Night Prayer - FIRST PRACTICAL STEPS. How to pray at night & What to do when prayer doesn't come?
Summary
TLDRThe speaker emphasizes the importance of consistent, disciplined prayer during the night, highlighting the necessity of patience and humility in spiritual growth. They discuss practical steps to maintain focus, suggesting gradual increases in prayer duration and the use of various prayer tools like the Octoechos and Menaion. The talk also touches on the importance of waiting for Christ during prayer and the value of creating personal prayer booklets to stay engaged. The speaker advises against rigidity, advocating for flexibility and consistency to avoid despondency and pride, ultimately encouraging prayer for the whole world.
Takeaways
- 📚 There is no shortcut in the process of learning to pray; time, patience, and humility are essential for genuine transformation.
- 🌙 Night-time prayer requires discipline in controlling the mind and body to stay awake without it consuming all your energy and focus.
- 🔄 The initial focus of night-time prayer is a shift from self to spiritual struggle, with a gradual introduction of prayer forms like the Jesus prayer.
- ⏳ It's advised not to stay awake for more than an hour for prayer, especially for those with worldly responsibilities, to maintain balance.
- 🙏 The core of night-time prayer is waiting for Christ, and this waiting should be the foundation of one's prayer life.
- 🕰 Adjusting prayer times and durations can be guided by the experience of prayer itself, which teaches when and how to pray effectively.
- 🛠 Expanding the prayer toolkit with various forms of prayer and active engagement is crucial for maintaining focus and combating sleepiness.
- 📖 Utilizing collections like the Octoechos and Menaion, which contain prayers and canons dedicated to the Saints, can enrich one's prayer routine.
- 🤝 Prayers for communion, preparation for feasts, and prayers for various life moments help in maintaining a continuous connection with the spiritual realm.
- 🔑 Personalizing prayer by creating one's own collections (philokalias) and engaging in active prayer forms like writing or making prayer booklets keeps the mind alert.
- 💡 Flexibility in prayer is vital; while consistency in prayer times and content is encouraged, one should not become despondent or prideful due to rigid adherence to rules.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the video script?
-The main focus of the video script is to discuss the practice of prayer by night, emphasizing the importance of patience, discipline, and the gradual introduction of different forms of prayer into one's spiritual routine.
Why is it necessary to invest time and patience in prayer according to the script?
-It is necessary to invest time and patience in prayer because prayer feeds from what happens inside ourselves, and any deep, serious change or transformation within ourselves requires time and happens over time.
What is the initial struggle described in the script when beginning to pray at night?
-The initial struggle described is the discipline of controlling one's mind and body to wake up and stay awake without it consuming all of one's energy and focus.
What is the recommended maximum duration for a lay person to stay awake for prayer during the night?
-The recommended maximum duration for a lay person to stay awake for prayer during the night is one hour.
What is the primary reason for staying awake during the night as mentioned in the script?
-The primary reason for staying awake during the night is to wait for Christ, providing a space and time to wait for Christ to reveal Himself.
How does the speaker suggest one should approach the timing of their night-time prayer?
-The speaker suggests allowing prayer itself to teach when and for how long one should pray, whether earlier or later in the night, and to listen to the experience of prayer for guidance.
What is the significance of maintaining a chunk of sleep according to the script?
-Maintaining a chunk of sleep is significant because it is more restful for the body and mind than breaking sleep in the middle, as two or three hours on both sides are not as restful as one larger chunk of sleep on either side of the night-time vigil.
What are some of the tools or methods the speaker mentions to keep oneself awake and focused during prayer?
-Some of the tools or methods mentioned include physical acts of prayer like standing and prostrations, creating personal prayer booklets or philokalias, writing thank-you notes, and praying for various categories of people.
How does the speaker describe the process of selecting prayers and saints for one's personal prayer routine?
-The speaker describes the process as one of personal discernment, where over time one becomes attuned to which prayers and saints are most effective for their spiritual state at any given time, similar to a mechanic selecting the right tools for a job.
