is only
then that we can go down from the top of the mountain,
step by step, to meet those who are still on their way or
those who have not yet begun their way.
 Ill

The Prayer of Bartimaeus

the case of Bartimaeus, as recorded in Mark 10:46,

gives us some insight into a certain number of points re-

lating to prayer.

And they came to Jericho and as he went out ofJericho with

;

his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus,

the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side, begging. And when
he heard that was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and
it

say, 'Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy upon me/ And many
charged him that he should hold his peace; but he cried the
more a great deal, 'Thou, son of David, have mercy on me/
And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called, and
they called the blind man, saying to him, be of good comfort,
rise; he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose,
and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him,
'What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?' The blind man
said might receive my sight/ And Jesus
unto Him, 'Lord, that I

said unto him: 'Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole/
And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in
the way.

This man, Bartimaeus, was not a young man apparently

he had sat for a number of years at the gate of Jericho,
 THE PRAYER OF BARTIMAEUS 47

receiving his sustenance from the mercy or the indifferent

wealth of those who passed by. It is likely that in the course

of his life he had tried all existing means and all possible
ways of being healed. As a child, he had probably been
brought to the temple, prayers and sacrifices had been
offered. He had visited all those who could heal, either
because they had a gift, or because they had knowledge.
He had surely fought for his sight and he had been con-
stantly disappointed. Every human device had been tried,

yet blind he remained. He had probably also heard in the

previous months that a young preacher had appeared in
Galilee, a man who loved people, who was merciful and
who was a holy man of God, a man who could heal and
work miracles. He had probably often thought that if he
could he would have gone to meet him; but Christ was
going from one place to another and there was little chance
that a blind man should find his way to him. And so, with
that spark of hope that made despair even deeper and more
acute, he sat by the gate of Jericho.
One day a crowd passed him, a crowd greater than usual,
a noisy oriental crowd; the blind man heard it and asked

who was there, and when he was told that it was Jesus of
Nazareth, he began to call out. Every spark of hope that

had survived in his soul suddenly became a fire, a burning

fire of hope. Jesus, whom he had never been able to meet,

was passing his way. He was passing by, and every step

was bringing him nearer and nearer, and then every step

would take him farther and farther away, hopelessly so;

and he began to cry, 'Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy

upon me.' This was the most perfect profession of faith

that he could make at that moment. He recognised in him

48 LIVING PRAYER

the son of David, the Messiah; he could not yet call

him the son of God, because even the disciples did
not yet know; but he recognised in him the one
who was expected. Then something happened which
happens constantly in our lives: they told him to be
quiet.

How often does it not happen that after seeking and

struggling for years on our own, when on a sudden we
begin to cry to God, many voices try to silence our prayers,
outward voices as well as inward voices. Is it worth pray-
ing? How many years did you struggle and God did not
care? Is he to care now? What is the use of praying?
Go back into your hopelessness, you are blind, and blind for
ever. But the greater the opposition, the greater also is the
evidence that help is at hand. The devil never attacks us so
violently as when we are quite close to the term of our
struggle, and we might yet be saved, but often are not,
because we give way at the last moment. Give in, says the
devil, make haste, it is too much, it is more than you can
stand, you can put an end to it at once, do not wait, you

cannot endure it any more. And then we commit suicide,

physically, morally, spiritually; we renounce the struggle
and accept death, just a minute before help was at hand
and we might have been saved.
We must never listen to these voices; the louder they
shout, the stronger should be our purpose; we must be
ready to cry out as long as necessary, as loud as Bartimaeus
did. Jesus Christ was passing by, his last hope was passing
by, but the people who were surrounding Christ were
either indifferent or trying to silence him. His grief and
suffering were out of place. They, who perhaps needed
 THE PRAYER OF BARTIMAEUS 49

Christ less, but surrounded him, wanted him to be busy

with them. Why should that blind man in distress inter-
rupt them? But Bartimaeus knew that there was no hope
for him if this last one vanished. This depth of hopelessness
was the well from which sprang a faith, a prayer full of
such conviction and such insistence that it broke through all

barriers - one of those prayers which beat at the gates of

heaven as St John Climacus says. Because his despair was
so profound he did not listen to the voices commanding
him to be quiet, to hold his peace; and the more they
tried to prevent him from reaching out to Christ, the
louder he said: 'Thou, son of David, have mercy on me!'
Christ stood still, asked for him to be brought forward and
worked a miracle.

We can learn from Bartimaeus in our practical approach

to prayer that when we
God wholeheartedly, God
turn to
always hears us. Usually when we realise that we can no
longer depend upon all that we are accustomed to find
reliable around us, we are not yet ready to renounce these

things. We can see that there is no hope as far as human,

earthly ways are concerned. We are aiming at something,
we search for our sight and we are constantly frustrated;

it is torment and hopelessness and if we stop there, we are

defeated. But if at that moment we turn to God, knowing

that only God is left, and say: 'I trust thcc and commit into
thy hands my soul and body, my whole life/ then despair
has led us to faith.
Despair is conducive to a new spiritual life when we
have got the courage to go deeper and farther, realising

that what we are despairing about is not the final victory

but the means we have employed to reach it. Then we

D
50 LIVING PRAYER

start at new way. God may bring

rock bottom in quite a
us back to one of the means we have already tried, but
which, under him, we may be able to use successfully.
There should always be real cooperation between God and
man and then God will give intelligence, wisdom, power
to do the right thing and achieve the right goal.
 IV

Meditation and Worship

meditation and prayer are often confused, but

there is no danger in this confusion if meditation develops
into prayer; onlywhen prayer degenerates into meditation.
Meditation primarily means thinking, even when God is
the object of our thoughts. If as a result we gradually go
deeper into a sense of worship and adoration, if the pre-

sence of God grows so powerful that we become aware of

being with God, and if gradually, out of meditation we
move into prayer, it is right but the contrary should never
;

be allowed, and in this respect there is a sharp difference

between meditation and prayer.

The main distinction between meditation and our usual
haphazard thinking is coherence; it should be an ascetical

exercise of intellectual sobriety. Theophane the Recluse,

speaking of the way in which people usually think, says

that thoughts buzz around in our heads like a swarm of

mosquitoes, in all directions, monotonously, without order
and without particular result.

The first thing to learn, whatever the chosen subject of

thought, is to pursue a line. Whenever we begin to think
52 LIVING PRAYER

of God, of things divine, of anything that is the life of the

soul, subsidiary thoughts appear; on every side we see so
many possibilities, so many things that are full of interest
and richness; but we must, having chosen the subject of
our thinking, renounce all, except the chosen one. This is

the only way in which our thoughts can be kept straight

and can go deep.

The purpose of meditation is not to achieve an academic
exercise in thinking; it is not meant to be a purely in-
tellectual performance, nor a beautiful piece of thinking
without further consequences; it is meant to be a piece of
straight thinking under God's guidance and Godwards,
and should lead us to draw conclusions about how to live.
It is important to realise from the outset that a meditation
has been useful when, as a result, it enables us to live more
precisely and more concretely in accordance with the
gospel.
Every one of us is impervious to certain problems and
open to others when ; we are not yet accustomed to think-
ing, it is better to begin with something which is alive for

us, either with those sayings which we find attractive,

which 'make our heart burn within us', or else, on the
contrary, with those against which we rebel, which we
cannot accept; we find both in the gospel.
Whatever we take, a verse, a commandment, an event
in the life of Christ, we must first of all assess its real ob-
jective content. This is extremely important because the
purpose of meditation is not to build up a fantastic struc-

ture but to understand a truth. The truth is there, given, it

is God's truth, and meditation is meant to be a bridge

between our lack of understanding and the truth revealed.

 MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 53

It is a way in which we can educate our intelligence, and

gradually learn to have 'the mind of Christ' as St Paul says
(1 Cor 2:16).
To make sure of the meaning of the text is not always as
simple as it sounds; there are passages that are quite easy,
there are other passages where words are used which can
be understood only against the background of our ex-
perience, or of the traditional understanding of these words.
For instance, the phrase 'The Bride of the Lamb' can be
understood only if we know what scripture means by the
word 'Lamb' ; otherwise it becomes completely nonsensical
and will be misunderstood. There are words which we can
understand adequately only if we ignore the particular or
technical meaning they may have acquired.
One word is 'spirit'. For a christian, 'spirit' is a
such
technical word it is either the Holy Spirit, the third person
;

of the Trinity or one of the components of the human body

- body and soul. It does not always convey with the same
simplicity and breadth what the writers of the gospel meant
to convey ; it has become so specialised that it has lost con-
tact with its root. To make sure of the text and what it

means, there is also the definition given in the dictionary.

The word spirit, or any other word, can be looked up and

immediately seems simple and concrete, although it may
have developed into a deeper meaning as a result of the
efforts of theologians. But we should never start with the
deeper meaning before we have got the simple concrete

one, which everyone could understand at the time Christ

spoke with the people around him.
There are things which we cannot understand except
within the teaching of the Church; scripture must be
54 LIVING PRAYER

understood with the mind of the Church, the mind of

Christ, because the Church has not changed; in its inner
experience it continues to live the same life as it lived in
the first century; and words spoken by Paul, Peter, Basil
or others within the Church, have kept their meaning. So,
after a preliminary understanding in our own contemporary
language, we must turn to what the Church means by the
words; only then can we ascertain the meaning of the given
text and have a right to start thinking and to draw con-
clusions. Once we have got the meaning of the text, we
must see whether in its utter simplicity it does not already
offer us suggestions, or even better, a straight command.
As the aim of meditation, of understanding scripture, is to
fulfil the will of we must draw practical conclusions
God,
and act upon them. When we have discovered the mean-
ing, when in this sentence God has spoken to us, we must

look into the matter and see what we can do, as in fact
we do whenever we stumble on a good idea; when we
come to realise that this or that is right, we immediately
think how to integrate it into our life, in what way, on
what occasion, by what method. It is not enough to under-
stand what can be done and enthusiastically to start telling

our friends all about it; we should start doing it. Paul the
Simple, an Egyptian saint, once heard Anthony the Great
read the first verse of the first Psalm: 'Blessed is the man
that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,' and im-
mediately, Paul departed into the wilderness. Only after

some thirty years, when Anthony met him again, St Paul

said tohim with great humility: 'I have spent all this time
trying to become the man that does not walk in the counsel
of the ungodly/ We do not need understanding on many
 MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 55

points to reach perfection; what we need is thirty years of

work to try to understand and to become new man.
that
Often we consider one or two points and jump to the
next, which is wrong since we have just seen that it takes a
long time to become recollected, what the Fathers call an
attentive person, someone capable of paying attention to
an idea so long and so well that nothing of it is lost. The
spiritual writers of the past and of the present day will all

tell us : on it hour after hour, day after

take a text, ponder
day, until you have exhausted all your possibilities, in-
tellectual and emotional, and thanks to attentive reading
and re-reading of this text, you have come to a new
attitude. Quite often meditation consists in nothing but
examining the text, turning over these words of God
addressed to us, so as to become completely familiar with

them, so imbued with them that gradually we and these

words become completely one. In this process, even if we

think that we have not found any particular intellectual
richness, we have changed.

On many occasions we can do a lot of thinking there ;

are plenty of situations in our daily life in which we have

nothing to do except wait, and if we are disciplined - and
this is part of our spiritual training - we will be able to

concentrate quickly and fix our attention at once on the

subject of our thoughts, of our meditation. We must learn
to do it by compelling our thoughts to attach themselves

to one focus and to drop everything else. In the beginning,

extraneous thoughts will intrude, but if we push them away

constantly, time after time, in the end they will leave us
in peace. It is only when by training, by exercise, by habit,

we have become able to concentrate profoundly and

56 LIVING PRAYER

quickly, that we can continue through life in a state of

collectedness, in spite of what we are doing. However, to
become aware of having extraneous thoughts, we must
already have achieved some sort of collectedness. We can
be in a crowd, surrounded by people and yet completely
alone and untouched by what is going on; it depends on
us whether to allow what is happening outside to become
an event in our inner life or not ; if we allow it to, our
attention will break down, but if we do not, we can be
completely isolated and collected in God's presence what-
ever happens around us. There is a story by Al Absihi
about this sort of concentration. A Moslem's family used to
keep a respectful silence whenever he had a visitor, but they
knew that they could make as much noise as they wanted
while he was praying, because at such times he heard no-
thing; in fact, one day he was not even disturbed by a
fire that broke out in his house.

