On Prayer

Beloved brethren! In order to succeed in the feat of prayer, in order to in due time, by the ineffable mercy of God, to taste the sweetest fruit of prayer, which consists in the renewal of the whole person by the Holy Spirit, one must pray constantly, one must courageously endure those difficulties and sorrows with which the podvig of prayer is associated. This is what the Lord commanded us, as we have heard today in the Gospel. It is proper always to pray and not to be cold [1123], that is, not to lose heart. They usually lose heart at failures: consequently, the Lord commands us not to lose heart if, having been engaged in prayer for a long time, we do not notice the desired success; if our mind, instead of praying attentively, is plundered by various vain thoughts and dreams; if our heart, instead of being filled with tenderness, which is almost always accompanied by consoling tears, is cold and hard; if during prayer obscene and violent passions suddenly boil up in us, vicious memories are brought; if our prayer is prompted by circumstances and people; if our prayer is slandered by the worst enemies of prayer – the demons. All obstacles encountered in the field of prayer are overcome by constancy in prayer.

The teaching about the benefit and fruit of constant prayer, like many of His other teachings, the Lord deigned to clothe with a parable. The parable is imprinted in the memory with special convenience, and with it the teaching clothed in the parable is also imprinted in the memory.

The Judge was in a certain city, said the Lord, explaining the need for constant and patient prayer, not to fear God, and man not to be ashamed. And a certain widow was in that city, and came to him, saying, Avenge me, that is, defend me from my adversary. And you don't want to spend time. Follow then the saying within yourself: If I do not fear God, and man am not ashamed: but this widow does not work for me, I will avenge her: but not to the end, that is, she will stand for me unceasingly and endlessly [1124]. Outwardly, a ruler who has reached the extreme degree of sinfulness is exhibited here. Many people who lead a vicious life have lost the fear of God; but they, fearlessly sinning before the all-seeing God, Who, in their blindness and hardness, appears to them to see nothing and even not to exist, are ashamed to sin openly before men, try in every way to conceal their iniquities from them, and try to inspire them with the kindest opinion of themselves. The ruler lost both fear and human shame: nothing bound him in his actions; he could only be guided by arbitrariness. Such a desperate sinner at the first superficial glance appears to be the judge; but a deeper investigation reveals that, in a mysterious sense, many of the features attributed to the judge refer to God [1125]. God cannot fear Himself, and He does not accept the face of man: all men are equal before Him, all are creatures, all are His servants, all are equally in need of His mercy, they are in His complete power. He is called unrighteous, that is, unjust, because He did not create us to eat according to our iniquity, but recompensed us to eat according to our sin. As our creation is known, I will remember Him as the finger of the Father[1126]. In spiritual rapture at the contemplation of God's ineffable love for mankind, St. Isaac of Syria exclaims: "Do not dare to call God just, for His justice over you is not seen. Although the Prophet calls Him righteous and upright, His Son declared that He is more good and merciful: He is good to the ungrateful and the wicked [1127]. How can we call Him just if we read the parable of the workers' wages? "My friend! I do not offend you, but I want to give this last one (who has hardly touched the work) the same price at which I agreed with you (who bore the burden of a whole hot day)? Am I not sovereign in mine? Is thy eye envious because I am good? [1128] Again, how can we call God just, if we read the story of the prodigal son, who squandered all his wealth in debauchery? On account of one of the tenderness expressed by the son, the father ran out to meet him, took him in his arms and gave him his former dignity. The Son of God Himself, no one else, testified to this about God; There is no room for doubt about this. Where is the justice of God, when Christ died for us, while we were His enemies?" [1129]

In the parable, a widow is a human soul separated from God by sin, aware and sensing this separation. The world is called a city as a creation of God. Very few in this city profess their spiritual widowhood; the majority remain outside the memory of death and the Judgment of God, they remain completely immersed in temporary cares and pleasures. So few think about eternity and prepare for it, that one such person is remembered throughout the city. The state of widowhood is a state of loneliness, helplessness, a state that is not separated from sorrow, a state of incessant lamentation. Those who have felt their spiritual widowhood by God, who have been deprived of communion with the Holy Spirit through sin, who thirst and strive to renew this communion through repentance, who are dead to God because of their broken communion with Him, who are dead to the world because of their lack of sympathy with the world, come to such a state. This state of the soul is necessary for success in the prayerful feat: God hearkens to the prayers of only widows, that is, only poor in spirit, filled with awareness of their sinfulness, their weakness, their fall, alien to self-conceit, which consists in the recognition of their virtues, virtues, and righteousness. Self-conceit is self-deception. Those who recognize their virtues, virtues, and righteousness are called rich in the Holy Scriptures. The rich are those who in reality do not have any wealth, but, deceiving themselves, think they have it and try to present themselves as rich before men. Vain, proud concepts, from which self-conceit is composed, destroy in man the spiritual throne on which the Holy Spirit usually sits, destroy the only condition that attracts God's mercy to man. On the contrary, from the concepts of the humble, the throne for the Holy Spirit is built in man, the condition, the pledge for receiving God's mercy are formed. Self-conceit of itself destroys the possibility of success in prayer, which is why the Scriptures say: Scatter the proud in the thought of their hearts. Bring down the mighty from the throne and exalt the humble. Fill those who hunger with good things, and let go of those who are rich [1130]. The prayer of the proud is destroyed by absent-mindedness. They are deprived of power over themselves: neither their thoughts nor their feelings obey them. Their mind cannot be concentrated in self-view, from which a feeling of repentance and tenderness is born in the soul. He who sows his seeds on a stone reaps no fruit; so he who prays without tenderness, who prays coldly and superficially, departs, after the completion of his prayer, alien to the fruit of the Spirit, not admitted to communion with God. God accepts into communion with Him only the humble.

