"M.G. I am sending you a prayer that must go around the circle of light. Rewrite it down and see that a miracle will happen. It is said: whoever writes down these prayers in two days to 9 persons will be delivered from evil and on the 4th day will receive joy, but whoever leaves them unattended will suffer misfortune. Do not sign your name, but only indicate the date when the letter is received. Do not interrupt this prayer, sending it to the nine persons, write everything that I write to you. I received it on January 25 and sent it on January 26, 1913."

"O Lord! I pray Thee: bless me and all mankind, deliver us from evil, and let us dwell with Thee. Amen."

That's all..

And if you throw out the Pharisaic "I pray You", which is not at all necessary in such a short prayer, then the prayer will be even shorter.

What does prayer ask for?

"Bless me and all mankind"...

God's blessing is a great deed, but Orthodox prayer first of all asks for mercy, for then God's blessing will come by itself. It is as if the author already considers "all mankind" to be pardoned. Has it repented?.. The spirit of repentance is not heard in this prayer... And what does the author mean by the word: "all mankind?" To all those who turn away from God's blessing, flee from the presence of God, perishing in hatred of God? But is not such a prayer an insult to God? And a simple priest will not bless someone who mocks God's blessing... And what is the expression: "Let us dwell with Thee"? How to understand it? The Lord is Omnipresent, so that's not what I'm talking about... What is it about? This is the secret of the author, who arbitrarily composes prayers for "the whole world"...

But all the harm of spreading such prayers is not in the words of the prayer itself, but in the order with which it is accompanied. In this order there is both superstition and even blasphemy... An unknown sectarian scribbler obliges the one who has received his prayer immediately, within two days, to write nine copies of the prayer and send it to nine persons, and even dares to prophesy and threaten: if you carry out his order, then on the 4th, for some reason certainly on the fourth day, "you will receive joy, and whoever ignores it, you see, misfortune will befall him"... This, as they say, is too much... The author lied! Where did he get such power to give happiness or to bring misfortune to people with one of his semi-literate messages? And, of course, many Orthodox received this apocryphal prayer and did not pay the slightest attention to it; I received a dozen of them, and with indignation at the author for his instruction I tore them up and threw them into the basket, and, by the mercy of God, we are all safe and sound, and no misfortune has happened to us. And it could not have happened, for we believe that the Lord is more merciful than the author of the prayer and will not, according to his instructions, distribute happiness or punish us for not fulfilling his order, moreover, which is still resonant, as noted in the above-mentioned letter, with misfortunes... One pastor justly says in The Bell that "this injunction makes prayer a conspiracy," turns its distribution into a sowing of blasphemous superstition, into the propaganda of sorcery lamentation, although it also mentions the name of God. Remember Chrysostom: he inspired "magicians to flee and turn away, even though they call upon both the Holy Trinity and the saints of God, and sign themselves with the sign of the cross" ("Trebnik"). There is an element of magic, enchantment in this invocation of happiness on the one who sends prayer and misfortune on the disobedient. "I have sent a prayer — and God is obliged to give me happiness, He cannot refuse to give me great joy, even if I deserve scourges and scorpions according to my deeds, feelings and dispositions." Is this not a blasphemous hope? Christ the Lord taught us to pray to the Heavenly Father, that in heaven and on earth everything would be done according to His all-wise and just will. And now the inventor, unknown to the world, wants to bind the will of God by the unwise act of sending out prayer and to appoint to God even a date for the fulfillment of hope"... What madness! What terrible blasphemy and blasphemy..