We may sometimes find ourselves in a group of people

arguing hotly with no hope of a solution. We cannot leave
without causing further disorder, but what we can do is

mentally to withdraw, turn to Christ and say, 'I know that

you are here, help!' And just be with Christ. If it did not
sound so absurd one would say, make Christ present in the
situation. Objectively he is always present, but there is

some difference between being there objectively and being

introduced by an act of faith into a given situation. One
can do nothing but sit back and just remain with Christ and
let the others talk. His presence will do more than anything
one could say. And from time to time, in an unexpected
way, if one keeps quiet and silent together with Christ,
one will discover that one can say something quite sensible
 MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 57

that would have been impossible in the heat of argu-

ment.
Parallel with mental discipline, we must learn to acquire
a peaceful body. Whatever our psychological activity, our
body reacts to it; and our bodily state determines to a

certain degree the type or quality of our psychological

activity. Theophane the Recluse, in his advice to anyone

wishing to attempt the spiritual life, says that one of the
conditions indispensable to success is never to permit bodily
slackness : 'Be like a violin string, tuned to a precise note,
without slackness or supertension, the body erect, shoulders

back, carriage of the head easy, the tension of all muscles

oriented towards the heart/ A great deal has been written
and said about the ways in which one can make use of the
body to increase one's ability to be attentive, but on a

level accessible to many, Theophane's advice seems to be

simple, precise and We must learn to relax and

practical.

be alert at the same time. We must master our body so

that it should not intrude but make collectedness easier for

us.

Meditation is an activity of thought, while prayer is the

rejection of every thought. According to the teaching of the

eastern Fathers, even pious thoughts and the deepest and
loftiest theological considerations, if they occur during
prayer, must be considered as a temptation and suppressed;
because, as the Fathers say, it is foolish to think about God
and forget that you are in his presence. All the spiritual
guides of Orthodoxy warn us against replacing this meeting

with God by thinking about him. Prayer is essentially

standing face to face with God, consciously striving to

remain collected and absolutely still and attentive in his
58 LIVING PRAYER

presence, which means standing with an undivided mind,

an undivided heart and an undivided will in the presence
of the Lord and that ; is not easy. Whatever our training
may give us, there is always a short cut open at any time:
undividedness can be attained by the person for whom
the love of God is everything, who has broken all ties, who is

completely given to God; then there is no longer personal

striving, but the working of the radiant grace of God.
God must always be the focus of our attention for there
are many ways in which this collectedness may be falsified
when we pray from a deep concern, we have a sense that
our whole being has become one prayer and we imagine
that we have been in a state of deep, real prayerful col-

lectedness, but this is not true, because the focus of at-

tention was not God; it was the object of our prayer. When
we are emotionally involved, no alien thought intrudes,
because we are completely concerned with what we are

praying about; it is only when we turn to pray for some

other person or need that our attention is suddenly dis-

persed, which means that it was not the thought of God,

not the sense of his presence that was the cause of this con-
centration, but our human concern. It does not mean that

human concern is of no importance, but it means that the

thought of a friend can do more than the thought of God,

which is a serious point.

One of the reasons why we find it so difficult to be

attentive is that the act of faith which we make in affirm-

ing : 'God is here,' carries too little weight for us. We are
intellectually aware that God is here, but not aware of it

physically in a way that would collect and focus all our

energies, thoughts, emotions and will, making us nothing
 MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 59

but attention. If we prepare for prayer by a process of

imagination: 'The Lord Christ is here, that is what he looks
like, this is what I know about him, this is what he means
to me . . .\ the richer the image, the less real the presence,
because it is an idol that is built which obscures the real
presence. We can derive some help from it for a sort of
emotional concentration, but it is not God's presence, the
real, objective presence of God.
The early Fathers and the whole Orthodox tradition
we must concentrate, by an effort of will, on
teach us that
the words of the prayer we pronounce. We must pro-
nounce the words attentively, matter-of-factly, without
trying to create any sort of emotional state, and we must
leave it to God to arouse whatever response we are capable
of.

St John Climacus gives us a simple way of learning to

concentrate. He says: choose a prayer, be it the Lord's
Prayer or any other, take your stand before God, become
aware of where you are and what you are doing, and
pronounce the words of the prayer attentively. After a

certain time you will discover that your thoughts have

wandered; then restart the prayer on the words or the
sentence which was the last you pronounced attentively.

You may have to do that ten times, twenty times or fifty

times; you may, in the time appointed for your prayer,

be able to pronounce only three sentences, three petitions
and go no farther; but in this struggle you will have been
able to concentrate on the words, so that you bring to God,
seriously, soberly, respectfully, words of prayer which you
are conscious of, and not an offering that is not yours,
because you were not aware of it.
60 LIVING PRAYER

John Climacus also advises us to read the prayer of our

choice without haste, in a monotonous way, slowly enough
to have time to pay attention to the words, but not so

slowly as to make the exercise dull; and to do it without

trying to experience anything emotionally, because what
we aim at is a relationship with God. We should never
try to squeeze out of the heart any sort of feeling when we
come to God; a prayer is a statement, the rest depends on
God.
In this way of training a given amount of time is set

apart for prayer, and if prayer is attentive, it does not matter

what this length of time is. If you were meant to read three

pages in your rule of prayer and saw that after half an hour
you were still reading the first twelve words, of course it

would raise a feeling of discouragement; therefore, the

way is
best to have a definite time and keep to it. You
know the time fixed and you have the prayer material to
make use of; if you struggle earnestly, quite soon you will

discover that your attention becomes docile, because the

attention is much more subject to the will than we imagine,
and when one is absolutely sure that however one tries to

escape, it must be twenty minutes and not a quarter of an

hour, one just perseveres. St John Climacus trained dozens
of monks by this simple device - a time limit, then merciless
attention, and that is all.

The outward beauty of the liturgy must not seduce us

into forgetting that sobriety in prayer is a very important

feature in Orthodoxy. In the Way of a Pilgrim a village

priest gives some very authoritative advice on prayer:
'If you want it to be pure, right and enjoyable, you must
choose some short prayer, consisting of few but forcible
 :

MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 6l

words, and repeat it frequently, over a long period. Then

you will find delight in prayer/ The same idea is to be
found in the Letters ofBrother Lawrence: 'I do not advise you
to use multiplicity of words in prayer; many words and
long discourses being often the occasions of wandering/
John of Kronstadt was asked once how it was that priests,
in spite of their training, experience wandering, intrusive
thoughts, even in the course of the liturgy. The answer was
'Because of our lack of faith/ We have not faith enough,
faith being understood in the terms of St Paul as 'the evi-

dence of things not seen' (Heb 11:1). But it would be a

mistake to think that those distracting thoughts all come

from outside; we must face the fact that they come from
our own depths: they are our continual inner preoccupa-
tions coming to the fore, they are just the thoughts that

usually fill our life, and the only way to get radically rid of
unworthy thoughts is to change our outlook on life funda-
mentally. Again, as Brother Lawrence puts it in his eighth

letter: 'One way to recollect the mind easily in the time of

prayer, and preserve it more in tranquillity, is not to let it

wander too far at other times; you should keep it strictly

in the presence of God; and being accustomed to think of

him often, you will find it easy to keep your mind calm at

the time of prayer, or at least to recall it from its wander-

ings/
As long as we care deeply for all the trivialities of life,

we cannot hope to pray wholeheartedly; they will always

colour the train of our thoughts. The same is true about

our daily relations with other people, which should not

consist merely of gossip but be based on what is essential

in every one of us, otherwise we may find ourselves unable

62 LIVING PRAYER

to reach another level when we turn to God. We must

eradicate everything meaningless and trivial in ourselves

and in our relations with others, and concentrate on those

things we shall be able to take with us into eternity.
It is not possible to become another person the moment
we start to pray, but by keeping watch on one's thoughts
one learns gradually to differentiate their value. It is in our

daily life that we cultivate the thoughts which irrepres-

sibly spring up at the time of prayer. Prayer in its turn will

change and enrich our daily life, becoming the foundation
of a new and real relationship with God and those around
us.

In our struggle for prayer the emotions are almost

irrelevant ; what we must bring to God is a complete, firm

determination to be faithful to him and strive that God

should live in us. We must remember that the fruits of
prayer are not this or that emotional state, but a deep
change in the whole of our personality. What we aim at is

to be made able to stand before God and to concentrate

on his presence, all our needs being directed Godwards,

and to be given power, strength, anything we need that
the will of God may be fulfilled in us. That the will of God
should be fulfilled in us is the only aim of prayer, and it is

also the criterion of right prayer. It is not the mystical

feeling we may have, or our emotions that make good
praying. Theophane the Recluse says: 'You ask yourself,

"Have I prayed well today ?" Do not try to find out how
deep your emotions were, or how much deeper you
understand things divine; ask yourself: "Am I doing God's
will better than I did before?" If you are, prayer has
brought its fruits, if you are not, it has not, whatever
 '

MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 63

amount of understanding or feeling you may have derived

from the time spent in the presence of God.'
Concentration, whether in meditation or in prayer, can
only be achieved by an effort of will. Our spiritual life is

based on our faith and determination, and any incidental

joys are a gift of God. St Seraphim of Sarov, when asked
what it was that made some people remain sinners and
never make any progress while others were becoming
saints and living in God, answered: 'Only determination.
Our activities must be determined by an act of will, which
usually happens to be contrary to what we long for; this

will, based on our faith, always clashes with another will,

our instinctive one. There are two wills in us, one is the
conscious will, possessed to a greater or lesser degree, which
consists in the ability to compel ourselves to act in ac-

cordance with our convictions. The second one is some-

thing else in us, it is the longings, the claims, the desires of
all our nature, quite often contrary to the first will. St Paul

speaks of two laws that fight against each other (Rom

7:23). He speaks of the old and the new Adam in us, who
are at war. We know that one must die in order that the

other should live, and we must realise that our spiritual

life, our life as a human being taken as a whole, will never

be complete as long as these two wills do not coincide.

It is not enough to aim at the victory of the good will

against the evil one; the evil one, that is the longings of our

fallen nature, must absolutely, though gradually, be

transformed into a longing, a craving for God. The struggle
is hard and far-reaching.
The spiritual life, the christian life docs not consist in

developing a strong will capable of compelling us to do

64 LIVING PRAYER

what we do not want. In a sense, of course, it is an achieve-

ment to do the right things when we really wish to do the
wrong ones, but it remains a small achievement. A mature
spiritual life implies that our conscious will is in accordance

with the words of God and has remoulded, transformed our

nature so deeply, with the help of God's grace, that the
totality of our human person is only one will. To begin
with, we must submit and curb our will into obedience to
the commandments of Christ, taken objectively, applied
strictly, even when they clash with what we know about

life. We must, in an act of faith, admit against the evidence

that Christ is right. Experience teaches us that certain
things do not seem to work as the gospels say they should;
but God says they do, so they must. We must also re-
member that when we fulfil God's will in this objective
sense, we must not do it tentatively, thinking of putting it

to the test, to see what comes of it, because then it does not
work. Experience teaches us that when we are slapped on
one cheek, we want to retaliate; Christ says 'turn the other
cheek'. What we really expect when we finally determine
to turn the other cheek is to convert the enemy and win
his admiration. But when instead we are slapped again, we
are usually surprised or indignant, as though God has
cheated us into doing something quite unworkable.
We must outgrow this attitude, be prepared to do
God's will and pay the cost. Unless we are prepared to pay
the cost, we are wasting our time. Then, as a next step,

we must learn that doing is not enough, because we must

not be drilled into Christianity, but we must become
christians; we must learn, in the process of doing the will
of God, to understand God's purpose. Christ has made his
 MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 65

intentions clear to us and it is not in vain that in St John's

gospel he no longer calls us servants but friends, because
the servant does not know the mind of the master, and
he has told us all things (Jn 15:15). We must, by doing the
will of God, learn what this doing implies, so that in
thought, in will, in attitude, we may become co-workers
with Christ Cor 3:9). Being of one mind we shall
(i

gradually become inwardly what we try to be outwardly.

We see that we cannot partake deeply of the life of
God unless we change profoundly. It is therefore essential

thatwe should go to God in order that he should transform

and change us, and that is why, to begin with we should
ask for conversion. Conversion in Latin means a turn, a
change in the direction of things. The Greek word metanoia
means a change of mind. Conversion means that instead of
spending our lives looking in all directions, we should
follow one direction only. It is a turning away from a great

many things which we valued solely because they were

pleasant or expedient for us. The first impact of conversion
is to modify our sense of values: God being at the centre of
all, everything acquires a new position and a new depth.