What advice does the speaker give regarding consistency and flexibility in one's night-time prayer routine?
-The speaker advises aiming for consistency, particularly in the time one wakes up and the duration of staying awake, but also emphasizes the importance of flexibility to adapt to how one feels each night, preventing despondency or pride.
What is the speaker's stance on the necessity of a spiritual father's guidance in one's prayer journey?
-The speaker acknowledges the ideal situation of having a spiritual father's guidance but also reassures that God's help is available to all, regardless of whether one has a spiritual father or not.
Outlines
🌙 Embracing the Discipline of Nighttime Prayer
The speaker emphasizes the importance of a disciplined approach to nighttime prayer, acknowledging the necessity of patience and humility in the spiritual journey. They stress that true transformation requires time and cannot be rushed, even when learning from books or listening to teachings. The focus shifts from self to spiritual struggle, introducing prayer gradually and not rushing into contemplative or silent prayer. The foundation of nighttime prayer is waiting for Christ, and the speaker advises against staying awake for more than an hour, recommending a gradual increase in prayer time.
⏰ Balancing Prayer with Rest and Practical Advice
The paragraph discusses the balance between prayer and rest, suggesting not to break sleep in the middle but to allow for a chunk of sleep either before or after prayer. It also touches on the personalization of prayer times and the importance of listening to prayer as it will guide the practitioner. The speaker provides practical advice for laypeople with responsibilities, recommending not to exceed an hour of wakefulness for prayer and to gradually refine one's prayer tools and methods.
📚 Expanding the Prayer Toolbox and Preparing for Feasts
The speaker talks about expanding one's prayer repertoire, including the use of the Octoechos and Menaion, which are collections of prayers dedicated to the Saints. They describe how these collections can be used throughout the year and especially in preparation for major feasts. The speaker also mentions the importance of praying the canon for an upcoming feast in the days leading up to it, as a form of preparation and reverence.
🙏 Personalizing Prayer with Saints and Sacraments
The speaker shares personal practices, such as praying to various Saints who have been significant in their spiritual journey. They also discuss the importance of giving thanks for sacraments like Baptism, Chrismation, and Confession, as well as preparing for death and the judgment day. The paragraph highlights the personalization of prayer and the acknowledgment of the support and intercession of the Saints.
🛠️ Crafting Prayer Tools and Engaging the Mind
The paragraph explores the idea of creating one's own prayer tools, such as philokalias or booklets of prayers, as a way to engage the mind and fight sleepiness during prayer. The speaker provides examples of how to create these booklets and the importance of physical acts in prayer, such as standing or prostrating, to maintain alertness and focus.
📝 Active Prayer Through Writing and Gratitude
The speaker suggests writing prayers, thank-you notes, and blessings as a form of active prayer that keeps the mind busy and the heart engaged. They describe the process of creating these notes and the spiritual significance of writing prayers by hand, which imprints the words and deepens the prayer experience, even when not in a traditional prayer posture.
🌏 Praying for Others and Avoiding Spiritual Extremes
The speaker encourages praying for family, friends, and those facing difficulties, as well as for categories of people such as the sick and the dying. They discuss the importance of consistency in prayer while allowing for flexibility to adapt to one's feelings each night. The paragraph warns against the dangers of despondency and pride and emphasizes the importance of spiritual guidance, even in the absence of a spiritual father.
🙌 The Role of Prayer in Spiritual Growth and Discipline
In the concluding paragraph, the speaker reflects on the role of prayer in spiritual growth, stating that prayer itself will teach how to pray and guide the practitioner. They stress the importance of discipline and consistency in prayer time and content, while also allowing for personal adaptation. The speaker ends with an encouragement to continue in prayer, seeking God's blessing for all, including themselves.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Prayer
💡Night-time vigil
💡Spiritual struggle
💡Contemplative prayer
💡Active prayer
💡Humility
💡Philokalia
💡Menaion
💡Octoechos
💡Spiritual father
💡Despondency
💡Pride
Highlights
Introduction to night-time prayer and its practical application.
