The first premise is that the Gospel has been proclaimed to everyone without exception. And if Christ offered us the gospel ideal, the gospel path, precisely without making a distinction, without pointing out any special separate ramifications, its implementation in modern life should be possible. The question is - what and how.

For the most part, one or the other is impossible forms life under certain circumstances. But one or another mood, one or another internal structure is not impossible. Let’s say, you can lead a contemplative life like a hermit in the desert, practice the Jesus Prayer the way the Wanderer did it (see: The Wanderer’s frank stories to his spiritual father. – Red.), is possible only in the conditions of his wandering, etc. But this does not mean at all that one cannot be face to face with God outside the desert, that without being a wanderer one cannot be in the same radical coming or you cannot practice the Jesus Prayer with the same depth of experience. So, if we pose the question of ascetic life based on certain forms, the forms may turn out to be incompatible with certain circumstances, but this does not mean that their content is incompatible.

If you think about how these forms gradually crystallized: first, they were not invented or contrived. They gradually grew from within experience; then they began to be given as conditions for seeking or finding this or that spiritual experience, but it began demon formally. When the first man went into the desert, he had no program, no idea what it would all lead to, he only knew one thing: that he needed to be completely alone, face to face with God and with himself. And from this already forms began to emerge; Let's say it was immediately discovered that it was impossible to live inactively, that one had to work; the hermits, for example, weaved baskets, or at least worked. Moreover, the work had to be hard, such that real effort was put into it; the work consisted, firstly, in doing something expedient (weaving baskets), which required minimal mental attention and no attention of the heart, which could remain entirely God's; and, secondly, in difficult living conditions: for example, they walked quite a long distance to fetch water, which was the most genuine physical labor.

Then a whole series of other things were discovered. The first giants of the spirit somehow stood before God; when people of a smaller scale began to join them, but who sought the same thing under their leadership, such a concept as obedience appeared; it began to be developed first as a general guideline, and then developed into radical aspects of it.

But the main thing we need to remember is whether it’s physical exercises, whether it’s mental exercises, whether it’s the structure of life, whether it’s the rules of this life - all this began without the intention of “creating” anything in this order; the system grew out of inner life. Therefore, life, when it exists, can develop its own forms. This is a general biological rule, this is both a social and personal rule - there would be life!

If we ask ourselves the question of what is the essence of evangelical work, what is its absolute radicality: I think that in love and in nothing else; but in ultimate and radical love. Not in the kind of love that is directed towards loved ones and leaves others aside, not in the kind of love that reduces everything to oneself. We love people in very different ways; we use the same word “love” for concepts simply Not compatible. (There is a Bulgarian proverb: one person loves watermelons, the other loves officers). We “love” this or that food, and we “love” the person dear to us in the same way as we love food: we devour him to the ground. One English writer has a book: letters from an old demon, where he teaches his nephew, a young demon who has just begun his subversive activities among people. And he writes about love: I don’t understand how Christ says that he loves people and leaves them free. Here I am, you little devil, I love you; what does it mean? This means that I want to possess you, I want to master you so that nothing of yours remains outside of me, so that in the end I can digest you completely, so that you are all somehow integrated into me... This is a demonic pseudo- Love; but this is eerily similar to the way we love people, although perhaps not to the same extent and, in any case, not so intentionally. But very often people tell us, if not in words, then in actions: love me less, but leave me free...

In this sense, evangelical love begins with questioning all forms of our love - and in all categories, because you can love with parental, marital, friendly love as destructively as this old demon loved his imp-nephew. Further, if you think about how Christ loves us: His love leaves us to end free. That is, He takes upon Himself, out of love for us, all the consequences of this love: because He loves, He becomes completely vulnerable, and, as a lamb is silent before its shearers, so He opened not His mouth- these are words from Isaiah repeated at the proskomedia. He doesn’t protest with a word: do whatever you want with Me, I love you enough for that... Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends... moreover, “friend” in the strong sense of the word, that is, not a friend, not an acquaintance, but one who is, as it were, my alter ego, “another self”; this is a vision of another in such a relationship with oneself that everything that makes up his destiny is also my destiny, with all the consequences: both positive (this is not a problem) and negative.

