- Dec 25, 2015
- 2,827
- 982
- Faith
- Eastern Orthodox
- Marital Status
- Private
- Politics
- US-Constitution
Paul's holy words, yet who can do them? Who, indeed, even CAN do them? How can sinners like us ever pray ceaselessly as our Way of Life?
The words of a Christian in the late 1800s may prove of value. Perhaps anticipating the fall of Russia to the Atheists in the early 1900s, he wrote a book, and began it with this simple introduction of himself as its author:
By the grace of God I am a Christian man,
by my actions a great sinner,
and by calling a homeless wanderer of the humblest birth
who roams from place to place.
My worldly goods are a knapsack with some dried bread in it on my back,
and in my breast pocket a Bible.
And that is all.
The title of the book is: "The Way of a Pilgrim"...
The assault on Christianity in Russia by the atheists began in full in 1917 after they won the civil war and executed the Tsar and his family, and continued until perestroika, when the Gulags were closed and the mass graves were overgrown and their millions upon millions of dead were received by Nature's earth and forgotten by man...
Without the Church, the Russian faithful had to learn how to be a Church unto themselves, and to live holy lives amidst their persecutors as more and more of them were taken away and placed into the Gulag for labors unto death... This little book, which first came to us in Russian, was their treasury of how to do so... It shows the cultivation of the Jesus Prayer in the heart of man... It normally does not need to be read twice...
He then goes on:
I looked at my Bible and with my own eyes read the words which I had heard,
that is, that we ought always, at all times and in all places,
to pray with uplifted hands.
I thought and thought, but knew not what to make of it.
"What ought I to do?" I thought.
"Where shall I find someone to explain it to me?
I will go to the churches where famous preachers are to be heard;
perhaps there I shall hear something that will throw light on it for me."
I did so.
I heard a number of very fine sermons on prayer—
what prayer is, how much we need it, and what its fruits are—
but no one said how one could succeed in prayer.
I heard a sermon on spiritual prayer, and unceasing prayer,
but how it was to be done was not pointed out.
We go through our days immersed in thoughts about all manner of matters, and our lives become used to this incessant internal dialogue, and we so often then simply come to "accept in ourselves" that this is who we are, always thinking our way into actions as we walk in the world...
Has anyone read this little book and tried to put it into action?
What were your results?
It is the prayer of inner stillness that is being discipled in it...
Attained by praying its prayer unceasingly...
The Eastern Orthodox Faith calls it the "Jesus Prayer"...
Arsenios
ps - The book is available online free:
The way of the pilgrim
The words of a Christian in the late 1800s may prove of value. Perhaps anticipating the fall of Russia to the Atheists in the early 1900s, he wrote a book, and began it with this simple introduction of himself as its author:
By the grace of God I am a Christian man,
by my actions a great sinner,
and by calling a homeless wanderer of the humblest birth
who roams from place to place.
My worldly goods are a knapsack with some dried bread in it on my back,
and in my breast pocket a Bible.
And that is all.
The title of the book is: "The Way of a Pilgrim"...
The assault on Christianity in Russia by the atheists began in full in 1917 after they won the civil war and executed the Tsar and his family, and continued until perestroika, when the Gulags were closed and the mass graves were overgrown and their millions upon millions of dead were received by Nature's earth and forgotten by man...
Without the Church, the Russian faithful had to learn how to be a Church unto themselves, and to live holy lives amidst their persecutors as more and more of them were taken away and placed into the Gulag for labors unto death... This little book, which first came to us in Russian, was their treasury of how to do so... It shows the cultivation of the Jesus Prayer in the heart of man... It normally does not need to be read twice...
He then goes on:
I looked at my Bible and with my own eyes read the words which I had heard,
that is, that we ought always, at all times and in all places,
to pray with uplifted hands.
I thought and thought, but knew not what to make of it.
"What ought I to do?" I thought.
"Where shall I find someone to explain it to me?
I will go to the churches where famous preachers are to be heard;
perhaps there I shall hear something that will throw light on it for me."
I did so.
I heard a number of very fine sermons on prayer—
what prayer is, how much we need it, and what its fruits are—
but no one said how one could succeed in prayer.
I heard a sermon on spiritual prayer, and unceasing prayer,
but how it was to be done was not pointed out.
We go through our days immersed in thoughts about all manner of matters, and our lives become used to this incessant internal dialogue, and we so often then simply come to "accept in ourselves" that this is who we are, always thinking our way into actions as we walk in the world...
Has anyone read this little book and tried to put it into action?
What were your results?
It is the prayer of inner stillness that is being discipled in it...
Attained by praying its prayer unceasingly...
The Eastern Orthodox Faith calls it the "Jesus Prayer"...
Arsenios
ps - The book is available online free:
The way of the pilgrim