Quite different is the podvig of prayer for those who only dream of it, being content with the most meager exercise in it, than for those who have carefully engaged in the feat of prayer and have experienced it. The former recognize this podvig as the easiest, completely dependent on the will of man, becoming his property at any time, whenever he decides to come into possession of this property. They believe that as soon as they abandon their cares and enter into silence, they will already be met there with the most abundant spiritual delight. "We will constantly converse with God," they think and say, and they invent for themselves various lofty spiritual states, such as the state of clairvoyance, prophecy, miracles, and the healing of ailments. Thus ignorance dreams and wanders, guided by the incomprehensible passion of vanity. Experience shows and proves quite the opposite.

The one who has entered into a true prayerful feat is guided in it by God Himself, with wisdom incomprehensible to those who are not initiated into its mysteries. "Prayer," said St. John of the Ladder, "contains in itself its own teacher, God, Who teaches man to understand (prayer), Who gives prayer to the one who prays and blesses the years of the righteous" (1131). According to the distribution of Divine wisdom, the one who has entered into the feat of prayer is first given the consolation of prayer [1132]. Thus, a well-chosen remedy for some old disease, touching its surface, immediately, at the first doses, brings relief. The same medicine, with its further use, begins to penetrate into the physique, disturbs the disease and, gradually expelling it, increases the pain, sometimes brings the patient into a painful state. With such phenomena, an inexperienced patient can easily doubt the usefulness of the drug; but it is precisely in these phenomena that skilled physicians see its beneficence. Exactly the same thing happens during prayer. When a Christian is constantly and carefully occupied with it, then little by little it will begin to reveal in him his passions, the existence of which he did not know in himself until now. It will reveal to him in a striking picture the fall of human nature and its captivity. When a Christian intends to arise from the fall and be freed from captivity, then those spirits who have enslaved us to themselves will come and stubbornly rise up against prayer, which is trying to give the Christian spiritual freedom. This serves as proof of the validity of prayer, as the same great instructor of monks said: "We conclude about the usefulness of prayer by the opposition from the demons that we encounter during its performance, and about its fruit we conclude from our defeat of the enemy" [1133]. In the involuntary contemplation of our fall and in the struggle with our passions and spirits of malice, the Divine Providence very often, for a very long time, holds the ascetics for their essential benefit. "Seeing the passions constantly arising in himself, seeing the constant predominance over himself of sinful thoughts and dreams brought by the spirits, the ascetic acquires the poverty of the spirit commanded by the Gospel, is mortified for the world, becomes a true widow in the spiritual sense, and, from a strong feeling of widowhood, orphanhood, loneliness, and homelessness, begins with a special lack of stuod, with a special lack of clarity, with a special lack of relent, to chill with prayer, combined with weeping, the Judge, who does not fear God and man does not to the one who is ashamed, to weary the Tireless. Although this Judge, being God, does not fear God, yet the soul, which has become, because of sin and fall, a widow in relation to Him, does not work for Him: He will take vengeance on it from its rival, the body, and from its adversaries, the spirits" [1134]. How is this vengeance, this defense, accomplished? By the gift of the Holy Spirit to the ascetic, exhausted by the struggle of prayer: Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and ye shall find: push, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one who asketh receives, and seeketh findeth, and to him that interpreteth it shall be opened... The Father, who is in heaven, will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him [1135], thus the Lord assures us. But in order to receive a gift, it is commanded to ask, to seek, to knock unceasingly at the spiritual doors of God's mercy.