In order to achieve this, you must truly abandon yourself and forget yourself. Forgetting yourself when you naturally love someone is no longer easy, because here you remember yourself. But when the heart is not naturally attracted to someone, it is very difficult to forget oneself. I can give you an example. I have a parishioner who is now close to eighty years old. At some point in her life she went to prison. She told me how at first there were nights and nights of interrogations. One night she became so exhausted and exhausted that she felt: anything better than this flour. She sat with drooping eyes and raised her head to challenge her tormentor; and suddenly she discovered on the other side of the table a man, pale as death, from fatigue, just as exhausted as she was, because he had been sitting for the same hours, only on the other side of the table. And at that moment she realized that they were not enemies, that both were caught in the whirlpool of history that scattered them - one on one side, the other on the other side of the table, but in essence both at the mercy of the same historical events, and personally there is no reason to view each other as enemies. At that moment she accepted him, simply agreed that he had the right to be where he was, and she was where she was, and smiled. And she told me that this did not change anything in subsequent events, but it completely changed her at that moment. Here the recognition of another flashed: recognition of his right to be what he is. This is some basic justice; not the kind of justice when we think that everyone should receive an equal share of something or that there should be retribution or reward for certain actions. No, recognition of another person, like he is, with his own destiny, with his future, with his eternal calling, that is, independently of me: he does not exist only in relation to me, he exists in relation to himself, to God, Whom he may not know, to the whole a world in which he is not aware of.

And here the love of Christ becomes so demanding and terrible, because, ultimately, the love that Christ speaks of is, in the words of Theophan the Recluse, suicide. Bishop Theophan says that no one can, without God’s help, raise his hand to himself in the way that Christian love requires, that is, renounce himself to such an extent that, in the end, he does not remember himself, but only remembers another. Much more could be said about this, but essentially This- the core of the Gospel, our likeness to God, the path by which we commune with Him, the path that God has opened for us to our brother, to our neighbor, to good and evil, to our own and to others, etc. And this is possible in any conditions, and radicalism can be the same for a monk in a community, for a hermit, or simply for a person living in the world. And community life, whether monastic or secular, is partly a necessary preparation. Never in the tradition of monasticism have they allowed a person to live alone until they have made sure that he has achieved love and humility, because if he has not achieved them, then when he is alone, without verification, he will live in delusion. It is very easy to love the whole world when it is not there; It's very easy to feel humble when no one is putting you down.

Of course, there are things in the Philokalia that are difficult to achieve without organized asceticism; but, as Grigory Skovoroda said, the wonderful thing about life is that everything that is complex is unnecessary and everything that is necessary is uncomplicated. There is also truth in this, because the goal or even the form of Christian life is not to live this way or that, but to live alone with selfless, flaming love, not one’s own, but God’s.

And in this sense, I think we still need to think a lot about how to lead our lives in worldly conditions, that is, about the technique of this, about what can be applied formally and what can be applied only in spirit, looking for forms. But I think that the whole Gospel is feasible in life, in ordinary worldly life; Just don’t try to live in the world as if you were living in the desert or as if you were living in a monastery, because then what you end up with is not following Christ, but following some kind of ape. I think we all do this at some point in our lives; we suddenly decide to be a hermit or something like that, and try to adapt ourselves or life to this. But this is not necessary. I know that in the Russian Church there is a tradition of secret monasticism. Secret monasticism is characterized by the fact that you do not live outwardly as you would live in a monastery or in the desert, but everything that constitutes monasticism, namely stability, standing before God and monastic vows, must be fulfilled. Stability (I don’t have a suitable word, the Latin stabilitas expresses this well): a person has become and will not move from his place. This is the first question that is asked when taking tonsure: do you undertake not to leave the monastery? This is now understood purely geographically: here are the walls, and I undertake not to leave there. But you can live within the walls and at the same time with your imagination, your dream, your desire to be everywhere; and it is possible, moving from place to place, to preserve what St. Theophan called “inwardness,” that is, to be entirely within oneself.