All that is God's, all that belongs to him, is positive and

real. Everything that is him has no value or mean-
outside
ing. But it is not a change of mind alone that we can call
conversion. We can change our minds and go no farther;

what must follow is an act of will and unless our will comes
into motion and is redirected Godwards, there is no con-
version; at most there is only an incipient, still dormant
and inactive change in us. Obviously it is not enough to
look in the right direction and never move. Repentance
must not be mistaken for remorse, it docs not consist in
E
 66 LIVING PRAYER

feeling terribly sorry that things went wrong in the past;

it is an active, positive attitude which consists in moving
in the right direction. It is made very clear in the parable

of the two sons (Mt 21:28) who were commanded by

their father to go to work at his vineyard. The one said,

'I am going', but did not go. The other said, 'I am not
going', and then felt ashamed and went to work. This was
real repentance, and we should never lure ourselves into
imagining that to lament one's past is an act of repentance.
It is part of it of course, but repentance remains unreal and
barren as long as it has not led us to doing the will of the
father. We have a tendency to think that it should result
in fine emotions and we are quite often satisfied with
emotions instead of real, deep changes.
When we have hurt someone and realise that we were
wrong, quite often we go and express our sorrow to the
person, and when the conversation has been emotionally
tense, when there were a lot of tears and forgiveness and
moving words, we go away with a sense of having done
everything possible. We have wept together, we are at
peace and now everything is all right. It is not all right at

all. We have simply delighted in our virtues and the other

person, who may be goodhearted and easily moved, has
reacted to our emotional scene. But this is just what con-
version is not. No one asks us to shed tears, nor to have a
touching encounter with the victim, even when the victim
is God. What is expected is that having understood the

wrong, we should put it right.

Nor does conversion end there; it must lead us farther in

the process of making us different. Conversion begins but

it never ends. It is an increasing process in which we
 MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 67

gradually become more and more what we should be,

until, after the day of judgement, these categories of fall,

conversion and righteousness disappear and are replaced

by new categories of a new life. As Christ says: 'I make all

things new' (Rev 21:5).

One can pray everywhere and anywhere, yet there are

places where prayer finds its natural climate; those places
are churches, fulfilling the promise; 'I will make them joy-
ful in my house of prayer' (Is 56:7).
A church, once consecrated, once set part, becomes the
dwelling-place of God. He is present there in another way
than in the rest of the world. In the world he is present as a
stranger, as a pilgrim, as one who goes from door to door,
who has nowhere to rest his head; he goes as the lord of the
world who has been rejected by the world and expelled from
his kingdom and who has returned to it to save his people.

In church he is at home, it is his place; he is not only the

creator and the lord by right but he is recognised as such.
Outside it he acts when he can and how he can; inside a
church he has all power and all might and it is for us to

come to him.

When we build a church or set apart a place of worship

we do something which reaches far beyond the obvious

significance of the fact. The whole world which God

created has become a place where men have sinned; the
devil has been at work, a fight is going on constantly;
there is no place on this earth which has not been soiled by
blood, suffering or sin. When we choose a minute part of
it, calling upon the power of God himself, in rites which
convey his grace, to bless it, when we cleanse it from the
68 LIVING PRAYER

presence of the evil spirit and set it apart to be God's

foothold on earth, we reconquer for God a small part of
this desecrated world. We may say that this is a place where
the kingdom of God reveals itself and manifests itself with
power. When we come to church we should be aware
that we are entering upon sacred ground, a place which

belongs to God, and we should behave accordingly.

The icons seen on church walls are not merely images or
paintings: an icon is a focus of real presence. St John
Chrysostom advises us, before we start praying, to take
our stand in front of an icon and to shut our eyes. He says

'shut your eyes', because it is not by examining the icon,

by using it as a visual aid, that we are helped by it to pray.

It is not a substantial presence in the sense in which the

bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ. An icon
is not, in this sense, Christ, but there is a mysterious link

between the two. By the power of grace an icon participates

in something which can best be defined in the words of
Gregory Palamas as the energies of Christ, as the active

power of Christ working for our salvation.

An icon is painted as an act of worship. The wood is

chosen and blessed, the paint is blessed, the man who

wishes to paint prepares himself by fasting, by confession,

by communion. He keeps ascetical rules while working

and when his work is completed, it is blessed with holy
water and chrismated (this last part of the blessing is now
often omitted, unfortunately). Thus, by the power of the
Holy Spirit, the icon becomes more than a painting. It is

loaded with presence, imbued with the grace of the Spirit

and linked with the particular saint it represents in and
through the mystery of the communion of saints and the
 MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 69

cosmic unity of all things. One cannot say of the icon that
the indwelling of the saint is identical with or even similar
to that which we find in the holy gifts, and yet it is a focus
of real presence as it is experienced and taught by the
Church. An icon is not a likeness, it is a sign. Certain icons

have been singled out by the power and wisdom of God

to be miraculous icons. When you stand in their presence
you feel challenged by them.
A priest who visited Russia recently took services in

a church where there was a well-known wonder-working

icon of Our Lady and was deeply conscious of her
active participation in the service. The icon had become
very dark in the course of centuries, and from the place
where he stood he could not distinguish the features, so he

continued to celebrate with his eyes shut. Suddenly he felt

that the Mother of God in the icon was as it were compell-

ing him to pray, directing his prayers, shaping his mind.

He became aware of a power originating from the icon

that filled the church with prayer and guided the diffuse
thoughts. It was almost a physical presence, there was a

person standing there, compelling a response.

 V
Unanswered Prayer and Petition

in the episode of the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:

22) we see Christ, at least at first, refusing to answer a

prayer; it is the case of a prayer tested in an extremely hard
way. The woman asks for something which is absolutely
right, she comes with complete faith and does not even say
'if you can', she just comes, sure that Christ can and that
he will be willing, and that her child will be cured. To all

this faith the answer is 'No'. It is not that the prayer is not
worthy, or the faith not sufficient, simply that she is the
wrong sort of person. Christ has come for the Jews, she
is a pagan; he has not come for her. But she insists, saying,

'Yes, I am the wrong kind, but even the dogs eat the crumbs
which fall from their master's table.' And she stands,
trusting in the love of God, in spite of what God says,

trusting so humbly despite the reason he gives. She does not

even invoke the love of God, she just appeals to its ex-
pression in daily life: I have no right to a loaf, just give
me some crumbs. Christ's clear and sharp refusal tests her
faith and her prayer is fulfilled.

So often we implore God, saying, 'O God, if . . . if

 UNANSWERED PRAYER AND PETITION 71

Thou wilt . . . if Thou canst . . /Just like the father, who

says to Christ: 'Your disciples have not been able to cure
my little boy, you can do anything, do it' (Mk 9:22).
if

Christ answers with another 'if if you believe, however ' :

little, everything is Then the man says:

possible with faith.
'I believe, help thou mine unbelief/ The two 'ifs' are
correlative, because if there is no faith there is also no
possibility for God to enter into the situation.
The fact that one turns to God should be the proof of
belief, but it is so only to a certain extent; we believe and
we do not believe at the same time, and faith sbows its

measure by overcoming its own doubts. When we say:

'Yes, I doubt, but I do believe in God's love more than I

trust my own doubts/ it becomes possible for God to act.

But if one believes in law and not in grace, if one believes
that the world as we know it with its mechanical laws is

mechanical because God willed it to be nothing but a

machine, then there is no place for God. Yet the heart's

experience, as well as modern science, teaches us that there is

no such thing as the absolute law in which men believed in

the nineteenth century. Whenever by faith the kingdom of

God is re-created, there is a place for the laws of the king-
dom to act, that is for God to come into the situation with

his wisdom, his ability to do good within an evil situation,

without, however, upsetting the whole world. Our 'if

refers less to the power of God than to his love and con-
cern; and God's reply 'if you can believe in my love,

everything is possible' means that no miracle can happen

unless, even in an incipient way, the kingdom of God IS

present.

A miracle is not the breaking of the laws o( the fallen

72 LIVING PRAYER

world, it is the re-establishment of the laws of the kingdom

of God; a miracle happens only if we believe that the law
depends not on the power but on the love of God. Al-
though we know that God is almighty, as long as we think
that he does not care, no miracle is possible; to work it

God would have to enforce his will, and that he does not
do, because at the very core of his relationship to the world,
even fallen, there is his absolute respect for human freedom
and rights.The moment you say: 'I believe, and that

is why I turned to you/ implies: *I believe that you will be

willing, that there is love in you, that you are actually

concerned about every single situation.' The moment this
grain of faith is there the right relationship is established

and a miracle becomes possible.

Apart from this type of 'if ', which refers to our doubt
in the love of God, and which is wrong, there is a legitimate

category of 'if. We can say: 'I am asking this, if it is

according to thy will, or if it is for the best, or if there is no

secret evil intention in me when I ask,' and so on. All these
'ifs' are more than legitimate, because they imply a diffident

attitude to our own selves; and every prayer of petition

should be an 'if-prayer'.

As the Church is an extension of Christ's presence in

time and space, any christian prayer should be Christ
praying although it implies a purity of heart that we do not
possess. The prayers of the Church are Christ's prayers,
particularly in the canon of the liturgy, where it is entirely

Christ praying ; but any other prayer in which we ask for

something involving a concrete situation is always under
'if. In the majority of cases know what Christ
we do not
would have prayed for in this situation and so we introduce
 UNANSWERED PRAYER AND PETITION 73

the 'if , which means that as far as we can see, as far as we

know God's will, this is what we wish to happen to meet
his will. But the 'if also means: I am putting into these
words my desire that the best should happen, and therefore
you can alter this concrete petition to anything you choose,
taking my intention, the desire that your will be done,
even if I am unwise in stating how I should like it to be
done (Rom 8:26). When, for example, we pray for some-
one to recover, or to be back from a journey at a certain

time, for some purpose we think essential, our real in-

tention is the good of the person, but we are not clear-
sighted about it, and our timing and planning may be
wrong. 'If ' implies that so far as I can see what is right, be
it done that way, but if I am mistaken, do not take me at

my word but at my intention. The Staretz Ambrose of

Optina had the kind of vision which allowed him to see a

person's real good. The monastery's icon painter had just

received a large sum of money and was about to start his
journey home. He must have prayed that he might be on
his way immediately; but the Staretz deliberately delayed
him from
the artist for three days, and in so doing saved
being murdered and robbed by one of his workmen. When
he eventually departed the villain had left his ambush, and
it was only years later that the painter discovered from what
danger the Staretz had protected him.
We sometimes pray for someone we who is in
love,

need and whom we are not able to help. Very often we do

not know what the right thing is, we do not find the words
to help we know that
even the most beloved. Sometimes
nothing can be done except to be silent, though we are
ready to give our life to help. In that spirit we can turn to
74 LIVING PRAYER

God, put the whole situation into his care and say: 'O
God, who knowest everything and whose love is perfect,
take this life into thine hand, do what I long to do, but
cannot/ Prayer being a commitment, we cannot pray in
all truth for those whom we are not ourselves prepared
to help. With Isaiah we must be ready to hear the Lord say
'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' and to
answer: 'Here am I, send me' (Is 6:8).
Many are dismayed at the thought of praying for the
dead, and they wonder what one is aiming at, what one
can hope in doing so. Can the destiny of the dead be
changed if one prays for them, will the praying convince
God to do an injustice and grant them what they have not
deserved?
If you believe that prayers for the living are a help to
them, why should you not pray for the dead? Life is one,
for as St Luke says 'He is not: the God of the dead but of the
living' (20:38). Death is not an end but a stage in the
destiny of man, and this destiny is not petrified at the

moment of death. The love which our prayer expresses

cannot be in vain; if love had power on earth and had no
power after death it would tragically contradict the word
of scripture that love is as strong as death (Song 8:6), and
the experience of the Church that love is more powerful
than death, because Christ has defeated death in his love
for mankind. It is an error to think that man's connection
with life on earth ends with his death. In the course of one's
life one sows seeds. These seeds develop in the souls of
other men and affect their destiny, and the fruit that is

born of these seeds truly belongs not only to those who bear
it but also to those who sow. The words written or spoken
 UNANSWERED PRAYER AND PETITION 75

that change a human life or the destiny of mankind, as the

words of preachers, philosophers, poets or politicians, re-

main their authors' responsibility, not only for evil but
also for good; the authors' destiny is bound to be affected

by the way they have influenced those living after them.

