Read less, Pray more

I apologize to my readers for such a long delay since the last time I published something on this blog.  I do have a first draft of a translation continuing the instructions of Hieromonk Hilarion of Sarov which I hope will soon be ready.  For the time being I want to encourage you to read less and pray more.  I am not implying that we should leave off reading, for reading does support prayer, but rather, “Read less and pray more”. 

Permit me to begin with an explanation; in doing so I will refer to the late Elder Ephraim of Arizona.  Shortly after the women’s monastery of Holy Protection was established in Pennsylvania,  Elder Ephraim of Arizona visited.  There was a small gathering of people present,  and he was asked, “Why is it that we find many people in the Church who will read a lot, go to talks for hours, and go to long church services; but we don’t find anyone who will spend a lot of time in their private personal prayer?” Elder Ephraim began to reply saying, “Yes, yes.”  Then he spoke of prayer as being a difficult struggle and quoted an early desert father who said, “Prayer is a struggle to our last breath.”  He went on to say, “When we pray we unite to God with our mind, we touch God with our mind.  The devil had this and he lost it therefore he fights against us at this time.  He does all he can to distract us from prayer, because he hates to see us acquire what he lost.”

Once one of the Elder’s monks was giving a talk at the women’s monastery of The Birth of the Theotokos in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania.  He was encouraging the listeners to spend time in prayer.  He said, “We give up too easily.  We let ourselves get distracted or we are tired, or we have a headache and we lay prayer aside.”  He repeated a number of times the cliche familiar in our ascetic tradition, “Shed blood and receive the Spirit.”  I had heard this many times before, but always in reference to physical labors.  This was the first time I heard it applied specifically to prayer.  This monk put forward as an example one Athonite father who spent 10 hours a day in prayer.  He did not give the name of this father, but it may have been St. Joseph the Hesychast or one of the secluded hermits of the Holy Mountain.  As he concluded one visitor expressed the following, “From what you have said I conclude that through prayer we acquire the grace of God more than any other work.  And what we may acquire through other works we be lost if we are not very prayerful as if we were to pour water into a bucket with holes.”  He agreed with this conclusion.

The Apostle Paul instructs us, “Pray without ceasing” (I Thess. 5:17).  Likewise when the Apostle and Evangelist Luke relates the parable of the persistent widow and unrighteous judge, he precedes it by saying: “And He (Jesus) spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1).  What is the fruit of this ascetic endeavor?  If we struggle much in prayer and it can be that prayer develops as a state of being, then prayer will become the primary state of our being.  It is then that prayer—which can become an action of God within us—is a great weapon. It can rise up within us and take hold of us and can influence us as the passions had formerly done.  At the Red Sea Moses said to the Israelites: “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you today” (Ex. 14:13).  If we become strong in prayer we can experience such a victory, not against a visible enemy, but against the passions that war against us.  I will now conclude and repeat the words with which I began: Read less, Pray more.  There is fruit that is worth striving for.  Amen.  Let’s do it!