This does not depend on external conditions, at least not entirely, because there is no need to be deceived: of course, some portion of the physical real fulfillment of this stability helps or, on the contrary, can serve as a test of our inability to achieve it. There is a very interesting and, in my opinion, given his restraint and almost coldness, a very tragic letter from Feofan, where he tells how difficult it was for him to gradually accustom himself to seclusion. You remember that he was first a seminary teacher, then a bishop in the Tambov diocese and in the Vladimir diocese. All the open spaces were in front of him, he could look into the distance, he could move freely; and he went into monastic seclusion while still a relatively young man. And so he says that at first he gave himself the freedom to walk around the monastery, climb the walls and look into the distance to his heart's content. When he got used to the monastery, he set himself a rule: go wherever you want, but don’t climb the wall and you won’t see any distance anymore. He writes that this first step was simply agony: the feeling that the world was ending Here, and behind the wall is the entire expanse of Russian land, which he never won't see it again. And he struggled for a long time with the temptation, with the desire to look, to see, that is, ultimately, to lose his temper. When he got used to this, he set a second rule for himself: to go only to church, to the refectory and to obediences, or wherever necessary, but not to walk, not to walk around the monastery aimlessly. This second stage of the struggle limited his physical world and forced him to test how far he could live within himself. Then he began to go to church only once a week and no longer went to the refectory; and eventually he locked himself in his cell. But you can avoid falling apart on this path only if each step corresponds to a gradual entry into yourself.

One of the desert fathers said that you can stay comfortably in a cell only if you live entirely under your own skin; If your heart is even an inch outside of yourself, the cell is unbearable, because you will break against every wall. This is the difference between a prison solitary cell and a cell: a person who is in solitary confinement is eager to get out; a person who goes into a cell, who was allowed to do so, rushes inside, deeper - and this is a completely different system.

And this is the first thing - the stability of life, which lies in the fact that there is absolutely no need to look for God somewhere, because if He is not found inside oneself, He cannot be found outside oneself. And at the moment when you discover this, then, in essence, it doesn’t matter so much where you are: whether in the market square or in a cell; if you are inside yourself, then you only inside yourself. You may be moving physically, but with your whole being you are simply standing before God.

The same can be said about other vows. They sometimes seem very external; Let's say, the vow of poverty or non-covetousness would seem to be very simple. Firstly, sometimes it seems to be very simple, because without it you have nothing. But it’s not at all so simple, because the moment you say: yes, I could have this, but I can’t anymore because I’ve renounced it - the most insignificant object suddenly becomes so attractive, so desirable... Me in 1939 year he took monastic vows, a week later he joined the army and army life began. I remember one evening I was sitting and reading; Next to me lay a stub of a pencil - sharpened on one side, eaten away on the other, there was really nothing to be tempted by. And suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this pencil, and something said to me: you will never again in your entire life be able to say: “this is my pencil.” You have renounced everything that you have the right to possess... And - this may seem like complete nonsense to you, but every temptation, every such attraction is a kind of delirium - I struggled for two or three hours to say: yes, this the pencil is not mine - and thank God!.. For several hours I sat in front of this stub of a pencil with the feeling that I don’t know what I would give to have the right to say: “This is my pencil.” Moreover, he was practically my pencil, I used it, I chewed on it. And he was not mine; and it was then that I felt that not having is one thing, but being free from an object is a completely different matter.

Therefore, when we talk about non-covetousness, there is an external side: do not save, do not buy, do not possess; but the main thing: do not be connected with the object in such a way that, in essence, it is not you, but you belong to it, because it always happens that both hold each other. When I was a boy, I remember my grandmother told me how, after some battle between the Turks and the Greeks, where the Greeks won, in the dark a Greek soldier shouted to his officer: “Lieutenant, lieutenant, I have captured a Turk!”.. That replies: “So drag him here!” - “I can’t, he’s holding me too tightly...” You see, the fact is that he “took him captive” because his side prevailed, but since, holding him, he himself could not move, he was the same prisoner. The same thing with the pencil: it held me captive.

