... crying out: O long-suffering Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Hello, my dear ones. There's such a feeling of despondency
and losing courage somehow
in the world, which we perceive as well through the comments and the messages
that we receive from you, and this
is now spilling over onto our spiritual life.
I've received many messages from people who are struggling with despondency,
particularly when they have started to properly pray, when
they have taken their prayer life seriously.
And this is something I'd like to address,
because it carries a great danger within it---
this experience of trying, really trying to approach prayer with
a serious, dedicated heart, and after the initial excitement and
the adrenaline of trying to do something
we've dreamed about doing for so long,
what happens is that instead of grace coming upon us, all these
feelings of doubt and this lack of courage and despondency collapse over us,
and of course I've experienced the same thing and everybody who has
tried to pray experiences the same thing---this happens
not only at the beginning of prayer but throughout
your entire life of prayer, and particularly there will be
moments when it feels like the entire hell
is empty because all the demons in hell are now
fighting against you, so you drop your prayer, you abandon your prayer---
and that usually happens just before something beautiful, something beyond
your hope is just about to be given to you, that
seems to happen just before God is
ready to place in our hands, in our palms this
beautiful grace.
At the very beginning, take courage from the knowledge that if you pray,
regardless of the quality of your prayer, whatever 'quality of prayer' may mean
at the level of you and I, but whatever that quality may be, the simple
fact that you pray, the simple fact that you get up and you
go through your prayers, your read prayers or
your prostrations or your bows or simply keeping yourself awake---that very
simple, basic fact of going through the motions
of prayer, if not being in the spirit of prayer,
that is proof that the Holy Spirit prays within you, even if you feel
dead inside, even if it feels like you're going through
an empty ritual, keep on doing it, because if you are doing it,
that in and of itself is proof that God is praying in you.
Think about it: everything about prayer, the act of prayer, particularly prayer by
night, goes against our fallen nature,
everything about it; this prayer goes against
the necessities, the needs of our body--- our body
needs, not only wants, it actually needs to rest,
and prayer by night fights it and goes against
that basic need; prayer goes against our mind
because rationally speaking we shouldn't be up
in the middle of the night, we should be in our beds
resting for all the rational reasons that we know---we have jobs, we have
families, we have responsibilities and so on and so forth,---
but although our rational mind tells us that we should be
in bed and not standing up in the dark waiting for Christ, we do it, we stand up
and we wait in the darkness for Christ's arrival,
so that prayer goes against our rational mind;
it goes also against our emotions, because you wake up feeling,
every bad feeling that there is--- you feel sad, you feel frustrated, you
feel abandoned, you feel discouraged---and
yet you pull yourself out of that bed and you stand in front of an icon, in
front of a candle, and you wait for Christ.
Don't fall into the pride of thinking that you are doing all of
this by yourself--- we cannot even contemplate doing
something against our nature, let alone actually
acting against our nature---this is very important that we understand
that the act of prayer, regardless of how we perceive that prayer, if it's
'successful' or 'unsuccessful', if it's alive or if it's dead, if it's 'working' or
'not working'--- we are not the judges of our prayer, we
are not at a level, spiritually speaking, to be able to
discern when our prayer is received before God and when it isn't.
Don't fall into the pride of thinking that you by yourself can
go against the needs of your body, against the rational thinking of your
mind, and against your own emotions---
only God can help you to achieve that. The simple
basic fact that in the middle of the night, in the darkness,
you are not in your bed resting, but you are standing
before an icon, before a candle, and you are
patiently struggling to keep yourself awake, waiting for Christ, that simple
fact means that within your heart,
dead as it may feel in that moment, within
your heart burns the Holy Spirit. St Isaac the Syrian and many, many
other Fathers teach us that, and they stress again
and again how important it is not to forget
that, because as you feel dead in your prayer in the darkness, if you
remind yourself 'Wait a minute: I feel dead, I feel like
I'm doing nothing, but I am actually doing something that
goes against my nature, that is according to my nature
resurrected through Christ, and that means that within me right now
is God Himself'---if you remind yourself of that in the middle, in the midst of your
despair, all of a sudden you realize you are not
alone any more, and God is in you, burning in you, praying
in you, working for your resurrection just then.
Christ is risen from the dead! Yes, you may stand there before the icon
feeling dead, and that's because you are dead,
and I am dead, spiritually speaking we are dead,
but within us, from this dead, from this tomb, He can bring
back life, trampling by his death onto our death.
Take courage from this knowledge and keep on praying
that prayer of the dead, think of yourself as being
dead in your tomb, hoping for Christ to come and offer you
as the ultimate gift of love His resurrection. Think of you as one
in hell, waiting in that depth for Christ to descend in the depth of
hell and raise you up the way He has risen
Adam and Eve and all those trapped in the guts of hell.
Be strong, my brothers and my sisters. I want you to be strong for your sake
and for my sake, because if you stand, through you
I stand as well; but if you abandon this fight,
you will fall, and in your fall I shall fall as well, because we are
all one as Christ has told us, we are all one
and we stand and we fall through each other. May God
bless you beyond your wildest dreams, my beloved ones. Amen.
O my soul, why do you grow rich in sins?
Why do you do the will of the devil?
In what do you place your trust? Leave all of this
and turn to God, crying out: O long-suffering Lord,
have mercy on me, a sinner.