Importance of patience, time, and humility in developing a disciplined prayer life.
The significance of controlling mind and body to stay awake and focused.
Transition from focusing on oneself to focusing on waiting for Christ.
Gradual increase in night-time prayer duration, with a maximum recommended time of one hour.
Prayer will guide you on how to pray effectively.
Importance of maintaining a chunk of uninterrupted sleep for rest.
Expanding and refining tools of prayer, including collections of prayers and physical acts of prayer.
Use of the Octoechos and the Menaion as valuable prayer resources.
Reading canons and akathists to prepare for significant feasts and to maintain a state of readiness for Communion.
Personal examples of Saints to pray to and their significance in the speaker's life.
The role of gratitude and preparation in daily prayer life.
Creating personal collections of prayers (philokalias) as a practical way to stay engaged.
Flexibility and consistency in night-time prayer routine to avoid despondency and pride.
Encouragement to seek guidance from a spiritual father but also to trust in God's help if one is not available.
Final blessing and encouragement to persevere in prayer and pray for the world.
Transcripts
Hello everyone. Today we'll talk a bit more about prayer,
about prayer by night, and just like in our previous videos
I hope to keep things very simple and very practical,
things that we can actually apply and do so that they help us in this attempt of
ours to learn how to keep vigil, how to keep
watch and pray during the night; and from the very
beginning, in this spirit of being practical,
I must tell you something that I dislike telling you but
it is it is necessary: there is no way that we can skip
any of these steps, there is no way in which we can ignore parts of this
process, and although I'm aware we may read a
book in a week, for instance, something like
the Ladder of Divine Ascent by Saint John of the Ladder,
or if you listen to a series of podcasts, or even if you watch these videos,
they may come into quick succession one after the other,
but that doesn't mean that our life has changed, that we have
appropriated the things that we've learned about
simply because we've read about them or because we've heard them.
It is unavoidable that we need to invest time and patience
and all the humility that comes from this need for patience.
The painful reality is that prayer feeds from what happens inside ourselves
and any deep, any serious change, any serious
transformation within ourselves requires time, and it happens in time,
not from one month to the other. Once we've acquired
the discipline of being able to control our minds and our bodies to the point of
being able to wake up and keep ourselves awake
without that taking away all our energy and all our focus,
then we can gradually begin to move our focus from ourselves, from
our bodily struggle to a more spiritual
struggle by slowly introducing prayer.
This is not yet the time for contemplative prayer
or silent prayer, the Jesus prayer; they can be introduced slowly, in small
doses, as long as they are balanced still by
active forms of prayer, by physical forms of
prayer, but this is not yet their time. What
happens now essentially is a change of focus, a
change of attention from almost being exclusively focused on
ourselves in order to keep ourselves awake to
focusing on a reason for being awake and that reason
is waiting. Whenever in doubt---'Why am I doing this?
Why am I awake? Why am I not resting? Why am I continuing to push
myself when I can see that my prayer doesn't
go any deeper, when I can see that there are no tears, there is no real
repentance in me? Why do I keep doing this?' Well,
we do this---and this is the time when this should become
the foundation of your night- time prayer---we do this because
we are waiting for Christ: this is the basic, the underlying
understanding of your prayer now and your prayer at
any given moment in your life. We provide this space, we provide this
time in order to wait for Christ to reveal Himself to us.