Now to the issue of wealth and poverty: John Chrysostom says that the poor person is not the one who does not have something, but the one who desires something that he does not have. You can have whatever you want; one the thing you passionately desire is not there - and you are a destitute person. It happens in feelings, it happens in objects, it happens in circumstances. On the other hand, you can be surprisingly rich while being wildly poor. In one of his books, the German Jewish writer Martin Buber talks about an 18th-century rabbi in northern Poland; he lived in wild poverty, in cold, in hunger, in abandonment. And every morning he enthusiastically said a prayer called “Eighteen Blessings.” One of his neighbors came to him and said: “Listen, how can you be so deceitful? After all, you will not deceive yourself, nor us, nor God: we all know that God has deprived you to the end - and you know this; Why are you thanking Him, for what?”.. And he answered: “You don’t understand the essence of the matter! God looked at me and thought: what does he need for him to grow to his full potential? He needs hunger, cold, loneliness... And He gave me this So abundantly that I thank Him day after day.” In this case, the concepts of wealth and poverty are very unique.

The same can be said about such a concept as chastity. Chastity is not determined either by external behavior, or even, to some extent, by purity of thought; it's a much more holistic relationship. This is an attitude in which, looking at a person, we see in him someone whom God created with love, whom He has endowed with an eternal calling and an eternal destiny, and we invite this person to assist and serve so that he reaches his full measure. That is, chastity is not only a sexual moment, it is a moment of a holistic attitude towards a person. This, again, is possible in the monastery, outside the monastery, in the desert. Of course, in external, worldly life the question is posed more constantly, more acutely, more demandingly than when you went to the monastery - if you do not allow your imagination to create what life is not capable of creating; because more people went mad from imagination than from actual life.

It's the same with obedience. We think of obedience mostly like this: one commands, the other executes; but this is a very primitive approach to obedience. Obedience means that a person listened closely- here's the first one; it is not that he simply hears some orders and carries them out, because this is external, physical obedience; This kind of obedience is ultimately inherent in a dog if it is trained. Obedience constitutes the ability of a person who has chosen a mentor, a teacher - either in the deepest, strongest sense, or even in the simple sense of the word - to be his student. Discipline - from the word discipulus, that is, a student is one who wants to be taught something, who for this purpose listens to every word, ponders every word, tries to grasp not only a formal order or advice, but to enter into the thought and feeling that dictated it, and tries to outgrow himself through all this and grow to the measure of his teacher, who, in turn, also tries to grow to another measure, ultimately - to the measure of the Savior, Who said: I am your only Teacher.

And then obedience becomes something completely different: it is not passivity, it is the highest form of activity of the soul and body. But somewhere in obedience there is a moment when it must be absurd, that is, when it must be the fulfillment of someone else's will, before you understand it. After all, while I understand why I was given this or that order or advice, this is not obedience, in the end, it is the fulfillment of my will, which I received from another, with which I united, made mine and now I live by it. But when, in the examples of the desert, orders were given that seemed meaningless, then the person got used to the fact that he could accept the word that he heard; and the will of the orderer was more important and significant for him than his own inclinations or considerations. And the goal of all this, ultimately, is to make us able to so renounce our will, so renounce all prejudice, so that when God speaks, we can hear and fulfill His words, even if they seem to us complete nonsense and absurdity.

If you take the Gospel and offer it to an outside person, and he reads there: if they hit you on one cheek, turn the other,- he throws his shoulders: “Nonsense! You can’t live like that!” If he reads that in order to live you have to die, he will shrug his shoulders: “That’s not true!” There is a lot of this in the Gospel. There is in the Gospel, from the point of view of human wisdom, a moment of madness; and one cannot unite with the madness of the cross, with the madness of the Gospel, except through a whole school of obedience; but again, does this require a monastery or a desert? Is it possible to learn to detach and renounce one’s will under other conditions? Speaking personally, when I asked my confessor the question: “Now I’m going into the army, how will I carry out my monasticism? in particular, obedience?” - he answered me: “Very simple - consider that everyone who gives you an order speaks in the name of God, and do what is ordered as the will of God, not only outwardly, but with all your inner being. Consider that every sick person who calls for help is your master, and serve him like a bought slave.” If you approach it this way, then, perhaps, the army is the most brilliant school of obedience, both absurd and reasonable.