The life of every person continues to have repercussions
until the last judgement, and man's eternal and final

destiny is determined not only by the short space of time

he has lived on this earth but also by the results of his life,

by its good or evil consequences. Those who have received

seed sown as in fertile ground, can influence the destiny
of the departed by prayerfully beseeching God to bless the

man who has transformed their lives, given a meaning to

their existence. In turning to God in an act of enduring

love, faithfulness and gratitude they enter this eternal

kingdom which transcends the limits of time, and they

can influence the destiny and the situation of the departed.
It is not injustice that is asked of God; we do not ask him
merely to forgive a man in spite of what he has done but
to bless him because of the good he has done, to which
other lives bear witness.
Our prayer is an act of gratitude and love, in so far as our
life is the continuation of something that he stood for. We
do not ask God to be unjust, and we do not imagine that

we more compassionate and more loving than he is,

are
nor do we ask him to be more merciful than he would
otherwise be; we are bringing new evidence for God's
judgement, and we pray that this evidence should be taken
into account and that the blessing of God should come
abundantly for the one who has meant so much in our life.
It is important to realise that we pray not in order to
76 LIVING PRAYER

convince God of something but to bear witness that this

person has not lived in vain, neither loving nor inspiring

love.

Any person who has been the origin of love in any way
has something to put forward in his defence, but it is for
those who remain to bear witness to what he has done for
them. Here again it is not simply a matter of goodwill or
emotion. St Isaac of Syria says do not reduce your prayer
:

to words, make the totality of your life a prayer to God.

Therefore, if we v/ish to pray for our departed, our life

must back up the prayer. It is not enough to wake up to

a certain feeling for them from time to time and then ask
God to do something for them. It is essential that every
seed of good, truth and holiness that has been sown by them
should bear fruit, because then we can stand before God
and say he has sown good, there was some quality in him
:

which inspired me to do well, and this particle of good is

not mine but his and is in a way his glory and his redemp-
tion.

The Orthodox Church has very firm views about death

and burial. The burial service starts by 'Blessed is our
God* we should realise what weight this carries, because
;

these words are said in spite of the death, in spite of the

bereavement, in spite of the suffering. The service is based
on Matins, which is a service of praise and light, the

mourners stand holding lighted candles in their hands as a

symbol of the resurrection. The basic idea of the service

is that we are indeed faced with death, but death does not
frighten us any more when we see it through the resur-
rection of Christ.
 UNANSWERED PRAYER AND PETITION 77

At the same time the service gives a sense of the ambiguity

of death, the two sides to it. Death cannot be accepted, it

is a monstrosity: we have been created in order to live, and

yet in the world which human sin has made monstrous,
death is the only way out. If our world of sin were fixed
unchangeable and eternal, it would be hell; death is the
only thing that allows the earth, together with suffering
and sin, to escape from this hell.

The Church perceives the two sides to this; St John of

Damascus has written about it with extreme realism,
crudely, because a Christian cannot be romantic about
death. Dying is dying in the same way in which, when we
speak of the cross, we must remember that it is an instru-
ment of death. Death is death with all its tragic ugliness

and monstrosity, and yet death ultimately is the only thing

that gives us hope. On the one hand, we long to live; on
the other hand, if we long sufficiently to live, we long to
die, because in this limited world it is impossible to live
fully. There is decay indeed, but a decay which, in con-
junction with the grace of God, leads to a measure of life

which otherwise we would never have. 'Death is a gain,'

says St Paul (Phil i :2i), because living in the body we get

separated from Christ. When we have reached a certain

measure of life - independent of time - we must shed this

limited life to enter into unlimited life.

The Orthodox burial service is strikingly centred round

the open coffin, because the person is still considered in his
entirety as body and soul, both being the concern of the
Church. The body has been prepared for the burial; the
body is not a piece of outworn clothing, as some seemingly
devout people like to say, which has been cast oft for the
78 LIVING PRAYER

soul to be free. A body is much more than this for a

Christian; there is nothing that befalls the soul in which the

body does not take part. We receive impressions of this
world, but also of the divine world partly through the
body. Every sacrament is a gift of God, conferred on the
soul by means of physical actions ; the waters of baptism,
the oil of chrismation, the bread and wine of communion
are all taken from the material world. We can never do
either good or evil otherwise than in conjunction with our
body. The body is not there only, as it were, for the soul
to be born, mature and then to go, abandoning it; the
body, from the very first day to the last, has been the co-
worker of the soul in all things and is, together with the
soul, the total man. It remains marked for ever as it were
by the imprint of the soul and the common life they had
together. Linked with the soul, the body is also linked

through the sacraments to Jesus Christ himself. We

commune to his blood and body, and the body is thus
united in its own right with the divine world with which
it comes into contact.
A body without a soul is a corpse and not our concern,
and a soul without a body, even the soul of a saint that

goes straight to heaven', does not yet enjoy the

*
bliss which
the whole human being is called to enjoy at the end of
time when the glory of God shines through soul and body.
As St Isaac the Syrian says, even eternal bliss cannot be
enforced on the human being without the consent of the
body. It is extremely striking to find this comment upon
the importance of the body in the sayings of St Isaac, who
is one of the great ascetics, one of those about whom people
might easily say that he spent all his life killing his body. But
 ;

UNANSWERED PRAYER AND PETITION 79

in the words of St Paul, the ascetics were killing the body of

sin, to reap out of corruption, eternity (Rom 6:6) and not
killing the body for the soul to escape an imprisonment.
Thus the dead body is an object of care on the part of the
Church, even when it is the body of a sinner; and all the
attention we pay to it when alive is nothing to the venera-
tion shown it at the burial service.

In the same way the body is linked with the soul in the
life of prayer. Every perversity, every excess, every
vulgarity to which we ourselves subject our bodies de-
grades one member of this partnership in a way which
damages the other; to put the matter another way, in-

dignity imposed from without can be overcome by prayer

self-inflicted indignity destroys prayer.

The characteristic of christian prayer is that it is the

prayer of Christ, brought to his father, from generation to
generation in constantly renewed situations, by those who,
by grace and participation, are Christ's presence in this

world; it is a continuous, unceasing prayer to God, that

God's will should be done, that all should happen accord-

ing to his wise and loving plan. This means that our life

of prayer is at the same time a struggle against all that is

not Christ's. We prepare the ground for our prayer each

time we shed something which is not Christ's, which is

unworthy of him, and only the prayer of one who can,

like St Paul, say: 'I live, yet not I, but Christ livcth in me
(Gal 2 20)
: is real christian prayer.

Yet, instead of praying for the will of God to be done,

we often try to convince him to do things as we want.

How can such prayers not be defeated?

80 LIVING PRAYER

However well we pray, we must be aware at every

moment that our best idea may be wrong. However
sincere, however truthful our intentions, however perfect
it is according to our lights, every prayer may go wrong
at a certain moment, and this is why, when we have said

everything we had to say to God, we must add, as Christ

did in the garden of Gethsemane: 'Not as I will, but as

Thou wilt* (Mt 26:39). In the same spirit we may make

use of the intercession of the saints : we bring them our
intentions which are good, but let them frame them in

accordance with the will of God, which they know.

'Ask and it shall be given' (Mt 7:7). These words are
a thorn in the christian consciousness, they can neither be

accepted nor rejected. To reject them would mean a refusal

of God's infinite kindness, but we are not yet christian
enough to accept them. We know that the father would
not give a stone instead of bread (Mt 7:9), but we do not
think of ourselves as children who are unconscious of
their real needs and what is good or bad for them. Yet
there lies the explanation of so many unanswered prayers.
It can also be found in the words of St John Chrysostom:
'Do not be distressed if you do not receive at once what
you ask for: God wants to do you more good through
your perseverance in prayer/
'Could not the silence of God be the tragic aspect of our
own deafness?'*

'Again I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on

earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be
done for them of my Father which is in heaven' (Mt
* A. de Chateaubriant, La Rtponse du Seigneur, p. 170.
 UNANSWERED PRAYER AND PETITION 8l

18:19). This quotation is sometimes used as a stick with

which to beat christians, because often enough things are
asked earnestly by several persons together and yet not
granted. But objections crumble the moment it appears
that the being together is a wordly one, the agreement is
coalition and not unity, and the belief that God can do
anything he likes is interpreted in the same way that it was
by Job's comforters.
As for the seeming untruth that 'All things, whatsoever
Ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive' (Mt
21:22), it is answered by Christ's prayer in the garden of
Gethsemane and partly also by St Paul (Heb 11:36-40):

And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings,

yea moreover of bonds of imprisonment : They were stoned,
they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the
sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins;
being destitute, afflicted, whom the world
tormented; (of
was not worthy) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains,
and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, having ob-
tained a good report through faith, received not the promise.
God having provided some better things for us, that they,
without us, should not be made perfect.

Surely in all those situations there was a great deal of

prayer, not perhaps for deliverance on the part of those who
were ready to lay down their lives for God, but for help;

and yet they were not given all they could expect.
When God sees that you have faith enough to stand his

silence or to accept being delivered to torment, moral or

physical, for a greater fulfilment of his kingdom, he may
keep silent, and in the end the prayer will be answered,

but in quite a different way from what you expected.

82 LIVING PRAYER

St Paul says, speaking of the prayer of Christ in the

garden of Gethsemane, that his prayer was heard (Heb
5:7), and God raised him from the dead. St Paul does not
speak here of an immediate answer from God, who could
have taken away the cup, which was what Christ was
asking; but in fact God gave Christ strength to accept, to
suffer, to fulfil his work, and it is the absoluteness of his
faith which made it possible for God to say No. But it is

also this very absoluteness of Christ's faith which made it

possible for the world to be saved.

Many of our prayers are prayers of petition, and people

seem to think that petition is the lowest level of prayer;
then comes gratitude, then praise. But in fact it is gratitude
and praise that are expressions of a lower relationship.

On our level of half-belief it is easier to sing hymns of

praise or to thank God than to trust him enough to ask
something with faith. Even people who believe half-
heartedly can turn to thank God when something nice
comes their way; and there are moments of elation when
everyone can sing to God. But it is much more difficult to
have such undivided faith as to ask with one's whole heart
and whole mind with complete confidence. No one
should look askance at petition, because the ability to say
prayers of petition is a test of the reality of our faith.

When the Mother of Zebedee's children came to ask

Christ for the two best places in paradise for her two sons,

she came with complete confidence that the Lord could do

what she was asking, but she was thinking of the power of
Christ to grant her request as the Lord's right to act simply
according to his will, which was not in accordance with
 UNANSWERED PRAYER AND PETITION 83

the teaching: 'My judgement is just because I seek not

mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent
me' (Jn 5:30).
What theMother of Zebedee's children expected was
that the Lord would arbitrarily fulfil her desire as a favour,
because she was the first to put forward the claim. The
refusal of Christ pointed out that what the mother was
kingdom of God,
asking was for a situation of pride in the
when the whole kingdom is based on humility. The
mother's prayer was conditioned by the Old Testament
attitude to the coming of the Messiah.
 VI

The Jesus Prayer

those who have read The Way of a Pilgrim are familiar

with the expression 'The Jesus Prayer'. It refers to a short
prayer the words of which are: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of
God, have mercy on me, a sinner,' constantly repeated. The
Way of a Pilgrim is man who wanted to learn
the story of a
to pray constantly (I Thes 5:17). As the man whose ex-
perience is being related is a pilgrim, a great many of his
psychological characteristics, and the way in which he
learned and applied the prayer, were conditioned by the
fact that he lived in a certain way, which makes the book
less universally applicable than it could be; and yet it is the
best possible introduction to this prayer, which is one of
the greatest treasures of the Orthodox Church.
The prayer is profoundly rooted in the spirit of the
gospel, and it is not in vain that the great teachers of Ortho-
doxy have always insisted on the fact that the Jesus Prayer
sums up the whole of the gospel. This is why the Jesus
Prayer can only be used in its fullest sense if the person who
uses it belongs to the gospel, is a member of the Church of
Christ.
 THE JESUS PRAYER 85

All the messages of the gospel, and more than the

messages, the reality of the gospel, is contained in the
name, in the person of Jesus. If you take the first half of the

prayer you will see how it expresses our faith in the Lord:
'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God/ At the heart we find the
name ofJesus; it is the name before whom every knee shall
bow (Is 45 12,3), and when we pronounce it we affirm the
historical event of the incarnation. We affirm that God, the
Word of God, co-eternal with the father, became man, and
that the fullness of the godhead dwelt in our midst (Col
2 9) bodily in his person.
:

To see in the man of Galilee, in the prophet of Israel, the

incarnate Word of God, God become man, we must be
guided by the spirit, because it is the spirit of God who
reveals to us both the incarnation and the lordship of Christ.
We call him Christ, and we affirm thereby that in him were
fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. To affirm

that Jesus is the Christ implies that the whole history of the
Old Testament is we accept it as the truth of God.
ours, that

We call him son of God, because we know that the Messiah

expected by the Jews, the man who was called 'son of
David' by Bartimaeus, is the incarnate son of God. These
words sum up all we know, all we believe about Jesus

Christ, from the Old Testament to the New, and from the

experience of the Church through the ages. In these few-

words we make a complete and perfect profession of faith.

