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(1) Prayer is proof of the existence of my reasoning personality, of my God-image; it is the pledge of my future divinity and beatitude.   I was created out of nothing; I am nothing before God, having nothing of my own.  But I, by His grace, am a per­sonality, possess intelligence, a heart and a free will, and in my intelligence and freedom I am able by approaching Him in my heart to gradually increase His eternal kingdom within me; to, gradually, still further increase His gifts within me; to draw from Him - as out of an ever flowing and inexhaustible Source - every spiritual and material good, especially the spiritual.  Prayer suggests to me that I am the image of God; that through humble and grateful disposition of my soul before God, with my free will, I, by infinitely multiplying God's spiritual gifts, am thus able to infinitely perfect myself and to enhance my God-image, my heavenly beatitude - for which I have been predetermined -to infinity.  Oh, prayer is the sign of my great dignity, with which my Creator has honored me.  At one and the same time, however, prayer reminds me of my nonentity (I came from no­thing and have nothing of my own, for which reason I beseech God for everything), as well as of my greatest dignity (I am God's image; I am divine; I may be called God's friend, just as was Abraham, the father of believers - if only I would but believe unquestionably in the existence of my God, in His goodness and almighty power; and become assimilated to Him in this life through deeds of love and mercy).

(2) In prayers: supplication - is against our proud flesh, which credits everything to itself; gratitude - is against the insensi­bility of our flesh toward God's countless blessings; praise - is against our carnal man, who seeks glory only for himself.

(3)   God is Truth: and my prayer must be truthful 'Leo, just as life.  God is light, and so must my prayer be offered in the light of mind and heart.  God is "Fire", and my prayer must - like life - be burning.  God is absolutely free: and so must my prayer be a free outpouring from the heart.  What wealth of human spirit: let him but think of God in his heart, let him but desire spirit­ual union with God -- and He is immediately with him.  And neither the wails of houses, nor any riveted steel of prisons - nei­ther mountains nor chasms -- can prevent such union.  God is im­mediately with you; : so also are the Angels and the Saint: with God, all of them are before your eyes, beside your heart like the closest of friends - are ever in your presence.  O, the wealth of the human spirit'.

 (4) Prayer is the uplifting of the mind and heart toward God, is the contemplation of God, audacious conversation of crea­ture with Creator, the reverent standing of the soul before the King and Life Himself Who giveth life to all; to forget all that surrounds us for His sake - is food for the soul, air and light.  It is the soul's life-giving warmth, it is the cleansing of sins; it is Christ's blessed yoke and His light burden.  Prayer is the con­stant feeling (awareness) of one's spiritual frailty or poverty; it is the soul's consecration, a foretaste of future beatitude, is angel­ic beatitude, is the heavenly rain which refreshes, satiates and makes fruitful the soil of the soul, is the power and strength of the soul and body: it is the airing and clearing of our mental atmosphere, enlightenment of the personality, joy of spirit, a golden bond which unites creation with its Creator; is cheerful­ness and courage in all of life's sorrows and temptations, is suc­cess in deeds, is dignity tantamount to that of the angels: is the consolidation of faith, hope and love.  Prayer is the reform of our lives, is the mother of heartfelt contrition and tears: is strong inducement to perform works of mercy; is safety in life and destruction of the fear of death; is the neglect of earthly treasures ­and wish for heavenly goods; is expectation of the Judge of the uni-verse, of common resurrection and of life in the hereafter: is increased efforts in avoiding eternal torments, is the constant ­search for the mercy of forgiveness from the Lord; is walking be­fore the eyes of God, is the blessed vanishing before the Creator ­and Provider of a11, is vital water of the soul; prayer is the con­taining of all people in one's heart through love, is the bringing down of heaven into the soul, is the containing of the Holy Trinity within the heart according to the words: "We will come unto him and make our abode with him." (John 14, 23).

 (5)  Prayer is the constant feeling of one's spiritual poverty and frailty; the contemplation within oneself, in people and in nature of the works of Gods wisdom, goodness and all-powerful strength: prayer is a constant feeling of gratitude.

 (6)   When you pray, make every effort to feel with your heart the truth and power of your prayer, and feed upon these qualities as upon imperishable food; saturate your heart with them as with dew; warm yourself as by a blessed fire.

 (7)   In prayer - as in any other activity in your life - avoid over-anxiety, doubt and diabolic dreaminess.  Let your spiritual eye be simple, so that the entire body of your prayer, your deeds and your life may be bright.