So even if we take this path in its form of secret monasticism, when you should not show yourself in any way so that people would suspect you of being a monk, then it is clear and simple: All can be done. That this fails is another matter; but this is not the fault of the circumstances and not the fault of the essence of the matter. And the absolute radicalism of the Gospel, it seems to me, is possible, and the application of everything that the Philokalia teaches is possible - provided that we do not believe that everything should be accordingly according to form, because very often the form matches, and freedom of spirit lost.

Firstly, in the statutory prayer there is enormous variety, while in the Jesus Prayer there is sometimes very painful one image. A single formula is repeated. I don’t want to say that it is poorer, but in an unaccustomed person a certain hunger of mind is born, a hunger of feeling, a hunger to pray with words and images and sequences that excite him. If you just take the evening or morning prayers: they contain a whole train of thought; according to their location there is a transition from feeling to feeling; they are not located in random order. Within each prayer are words that were written by saints, not far-fetched, but torn with blood from the soul either in moments of great uplift, or in moments of painful suffering; Through these words we can get a little insight into how this man lived. We can get a little familiar with what constituted his mental and spiritual life. We can, if we accept these words not only as an expression of our desires, our petitions, but also as a measure of Christian life, try live according to our prayers. If I said in the morning: “Lord, give me patience,” I must learn patience throughout the day, and not wait for God to give me just like that, etc. This means that these prayers feed our soul, and if we treat them thoughtfully, if we not only think through them, but, as Theophanes says, “feel” them, then our thoughts are permeated with concepts that belonged to the fathers; and gradually we begin to think their thoughts, our heart inclines towards their feelings, and we change accordingly. Our will, directed along the channel of these prayers, is straightened and straightened according to God's will; therefore they are necessary. Along the way, I will say that if we want to pray these prayers fruitfully, we must, firstly, use them soberly, calmly, from the depths of inner conviction, and allowing God, and not our spirituality, to give birth to the corresponding feelings in us.

Another thing that is necessary (I have already said this): whatever we say in prayer, we must implement in life. If this is not done, then in a very short time the words of prayers become cloying and drive us into despondency, because they are empty words; and we understand perfectly well that neither God nor we ourselves live by them.

And the third is advice that was given to me at one time: when we pray some prayer and we know who composed this prayer - Mark the Ascetic, Basil the Great, Simeon Metaphrastus - before praying it, you can stop, turn to the saint and say : “Here, I am now starting to read your prayer; pray that I too may share in your spirit” - to the best of our ability, of course. So that the prayer that grew out of the entire experience of this saint connects us with him - with love, reverence, his blessing, his prayers.

By doing this, you can begin to pray the Jesus Prayer, and this is the second thing I would like to say. You can approach doing the Jesus Prayer in completely different ways. You can try, for example, to learn the Jesus Prayer as described by the Pilgrim or the Philokalia, perceiving it as an almost exclusive internal activity. This is possible under certain conditions: guidance, time, silence, etc.

There is another approach, accessible to everyone: using this prayer like any other, taking into account that it is full of meaning, depth, but in no case is it a magical device, as Feofan says, a talisman, an amulet that allows us to achieve anything - as if without labor and sweat. In this regard, Feofan gives advice - and in a letter to a laywoman; he says: use the Jesus Prayer as any another prayer Not imagining that you are doing something special means not being proud of the fact that you have become a “doer” of the Jesus Prayer or anything like that. And use it this way: between every two prayers there are five Jesus prayers. How? - Firstly, with the utmost attention that you can put into prayers; secondly, with all the reverence that you can put into action when you approach the Living God. Thirdly, with hope and prayer for repentance, for God to change you - and nothing else. Don't put feelings or thoughts into it while you pray. Leave it to God to give you any thoughts, any feelings He wants; and you just tell Him, standing before Him.