But it is not enough to make this profession of faith; it is

not enough to believe. The devils also believe and tremble

(Jas 2: 19). Faith is not sufficient to work salvation, it must
lead to the right relationship with God; and so, having
professed, in its integrity, sharply and clearly, OUT faith in
86 LIVING PRAYER

the lordship and in the person, in the historicity and in the

divinity of Christ, we put ourselves face to face with him,
in the right state of mind: 'Have mercy on me, a sinner/

These words- 'have mercy* are used in all the Christian

Churches and, in Orthodoxy, they are the response of the
people to all the petitions suggested by the priest. Our
modern translation 'have mercy* is a limited and insuffi-

cient one. The Greek word which we find in the gospel

and in the early liturgies is eleison. Eleison is of the same
root as elaion, which means olive tree and the oil from it.

If we look up the Old and New Testament in search of

the passages connected with this basic idea, we will find

it described in a variety of parables and events which allow

us to form a complete idea of the meaning of the word.
We find the image of the olive tree in Genesis. After the

flood Noah sends birds, one after the other, to find out
whether there isany dry land or not, and one of them, a
dove - and it is significant that it is a dove - brings back a

small twig of olive. This twig conveys to Noah and to all

with him in the ark the news that the wrath of God has
ceased, that God is now offering man a fresh opportunity.
All those who are in the ark will be able to settle again on
firm ground and make an attempt to live, and never more
perhaps, if they can help it, undergo the wrath of God.
In the New Testament, in the parable of the good
Samaritan, olive oil is poured to soothe and to heal. In the

anointing of kings and priests in the Old Testament, it is

again oil that is poured on the head as an image of the grace

of God that comes down and flows on them (Ps 133:2)

giving them new power to fulfil what is beyond human

capabilities. The king is to stand on the threshold, between
 THE JESUS PRAYER 87

the will of men and the will of God, and he is called to

lead his people to the fulfilment of God's will; the priest
also stands on that threshold, to proclaim the will of God
and to do even more: to act for God, to pronounce God's
decrees and to apply God's decision.
The oil speaks first of all of the end of the wrath of God,
of the peace which God offers to the people who have
offended against him; further it speaks of God healing us
in order that we should be able to live and become what
we are called to be; and as he knows that we are not capable
with our own strength of fulfilling either his will or the
laws of our own created nature, he pours his grace abun-
dantly on us (Rom 5:20). He gives us power to do what
we could not otherwise do.
The words milost and pomiluy in Slavonic have the same
root as those which express tenderness, endearing, and
when we use the words eleison , 'have mercy on us', pomiluy,
we are not just asking God to save us from His wrath - we
are asking for love.
If we turn back to the words of the Jesus Prayer, 'Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner', we
see that the first words express with exactness and integrity

the gospel faith in Christ, the historical incarnation of the

Word of God; and the end of the prayer expresses all the

complex rich relationships of love that exist between God

and his creatures.

The Jesus Prayer is known to innumerable Orthodox,

either as a rule of prayer or in addition to it, as a form ot

devotion, a short focal point that can be used at any

moment, whatever the situation.
Numerous writers have mentioned the physical aspects
88 LIVING PRAYER

of the prayer, the breathing exercises, the attention which

is paid to the beating of the heart and a number of other
minor features. The Philocalia is full of detailed instruc-
tions about the prayer of the heart, even with references to
the Sufi technique. Ancient and modern Fathers have dealt

with the subject, always coming to the same conclusion:

never to attempt the physical exercises without strict

guidance by a spiritual father.

What is of general use, and God given, is the actual
praying, the repetition of the words, without any physical
endeavour - not even movements of the tongue - and
which can be used systematically to achieve an inner
transformation. More than any other prayer, the Jesus
Prayer aims at bringing us to stand in God's presence with
no other thought but the miracle of our standing there and
God with us, because in the use of the Jesus Prayer there
is nothing and no one except God and us.

The use of the prayer is dual, it is an act of worship as

is every prayer, and on the ascetical level, it is a focus that

allows us to keep our attention still in the presence of God.

It is a very companionable prayer, a friendly one, always

at hand and very individual in spite of its monotonous
repetitions. Whether in joy or in sorrow, it is, when it has
become habitual, a quickening of the soul, a response to

any call of God. The words of St Simeon, the new theo-

logian, apply to all its possible effects on us : 'Do not worry
about what will come next, you will discover it when it

comes' (Quoted in the Guild of Pastoral Psychology, No. 95,

p. 91).
 VII

Ascetic Prayer

when we are in the right frame of mind, when the

heart is full of worship, of concern for others, when as St

Luke says, our lips speak from the fullness of the heart
(6:45), there is no problem about praying; we speak freely

to God in the words that are most familiar to us. But if we

were to leave our life of prayer at the mercy of our moods,
we should probably pray from time to time fervently and
sincerely, but lose for long periods any prayerful contact
with God. It is a great temptation to put off praying till the
moment when we feel alive to God, and to consider that

any prayer or any move Godwards at other periods lacks

sincerity. We all know from experience that we have a

variety of feelings which do not come to the fore at every

moment of our lives; illness or distress can blot them from
our consciousness. Even when we love deeply, there arc
times when we are not aware of it and yet we know that

love is alive in us. The same is true with regard to God;

there are inner and outward causes that make it difficult

at times to be aware of the fact that we believe, that WC have

hope, that we do love God. At such moments we must act
90 LIVING PRAYER

not on the strength of what we feel but of what we know.

We must have faith in what is in us, although we do not
perceive it at that particular moment. We must remember
that love is still there, although it does not fill our hearts
with joy or inspiration. And we must stand before God,
remembering that he is always loving, always present, in
spite of the fact that we do not feel it.

When we are cold and dry, when it seems that our prayer
is a false pretence, carried out by routine, what should we
do? Would it be better to stop praying until prayer comes
alive again? But how shall we know that the time has

come? There is a grave danger of being seduced by the

desire for perfection in prayer when we are still so far from
it. When prayer is dry, instead of giving way we should
make a wider act of faith and carry on. We should say to
God : 'I am worn out, I cannot pray really, accept, O Lord,
this monotonous voice and the words of prayer, and help
me/ Make prayer a matter of quantity when unable to
make it a matter of quality. Of course, it is better to utter
only 'Our Father', with all the depth of understanding of
the words, than to repeat the Lord's Prayer twelve times;
but it is just what we are sometimes incapable of. Prayer
being quantitative does not mean the utterance of more
words than usual; it means keeping to the usual rule of
prayer fixed for oneself and accepting the fact that it is

nothing but a certain quantity of repeated words. As the

Fathers say, the Holy Spirit is always there when there is
prayer and according to St Paul: 'No man can say that
Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost* (I Cor 12:3). It

is the Holy Spirit who will in due time fill prayer, faithful
and patient as it has been, with the meaning and depth of
 ASCETIC PRAYER 91

new life. When we God in these moments of

stand before
dejection we must use our will, we must pray from convic-
tion if not from feeling, out of the faith we are aware of

possessing, intellectually if not with a burning heart.

At such moments the prayers sound quite different to us,
but not to God; as Julian of Norwich says, 'Pray inwardly
though thou thinkest it savour thee not, for it is profitable,
though thou feel not, though thou see nought, yea though
thou think thou canst not. For in dryness and in barrenness,
in sickness and in feebleness, then is thy prayer well pleasant
to me, though thou thinkest it savour thee nought but
little and so is all thy believing prayer in my sight' (The
Cloud of Unknowing).
In those periods of dryness, when prayer becomes an
effort, our main support is faithfulness and determination;
it is by an act of will, including them both, that we compel
ourselves, without considering our feelings, to take our
stand beforeGod and speak to him, simply because God
is God and we are his creatures. Whatever we feel at a

given moment our position remains the same; God remains

our creator, our saviour, our lord and the one towards
whom we move, who is the object of our longing and the
only one who can give us fulfilment.
Sometimes we think that we are unworthy of praying
and that we even have no right to pray; again, this is a

temptation. Every drop of water, from wherever it comes,

pool or ocean, is purified in the process of evaporation;
and so is every prayer ascending to God. The more de-
jected we feel, the greater the necessity for prayer, and that
is surely what John of Kronstadt felt one day when he was
praying, watched by a devil who was muttering, 'You
92 LIVING PRAYER

hypocrite, how dare you pray with your filthy mind, full

of the thoughts I read in it.' He answered, 'It is just because

my mind is full of thoughts I dislike and fight that I am
praying to God/
Whether it is the Jesus Prayer that is being used or any
other readymade prayer, people often say: what right have
I to use it? How can I say those words as my own? When
we make use of prayers which have been written by saints,
by men of prayer, and are the result of their experience,
we can be sure that if we are attentive enough, the words
will become our own, we shall grow into their underlying

feeling and they will remould us by the grace of God, who

responds to our effort. With the Jesus Prayer the situation,

in a way, is simpler, because the worse our position is, the
easier it is to realise that, having taken our stand before God,
all we can say is Kyrie Eleison, 'Have mercy'.
More often than we may admit to ourselves, we pray
hoping for a mysterious illumination, hoping that some-
thing will happen to us, that a thrilling experience will
come our way. It is a mistake, the same kind of mistake we
make sometimes in our relationships with people which
may in fact destroy the relationship completely. We
approach a person and we expect a definite sort of response,
and when there is no response whatever or else when it is

not the one we expected, we are disappointed, or we dis-

miss the reality of the given answer. When we pray, we

must remember that the Lord God, who lets us come freely
into his presence, is also free with regard to us which does ;

not mean that the freedom he takes is an arbitrary one, as

ours, to be gracious or rude according to our mood, but

that he is not bound to reveal himself to us simply because
 ASCETIC PRAYER 93

we have come and are gazing in his direction. It is very

important to remember that both God and we are free
either to come or to go ; and this freedom is of immense
importance because it is characteristic of a real relationship.

Once, a young woman, after a period of prayerful life in

which God seemed to be immensely familiar and close,
suddenly lost touch with him completely. But more than
the sorrow of losing him she was afraid of the temptation
of trying to escape that absence of God by building up a
false presence of him; because the real absence of God and
his real presence are equally good proofs of his reality
and of the concreteness of the relationship which prayer
implies.

So we must be prepared to offer our prayer and be ready

for whatever God may give. This is the basic principle of
the ascetic life. In the struggle to keep ourselves directed
Godwards and to fight against anything in us that is opaque,
that prevents us from looking in the direction of God, we
can be neither altogether active nor passive. We cannot be
active in the sense that, by agitating ourselves, by making
efforts, we cannot climb into heaven or bring God down
from heaven. But we cannot just be passive either and sit

doing nothing, because God does not treat us as objects;

there would be no true relationship if we were merely

acted upon by him. The ascetic attitude is one of vigilance,
the vigilance of a soldier who stands in the night as still as

he can and as completely alert and aware as possible of

anything that is happening around him, ready to respond

in the right way and with speed to anything that may hap-
pen. In a way he is inactive because he stands and does
nothing; on the other hand, it is intense activity, because
94 LIVING PRAYER

he is alert and completely recollected. He listens, he watches

with heightened perception, ready for anything.
In the inner life it is exactly the same. We must stand in
God's presence in complete silence and collectedness, alert

and unstirring. We may wait for hours, or for longer

periods of time, but a moment will come when our alert-

ness will be rewarded, because something will be happen-

ing. But again, if we are alert and vigilant, we are on the
lookout for anything that may come our way, and not
for one particular thing. We must be ready to receive from
God whatever experience is sent. When we have prayed
for some time and have felt a certain warmth, we fall quite
easily into the temptation of coming to God the next day
expecting the same thing to happen. If we have in the past

prayed with warmth or with tears, with contrition or joy,

we come to God looking forward to an experience we have
already had, and quite often, because we are looking for
the old one, we miss the new contact with God.
God's coming close to us may find expression in a variety
of ways; it may be joy, it may be dread, it may be contri-
tion or anything else. We must remember that what we
are going to perceive today is something unknown to us,
because God as we knew him yesterday is not God as he

might reveal himself tomorrow.