 (8)  As long as we stand in zealous prayer, so long does the soul feel calm, and warm, and light: because we are then with God and in God; but no sooner do we stop praying than come temptations and all types of confusion.  O, thrice-blessed time of prayer!

 (9)   While praying, we must unfailingly take hold of our heart and direct it toward the Lord.  It must not be cold, sly, untrue and double-faced.  Otherwise, of what benefit is our prayer, our fast­ing and attendance at divine services before confession and Com­munion? Is it good to hear from the Lord these angry words: "This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoreth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me." (Matt. 15, 8).  And so, let us not stand in church spiritually enfeebled, but let each one's spirit burn in laboring for the Lord. Even fellow­humans value but little those services which we perform coldly, from habit. While what God wants is precisely our heart.  "My son, give Me thine heart" (Proverbs 23, 26) - because the heart is the main thing in man: it is his life; our heart is even more - it is the man himself.  That is why he who does not pray or serve God with his heart, does what amounts to not pray at all, since only his body is then praying, which by itself - without the soul - is nothing but earth.  Remember that when you stand in prayer, you are standing before God, containing the intelligence of all.  For this reason your prayer must be - so to speak - a11 spirit, all reason.

(10) During prayer, be like a babbling baby, blending into one spirit with that of your prayer.  Consider yourself a nonentity and accept prayers as a great gift of God.  Completely renounce the reasoning's of your flesh and do not heed them, for "knowledge (of the flesh) puffeth up" (1 Cor. 8, 1), it doubts, day-dreams, blas­phemes.  If during prayer, or at other times, the enemy (i.e. the devil) makes your soul stumble with some type of blasphemies or abominations, do not lose heart from them, but firmly say within your heart: it is to cleanse us from these and similar sins that our Lord Jesus Christ came to earth; it is to help us in these and similar failings of the spirit that the All-Merciful had come; and when you will have said these words with faith, your heart will be immediately at rest, for the Lord will cleanse it.  In general, we must not became dejected by any sin coming in dreaminess, but must trust in the Saviour.  O, boundless compassion of God!  O, the greatest of the God-Man's service to us sinners!   Even up to now does He help in His love of mankind, cleansing and saving us.   Thus may the enemy's power be put to shame.

 (11)   Man's thoughts exert an extremely powerful influence over the state and inclination of his heart and actions; consequently - in order that the heart be pure, kind and calm, while the will inclined toward kindness and goodness - it is necessary to cleanse your thoughts with prayer, the reading of Holy Scriptures and writings of the Church Fathers; through meditation on the perish­ability, transience and disappearance of earthly pleasures.

 (12)  As close as your thought is to you, as close as faith is to your heart - that is how close God is to you, the livelier and firmer the thought of God, the livelier the faith and realization of one's frailty and insignificance, of the feeling of the need for God - the closer He is.  Or, as close is the air to the body, so close is God to the soul. For God is - so to speak - the mental at­mosphere which is breathed by all the Angels, souls of the Saints, the souls of people who lead particularly pious lives. You cannot - not even for a minute - live without God, and, indeed, you live by Him each minute: "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17, 28).

(13)  The heart's insensibility to the truth of words in prayer arises out of the heart's disbelief and out of one's insensibility to one's sinfulness, while this, in turn, flows out of a hidden feel­ing of pride.  In measuring his feelings during prayer, a man is able to discover whether he is proud or humble: the more emotion­al, ardent the prayer - the humbler he;  the more insensible the prayer - the prouder the man.

 (14)   Try to achieve child-like simplicity in your relations with people and in your prayers to God.  Simplicity is man's greatest good and virtue.  God is absolutely simple, because He is absolute­ly good.  Let not your own soul, also, be split between good and evil.

 (15)   Learn to pray, force yourself to pray: you will find it difficult at first, but later, the more you will force yourself the easier it will become.  But, at first, you must always force yourself.

 (16)   As you pray, imagine as if only the One God in Three Persons is before you, and that apart from Him there is nothing else.   Imagine God to be in the world in the same way as the soul is in the body, although He is infinitely above the world and is not limited by it, while your body is small and all of it is taken up in your small soul.  But the universe is great.  God is infinitely great and throughout the whole of creation God fills everything - "is everywhere present and fillest all things."