If you get used to this, if the Jesus Prayer takes root, then you can pray a little more. But an absolutely necessary condition: at the beginning, choose a time when you can do it without distraction, without interference, with all attention and reverence; And not to study for a long time, but, say, to read ten times. If possible, say a prayer; keep quiet; make a prostration; stand up; allow yourself to calm down physically; and say the prayer again. If you bow down and use the Jesus Prayer at the same time and in a fast rhythm, then gradually some kind of semi-hysterical state is born from the bodily exercise, one on top of the other - so that the person loses sobriety. In the Jesus Prayer, as in any prayer, one must avoid allowing any mood to develop; everything that happens in the soul must be from God. He must put feelings into us; He must give us thoughts; He must correct our will; It must somehow reach our body. But we should not do this by, as it were, inflating ourselves - this is very important.

You can read the Jesus Prayer ten times and calm down. If during the day God puts it on your soul to repeat a prayer several times, you must do it; but we must strive in every possible way to do this with very clear attention. If attention is accidentally taken away from prayer, this is not drama; but if we approach prayer, knowing that now my attention no way I can’t cling to it, I’m just busy with something else and, as it were, consciously entering into prayer Not carefully, this is destructive. It is destructive simply because it is very easy to get used to some mechanism and lose prayer at the same time, just as, say, people who follow great prayer rules often lose prayer, because when should they pray when they say prayers?!

The next, perhaps most significant thing in the Jesus Prayer: this prayer is anticipation before God; there seems to be no movement from thought to thought in it. In the Lord's Prayer we move from one concept to another: Thy will be done... Thy kingdom come... etc. Here there is perfect unity of theme, there are no transitions. And it allows you to learn to prayerfully and vitally stand before God, to simply stand before Him as if in perfect stillness. And in this respect, it is, of course, predominantly the prayer of one who abides within himself, who abides, say, in a secluded cell. But it is also the path to this, because such stability is not achieved suddenly, but gradually by training oneself for this task.

Now - the content of this prayer. The Philokalia, in places and the Wanderer, quoting it, say that it is an abbreviation of the entire Gospel. And indeed, there are two parts to it; first: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God... Here is a confession of faith, here is a reminder to us of who the God is before Whom we stand. Who am I in front of? Who is He?.. - and not a reminder of some static God, but a reminder of God, which obliges us to something all the time.

Take each word briefly:

God. First, the Holy Scriptures teach us that no one can call Christ Jesus his Lord unless he is moved by the Holy Spirit. This means that to say “Lord” to Christ is to enter into some kind of relationship with the Lord by the Holy Spirit. This is already to express the experience that is given to us by the gift of the Holy Spirit, His ineffable prayers within us or His clear word of prayer in our soul. But second: saying “Lord” obliges us to actually recognize Him as Lord, the owner of our life. . Not everyone who says to Me: “Lord, Lord!” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven... And if only I dare to say “Lord” to God, this means that I completely recognize Him as my Lord, the master of my life, and without exception, everything that will happen in my life, every meeting, every event - I will accept everything without reserve as from His own hand: whatever I do, I will do as a faithful servant, slave, hired servant or son, depending on the extent to which I have achieved - for His sake.

Christ - The Anointed One: the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.

And finally God's Son- because we know what the Old Testament did not know; we know that He is truly the Son of the Living God.

This formula may seem at first to be purely Christ-centric, that is, focused on none other than Christ the Savior. Actually this is not true; we cannot call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit; we cannot talk about the Son of God, forgetting about the Father. And here something very important comes into play: Christ calls Himself the door. He is the door by which one enters, He is the path by which one walks, He is not the final goal in this sense. And this is a complete, meaningful confession of faith. Having said this, we truly stand before the Living God, the God of the Gospel.

