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| Saint Nicodemos of Mount Athos. |
I am aware that some may criticize me for writing to a
person living in the world about those things that are appropriate for monks
living outside the world. But if these persons are justified or not in
criticizing me, I will keep silent and say only that indeed I have done it. I
have done this, first, because of my great love for your salvation. For it is
characteristic of friends to reveal to each other their secrets. "I have
called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to
you" (Jn 15:15). God is not a body, and does not delight in worship
offerings made to him through the body (even though God's worshipers who have a
material body are obliged to worship God with bodily worship); God is spirit
and mind and of all the spirits and minds He is the first. Therefore God
delights more in the worship offered to him through the mind and the spirit
because they are more akin to his nature. "Every creature loves its
like" (Sir 13:15). The Son of God taught us this truth when he said:
"The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such
the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must
worship in spirit and truth" On 4:23-24). Such spiritual and true worship
is especially carried out through the spiritual prayer of the heart.
St. Paul too has given a direction to all the Christians without exception to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thes 5: 17). According to St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom this constant prayer is best achieved through the prayer of the heart that can be activated anytime, anywhere, and during all forms of activity. Again St. Paul has directed Timothy to remember Jesus Christ: "Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead" (2 Tm 2:2). St. Gregory the Theologian said: "It is more important to remember God than to breathe." Another Father has said that God requires of us to remember Him always because He always provides for us everything-our existence and our breath.
St. Gregory Sinaite did not teach the art of spiritual
prayer only to the monks of the Holy Mountain, but beginning from the mountain
he travelled and taught all the people all the way into Blachia. St. Gregory
Palamas too in many of his homilies encouraged all the Christians to pray
spiritually in the heart. He even devoted an entire treatise which he sent to John
and Theodore, the philosophers who were in the world, and in which he revealed
to them all the mysteries of this sacred prayer and purification.
St. Diadochos said that the devil does not like to see
people learn and believe, for he is in the heart and from there he attacks
them. However, he just loves to make them think that he attacks them from the
outside. Therefore most persons, and oftentimes highly educated persons, do not
realize that these thoughts come to them from within-from the heart-and not
from the head or some other place, as they think. Thus by not learning the
truth they are unable to attack him through the contemplation of Jesus Christ
in the heart. This then is the reason why I have explained to you the deceptive
ways of the devil, so that you may know and fight against him through prayer of
the heart.
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| “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord”.(Meteora Monks choir). |
Let me again, beseech you to have Jesus as the sweet
contemplation of your
heart; let Jesus be the preoccupation of your tongue: let
Jesus be the honorable shape and idea in your mind. In brief, let Jesus be
your breath and never grow tired of calling upon Jesus. From such a
perpetual and most sweet memory of Jesus, those great theological virtues- faith,
hope and love-will grow and mature and become great trees in your heart. Know
that when a lover is far from his beloved there is no other consolation for him
but to constantly remember the name of the beloved person. When Emperor Leo the
wise was banished from Constantinople, his mother found some consolation in
repeating his name constantly: "My Leo, my Leo, my son." She spoke
these words so often that the parrot who heard them learned to repeat them.
Thus the soul that loves Jesus but cannot see and enjoy him because He is in
heaven and not present cannot be consoled in any other manner except by
constant remembrances of His holy name, calling him always with love and tears
and pain of heart: "My Jesus, my beloved Jesus!" This is why St.
Isaac told us: "When the mind is moved to remember God, the heart is
directly moved in love and the eyes produce many tears. It is the habit of love
to shed tears when remembering the beloved person. "
By remembering Jesus and saying the Jesus Prayer we
cultivate in our heart love for Jesus and His commandments. What is more
blessed, what is more happy, what is more sweet than to contemplate always the most
glorious, the most pleasant, and the most beloved name of Jesus Christ, through
whom anything anyone asks of the Father and of Him himself one receives without
fail? "Whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to
you" On 15:16). And again, "Whatever you ask in My name, I will do
it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son" On 14:13). What other
thought and recollection is more graceful and divine than the thought and
recollection of the salutary, divine, and fearful name of Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, whose name is above every name and before whom every knee shall bow?
St. Paul said: "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him
the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 2:9- U).
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| "...It is Characteristic of friends to reveal to each other their secrets." |
I have said these things to you out of the abundant
love which I have for your salvation. All of these things, like a parrot, I
have learned well out of the sacred books of the God-inspired Fathers and have
heard through the living voice of certain spiritual fathers who have in part
experienced these things. Because of my own laxity and my passions, I have not
been able to learn any of these things through my own experience.
Reference:
Nicodemos
of the Holy Mountain. The Classics of Western Spirituality.(1989)