 VIII

The Prayer of Silence

prayer primarily an encounter with God; on

is

certain occasionswe may be aware of God's presence, more

often dimly so, but there are times when we can place
ourselves before him only by an act of faith, without being
aware of his presence at all. It is not the degree of our aware-
ness that is relevant, that makes this encounter possible and
fruitful; other conditions must be fulfilled, the basic one
being that the person praying should be real. In social life

we have a variety of facets to our personalities. The same

person appears as one in one setting and quite different in

another, authoritative in any situation in which he com-

mands, quite submissive at home, and again quite different

among friends. Every self is complex, but none of these

false personalities or of those which are partly false and
partly true, are our real selves to such an extent as to be
able to stand in our name in the presence of God. This
weakens our prayer, it creates dividedness of mind, heart
and will. As Polonius says in Hamlet: 'To thine own self be
true, and it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst

not then be false to any man.'

96 LIVING PRAYER

To find the real self, among and beyond those various

false persons, cannot be done at an easy cost. We are so
unaccustomed to be ourselves in any deep and true sense
that we find it almost impossible to know where to begin

the search. We all know that there are moments when

we are nearer to being our true selves; those moments
should be singled out and carefully analysed in order to
make an approximate discovery of what we really are. It

is our vanity that usually makes it so difficult to discover

the truth about ourselves ; our vanity in itself and in the

way it determines our behaviour. Vanity consists of glory-
ing in things that are devoid of value and of depending for
our judgement about ourselves, and consequently for our
whole attitude to life, on the opinion of people who should
not have this weight for us ; it is a state of dependence on
other people's reactions to our personality.
Thus vanity is the first enemy to be attacked, although,

as the Fathers say, it remains the last to be defeated. We

find an instance of the defeat of vanity in the story of
Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1), which can teach us a great deal.

Zacchaeus was a rich man with social standing, he was an

official Roman Empire, a publican who had a posi-
of the
tion to maintain. He was an important citizen of his little
city; the attitude which is summed up in 'what will people

say?' might have stopped him from meeting Christ. When

Zacchaeus heard that Christ was passing through Jericho,
his desire to see him was so strong that he forgot that he
might become ridiculous - which is for us much worse than
a great many evils - and he ran, this respectable citizen,
and he climbed up a tree! He could be seen by the whole
crowd and it is difficult to doubt that a great many laughed.
 THE PRAYER OF SILENCE 97

But such was his desire to meet Jesus that he forgot to

worry about the opinions of other people; he became for a
short time independent of anyone's judgement and at that

moment he was completely himself; he was Zacchaeus the

man, not Zacchaeus the publican, or the rich man, or the
citizen.

Humiliation is one of the ways in which we may unlearn

vanity, but unless it is accepted willingly, humiliation may
only increase our hurt feelings and make us even more
dependent on the opinions of others. Statements concerning
vanity in St John Climacus and in St Isaac of Syria seem to
conflict: one says that the only way to escape vanity is

through pride; the other, that the way lies through

humility. They both express their opinions in a given
context and not as an absolute truth, but it allows us to see
what two extremes have in common, which
the is that

whether you grow proud or humble, you take no notice

of human opinions, in both cases the judgement of men is

set aside. In the life of St Macarius we have an illustration

of the first.

St Macarius, approaching a monastery over which he

had oversight, saw several of the brethren laughing and
mocking at a very young monk, who was taking no notice
of them at all, and he was amazed at the serenity of the
young man. Macarius had great experience of the diffi-

culties of the spiritual struggle and thought it slightly

suspicious. He asked the monk how it was that, young as

he was, he had attained such a measure of impassibility.

The answer was: 'Why should I take any notice of barking

dogs? I pay no attention to them, God is the only one

whom I accept as a judge.' This is an example of how pride

98 LIVING PRAYER

can free us from dependence upon the opinions of other

people. Pride is an attitude in which we set ourselves at

the centre of things, we become the criterion of truth, of

reality, of good and evil, and then we are free from any-

other judgement and also free from vanity. But it is only

perfect pride that can dispel vanity completely, and perfect
pride is fortunately beyond our human capabilities.

The other remedy is humility. Basically humility is the

attitude of one who stands constantly under the judgement
of God. It is the attitude of one who is like the soil. Humility
comes from the latin word humus, fertile ground. The fertile

ground is there, unnoticed, taken for granted, always there

to be trodden upon. It is silent, inconspicuous, dark and yet
it is always ready to receive any seed, ready to give it

substance and life. The more lowly, the more fruitful,

because it becomes really fertile when it accepts all the

refuse of the earth. It is so low that nothing can soil it,

abase it, humiliate it; it has accepted the last place and
cannot go any lower. In that position nothing can shatter
the soul's serenity, its peace and joy.
There are moments when we are shaken out of our
dependence on people's reactions; these are moments of
profound sorrow and also of real overwhelming joy. When
King David danced before the ark (II Sam 6:14), many,
like Michal, the daughter of Saul, thought that the king
was behaving in a very unseemly way. They probably
smiled or turned away, embarrassed. But he was too full

of joy to notice. It is the same with sorrow; when it is

genuine and deep a person becomes real; poses and

attitudes are forgotten and that is so precious in sorrow,

in our own as much as in someone else's.

 THE PRAYER OF SILENCE 99

The difficulty is that when we are real because we are in

sorrow, or because we are in joy, we are neither in a mood
nor in a position to watch ourselves, to observe the features
of our personality that come through; and yet there is a
moment when we are still feeling deeply enough to be
real, but sufficiently recovered from the ecstasy of joy or
of grief as to be struck by the contrast between what we
are at this particular moment and what we are usually;
then our depth and our shallowness appear to us clearly.
If we are attentive, if we do not move thoughtlessly from
one state of mind and heart into the other, forgetting
things as they pass by, we can gradually learn to preserve
those characteristic features of reality which appear for a
moment.
Several spiritual writers say that we must try to discover
Christ in us. Christ is the perfect, completely true man and
we can begin to discover what is true. in us by discovering
what is akin to him. There are passages in the gospel
against which we rebel and other passages which make
our heart burn within us (Lk 24:32). If we single out the

passages which either provoke a revolt, or which we feel

with all our heart to be true, we will already have dis-

covered the two extremes in us; in short, the anti-Christ

and the Christ in us. We must be aware of both kinds of
passages and concentrate on those which are close to our

heart, because we may safely assume that they mark one

point at least in which Christ and we are akin, a point at

which man is already - certainly not fully, but at least in

a

an incipient way - a real man, an image of Christ. But it is

not enough to be emotionally moved, to give complete
intellectual agreement to this or that passage of the gospel;
100 LIVING PRAYER

we must embody the words of Christ. We may have been

touched and yet abandon all we have thought and felt on
the first occasion that offers itself for applying the discovery.
There are times when we are in a mood to make peace
with our enemies, but if the other person resists, the peace-
making mood is soon changed into a bellicose one. That
happened to Miusov, in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Kara-
mazov. He had just been rude and intolerant to others and
then regained his own self-esteem by making a new start,
but Karamazov's unexpected insolence at once changed
his feelings again and 'Miusov passed immediately from
the most benevolent frame of mind to the most savage. All
the feelings that had subsided and died down in his heart

revived instantly.'
It is not enough to be struck by the passages which appear
to be so true, the struggle to become at every moment of
our life what we are at the best moments must follow, and
then we will gradually shed the superficial and become
more real and more true; just as Christ is truth and reality

itself, so shall we become more and more what Christ is.

This does not consist in imitating Christ in his outer

expression only, but of being inwardly what he is. The
imitation of Christ is not an aping of his conduct or of his
life; it is a hard and complex struggle.

This marks a difference between the Old and the New

Testament: the commandments of the Old Testament were
rules of life and he who faithfully kept to these rules

became a righteous man, and yet he could not derive

eternal life from them. On the contrary, the command-
ments of the New Testament never make a man righteous.
Christ once said to his disciples: 'When ye shall have done
 THE PRAYER OF SILENCE 101

all those things which are commanded you, say, We are

unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our
duty to do* (Lk 17: 10). But when we fulfil the command-
ments of Christ, not merely as rules of behaviour, but be-
cause the will of God has impregnated our heart, or even
when we simply curb our ill-will into fulfilling them out-
wardly and stand in repentance, knowing that there is

nothing in us beyond this outer compliance, we gradually

grow into the knowledge of God, which is inward, not
intellectual, rational or academic.
A person who has become real and true can stand before
God and offer prayer with absolute attention, unity of
intellect, heart and will, in a body that responds completely

to the promptings of the soul. But until we have attained

such perfection we can still stand in the presence of God,
aware that we are partly real and partly unreal, and bring
to him all that we can, but in repentance, confessing that

we are still so unreal and so incapable of unity. At no

moment of our life, whether we are still completely divided
or in process of unification, are we deprived of the possi-
bility of standing before God. But instead of standing in

the complete unity that gives drive and power to our

prayer, we can stand in our weakness, recognising it and

ready to bear its consequences.
Ambrose of Optina, one of the last Russian Starctz, said
once that two categories of men will attain salvation: those
who sin and are strong enough to repent, and those who
are too weak even to repent truly, but arc prepared,
patiently, humbly and gratefully, to bear all the weight

of the consequences of their sins; in their humility they arc

acceptable to God.
102 LIVING PRAYER

God is always real, always himself, and if we could stand

face to face with him as he is and perceive his objective

reality, things might be simpler; but we manage, in a sub-

jective way, to blur this truth, this reality in front of which
we stand, and to replace the real God by a pale picture of
him, even worse, by a God who is unreal because of our
one-sided and poor conception of him.
When we have to meet someone, the reality of the meet-
ing does not depend only on what we are and on what the
other is, but very much on the preconceived idea we have
formed about the other person. It is not to the real person
we are then speaking, but to the image we have formed
and it usually takes a great deal of effort on the part of the
victim of this prejudice to break through and establish a
real relationship.

We have all formed ideas about God; however lofty,

beautiful, even true in its component parts the idea may be,
it we are not careful, stand between us and the real
will, if

God and may become simply an idol before which we

pray while the real God is hidden by it. This happens
particularly when we turn to God with requests or for

intercession; then we do not come to God as to a person

with whom we want to share a difficulty, in whose love

we believe and from whom we expect a decision; but we
come trying to consider God under a certain aspect, and
we direct our prayers not towards God but towards a
concept of God, which at that particular moment is useful
to us.
We must not come to God in order to go through a

range of emotions, nor to have any mystical experience.

We must just come to God in order to be in his presence,
 THE PRAYER OF SILENCE 103

and, if he chooses to make us aware of it, blessed be God,

but if he chooses to make us experience his real absence,

blessed be God we have seen he is free to

again, because as

come near or not. He is as free as we are, although, when

we do not come into God's presence, it is because we are
busy with something else that attracts us more than he does.
As for him, if he does not manifest his presence, it is

because we must learn something about him and about

ourselves. But the absence of God which we may perceive
in our prayer, the sense that he is not there, is also part of
the relationship and very valuable.
Our sense of God's absence may be the result of his will;
he may want us to long for him and to learn how precious
his presence is by making us know by experience what

utter loneliness means. But often our experience of God's

absence is determined by the fact that we do not give
ourselves a chance of becoming aware of his presence. A
woman who had been using the Jesus Prayer for fourteen

years complained that she had never had any sense that

God was there. But when she had it pointed out to her that
she was talking all the time, she agreed to take her stand
silently for a few days. As she was doing it she became
aware that God was there, that the silence that surrounded
her was not emptiness, absence of noise and agitation, but

that there was a solidity in this silence, that it was not some-
thing negative, but positive, a presence, the presence of
of God who made himself known to her by creating the

same silence in her. And then she discovered that the prayer
came up quite naturally again, but it was no longer the

sort of discursive noise that had prevented God from mak-

ing himself known.
104 LIVING PRAYER

we were humble or even reasonable we should not

If

expect, just because we had decided to pray, that we should

at once have the experience of St John of the Cross, or
St Theresa or St Seraphim of Sarov. However, it is not
always the experience of the saints which we long to have,
but simply to repeat a former one of our own; although to
concentrate on a previous experience may blind us to the
one which should come our way quite normally. What-
everwe have felt belongs to the past and is linked with
what we were yesterday, not with what we are today.
We do not pray in order to provoke any particular experi-
ence in which we may delight, but in order to meet God
with whatever may happen as a consequence, or to bring
him what we have to bring and leave it to him to use it
the way he chooses.
We must also remember that we should always approach
God knowing that we do not know him. We must ap-
proach the unsearchable, mysterious God who reveals
himself as he chooses whenever we come to him, we are
;

before a God we do not yet know. We must be open to

any manifestation of his person and of his presence.
We may have understood a great deal about God from
our own experience, from the experience of others, from
the writings of the saints, from the teaching of the Church,
from the witness of the scriptures ; we may know that he

is good, that he is humble, that he is a burning fire, that

he is our judge, that he is our saviour and a great many

other things, but we must remember that he may at any
time reveal himself in a way in which we have never
perceived him, even within these general categories. We
must take our stand before him with reverence and be
 THE PRAYER OF SILENCE 105

ready to meet whoever we shall meet, either the God who

is already familiar or a God we cannot recognise. He may

give us a sense of what he is and it may be quite different

from what we expect. We hope to meet Jesus, mild,
compassionate, loving, and we meet God who judges and
condemns and will not let us come near in our present
state.Or we come in repentance, expecting to be rejected,
and we meet compassion. God, at every stage, is for us
partly known and partly unknown. He reveals himself,
and thus far we know him, but we shall never know him
completely, there will always be the divine mystery, a core
of mystery which we shall never be able to penetrate.
The knowledge of God can only be received and given
in communion with God, only by sharing with God what

he is, to the extent to which he is communicable. The

Buddhist world of thought has illustrated it in a story

about a doll of salt.