And the second part: Have mercy on me, a sinner. The word “sinner” in it has two connotations. On the one hand, each of us actually sins - in word, deed, thought. On the other hand, to be a sinner does not only mean to sin, it is a state, and not just an act; and ultimately it is a state of separation, of being cut off. We are separated from God; we are separated from each other, even if we do nothing reprehensible towards God or our neighbor; as long as we are separated we are in a state of sin. And we should perceive this state as extremely tragic, because to be separated from God means to incur death; This mortal danger. She should encourage us to do this scream Jesus Prayer constantly, if only we realized , how dangerous we are walking, How scary is this state of isolation, ultimately - from life, from love.

And then the meaning of the word have mercy. Its meaning is deeper and richer than what we put in when we think of the word “have mercy” almost in the sense of “have pity”, “treat me without anger.” The comment that some of the Fathers of the Greek Philokalia give is that the root of the Greek word “eleison” (“have mercy”) and the word that gave the Greek “olive tree,” “olive oil,” are the same. Philologists argue about this; but it is enough that the Church Fathers thought in this order. And you can imagine what this means besides philology, if you look at the Holy Scriptures. The first moment when the image of the olive tree appears is the end of the flood. Noah sends a dove, which brings him a twig of an olive tree, and this twig means that the wrath of God has ceased, the mercy and forgiveness of God - freely, undeservedly, out of love alone - are given to humanity, and now, when the earth is visible, there is a future before it, before life spreads out over it. This is the first thing we can see in the word “have mercy,” “eleison.”

But it is not enough that we have a future in front of us. The road may lie in front of us, and we are not able to take a single step along it if we are paralyzed by illness, horror, fear, indecision. And the second image: a good Samaritan who pours cleansing, burning wine and healing oil on the wounds of a man who has fallen among the robbers. We need to heal in soul and body in order to take advantage of what God offers us.

And one last thing. There is an image in the Old Testament - the anointing of kings and priests. Why is anointing necessary? Because both the high priest and the king stand on the line between the shrine of God and human sin, between the single will of God and the contradictory wills of men. Both of them, each in their own sphere, are called upon to harmonize one with the other: so that the popular will of Ancient Israel would be the will of God. And a person cannot stand on this brink, because every person is under the judgment of God. The Epistle to the Hebrews says that the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year, and not without blood, because he had to make a sacrifice for himself and for the people before he himself entered the sanctuary. Only one Man could stand in this place - the One whom Paul calls Man Jesus Christ(Rom. 5:15), precisely emphasizing that He is a Man in complete sense of the word. Precisely because He is God And man, He can stand on this brink both as God and as a man without condemnation. This is the third form of sanctification, anointing.

If you ask what this has to do with us, it has a similar relationship in this sense. Our human vocation is superhuman; We cannot achieve in our own strength what we are called to do. The Apostle Peter in his Epistle says that we are called to become partakers of the Divine nature. This cannot be achieved by any human effort; it could be given and can be accepted with love and humility - but not with human tricks and strength or skill. Further: we are called to become members of the Body of Christ, that is, to become so close to Christ, so united with Him, so that we are Them, in a sense, so much so that Irenaeus of Lyons at the end of the first century said that if we are truly so united with Christ, then when all is completed at the end of time, when the fullness of humanity is revealed, then we will not only be sons and daughters of God but in the Only Begotten Son we will be only begotten son. That is, our position in relation to God and the Father will be the same as that of the Only Begotten Son, who came into the world in the flesh.

Further. At Pentecost, according to the account we find in the 20th chapter of the Gospel of John, the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to each individual and to all together. This gift may be only for nothing; again, we can be God-receptive, but we cannot create any conditions from within ourselves other than open hearts, open hands. And all this is to say that to be human, just person, but in the real sense of the word, we must become something beyond our imagination; and we can become like this only by the gift of God, and not at all by our own tricks. And so we need the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Spirit, the anointing of the Spirit - just to fulfill our human calling. I’m not talking now about the priesthood, not about monasticism, or anything formal, but simply to be human.

And man, in the words of the same Irenaeus of Lyons, is something very great. I gave you one of his quotes; in another place he says that the glory of God, that is, the radiance of God, is a person alive to the end. A person imbued with the fullness of life that is from God - and There is the glory of God, His radiance and glorification.