(17)   Our Saviour deigned to become incarnate so as to not only save us when sins and passions have overcome us and when we will have been already entangled by them, but also so as to save us by cur prayers while sin and passion are only striving to overwhelm us, when they are fighting us.  We must not slum­ber and faint-heartedly give up the battle when passions are war­ring against us, but especially then must we be on our guard, be vigilant and pray to Christ not to permit us to sin.  It is not when flames have already swept through the whole building that one should begin to save a house from fire, but the best time is when the fire is only beginning.  The same applies to a soul: the soul is the house, and passions - the fire.   "Neither give place to the devil" (Ephesians 4, 27).

 (18)   The evil one tries to scatter our prayer like so much sand, wants to make our words like dry sand, without binding and with­out heart-felt warmth.  Prayer is, at times, a structure built on sand, at others - on rock.  They build on sand who pray without faith, absent mindedly, coldly, - such a prayer falls apart by it­self and brings no benefit to the one who is praying; while they build on stone who, throughout the length of their prayer, have their eyes fixed upon the Lord and who pray to Him as to one alive, conversing with Him face to face.

 (19)  Let us measure the worth of our prayer by a human measuring-stick, by the quality of our relations with people.  How do we behave with people? Sometimes we express our requests, praises, gratitude - or do something for them - coldly, without having our heart in it, in the line of duty or out of courtesy; while at other times - warmly, from the heart and with love; or sometimes - hypocritically, and at others - sincerely.  We behave exactly the same way also with God! We must always express our praises, gratitude and requests to God from the whole heart; we must always perform any task before Him from all our heart; we must love Him and trust Him always with all our heart.

 (20) Is it possible to pray with haste without damaging one's prayer? Yes, it is, but only for those who have mastered inner prayer with a pure heart.  In prayer, it is essential that the heart sincerely desire the object of its requests, that it feel the truth of what  it is saying, and a pure heart has this quality, as it were, within its nature. Which is why it can pray at the same time hurriedly and in a pleasing manner to God, since haste does not harm the truth (sincerity) of prayer.  But those who have not acquired prayer of the heart must pray without hurrying, await­ing the corresponding echo in their heart of each word of prayer And this does not soon come to a man who is unaccustomed to prayerful contemplation.  For this reason, the slow articulation of words in prayer must be set as an indispensable rule for such people.  Wait until each word reverberates in your heart with its corresponding echo.

 (21) Just as an evil man, in coming with a request to one who is kind, mild and humble, for the better success of his petition attempts to become like the latter, so must a Christian, in approaching our Lord, His Most Pure Mother, the Angels or the Saints - for his prayer to be successful - become as far as possible, like our Lord Himself, or His Most Pure Mother, the An­gels or the Saints.  And it is precisely in this that the secret of our prayer's degree of approximation and their being soon heard lies.

(22) Surrender your hearts to God, petitioners - that loving, sincere heart with which you love your children, your parents, benefactors and friends, in which you feel the sweetness of un­feigned and pure love.

 (23) Sometimes, during prolonged prayer, only a few minutes are truly pleasing to God and represent a true prayer and true service to God.  The main thing in prayer is - nearness of your heart to God, evidenced by the sweetness of God's presence in the soul.

 (24) Constrained prayer develops hypocrisy, makes one un­fit for any task requiring mental concentration and makes a man sluggish in everything, even in performing his routine tasks.  This must convince all who pray in such a manner to remedy their prayer.  One must pray willingly and energetically from the heart. Pray to God not from sorrow nor from want (compulsively) - "for God loveth a cheerful giver" (II Corinth. 9 7).

 (25) God's greatest gift - which we need most of all and which we receive very often from God as a result of our prayer - is peace of the heart, in the words of our Saviour: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11, 28). And rejoice and consider yourselves rich, as possessing everything when you will have received peace.

 (26) In beseeching our Lord, or the Most Pure Mother of God, or the Angels and Saints, it is essential to have the faith of the centurion of Capernaum.  He believed that just as his soldiers listened to him and obeyed his words, the more simply would his request be fulfilled by the Almighty word of the Good Lord.  If creatures with their limited power carried out his requests, then would not the Lord Himself with His almighty power ful­fill the pleas of His servants, when they approached Him with faith and hope.  Will not our own petitions, offered up with faith, hope and love, also be fulfilled by His servants - the Most Pure Mother of God, the Angels and Saints, who are faithful and powerful with grace and intercession before God.  Verily I, too, believe with the centurion that should I ask some Saint correctly and for what is necessary: "grant this" - he will grant it; "come to my assistance" - and he will come; "do this" - and he will do it.  This is the sort of simple and powerful faith we must have.

