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| Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov. |
God is the teacher
of prayer; true prayer is the gift of God. To him who prays constantly with
contrition of spirit, with the fear of God and with attention, God Himself
gives gradual progress in prayer. From humble and attentive prayer, spiritual
action and spiritual warmth make their appearance and quicken the heart. The
quickened heart draws the mind to itself and becomes a temple of grace-given
prayer and a treasury of the spiritual gifts which are procured by such prayer
as a matter of course.
“Labor away”,
say great ascetics and teachers of prayer, with pain of heart to obtain warmth
and prayer, and God will grant you to have them always. Forgetfulness expels them,
and it is born of sloth and carelessness. If you want to be
delivered from forgetfulness and captivity, you will not be able to attain it
otherwise than by acquiring within you the spiritual fire; only from the warmth
of the fire of the Spirit forgetfulness and captivity vanish. This fire is
obtained by desire of God.
Brother!
Unless your heart seeks the Lord day and night with pain, you will not be able
to succeed. But if you abandon everything else and occupy yourself with this,
you will attain it, as Scripture says: Be still and realize (Ps.
45.11).
Brother!
Implore the goodness of Him Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the
knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2.4) to give you
spiritual vigilance which kindles the spiritual fire. The Lord of heaven and
earth came to earth to pour that fire upon it (Luke 12.49).
According to
my power I shall pray with you that God Who gives grace to all who ask with fervor
and toil may grant you that vigilance. When it comes it will guide you to the
truth. It enlightens the eyes, directs the mind, banishes the sleep of languor
and negligence, restores luster to the weapon covered with rust in the earth
of sloth, restores radiance to clothes defiled by captivity to barbarians, and
inspires a desire to be satisfied with the great sacrifice offered by our great
High Priest. This sacrifice of which it was revealed to the Prophet that it
cleanses sins and takes away iniquities (Isa. 6.7), forgives those who weep,
and gives grace to the humble (Prov. 3. 34), manifests itself in the worthy,
and by it they inherit eternal life, in the name of the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit.
Spiritual vigilance or
sobriety is a spiritual art which completely delivers a man, with the help of
God, from sinful actions and passionate thoughts and words when fervently practiced
for a considerable time. It is silence of heart; it is
guarding of the mind; it is attention to oneself without any other thought
which always, incessantly and unceasingly calls upon Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, and God, which breathes by Him, with Him courageously takes up arms
against the enemies, and which confesses Him. This is the definition of
spiritual vigilance that St. Hesychius of Jerusalem gives. The rest of the
Fathers agree with him.
When the fire
descends into the heart, says St John of the Ladder, it revives prayer. And
when prayer has risen and ascended to heaven, then the descent of the fire
takes place into the cenacle of the soul. It is evident that the Saint is
speaking from his own blessed experience. Something similar happened in the
case of Saint Maximus Kapsokalivitis. “From my youth”, he told St Gregory the
Sinaite, “I had great faith in my Lady, the Mother of God, and besought her
with tears to grant me the grace of mental prayer. Once I came to her temple as
usual and fervently prayed to her for this. I went up to her icon and
reverently kissed her image. Suddenly I felt as if there fell into my breast
and heart a warmth which did not burn, but bedewed and delighted me, and
stirred my soul to compunction. From that moment my heart began
to say the prayer within itself, and my mind began
to delight in the remembrance of my Jesus and the Mother of God and to have
Him, the Lord Jesus, constantly within itself. Since then the prayer has never
ceased in my heart".
The prayer of grace appeared
suddenly, unexpectedly, as a gift from God. The Saint's soul had been prepared to
receive the gift of prayer by fervent, attentive, humble, constant prayer. The
prayer of grace did not stay in the Saint without its usual concomitants, quite
unknown and uncongenial to the carnal and natural state.
An abundant manifestation of spiritual fire in
the heart, the fire of divine love, is described by George, the recluse of
Zadonsk, from his own experience. But before that, he was sent the divine gift
of penitence which purified his heart to receive love (the gift which acts like
fire and consumes all that defiles the courts of the Holy and Mighty Lord),
and even took all the strength from his body. “The holy and heavenly fire”,
says St John of the Ladder, “scorches some on account of their defective
purity; but others it enlightens as having attained perfection. The same fire
is called a consuming fire and an illuminating light. For this reason some
leave their prayer as if it were a hotly heated bath-house, feeling a certain
relief from defilement and earthliness; while others go out shining with light
and arrayed in a double garment of joy and humility. But those who after prayer
feel neither of these two effects are still praying bodily, and not spiritually."!
Prayer inspired by divine grace is here called spiritual prayer, while prayer
performed by one's own efforts without the obvious assistance of grace is
called bodily prayer. The latter kind of prayer is indispensable, as St John of
the Ladder says, in order that grace-given prayer may be granted in its time.
But how does the prayer of grace intimate its coming? It intimates its coming
by supernatural weeping - and the man enters the gates of God's sanctuary (his
heart) with unspeakable thankfulness!.
On the Prayer of Jesus. Ignatius
Brianchaninov.(1965)