A doll of salt, after a long pilgrimage on dry land, came
and discovered something she had never seen and
to the sea

could not possibly understand. She stood on the firm

ground, a solid little doll of salt, and saw there was another
ground that was mobile, insecure, noisy, strange and un-
known. She asked the sea, 'But what are you?' and it

said, 'I am the sea/ And the doll said, 'What is the sea?'

to which the answer was, 'It is me/ Then the doll said, 'I

cannot understand, but I want to; how can I?' The sea

answered, 'Touch me/ So the doll shyly put forward a foot

and touched the water and she got a strange impression

that it was something that began to be knowablc. She

withdrew her leg, looked and saw that her toes had gone,
and she was afraid and said, 'Oh, but where is my toe,
106 LIVING PRAYER

what have you done to me?' And the sea said, 'You have
given something in order to understand/ Gradually the
water took away small bits of the doll's salt and the doll

went farther and farther into the sea and at every moment
she had a sense of understanding more and more, and yet
of not being able to say what the sea was. As she went
deeper, she melted more and more, repeating: 'But what
is the sea?' At last a wave dissolved the rest of her and the

doll said: 'It is I!' She had discovered what the sea was, but
not yet what the water was.
Without drawing an absolute parallel between the bud-
dhist doll and christian knowledge of God, one can see

much truth in this little story. St Maxim uses the example

of a sword that becomes red hot: the sword does not know
where the fire ends and the fire does not know where the
sword begins, so that one can, as he says, cut with fire and
burn with iron. The doll knew what the sea was when she
had become, minute as she was, the vastness of the sea.

So also when we enter into the knowledge of God, we do

not contain God, but are contained in him, and we be-
come ourselves in this encounter with God, secure in his

vastness.

Saint Athanasius said that man's ascent to deification

begins from the moment he is created. From the first, God
gives us uncreated grace to achieve union with him. From
the Orthodox point of view there is no 'natural man* to
whom grace is super-added. The first word of God that

called us out of nothingness was our first step towards the

fulfilment of our calling, that God should be in all and that

we should be in him as he is in us.

We must be prepared to find that the last step of our

 THE PRAYER OF SILENCE IO7

relationship with God is an act of pure adoration, face to

face with a mystery into which we cannot enter. We grow
into the knowledge of God gradually from year to year
until the end of our life and we will continue to do so
through all eternity, without coming to a point when we
shall be able to say that now we know all that is knowable
of God. This process of the gradual discovery of God leads
us at every moment to stand with our past experience

behind us and the mystery of God knowable and still

unknown before us. The little we know of God makes it
difficult for us to learn more, because the more cannot
simply be added to the little, since every meeting brings
such a change of perspective that what was known before
becomes almost untrue in the light of what is known later.
This is true of any knowledge which we acquire every ;

day teaches us something in science or the humanities, but

the learning we have acquired makes sense only because it

brings us to the borderline beyond which there is something

we can still discover. If we stop just to rehearse what we
know, we shall waste our time. So the first thing, if we
want to meet the real God in prayer, is to realise that all

the knowledge previously acquired has brought us to stand

before him. All this is precious and meaningful, but if we

go no farther it becomes ghostly, phantom-like, it will

cease to be real life; it will be a memory and one cannot

live on memories.
In our relations with people we turn inevitably just one
facet of our personality to one facet of the other person's;
itmay be good when it is a way of establishing contact, it
may be evil when we do so to exploit the other person s

weaknesses. To God also we turn the facet which is closest

108 LIVING PRAYER

to him, the trusting or loving side. But we must be aware

of the fact that it is never a facet of God we meet: we meet
God in his entirety.
When we come to pray we hope to experience God as

someone who is present and that our prayer will be, if not
a dialogue, at least a discourse to someone who listens. We
are afraid that we may sense no presence at all and have the
impression of speaking in the void, with no one there to
listen, to answer, to be interested. But this would be a
purely subjective impression; we compare our experience
if

of prayer with our normal daily human contacts, we know

that someone may be listening very intently to what we

say and yet we may feel that our words are being poured
out in vain. Our prayer always reaches God but it is not
always answered by a sense of joy or peace.
When we speak in terms of taking a stand, we always
think that here we are and there is God, outside us. If we
search for God, above, or in front, or around us, we will

not find him. St John Chrysostom said: 'Find the door of

the inner chamber of your soul and you will discover that

this is the door into the kingdom of Heaven/ St Ephraim

of Syria says that God, when he created man, put in the
deepest part of him all the kingdom, and that the problem
of human life is to dig deep enough to come upon the
hidden treasure. Therefore, to find God we must dig in
search of this inner chamber, of this place where the whole
kingdom of God is present at the very core of us, where
God and we can meet. The best tool, the one which will
go through all obstacles, is prayer. The problem is one of
praying attentively, simply and truthfully without replac-
ing the real God by any false God, by an idol, by a product
 THE PRAYER OF SILENCE 109

of our imagination and without trying to have a preview

of any mystical experience. Concentrating on what we
say, believing that every word we pronounce reaches God,
we can use our own words or the words of greater men to
express, better than we could, what we feel or what we
sense dimly within us. It is not in a multitude of words
that we shall God but in their veracity. When
be heard by
we use our own words we must speak to God with pre-
cision, neither trying to be short nor trying to be long, but
trying to be true.
There are moments when prayers are spontaneous and
easy, others when it feels as if the spring has dried up. This
is the time to use the prayers of other men which express
basically what we believe, all those things which are not

made vivid by any deep response of the heart.

at present

Then we must pray in a double act of faith, not only faith

in God but also in ourselves, trusting in the faith which is

dimmed, in spite of its being part of us.

There are times when we do not need any words of

prayer, neither our own nor anyone else's and then we pray
in perfect silence. This perfect silence is the ideal prayer,

provided, however, that the silence is real and not day-

dreaming. We have very little experience of what deep
silence of body and soul means, when complete serenity
fills the soul, when complete peace fills the body, when
there is no turmoil or stirring of any sort and when we
stand before God, completely open in an act of adoration.
There may be times when we feel physically well and men-
tally relaxed, tired of words because we have used so many
of them already; we do not want to stir and we fed happy
in this fragile balance; this is on the borderline of slipping
110 LIVING PRAYER

into daydreaming. Inner silence is absence of any sort of

inward stirring of thought or emotion, but it is complete
alertness, openness to God. We must keep complete silence
when we can, but never allow it to degenerate into simple
contentment. To prevent this the great writers of Ortho-
doxy warn us never to abandon completely the normal
forms of prayer, because even those who reached this

contemplative silence found it necessary, whenever they

were in danger of spiritual slackness, to reintroduce words
of prayer until prayer had renewed silence.

The Greek Fathers set this silence, which they called

hesychia, both as the starting-point and the final achieve-

ment of a life of prayer. Silence is the state in which all the

powers of the soul and all the faculties of the body are
completely at peace, quiet and recollected, perfectly alert

yet free from any turmoil or agitation. A simile which we

find in many writings of the Fathers is that of the waters
of a pond. As long as there are ripples on the surface,
nothing can be reflected properly, neither the trees nor the
sky; when the surface is quite still, the sky is perfectly

reflected, the trees on the bank and everything is there as

distinct as in reality.

Another simile of the same sort used by the Fathers is that

as long as the mud which is at the bottom of a pond has

not settled, the water is not clear and one can see nothing
through it. These two analogies apply to the state of the
human heart. 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall

see God* (Mt 5:8). As long as the mud is in motion in the

water there is no clear vision through it, and again as long

as the surface is covered with ripples there can be no
adequate reflection of what surrounds the pond.
 THB PRAYER OF SILENCE III

As long as the soul is not still there can be no vision, but

when stillness has brought us into the presence of God, then

another sort of silence, much more absolute, intervenes:
the silence of a soul that is not only still and recollected
but which is overawed in an act of worship by God's
presence; a silence in which, as Julian of Norwich puts it,

'Prayer oneth the soul to God.'

 EPILOGUE*
Prayer for Beginners

wearEall beginners and I do not intend to give you

a course of lectures, but I wish to share with you some
of the things I have learned, partly by experience, and
probably more through the experiences of others.
Prayer is essentially an encounter, a meeting between a

soul and God, but to be real an encounter takes two

persons each being really himself. To a very great extent
we are unreal and God so often in our relationship is unreal
to us because we believe that we turn to God, when we
are in fact turning to something we imagine to be God;
and we think that we are standing before him in all truth,
whereas we are putting forward someone who is not our
real self, who is an actor, a sham, a stage personality.

Every one of us is a variety of persons at the same time;

it may be a very rich blending, but also it may be an
unfortunate meeting of discordant personalities. We are

different according to circumstances and surroundings the :

various people that meet us know us as different persons.

* From the BBC television scries ' The Epilogue \ first

shown in 1958.
H
114 LIVING PRAYER

There is a Russian proverb that says, 'He is a lion when

meeting sheep, but he is a sheep when he meets lions.'

Which is quite true in more ways than one: we all know

the lady who is all smiles with outsiders and who is a holy
terror at home, or the big boss who is so tame in private
life.

When it comes to praying, our first difficulty is to find

which one of our personalities should be put forward to
meet God. It is we are so unaccustomed
not simple because
to be our real self that in all truth we do not know which
one that is and we do not know how to find it. But if we
;

were to give a few minutes a day to think over our various

activities and contacts, we would probably come much
closer to the discovery. We could find out the sort of person
we were when we met so and so, and the other person we
were when we were doing this or that. And we could ask
ourselves: but when was I really myself? Perhaps never,
perhaps only for a split second or perhaps to a certain
extent under special circumstances, while meeting particu-
lar people. Now, in these five or ten minutes which you
can spare, and I am sure everyone can spare them in the

course of the day, you will discover that there is nothing

more boring for us than to be left alone with ourselves!
We usually live some sort of reflected life. Not only are we
a variety of people successively under various circumstances
but also the very life that is in us belongs so often to other

people. If you look into yourself, and if you dare to question

how often you act from the very core of your personality,
how often you are expressing your own self, you will see
that it happens rarely enough. Too often we are immersed
in what is happening around us, all the unnecessaries we
gather from
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authentic beauty. And we disc

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Il6 LIVING PRAYER

because obviously if we are to address God, this God must

be real. We all know what a headmaster is for schoolboys
when they have to go and see him they go to the head-
master and it never occurs to them until they have grown
up and no longer in his power that the headmaster is a man.
They think of him in terms of a function ; but this empties
his human personality of every human characteristic and
there can be no kind of human contact with him.
Another example: when a boy is in love with a girl, he
adorns her with all sorts of perfections ; but she may not
have any of them and this person constructed out of
nothing is very often 'nothing', clad in qualities that are

artificial. Here again there can be no contact because the

boy is addressing someone who does not exist. This is true
also of God. We have a lot of mental or visual pictures of
God, collected from books, from church, from what we
when we are children and eventually from
hear from adults
clergymen when we are older. Quite often these pictures
prevent us from meeting the real God. They are not quite
false because there is some truth in them, and yet they are
perfectly inadequate to the reality of God. If we wish to
meet God we must, on the one hand, make use of the
knowledge acquired either personally, or by means of
reading, hearing, listening, but also, go farther.