So as you are awake in the dead of the night,
put it in your heart and in your mind that
no matter what you do, no matter what prayer you read or what prayer you say
or what action you do in order to keep yourself awake,
regardless of what you do, you are in fact ultimately
simply waiting, you are waiting for Christ. In practical terms,
this is also the time when you may slowly and gradually increase the amount
of time you keep yourself awake; you can go from
10-15 minutes to half an hour or maybe 45 minutes;
I would definitely advise against staying awake for more than an hour---this
would be the maximum I personally would advise
you to keep yourself awake as a lay person,
as someone living in the world that has responsibilities such as
a family with children and a spouse and a job,
as someone who has to drive places or who is responsible for other people---
an hour would be the absolute maximum I would personally recommend. But as you
pray, prayer will teach you everything:
prayer will teach you when to pray, if you should pray earlier in the night
or later in the night and closer to the morning;
if you should pray for 20 minutes or 40 minutes;
if you should continue to keep to a more active form of prayer
or if you can switch quicker to a more contemplative kind of prayer.
Prayer, if you learn to listen to it, the simple experience,
the act of prayer, will teach you how to pray. One more
thought about time: whatever you do
and for how long you pray, whether you pray better
earlier in the night or later in the night and closer to the morning,
try to allow yourself a chunk of rest, a chunk of sleep. If you sleep,
for example, for six hours a night or seven hours a night,
don't break those six hours at the very middle; in other words, don't
sleep for three hours then you wake up, you do your night vigil, and then you
sleep for three more hours; it's much better if you rest for
40 minutes or an hour and then you wake up and you pray
and then you have five hours of serious rest
until you have to wake up and face the new day, or
if you go through five hours of rest and then you wake up and you pray
and then you just snooze for 40 more minutes,
that's much more restful for your body and your mind
than if you break your sleep straight at the very middle,
because two or three hours on both sides are not as restful as one larger
chunk of sleep on either side of your night-time vigil. In this new
stage of your prayer, you need to expand
the range of the tools that are available to you.
On the one hand you need to expand and refine
the tools of prayer itself, and on the other hand you need to expand
and also refine the tools of your active prayer,
the things that you do in order to keep yourself awake,
and also the things that you do when prayer doesn't flow,
and that will happen: it is absolutely natural
and it's part of your growth to encounter
nights or weeks or months when prayer doesn't flow easily, but that's
not an excuse for you to skip your night-time vigil,
you still have to show up, you still have to offer that
time as a sacrifice to Christ and as a place and time when you wait for Him;
but because prayer doesn't flow, you need to be
able to select from amongst this series of tools that are available to
you; and I need to go through a few examples
of such tools of prayer and tools of active
prayer or tools of waiting, in order to just give you
an idea of what I mean by that, but only use these as
examples that I've learned from my experience;
trust that the Holy Spirit will teach you
what to do and how to pray, so that you acquire your own personal
prayer. For me, for example there are certain
collections of prayer that have proven very useful to me.
I of course use the usual prayers: midnight prayers,
evening prayers, the prayers said during the services of Vespers and the
service of Matins, but mostly
I love the Octoechos and the Menaion, and I always have them nearby. This, for
instance, is the Octoechos, and this, as well as the Menaion,
are collections of prayers, collections of
canons dedicated to the Saints of the Church.