This is what is contained in the words “Kyrie eleison,” “Lord, have mercy,” and this is why the Orthodox Church responds to all occasions in worship with these words: what else is needed? It begins at the very depths of sin: Lord, let Your wrath cease! Lord, give me - undeservedly, freely, in spite of everything - Your forgiveness!.. Lord, extend the days of my life and open the path before me!.. Lord, You give me all this, You have already given it, but I cannot step forward: with soul, body, with all my being I am relaxed - heal me, renew me, give me life!.. Lord, it turns out that this path is not earthly, it is the path from earth to heaven; how to implement it? How is this possible?.. Pour on me that grace that will make me a God-man, in the image of Him Who, being God, became man...

This is approximately, as far as I had to read, the content of this prayer; and of course, it’s only a premonition: you won’t go anywhere. Where to go if everything is just that you stand with open hands, with an open heart? This is a prayer of standing steadfastly before God; but if you use it, as I just said, with these concepts, with complete simplicity, unpretentiously, then everything is simple.

And one last thing. In the Philokalia, in the Wanderer, in Ignatius Brianchaninov, and in Theophanes, bodily exercises or bodily discipline associated with this prayer are indicated. This discipline has principles, universal things. The principle is that everything that happens in us in the soul, in thought, or in feeling, or in the will, one way or another responds to our bodily state. You yourself know that your bodily state when you are reading something that deeply moves you is not the same as when you are simply basking in the sun; and no matter what the thought is occupied, no matter what the heart burns, no matter where the will is directed, depending on the content and the intensity of the internal state, your body changes. And, again, based on the experience of prayer, observing the fact that certain prayer states are always associated with one or another bodily state, ascetics have developed physical exercises that can create that body-spirit structure in which prayer is easier to argue; but no physical or mental structure can create or evoke prayer. Ultimately, the whole tradition of hesychasm is to achieve bodily-spiritual silence, deep silence of soul and body; and from within this silence prayer begins. But silence itself is only an opportunity for prayer, it is not prayer itself.

On the other hand, bodily states for spiritual fathers can serve as a much more convenient and easy way to check the quality of the praying person and his spiritual experience, the presence or absence of charm, than descriptions on his part of his mental experiences, because mental experiences are very swirling, and bodily states are amazingly clear stuff.

This is a general principle. As a result, special techniques were developed that can be found among a number of fathers; Simeon the New Theologian writes about this in detail and others. But there is no point in doing them without guidance, because you will certainly reach a dead end: at some point you don’t know where to go next - this is at best. Here again, Bishop Theophan the Recluse can be of great help. Either in one of his letters or in “The Path to Salvation,” he says that in order to lead a spiritual life, one must be like a well-stretched string - and anyone can achieve this. We can all learn stillness or, conversely, harmonious movement that is neither tense nor loose. We can learn not to be tense in the mind and at the same time beyond any drowsiness; we may not be insensitive at heart and at the same time not in some kind of hysterical state. This is what we must look for - physically, externally. We must learn to sit and move in a way that controls our body. Because we can only give God what we have mastered, we cannot bring to God what we ourselves have not mastered.

That's all I can say about it. You can practice the Jesus Prayer, but do not make a mystical trick out of it.

The only question is to pray; and not to say prayers, but to pray, that is, to be in living relationship with God. And ultimately, whether you start with statutory prayer, with worship, with the Jesus Prayer, a person must come to silence. Not to such a dead silence, when nothing happens, but to that state where truly “let all human flesh be silent, let it stand in trembling...” This state is alive, active, not dead, not inert; and only from within deep silence can one truly pray.

But for probably more than five hundred years the Jesus Prayer was not a prayer of the desert, at least not referred to as the constant, normative prayer that it would later become. We find the first somewhat reliable mention in “The Ladder”, this is later; we find it in full bloom on Athos, but this is much later. I don’t think that, say, Anthony the Great or Macarius, who did not use it in this sense, found themselves destitute at the hour of death.