 (27) Outward prayer is not infrequently performed at the expense of the inner, while inner prayer - at the expense of the outer.  That is, when I pray with my lips or read audibly, then many words do not reach the heart: I am divided, am being a hypocrite.  I articulate one thing with my tongue while some­thing else is in my heart; my lips speak the truth, while the state of my heart is not in accord with the prayer's words.  But when­ever I pray within me, with the heart, then without paying atten­tion to the articulation of words, I fix my attention upon their meaning and power, gradually training the heart to become ac­customed to the truth, and enter into that state of spirit, in which the words of the prayer are written, and in this manner I come to learn little by little, to pray in spirit and in truth, in the words of eternal Truth: "They that worship God, must worship Him in spirit and in Truth" (John, 4, 24).  Whenever a man prays on the surface, audibly, then he is not always able to detect all the movements of his heart, which are too fast, so that he must of necessity concern himself with articulating, with the external form of words.  In this way, an utterly false prayer is produced by many sextons who read cursorily: they appear to be pray­ing with their lips, to a11 outward appearances you see them akin to the pious, while their heart sleeps and knows not what the lips are saying.  This happens because they hurry and do not ponder with their hearts over what they are saying.  We must pray for them, just as they pray for us; we must pray for their words to reach their heart and to breathe with its warmth.  They pray for us with the words of saints, while we pray for them.

 (28)   All, beginning to work for the Lord in prayer, learn to be, similar to Him, humble, with meek and truthful heart; do not have slyness in heart, duplicity, do not be cold; try to have His spirit, for who does not possess the spirit of Christ is not His, - and the Lord seeks in us something similar and related to Himself to which His grace could be implanted.  Remember that not a single word will be lost in vain in prayer if it be said from the heart: the Lord hears each word and each word is on His balance.  It seems to us at times as if our words only beat the air in vain, resound as a voice in the wilderness: no.  We must remember that the Lord understands us in our prayer, if it is permitted to say so, i. e. our words - in exactly the same way as perfect men of prayer understand themselves for ; man is the image of God.  The Lord replies to each wish of the heart, whether expressed in words or not.

 (29) So that a Christian may live a Christian life and life of the spirit be net completely extinguished within him, private and public prayer is essential to him, it is as essential to attend Divine Services in church with faith, comprehension and zeal, as it is essential to refill a lampadka with oil for it to burn and not die out; while since sincere, ardent prayer comes from ab­stinence, then in order to uphold within yourself the Christian life or ardour of faith, hope and love, abstinence and fasting are needed.  Nothing so soon extinguishes within us the spirit of faith as intemperance, gourmandizing and surfeit and a dissipated, loose life.-I die away, die spiritually whenever I do not serve in church a whole week and flare up, revive in body and heart when I serve, forcing myself to not merely formal prayer, but actual, spiritual, sincere, flaming.

 (30) Contemplate God firmly with your spiritual eyes and during contemplation of Him, ash what you wish for in the name of Jesus Christ - and it will be done to you. God will be every­thing for you in an instant, for He is a simple Being, above all time and space, and during the minutes of your faith, your spiritual union with Him, will fulfill for you everything you require for the salvation of yourself and your neighbor, and you will, for this period of time, yourself be a participant to Divinity in your most sincere communion with Him: "I have said: ye are gods." Just as between God and yourself at this time there will be no interval, so also between your word and your per­formance will there be no interval; you will speak - and it will be immediately performed, just as God "commanded, and they were created." This is so - both as regards the Sacraments, as spiritual prayer in general.  Although in the Sacraments every­thing is accomplished owing to the grace of priesthood in which a priest is vested, for the sake of the supreme High Priest Himself - Christ, Whose image the priest bears upon himself, - for which reason, although he bears his office unworthily, though he be suspicious, sceptical or mistrustful, nevertheless God's mystery is performed swiftly, in the twinkling of an eye.

(31) Some say: we are soon tired of praying.  From what? From not imagining vividly the Lord before them, - Who is to the right of you.  Look at Him ceaselessly with eyes of the heart, and then you will stand an entire night in prayer without tiring.  What am I saying - a night! Three days and three nights will you stand and not become tired.  Remember those who were standing on top of pillars.  They stood many years on a pillar in a prayer­ful mood of the spirit and overcame their flesh which, as in you so also in them, was also prone to laziness.  While you feel bur­dened by a few hours of public prayer, by even one hour.

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