The Menaion has one or several canons for each Saint that we commemorate in our
Church calendar, so during the whole year, every day there
will be prayers and canons of prayer for
each Saint of every single day, in the Octoechos there are canons to
selected Saints, such as the Powers of Heaven, or Saint John
the Baptist, the Apostles, Saint Nicholas, obviously the Theotokos, and Christ, and
the Resurrection and the Holy Cross, and I
use them by---you can see I've already marked them so I always know exactly
where I go, I know that the first sign, here for
instance, will take me to the Monday service
dedicated to the powers of heaven, because my name is
Seraphim, and apart from Saint Seraphim of Sarov, I
also pray to Seraphim, one of the kinds of the
Powers of Heaven; then the next sign
will take me to Saint Nicholas to whom I try to pray every single day,
to read one of his canons; and then of course I've got
other signs---where are they, here--- for the prayers for the departed, which
are on Saturday, the Resurrection
which will be on Sunday, and so on. When there is a big feast approaching,
for example, such as the Dormition of the Mother of
God or the Nativity or any other of the main Saints or the main
Feasts of the Lord, I will use the canon for that particular
Saint for that particular Feast, and I will
read that canon every day for a week or two weeks or 40
days before the actual feast. So, for example,
before the feast of Saint Nicholas, or before the feast of
the Nativity of the Lord, 40 days before the actual feast I will begin to
pray and say either an akathist to that
particular Saint or to that particular Feast or read the
canon of the service of Matins for that
particular feast, and that allows me to prepare myself
for the feast, that allows me to prepare myself to welcome
Saint Nicholas and all the Saints I love in a
better way than if I just show up in church on that day only;
but then there are also collections of prayers
from the early centuries, there are also the Prayers for Communion, before
Communion, which I try to say every night: rather
than read all of them the night before
I receive communion, I try to split them so that I pray
those prayers every single day, whether or not
I commune the following day, because that keeps me in a state of
being aware that I'm always preparing to receive Communion,
and I'm also thanking God for having received Communion
even if that didn't happen today or this week
or even this month, I should forever and always prepare myself to
receive Communion, because receiving Communion is nothing
short from receiving Christ Himself, which is our judgment; to receive Christ
in myself is to face Christ, face to Face, person to
Person, and that is the judgment day,
and I should be preparing for that day every single day,
and I should also be grateful and express that gratitude
for having received Him, having received His Body and His
Blood, even if that happened last week or last month or last year.
So that is also one part of my night-time prayers, I then of course have
a series of Saints to whom I pray constantly:
Saint Seraphim, Saint Nicholas, St Isaac the Syrian,
St Joseph the Betrothed, Saint Xenia, Saint Matrona,
Saint Mary of Egypt, Saint George the Great Martyr,
Saint Elias the Prophet, Saint Sophrony, Saint Silouan, St Paisios, St Porphyrios,
all of these and many others are the Saints who have chosen me
and have protected me and helped me on my way
at some point or another in this 20-something years of me
being in the Church, and I try to remember them
always even if it is just making one bow or one prostration
and saying 'thank you' or 'pray for me', 'intercede for me', 'guard me now and in
the time of my judgment'. Then there are certain
moments in life for which I try to always prepare,
I try to give thanks to God for having received the Sacrament of Baptism
and of Chrismation, I try to express my gratitude for
all the times that I've received forgiveness for my sins
through the Sacrament of Repentance and Confession,
I try to thank God for the fact that I am a monastic and I am a priest,
this is something I try not to let go of and
that of course comes with praying to Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Basil and
Saint Gregory the Theologian, the great Hierarchs and the Teachers of
priesthood; I try to prepare for the time of my death,
I try to prepare for the time of me facing
Christ at judgment day; I try to pray for everyone,
not only myself, those people whom I love, those people who've asked for my prayers,
and the people whom I don't even know, and I try to pray on their behalf as
well, for their moment of death, because we all die,
for their moment of judgment, because we shall all go through that dreadful moment.
