To pray means to be in that special inner state when the spiritual principle in a person enters into mysterious and direct contact with the Lord God and the other invisible world. This state is possible in all external conditions. But since everything worldly prevents him, the best condition for prayer should be considered solitude. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself pointed out this path of prayer. He alone remained for prayer, leaving the people and the disciples. He also remained with his disciples, secluding himself with them from the people. In the words of the Evangelist Luke, "He went into the wilderness and prayed" (Luke 5:16). And the Evangelist Mark says: "In the morning, rising up very early, he went out and withdrew into a desert place, and there he prayed" (Mark 1:35). The Evangelist Luke also speaks of solitary prayer together with His disciples: "He prayed in a solitary place, and the disciples were with Him" (Luke 9:18).

   Solitude is an outwardly favorable condition for prayer. Worldly noise interferes from the outside. But there is an internal obstacle. As if there was an internal noise. This noise is created in us by worldly attachments and carnal passions. Therefore, behind the main work of monasticism -- prayer -- there is an inward, invisible battle with temptations and the virtues associated with this struggle: non-acquisitiveness, self-denial, dispassion. Monasticism experienced the path of non-acquisitiveness, self-denial and dispassion, and by experience created a perfect prayerful life. Everything that it gave to the liturgical rule, and everything that took the form of "cell rules," was not armchair fabrications, but the result of great prayerful feats. Prayer filled almost the entire life of the monastery. She created the true heaven on earth. The monk lived in the temple. And he left there only for certain earthly concerns, which he bore patiently, as something inevitable for a person clothed in an earthly shell. But the fulfillment of these earthly deeds did not have time to dissipate what filled the soul in the temple.

   The need to "pray without ceasing" created a special kind of prayerful feat: the practice of the Jesus Prayer: "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." This prayer, which appeared in the Church, according to tradition, from the time of the Apostles, which was previously performed by all believers, later became the foundation of the prayer life of monks. Without this prayer, prayer became simply impossible for the monk. It was constantly on his lips, in his mind, and in his heart. She accompanied him everywhere. It supplemented prayer in the Church, softening the heart and opening it up for the assimilation of divine services, it replaced the church for him when he went to fulfill his obediences and had to attend to his earthly affairs. She lived with him in his cell, drove away melancholy, self-pity, and thoughts. It gathered wandering thoughts and scattered feelings, it was the most powerful weapon in the struggle against passions, especially in the inevitable contact with the world.

   The Jesus Prayer gave the human soul the opportunity to feel itself in the eyes of God all the time. All the time, in the depths of our hearts, we feel tenderness from the awareness of the immeasurable mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who suffered for our sins, and contrition for sins, and hope for salvation. And all this was like one common feeling that settled in the heart, lived there constantly even when the words of the prayer were not pronounced, and protected the soul from the filth and temptations of the world.

   Prayer, like everything in spiritual life, has its own path and its own stages of ascent. A prayerful state is not always given to a person with unconditional fullness. And here, as in the moral life, much depends on the efforts of the person himself, but the main and perfect thing depends on the mercy of God, on grace as a gift of the Holy Spirit. In the moral life, every good deed is already something positive on the path of perfection, because behind it there is a good will. And in the life of prayer, every word of prayer, even if uttered with one mouth, is already an act of prayer, because it testifies to the desire to pray. And the monastery therefore strictly demanded the observance, at least externally, of the prayer rule. This was not a requirement of the "letter of the law". There was great wisdom in this. The letter of the prayer rule was a necessary step, which the greatest ascetics certainly passed. The rule was what was required of everyone. Further ascent along the inner steps of prayerful perfection was left to the grace of God and the feats of each individual person.

   Thus, monasticism, continuing the work of the Saviour, His holy apostles and the first Christians, by the podvig and grace of God, created a perfect form of the prayer rule and, having experienced the path of prayer, taught all those who sought salvation to follow it.

   The second work of monasticism is fasting. The ascetics call prayer and fasting the two wings, without which it is impossible to rise above the worldly and passionate life. Some of them considered the feat of fasting to be the surest measure of the successful passage of the spiritual path. Fasting is a feat that is aimed at fighting our passions. Behind it is the virtue of impassibility. "Give blood, and receive the Spirit," says Abba Longinus, meaning by "blood" all the sorrows of the ascetic path. By fasting we must understand not only abstinence in food, but the totality of all ascetic means in the struggle with the passions. Its first and basic stage is abstinence from a certain composition of food, its abundance and sweetness, and the subsequent stages concern internal tasks: abstinence from all defilements in general.

   The Church's view of this is expressed in the words: "Let us fast with a pleasant fast, pleasing to the Lord: true fasting is the alienation of the wicked, the abstinence of the tongue, the deferral of rage, the excommunication of lusts, the utterance, lies and perjury. Of these impoverishment the true fast is also favorable." To pass immediately to such a fast, having stepped over the first step of the "Lenten rule," is as impossible as to rise immediately to mental prayer without going through the first stage of oral prayer. This is not an abstract theological assertion, but a truth established by ascetic experience, and all the words that "it is better than not to eat quickly -- not to be angry, not to offend, not to envy" -- are empty words.

   Spiritual life without fasting is impossible. This truth, like everything else in monastic life, is not abstract and theological, but ascetic, for which it is paid with blood. The external rule is not perfect fasting, and therefore it is impossible to limit oneself to it, but the internal higher tasks of fasting are impossible without observing the external Lenten rule.

   And here, according to His humanity, the Saviour indicated by His example the meaning of fasting, not eating for 40 days in the wilderness, and the Apostles prayed with fasting, and the entire ancient Church applied fasting, and monasticism, continuing the work of the Saviour, the Apostles and the first Christians, created by its ascetic experience the perfect Lenten rule as the best way to achieve the inner tasks of impassibility. Here prayer is inseparable from fasting, and fasting is inseparable from prayer.

   Now let's move on to obedience. This is the main foundation of monasticism. In monastic terms, obedience is higher than fasting and prayer. The entire great building of the monastery rests on it. It permeates every movement of monastic life, it is the highest desirable virtue for every monk. Behind obedience there is everything -- prayer, self-denial, dispassion, humility, and podvig. It is not without reason that the Holy Fathers call obedience voluntary martyrdom. And this path of voluntary martyrdom is traversed by every monk. He renounces his will and entrusts it to the abbot and his spiritual father. He crucifies his will, his self-love, his pride. Reason, desire, feelings -- everything is given over to obedience. Obedience is not agreement with an authoritative opinion or obedience out of principle, it is an internal rejection of any independent action. Refusal not because "I must obey, although I do not agree," but because there can be no "disagreement" -- for I know nothing, and everything knows what I must do, my spiritual father.

   Unknown. Hold on. But if the spiritual father is mistaken. After all, he is not God. Is it really necessary to fulfill an obviously erroneous or ridiculous demand?

   Confessor. Yes, the ascetics say that it is necessary to fulfill even such requirements that may seem to the novice to contradict his salvation. And this is the truth. For where there is criticism, disagreement, there is one's own knowledge, one's own will, one's own decision, which is opposed to the knowledge, will, and decision of the elder, but the true novice knows nothing, has no will of his own, and has no solutions.

   Unknown. And if the elder demands something contrary to the teaching of the Church, if he falls away from Orthodoxy, must we also obey?