A prayer glorifying the Lord is always heard in church, and especially during the greatest church service, the Liturgy.

I will say a few words about how one should pray. It is difficult for many to renounce the world around you and enter into the words and spirit of prayer without a long experience of prayer. You pray, trying to delve into the prayer, but the prayer goes on absent-mindedly, next to the prayer there always arises a parallel thought about something worldly, and you cannot get rid of it, get away from it. To overcome this, it is necessary to pray more often and more, always aloud at first, if possible. Priests often say and even write that scattered, unfocused prayer is not pleasing to God and is even sinful, because the one who prays does not give his soul completely to God and thereby commits a sin. Of course, such prayer is incomplete. The praying person tried to gather his will and lead his soul into prayerful striving, but, due to his weakness, he could not, but still strove to do it. Only the Lord can appreciate the sincerity and spiritual value of such a prayer. However, I believe that if a prayer is said and a person tries to aspire to God, then although for reasons unknown to us he was unable to perform a fervent and sincere prayer, he still prayed. I did not forget to read the rule in due time: this is already a sacrifice, a work brought to the Lord, and He will accept the prayer, weighing the inner structure and sincerity of the person praying. Many, including priests, disagree with me, but I think so and have found indirect confirmation of my words in spiritual literature and even in ancient patericons.

At all stages of prayerful activity, a person is obliged to strive, offering petitions, thanksgiving or praise, to pray with all his soul, trying to renounce everything vain, earthly. If the praying person cannot in any way acquire the ability to pray sincerely, he must consult with his spiritual father. Often I pray for a long time with visitors, pronouncing each phrase loudly and distinctly, trying to put my whole soul into each word, and then explaining the meaning and significance of the prayer. The most sincere and directed to God are prayers of supplication, for any person who prays, even if he has not attained spiritual perfection, is sincere to the end in his prayers of supplication, he asks for healing, mercy, help to loved ones, sending down the blessings of life, for salvation from death, illness, for what causes him pain and suffering

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The recording of the conversation about prayer has been reproduced from memory. Two conversations about Fr. Arseny's prayer, which I recorded, were of a general nature and were conducted with the newly arrived people. With each new person who came to him and became his spiritual child, Fr. Arseny always had a personal conversation about prayer to the Lord and about relationships with people. He considered and demanded from a person the obligatory and strict fulfillment of the daily prayer rule. At first, he asked what rule the visitor observed, after listening, he advised which prayers to include or exclude, depending on the spiritual appearance of the visitor. He recommended that you carefully review the past day, your actions, thoughts, conversations, realize what you have done wrong, and, lifting up prayers to God, ask Him for forgiveness for what you have done and try not to repeat the bad in the following days. Fr. Arseny did not approve of lengthy prayer rules, saying that by the end of his prayer he gets tired and repeats prayers soullessly, mechanically, but he blessed some to pray for an hour or more.

He advised to pray in the morning and in the evening at the hours set once and for all, he recommended that parents with children pray with the whole family, but in such a way that the child does not get tired; At first, pray briefly with the children, and then continue to pray to adults, fulfilling the established rule. He advised to pray on the way to or from work, repeating the entire rule or individual prayers from it, believing that such a prayer saves a person from empty and unnecessary thoughts. He constantly reminded me: pray to God, but do not forget to pray for people, do good. Prayer to God and love for man must be in unity, one cannot live without the other.

MEMOIRS OF FATHER ARSENY

Yuri and I came to Fr. Arseny for the Christmas holidays for ten days, stayed with the Platonovs, where in the summer we constantly rented a room.

It was the third day of the Nativity of Christ, January 9, 1975. Two doctors, Irina and Lyuda, had been living with Nadezhda Petrovna for several days, watching his condition. Liturgy on this day was served by Fr. Nicholas, Fr. Herman and Fr. Paul. Father Arseny was lying on the sofa. From constant weakness, shortness of breath and arrhythmia, he could not only get up, but also sit.

At the end of Liturgy and after breakfast, Fr. Arseny asked all those who had come that day to come to him: Lyuda, Irina, Yuri, Fr. Nicholas, Fr. Herman and Fr. Pavel, Nadezhda Petrovna, Natasha, and me. We sat silently in armchairs, on chairs, and on a footstool. Father Arseny was thoughtful, lying on the sofa, mechanically sorting through the fringe of the blanket that covered him. There was silence. Raising his bowed head, he looked at the icons for a long time, crossed himself three times and said in a low voice:

My dear and beloved friends and spiritual children, life is slowly and inexorably leaving my mortal body, such is the will of the Lord. And now I want to tell you the segments of my life, on the basis of which my spiritual worldview was formed and the further path leading to the knowledge of God and the leadership of the flock entrusted to me by the Lord and the individuals I met in life were determined.

I lived a long life, two-thirds of which was surrounded by people who brought divine joy and light. The first was my mother, Maria Alexandrovna (I have already spoken about her once), a gifted, wise person, imbued with the deepest faith in God, precisely the deepest. She treated me in two ways: as her own son, and as a creation of God, which she was obliged to preserve and bring up in deep faith in the Creator. She considered herself responsible to Him, for He had entrusted her with a human soul. I was the third child in the family, my brother died at the age of two, my sister was four years old, and my mother, when I was born, made a promise to the Lord to put faith, truthfulness and love for people in me, and she raised me this way. At the age of sixteen, being fond of Old Russian art, he already dreamed of monasticism. Then there was the Optina Hermitage, where it was difficult to get under the guidance of the elders, but by the mercy of God I was accepted, and I was guided by the elders Fr. Anatoly and Fr. Nektarios. For two years he lived in the Optina Hermitage under the guidance of Elder Fr. Nektarios and Elder Fr. Anatoly. Why two elders? Many people are surprised by this; Probably, according to the plan of the elders, this was part of the system of my spiritual education. Sometimes, when you came to Fr. Nektarios, you always had to wait a long time. You ask, and he answers: Go to Fr. Anatoly, he will tell you. I will come to Fr. Anatoly, and he will also answer: Go ask Fr. Nektarios. At first, I was confused and even offended to tears, but then I realized: It means that this is the way it should be, and this later determined my spiritual worldview, when, with the blessing of Fr. Nektarios and Fr. Anatoly, I was sent to serve in the world, in the parish church, in the rank of hieromonk.

The circle of communication in the monastery is small, the same people are constantly the same, monks whom you know and see every day, monastic work, constant prayer in church, cell, at work, a minimum of conversations and instructions from the elders. Obedience and humility in communication with novices and monks. One should not think that the relationships with others were cloudless in the monastery, sometimes they were so difficult that the soul contracted with pain, these were temptations allowed by the Lord. Coming to the elder, crushed and oppressed, I wanted to tell him everything, but he already knew, yes, he knew everything, and by the nature of your attitude to what had happened, he determined the level of your spiritual perfection or fall and taught you to perceive what had happened with prayer as the will of the Lord.

Your opinion, the humiliation you received, the insult you received were not taken into account, only humility before God and understanding were accepted: you are still so imperfect that what happened is the result of your sinfulness and is just. The elder in the monastery is your father, mentor, guide in everything, you do not have your own will, you have a complete renunciation of your vain self.