There are all these types of prayer, which I call tools, that are set before
me, and many, many others; there are of course
my own personal philokalias,
collections of prayers, which I can always turn to; there are the
Church's collections of prayers, such as the Psalms, for example; there are
readings from the New Testament; there are readings from
certain lives of Saints from the Old Testament: Saint Moses the Great Prophet,
St Elias the Great Prophet, Saint David the Great Prophet: all of
these are like tools which I have before
myself when I begin to pray, and every night
feels different and looks different, and in time you'll become attuned
and you will know which set of tools will serve you best that
particular night, and you'll know how to switch from one
to the other; you will know how to grow from a colder kind of prayer to a
more alight, on-fire type of prayer; you'll
learn which tools serve you better when your heart is slightly asleep
or your heart fails you and is not really
on fire with love for Christ; you will know
what prayers work best; you will know what Saints are closer to you
and quicker to come to your help; and you will be just like a mechanic
or an electrician: you will see the problem
in your heart and your soul, and you will know
which tools serve you best because you will have already learned
your skill. But that's why you can't rush through previous stages, because if
you get here and you don't know your skill, you will
be like an electrician trying to do something and instead of
using the right tools, you will not know the correct tools and
you might get yourself electrocuted and definitely you will not be able to
just get the job done. Apart from these tools
which are tools of prayer, there are also more refined tools, also,
of keeping yourself awake, of keeping your mind
busy, and sometimes this is all you can do: your soul simply doesn't want
to start, your your heart is just like a car that
died in the middle of the road and just refuses to restart,
and you've got this soul that doesn't want to restart,
and these very simple choices: you either abandon and you go back to sleep and to
your rest, and this is what your body and
your passions and the devil want you to do;
or you can revert to that basic underlying understanding of your
night-time vigil as a time of simply
waiting for Christ, and in that case you just need to have something to do
while those 40 minutes of your usual prayer
will pass by, and there are all sorts of things that you can do---
never, ever, ever abandon the physical acts of
prayer we've mentioned in our previous video:
standing up instead of sitting down, prostrations and bows,
but apart from these there are other slightly more refined
things you can do: you may for example collect your own prayers,
you may make these collections of prayers, your own philokalias---
we've spoken about them at large in a previous video---
you may just sit down and cut paper and make little drawings, or if
you can't draw, just cut from old
calendars icons of the Theotokos or of Christ
which you then glue to these booklets which you make, and then just
write these prayers, either by hand or, again, you cut them from
copies from your prayer books and then you glue them together and you
sew them together and you create these beautiful booklets, your own
philokalias, collections of prayers which you can use in times of
spiritual emergency. Let me show you a few---
I've put these aside to show to you but these are by far not you know
the best I've done, now I'm protecting my work---
these, for instance, are two very simple examples,
I've simply cut the paper, I've cut cardboard,
and then I've also cut the text of the service,
this is the canon of the Resurrection, which I also try to incorporate in my
night-time prayer as often as I can throughout the year, regardless of where
we are during our calendar, and I've simply
glued them together then I've punctured the paper and I've sewn it
together with some wool and I created
this booklet which then I just keep by my side---it's always readily available---
and I can use it. Similarly, this one has--- I think, yes---
the prayers during Vespers, as a priest I can use them,
but also you can use them as laypeople as well---there are collections of these
prayers available--- and on the cover of this little booklet
I've used an icon of the Mother of God which I found in an old calendar,
instead of burning them or finding other uses for them, I just
cut them and I reuse them in these little philokalias.
And this one which I've not finished yet is a bit more
complex---again, I've cut bits and pieces of paper and I've created this
accordion-style booklet in which I've
written by hand also the canon of the Resurrection; and you
can get creative and you can make
those beautiful letters at the beginning, and
as you write these things or you copy them out or as you
paint your little drawings or your letters at the beginning of
a prayer, your mind is busy with something so it is easier for
you to fight sleep, but at the same time your mind is
busy with something that allows prayer
to reverberate somewhere at the back of your mind, at the back of your heart:
while you write a prayer, while you copy a prayer, unavoidably
your mind is engaged with that prayer, with an expression,
with the word that you are writing at that particular moment:
as you write the word 'Christ' or 'My Lord', 'My
God', as you write 'Save me' or 'Have mercy on me',
that word is imprinted in you, and even if you're not on your knees or
collapsed to the floor in prayer, you are still praying, you are still
preparing that soil of your heart for the time when the
seed of prayer will fall down and will catch root;