The knowledge of God which we possess today is a

result of yesterday's experience and if we set ourselves in

front of God as we know him, we will always turn our

backs to the present and to the future, looking only at our
own past. It is not God that we are going to meet, it is

what we have already learned about him. This illustrates

the function of theology, since theology is our whole

 EPILOGUE 117

knowledge of God and not the small amount we have

personally already known and learned about him. You
must, if you wish to meet God as he really is, come to him
with a certain experience, allow it to bring you close

to God, and leave it at that, standing before not the God

you know but the God both known and unknown.
What will happen next? Something quite simple: God
who is free to come to you, to respond, to answer your
prayers, may come to you and make you feel, perceive,

his presence; he may also choose not to do so. He may just

give you a sense of his real absence, and this experience is

as important as the other, because in both cases you come

upon the reality of God's right to answer or to stand
back.
Try, then, to discover your own real self and to stand it

face to face with God as he is, having shed all false images
or idols of God; and to help you in this search, to give you
support in this effort, I suggest that you should, this week,
pray the following prayer:
'Help me, O God, to discard all false pictures of thee,

whatever the cost to my comfort/

In the search for our true self we may come not only to
boredom, which I have mentioned, but to fear, or even to
despair. It is this nakedness that brings us to our senses;
then we can begin to pray. The first thing to avoid is lying

to God; it seems quite obvious, and yet we do not always

observe it. Let us speak frankly to God, say to him what
sort of person we are; not that he does not know it, but

there is a great difference between assuming that someone

we love knows all about us, and having the courage and
Il8 LIVING PRAYER

real love for the person to speak truthfully and tell every-
thing about ourselves. Let us say to God openly that we
stand before him with a feeling of uneasiness, that we do
not really want to meet him, that we are tired and would
rather go to bed, but we must beware of being frivolous or
just presumptuous: he remains our God. After that the
ideal would be to remain happily in his presence, as when
we are with people we love dearly, when there is real
intimacy. But more often than not we are not on those
terms with God. We do not feel so happy and intimate with
him as to be able just to sit and look at him and feel glad.

As we must talk, let it be genuine talk. Let us put all our

worries to God, squarely, and then, having told him every-
thing, so that he should know them from us, we should
drop them, leave them to him. Now that he is in the know,
it is no longer any of our concern: we can freely think of
him.
The exercise of this week, obviously, must be added to
the exercises of the previous weeks, and it will consist in

learning to put everyone of our concerns to God, after

having settled ourselves in front of him, and then drop
these concerns; and to help us in this, let us from day to

day repeat a very simple and precise prayer, that will define
our way of dealing with God
'Help me O God to let go all my problems, and fix my
mind on thee/

If we did not put our worries to God, they would stand

between him and us in the course of our meeting, but we
have also just seen that the next move, which is essential,

is to drop them. We should make that in an act of conn-

 :

EPILOGUE 119

dence, trusting God enough to give him the troubles we

wish to get off our shoulders. But then, what next? We
seem to have emptied ourselves, there is nothing much
left, what we going to do? We cannot remain empty,
are
because if we do we shall be filled by the wrong things, by
feelings, thoughts, emotions and reminiscences and so on.
We must, I believe, remember that an encounter is not
meant to be a one-sided discourse on our part. Conversa-
tion means not only talking but hearing what the other
has to say. And to achieve this we must learn to be silent;
although it seems trifling it is a very important point.
I remember that one of the first people who came to me
for advice when I was ordained was an old lady who said
'Father, I have been praying almost unceasingly for four-
teen years, and I have never had any sense of God's pre-
sence/ So I said: 'Did you give him a chance to put in a
word?' 'Oh well,' she said. 'No, I have been talking to him
all the time, because is not that prayer?' I said: 'No, I do
not think it is, and what I suggest is that you should set

apart fifteen minutes a day, sit and just knit before the
face of God/ And so she did. What was the result? Quite

soon she came again and said: 'It is extraordinary, when I

pray to God, in other words when I talk to him, I feel

nothing, but when I sit quietly, face to face with him, then
I feel wrapped in his presence/ You will never be able to

pray to God really and from all your heart unless you learn

to keep silent and rejoice in the miracle of his presence, or

if you prefer, of your being face to face with him although
you do not see him.
Quite often, having said what wc have to say and having
sat for a certain time, wc are at a loss: what shall wc do?
120 LIVING PRAYER

What we should do I believe is to start on some set prayers.

Some find set prayers too easy, and at the same time see a
danger of taking for actual praying the repetition of what
someone else has said in the past. Indeed, if it is just mechani-
cal it is not worth doing, but what is overlooked is that it

depends on us whether it is mechanical or not, by paying

attention to the words we say. Others complain that set

prayers would be unreal because it is not quite what they

would express, it is not theirs. In a sense it is unreal, but

only in the same way in which the painting of a great

master is unreal for a schoolboy, or the music of a great

composer is unreal for a beginner, and yet that is just the

point: we go to concerts, we visit art galleries to learn

what real music or real painting is, to form our taste; and
that is partly why we should use set prayers, to learn which
feelings, which thoughts, which ways of expressions we
should employ, we belong to the Church. It also
if helps
in time of dryness, when we have very little to say.
Apart from the stripped, naked, reduced-to-bone person
which we when we remain just alone, we are also in
are
the image of God and the child of God that is in each of us
is capable of praying with the loftiest and holiest prayers
of the Church. We must remember that and make use of
them. I suggest we add to the exercises we have been
doing, a period of silence, a few minutes - three or four
minutes - which we shall end with a prayer:
'Help me, O God, to see my own sins, never to judge
!'
my neighbour, and may the glory all be thine

Before I enter into the subject of 'Unanswered Prayer',

I would like to pray to God that he might enlighten both
 EPILOGUE 121

me and you, because it is a difficult subject, yet such a vital

one. It is one of the great temptations which everyone may

meet on his way, which makes it very hard for beginners,
and even for proficient people, to pray to God. Many
times people pray and it seems to them that they are addres-
sing an empty heaven; quite often it is because their prayer
is meaningless, childish.
I remember the case of an old man telling me that when
he was a child he prayed for several months that he would
be given by God the amazing gift which his uncle possessed

- that of every evening taking his teeth out of his mouth,

and putting them into a glass of water - and he was terribly

happy later on that God did not grant his wish. Often
our prayers are as puerile as this, and of course they are not
granted. Quite frequently when we pray we believe that
we are praying rightly, but we pray for something which
involves other people, of whom we do not think at all. If
we pray for wind in our sails, we do not realise that it
may mean a storm at sea for others, and God will not
grant a request that affects others badly.
two obvious points, there is another side
Besides these
to unanswered prayer which is more basic and deep there :

are cases when we pray to God from all our heart for

something which, from every angle, seems to be worthy

of being heard, and yet there is nothing but silence, and
silence is much harder to bear than refusal. If God said

'No', it would be a positive reaction of God's, but silence

is, as it were, the absence of God and that leads us to two

temptations: when our prayer is not answered, we cither

doubt God, or else we doubt ourselves. What we doubt in

God is not his might, his power to do what we wish, but
122 LIVING PRAYER

we doubt his love, his concern. We beg for something

essential and he does not even seem to be concerned where ;

is his love and his compassion? This is the first temptation.

There is we know that if we had as much faith
another:
as a mustard seed, we could move mountains and when we

see that nothing budges, we think, 'Does that mean that

the faith I have got is adulterated, false?' This again is

untrue, and there is another answer: if you read the gospel

attentively, you will see that there is only one prayer in it

that was not answered. It is the prayer of Christ in the garden

of Gethsemane, and yet we know that if once in history

God was concerned for the one who prayed, it was then
for his son, before his death, and also we know that if ever
perfect faith was exemplified, it was in his case, but God
found that the faith of the divine sufferer was great enough
to bear silence.

God withholds an answer to our prayers not only when

they are unworthy but when he finds in us such greatness,

such depth - depth and power of faith - that he can rely

upon us to remain faithful even in the face of his silence.
I remember a young woman with an incurable disease

and of the awareness of God's presence, she

after years

suddenly sensed God's absence - some sort of real absence -

and she wrote to me saying, 'Pray to God, please, that I

should never yield to the temptation of building up an

illusion of his presence, rather than accept his absence/
Her faith was great. She was able to stand this temptation
and God gave her this experience of his silent absence.
Remember these examples, think them over because one
day you will surely have to face the same situation.

I cannot give you any exercise, but I only want you to

 EPILOGUE 123

remember that we should always keep our faith intact,

both in the love of God and in our honest, truthful faith,

and when this temptation comes upon us, let us say this
prayer, which is made of two sentences pronounced by
Jesus Christ himself:

'Into Thy hands I commend my spirit,

Thy Will, not mine, be done/

Whatever I have tried to give as an outline of the main

ways in which we should approach prayer, does it mean
that if you do all I have suggested you will be able to pray?
Indeed not, because prayer is not simply an effort which
we can make the moment we intend to pray prayer must
;

be rooted in our life and if our life contradicts our prayers,

or if our prayers have nothing to do with our life, they will
never be alive nor real. Of course we can deal with that
difficulty and make an easy escape by excluding from our
prayers everything that, in our life, does not fit into the

framework of prayer - all those things we are ashamed or

uneasy about. But it does not solve anything satisfactorily.

Another difficulty which we meet constantly is to fall

into daydreaming, when our prayer expresses a sentimental

trend and is not the expression of what our life is basically.

There is one common solution for these two difficulties;

that of joining together life and prayer, making them one,

by living our prayer. To help us along this line, set prayers,

of which I have already spoken, are most precious because

they are an objective, hard outline of a way of praying.
You may say that they are unnatural, and it is true in the

sense that they express the life of people who arc im-
measurably greater than we are, of real christians, but that
124 LIVING PRAYER

is just why you can make use of them, trying to become

the sort of people for whom those prayers are natural.
You remember Christ's words: 'Into Thy hands I com-
mend my Spirit/ Of course it is not within our own ex-
perience, but if we learn from day to day to become the
sort of person who is capable of pronouncing these words

sincerely, in all honesty, we will not only make our

prayers real, but we will make ourselves real, with a new

reality, the true reality of becoming the sons of God.
If you take, for instance, the five prayers which I have
suggested and if you take one after the other, each of the
petitions of these prayers, and if you try to make each of
them in turn the motto, the slogan that will direct the day,

you will see that prayer becomes the criterion of your life;

it will give you a framework for it, but also your life will

stand in judgement, against you or for you, giving you the

lie when you pronounce these words, or, on the contrary,
affirming thatyou are true to them. Take each sentence of
each prayer and make it the rule of one day after the other,
so for weeks and weeks, until you become the sort of
person for whom these words are life.

We have to part now; I have immensely enjoyed being

with you, although I do not see you, but we are united in

prayer and in our common interest for the life of the spirit.
May the Lord God be with each of you and in our midst
for ever.
And before we part, I would like us to say together one
short prayer that will unite us before the throne of God:
O Lord, I know not what to ask of thee; thou alone knowesc
what are my true needs. Thou lovest me more than I know how
to love myself. Help me to see my real needs which are con-
 EPILOGUE 125

cealed from mc. I dare not ask either a cross or consolation.

I can only wait on thee. My heart is open to thee. Visit and
help me for thy great mercy's sake, strike me and heal me, cast

me down and raise me up. I worship in silence thy holy will

and thine inscrutable ways. I offer myself as a sacrifice to thee.

I put all my trust in thee. I have no other desire than to fulfil

thy will. Teach me how to pray, pray thou thyself in me.

AMEN
 Metropolitan Anthony (who is known to many readers as Anthony Bloom)
is a Russian Orthodox bishop. Before becoming a monk he was a

physician who worked with the French Resistance during World War
Two. His writings have attracted an ever-growing audience in this

country and in England, where he is also noted for his radio and
television appearances. During the years since its initial

appearance, LIVING PRAYER has become a spiritual

classic Among the many topics covered here are

the problem of praying honestly, meditation and
worship, and how to discard false images of
ourselves and of God. In LIVING PRAYER
Metropolitan Anthony tells us, as few
writers can, how to begin and
sustain the life of prayer.
livinq
J
prayer

Tenth U.S. Printing ISBN D-fl7EM3-D5M-5

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