It is not useful for us, even harmful, to acquire spiritual wealth quickly and without difficulty [1136]: having easily obtained it, we will not be able to preserve it; it can serve us as a pretext for vanity, for contempt and condemnation of our neighbors, which leads the ascetic to grievous falls, which usually follow pride and serve as a punishment and admonition for those who are carried away by the most pernicious passion that has cast down the fallen angels from heaven. For this reason, God leaves the ascetics of prayer to languish for a long time in an unresolved struggle with passions and spirits, in the midst of hope and hopelessness, in the midst of frequent victories and defeats. In the denunciations of iniquity, Thou didst punish man, says the great worker of prayer, and Thou didst fade away like a spider's soul [1137]. In this difficult time, ascetics were thoroughly studied by experience with the various passions and demonic intrigues, thoroughly studied the Gospel commandments, which became their property from prolonged and careful study. In this difficult time, ascetics are thoroughly prepared to receive and preserve Divine grace. Is it not God, the Gospel parable concludes, that He will take vengeance on His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night, and suffer long for them? I say unto you, that he shall bring about their vengeance quickly. God's long-suffering is here called the duration of the struggle with sin, which is allowed by God's chosen one by no one else, by God Himself. Vengeance or protection is called to be given quickly, because even in times of struggle God constantly supports His elect; after the struggle has passed, and after the renewal of man by the Holy Spirit, such bliss pours into him that he immediately forgets all the anguish of the struggle; it appears to him as acting for the shortest time. Let us be filled with Thy mercy in the morning, O Lord, and let us rejoice and be glad, — thus confess to the Lord those who have been convinced that their prayer has been heard, who have seen in their souls the manifestation of the spiritual morning after the darkness of the night — all our days we shall rejoice, for the days, in which Thou hast humbled us, the years, in which Thou hast seen evil [1138].  But the struggle is so difficult that the prayerful cry of the elect is constantly intensified because of it; because of it, it does not cease day or night; the distance between the prayers is destroyed, and the servants of God begin to chill God with uninterrupted prayer and weeping, produced by that humble conception of oneself which appears from the sight of one's own sinfulness. Walking all day long, says the holy Prophet David, "that my hands are filled with reproach, and there is no healing in my flesh. Embittered by my passions and spirits of malice, and humbled to the ground [1139]. How long, O Lord, wilt thou forget me to the end? How long wilt Thou turn Thy face away from me? How long wilt Thou be long? How long wilt thou not take Thy vengeance upon my adversaries? How long, because of my perplexity, shall I put many and fruitless counsels in my soul, sickness in my heart day and night? How long will my enemy be lifted up against me? [1140] My enemies have conquered my soul... Thou hast embraced me as a lion is ready to fish, and as a lion dwelleth in the secrets. Arise, O Lord, precede me, and stumble upon them! deliver my soul from the wicked... [1141] … My god! I trust in Thee, that I may not be ashamed for ever, that my enemies may laugh at Thee: for all who endure Me shall not be ashamed. [1142]

When the Lord ended the parable with the promise to bring vengeance soon to the one who would pray to Him day and night, then He said: "When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?" Why are these words spoken? They are spoken, according to the interpretation of the Fathers, for the following reason [1143]. The Lord, having enumerated the signs that will precede His Second Coming, pronounced the teaching about prayer, which is especially necessary in these difficult and calamitous times, just as on another occasion on the same occasion He said: "Be vigilant at all times when you pray, that you may be vouchsafed to flee from all these who desire to be, and to stand before the Son of Man" (1144). When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? This means: will He find true believers who prove faith by works, and especially by true and actual prayer, by which podvig is based on faith, and is accomplished, constantly relying on faith? Such a phrase, according to its use in the Scriptures, is equivalent to the following: [1145] The Son of God, having come to earth, will find almost no one, or will find very, very few who would have the true faith and the prayerful progress that depends on it, manifesting it. And then this success is especially needed! The end is at hand, says the holy Apostle Peter, be chaste and sober in your prayers [1146]. There will be neither success in prayer nor true practice of prayer: all people will be engaged in material development, they will be engaged in turning the earth doomed to burn into their paradise, they will consider, in self-deception, temporal life to be eternal, and they will reject and ridicule the care of preparing themselves for eternity. For those whose thoughts are wholly directed to the earth and occupied with the earth, there is no God. He who ascends to God through pure and frequent prayer acquires a living faith in God, sees Him with it, and will fly like a winged man through all the vicissitudes and calamities of earthly life. He will see his vengeance from his rival, and he will rejoice not only in the forgiveness of his sins, but also in the cleansing of his sinful passions. The Holy Fathers call this state holiness, blessed impassibility, Christian perfection. In this state he will be vouchsafed to flee from all the calamities that desire to be, and to stand before the Son of Man, when he will be required before him both by death and by that trumpet which will gather the living and the dead to the Judgment before the Son of God. Amen.

Homily

on the 54th conception of the Gospel of Luke,

read on all feasts of the Mother of God