in other words, you're not going back to sleep,
and you're not wasting your time, you are doing
still the necessary preparation work for deeper, more
personal prayer at some future time when God so wills and blesses us to
be able to to do it. You may also pray: you may pray
for your family, you may also pray for your
friends, you may pray for the people who go through a particular
problem at that moment, you may also pray for categories of people
such as people who fight with a certain disease,
people who have found out that day that they have
a serious disease or a terminal disease, you may pray for the people around them,
their families, their friends, their loved ones, the doctors and the
nurses and the priests who struggle to help them,
you may pray for the people who are dying at that particular moment or who
are facing their death during that day or that night, you may---for instance, I
pray, I pray for everyone who
are sending us their names to pray, and I've got categories: personal
people, these for instance are all the people
who have sent us names to pray for them,
and I have them either in church or in my cell and I pray for them as often
as I can, these have been sent to us before
Christmas last year and we still have them, we still pray for them,
and at night, blessing these people and just reading their names is one of
these more active forms of prayer that helps me
get through my waiting time, through my waiting vigil;
you may also do things like, for example, these are
thank-you notes which I write to people who have sent us a donation,
I've cut these new pieces of paper and I'm
writing a small prayer and a small blessing for everyone
who have sent us a donation and I'm going to send them with a little
booklet or something to show my gratitude and my appreciation,
and you may think this is weird to do this at night time,
but it's not, because as I say that prayer, as I
write that blessing, my heart actually blesses these people, so it is a form of
prayer, but it is a more active, practical form of prayer
that keeps me awake while still keeping me praying
for you all. Prayer itself, the experience of
prayer itself will teach you, you personally, what are your
ways of praying in a more contemplative way
or praying in a more active sort of way, but
in time you will need to discover and create collections of
types of prayer so that like any other skilful mechanic, electrician,
or prayerful person, you will be able to discern
your problem at any given moment, your temptation at any given moment,
and then experience will have taught you which tool from each
category is more helpful, more useful for you at
that given moment. I don't want to finish this recording before
I tell you one more thing, because it is very important and I don't want you to---
oh, the candles have run out---I don't want you to either
fall into pride or into despondency, so please pay attention for just five
more minutes: Whatever you do, try to be
flexible, try to allow fluctuations in your
night-time prayer: whatever happens, aim to be consistent, aim to
always wake up at the same time, aim to always
keep yourself awake for the same amount of
time, aim to always go through at least a general
content, the same content of your night-time vigil,
such as some prostrations and some prayers,
remembering certain Saints and so on; so aim for consistency, particularly
in terms of when you wake up and for how long
you are awake, but do not grow despondent if you cannot do that all the
time, if you need to change that from time to
time, do it; don't become a slave
to rules, because these rules are man-made, I mean
we made them, so they they have absolutely no value,
it is important to try to be consistent with your
time when you wake up and for how long you're awake,
just because that will make it easier for your body and your brain to function,
but no rule is absolute, allow yourself the freedom, the
flexibility, to adapt to how you
feel every single night; that is very important, because
that will prevent you from the main extremes, which are also the main dangers
in our entire spiritual life and therefore also
in our night-time vigil: the first danger and extreme is that you
will fail to follow this rule, and because in your mind if you
fail to follow that particular rule that means you fail to pray,
there's a great danger that you'll just abandon everything,
and that's called despondency; the other extreme
is that you will continue to succeed and you'll have success after
success in your night-time vigil, and
that comes with another risk which is equally
damning, the risk of pride. Ideally,
you shouldn't attempt this without the advice, the wisdom, and the
supervision of your spiritual father, but that is an ideal world in
which every one of us has a spiritual father
and that spiritual father is readily available to us, but even this
should not worry you too much and should not
prohibit you from trying to pray--- God knows if we have a spiritual father
or if we don't, and God is readily available to help us
anywhere we live, whoever we are, however we are.
Aim to be consistent, allowing yourself
plenty of flexibility; aim to be consistent, aim to have a
discipline about your prayer, get yourself before your
icons every night,
and the experience of prayer, the act of prayer will teach you how to pray:
prayer itself will teach you what a spiritual father would have
taught you in an ideal world. Take
comfort, great comfort and courage from this, and
keep on going forward, and as you do pray for the whole world,
including this sinful, pitiful monk who tries his best to help you.
May God bless all of us beyond our wildest hopes
and dreams, dear ones. Amen.
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