About forty years ago, prayer was also spread, with a similar conspiracy, promises and threats. Occasionally, it continues to circle around the world. I remember that at that time, when I was still a student of the seminary, I found the Armenian heresy in it, for the prayer – the Trisagion – was addressed to one Person of the Most Holy Trinity, to the Son of God... Apparently, such superstitions are tenacious. And in our time they find a very fertile ground for themselves in that human weakness which the enemy of the human race has always abused when he wanted to divert people seeking salvation to the wrong path! This has been the case at all times, since ancient times. The idea of happiness is embedded in the soul of man at his creation. God created him not for suffering, but for bliss. But in order to attain blessedness even in paradise, work was needed – to cultivate and preserve paradise, it was necessary to obey God, to cut off one's own will. The enemy tempted people with the desire to immediately receive the highest happiness — you will be like God... The primordial ones have fallen. But the desire for bliss embedded in the soul, and after the fall, for salvation, remained ineradicable. And so, next to the path of podvig, according to the word of the Lord: the Kingdom of God is tedious, and strait are the gates, narrow is the path leading to it, there is another path, as if bypassing the first — the path of self-will, easy salvation, as St. Theophan the Recluse characterized it in his writings. The idea of salvation "easier" lies at the basis of all sects, both rationalistic and mystical. The feat is too difficult: is it possible to replace it with something? Even in the realm of podvig itself, there have appeared and are ways and means to attain certain states considered grace-filled, apart from the paths indicated to the Church. The Latin Church invented, in order to alleviate, mainly the laity, indulgences, Francis of Assisi invented special ways to achieve exalted enthusiasm, Ignatius of Loyola invented a whole system of "spiritual exercises", in many ways reminiscent not of the teaching of the experienced great ascetics of the East, but rather the teaching of the yogis of pagan Hindustan. The Protestant rationalists simply rejected the significance of podvig and good deeds in the education of a person for eternal life, calming their conscience on the teaching that faith alone is sufficient for salvation, while the sectarian mystics invented joy, the eunuchs invented the disfigurement of oneself, and so on. That is why all these renegades from the Orthodox Church are so hateful to the teaching of the Church about the necessity of podvig, of the struggle with oneself, of the humble awareness of one's spiritual powerlessness in this matter and the necessity, and consequently, of seeking God's grace-filled help. In this way, the teaching about the cross, about the need for a Christian to participate in Christ's sufferings through the fulfillment of the Savior's commandment, is gradually eradicated from the consciousness of Christians: "If anyone wants to follow Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross...

It should be noted how this deviation from the cross, from podvig, so to speak, seeps into our church life.

The late Fr. John of Kronstadt, himself the greatest ascetic of cross-bearing and inner spiritual struggle, often advised his spiritual children to partake of Holy Communion more often. Mysteries of Christ. It goes without saying that this must be done with due preparation, with great reverence and in accordance with the rules established by the Church. Among his spiritual children there were those who took his advice to heart. All the faithful know that the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist gives great spiritual consolation to the communicants who reverently approach it. Naturally, the above-mentioned spiritual children of Fr. John could not help but experience this consolation. And they began to approach the most holy sacrament more often than usual. But human infirmities made themselves felt in them as well: little by little they began to cool down in the podvig they had taken upon themselves, directing all their attention only to the consolation that communion of the Holy Mysteries gave them. Not heeding their own unworthiness, they began to place the whole work of their salvation solely in Communion itself, approaching it without proper and feasible preparation. The commandment of podvig, cross-bearing, struggle with oneself, humble cleansing of conscience in tearful repentance — all this first faded into the background, and then began to be forgotten... A sect appeared, at first, perhaps, not so noticeable, but then, as a result, as I think, of special psychophysiological conditions known from the teaching of the Holy Fathers, of which it is not the place to speak now, the sect took on the character of Khlystism and, probably, in its development will turn into such...

Every now and then one hears and reads that sects are appearing in different parts of Orthodox Russia: in Bessarabia – the Innokenty movement, in the Vologda diocese – the Stepanov movement, in the Kharkov diocese too – in the name of another Stephen, in the Kiev diocese the traces of the Malevanism have not yet disappeared... In the capital itself there are rascals who carry away even intelligent people with their false piety, not to mention the notorious Churikovism. It would seem that the very fact that some peasant, calling himself a wanderer, having grown his hair, came, for some unknown reason, to the capital to wander the streets, sometimes barefoot, without a hat, with a huge stick – this alone should warn everyone who understands the Christian life against making the acquaintance of such a mysterious person: to think that in our age there are many chosen ones of God, who carry out the feat of foolishness for the sake of Christ, it is impossible: there have always been few true fools: the Greek Church honors only Simeon and Isidore of Egypt among the saints, – Andrew is already a Slav, and the Russian Church has no more than three or four dozen of these ascetics among its saints. And yet there are a lot of strange people wandering around in the capital, and they say that things are not going badly for them... They have their own houses! And yet, not only ordinary people, but also from society cling to such crooks. What attracts them? I think the desire to receive instruction on how to save the soul is easier... It is here that these seekers of salvation fall into the snares of the Khlystovshchina and similar false teachings...

Needless to say, the various Redstocks, Pashkovs, and more recently the Fetlers find many followers among those who are supposedly seeking salvation. Fortunately, all kinds of freedoms are in vogue now, up to and including the freedom of spiritual suicide. And the infatuation with the sermons of such false teachers is, in fact, a real spiritual suicide...

I repeat: the danger lies in the fact that this striving for easy salvation has been noticed by the enemies of the Church; he is patronized by both the press and the intelligentsia; even our pastorate treats him with condescension. Let us not hide the sin: being weak ourselves, we are always ready to condescend to others in such matters, in which we not only have no right to make concessions, but are also obliged to mercilessly denounce error, in order to protect the purity of the very ideal of Orthodox life, by which it has been given to us, our holy matter, the Church...