THE PRAYER ROPE: tool for the Jesus Prayer. How WORK UNDER OBEDIENCE can save an empty, fallen soul

Summary

In this heartfelt message, the speaker discusses the significance and history of prayer ropes in monastic tradition. They share personal experiences of making prayer ropes, the challenges faced, and the spiritual journey involved. The speaker explains the evolution of prayer tools from stones to knotted ropes and highlights the importance of obedience in spiritual life. They emphasize how simple manual work can empty the mind of worldly thoughts and fill it with prayer or reveal personal spiritual battles. The message concludes with blessings and encouragement to remain faithful and grow together in grace.

Takeaways

• 🙏 The speaker discusses the importance of prayer ropes in Orthodox monastic tradition.
• 🧵 Prayer ropes are traditionally made from black wool, symbolizing mourning and repentance.
• 📜 Early monastics used small stones to count prayers before switching to knots.
• 👼 The method of making prayer ropes with nine crosses in each knot was taught by an angel to protect against demonic interference.
• 📿 Prayer ropes help monks keep track of their prayers, emphasizing obedience over self-guidance.
• 💡 The speaker suggests that counting prayers helps avoid self-will and ensures obedience to spiritual guides.
• 🌊 Personal anecdotes about using shells for prayer during travel to maintain a connection to home and nature.
• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Emphasizes the communal aspect of monastic life, where individual work supports the entire community.
• 🎨 Warns against making personal talents and hobbies into idols that distract from spiritual growth.
• 🕊 The ultimate goal of monastic life is not skill perfection but spiritual salvation and becoming a Saint.

Q & A

What are prayer ropes and why are they used?

Prayer ropes are tools used in prayer, particularly in the Orthodox Christian tradition, to keep count of the number of prayers said. They serve as a physical aid to maintain focus and discipline in prayer.

How were prayers counted before the use of prayer ropes?

Initially, early monastics used small stones to keep track of their prayers. They would move the stones from one pile to another as they prayed. Later, they began using simple ropes with knots to count their prayers.

Why are traditional prayer ropes made out of wool?

Traditional prayer ropes are made out of wool to symbolize that believers are the flock of Christ, who is their shepherd. Wool also represents the purity and simplicity of monastic life.

What is the significance of the color black in prayer ropes?

The color black symbolizes mourning and repentance, fitting the nature of the Jesus Prayer, which is a prayer of repentance. It reflects the sorrow for one's sins and the desire for forgiveness.

What is the story behind the current method of making prayer ropes?

The method of making prayer ropes, as it is known today, involves weaving nine crosses into each knot. This technique was revealed by an angel to early monastics to prevent the devil from untying the knots, a problem they faced with simpler knots.

Why is it important to count prayers in the Orthodox tradition?

Counting prayers in the Orthodox tradition emphasizes obedience over personal will. It helps maintain discipline and ensures that prayer is consistent and guided by spiritual authority rather than personal preference.

What is the Jesus Prayer and how is it used with prayer ropes?

The Jesus Prayer is 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.' It is often repeated on each knot of the prayer rope as a form of continuous, meditative prayer.

Why might a spiritual elder deny a novice the work they enjoy in a monastery?

A spiritual elder may deny a novice the work they enjoy to prevent the work from becoming an idol and to help the novice focus on spiritual growth rather than personal skills or interests.

How can simple manual work aid in spiritual growth according to the script?

Simple manual work helps empty the mind of worldly thoughts, allowing it to either be filled with the grace of prayer or to reveal personal spiritual enemies that can then be addressed in confession and spiritual guidance.

What are the benefits of praying while doing obedience or handiwork?

Praying while doing obedience or handiwork can lead to two outcomes: the Holy Spirit filling the heart and mind with prayer, or the revelation of personal spiritual enemies. Both outcomes aid in spiritual growth and salvation.

Outlines

00:00

📿 The Making and Use of Prayer Ropes

The speaker discusses the traditional crafting and usage of prayer ropes in monastic life. He shares his personal experience of making prayer ropes for the past few weeks, emphasizing the challenge of completing orders by Christmas. Historically, monks used small stones or simple knots to count prayers, evolving to the intricate knots used today, each containing nine crosses. This evolution was due to a legend where an angel taught monks this method to prevent the devil from untying the knots. The speaker highlights the significance of obedience and structured prayer in monastic life.

05:04

🙏 Obedience in Monastic Tradition

The speaker explains the importance of obedience to a spiritual elder in the Orthodox and monastic traditions. Obedience is placed above prayer because it ensures one does not become self-guided, which can lead to spiritual blindness. He compares self-guidance to the fall of Adam, stressing that following one's own will can lead to downfall. Traditional prayer ropes are made from black wool to symbolize mourning and repentance. The Jesus Prayer is highlighted as the most common use of prayer ropes, though they can be used for various short prayers.

10:04

🧘‍♂️ The Role of Work and Prayer

The speaker discusses the integration of prayer and manual labor in monastic life. He explains how work can empty the mind of worldly concerns, allowing it to be filled with prayer or revealing personal spiritual enemies. Recognizing these enemies helps in confession and spiritual growth. The speaker warns against choosing pleasurable tasks, as they can become idols, distracting from spiritual progress. True spiritual guides often deny novices the work they desire to prevent this idolatry and ensure their focus remains on spiritual growth.

15:05

⛪ Spiritual Growth through Obedience

The speaker describes the process of spiritual growth in a monastery, emphasizing the role of a spiritual guide. Novices often have talents they wish to use immediately, but true guides may deny these desires to prevent distraction. Over time, as novices find peace in their assigned tasks, they may be permitted to return to their desired work. The goal is not to perfect earthly skills but to become the saint one is meant to be. The speaker illustrates how manual work, even if unenjoyable, can lead to spiritual clarity and growth.

20:11

🙏 Final Blessings and Encouragement

The speaker concludes with blessings and encouragement for the audience. He urges them to stay safe and healthy, to continue doing good, and to avoid evil. The speaker prays for God's grace to be upon them, so they may share and grow together in the Spirit, ultimately finding salvation in Jesus Christ.

Keywords

💡Prayer Ropes

Prayer ropes are tools used in the Orthodox monastic tradition for counting prayers. They are traditionally made of wool and black in color, symbolizing mourning and repentance. The script details their historical evolution from using stones to the modern form with intricate knots, each containing nine crosses to prevent the devil from untying them.

💡Monastic Tradition

Monastic tradition refers to the practices and customs followed by monks and nuns in religious communities. The script discusses how prayer ropes were integral to early monastic practices and how obedience to a spiritual elder is crucial for a monk's spiritual life.

💡Obedience

Obedience in the monastic context is the practice of submitting to the guidance of a spiritual elder. The video emphasizes that obedience is placed above prayer, as it ensures that monks do not become their own spiritual guides, which could lead to misguided self-reliance.

💡Desert Fathers

The Desert Fathers were early Christian hermits, ascetics, and monks who lived in the Egyptian desert. The script mentions a story from the Desert Fathers about an angel teaching monks how to make prayer ropes to prevent the devil from untying them.

💡Jesus Prayer

The Jesus Prayer is a short, formulaic prayer often used with prayer ropes: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' It is a prayer of repentance and is central to Orthodox spirituality, as highlighted in the script.

💡Spiritual Elder

A spiritual elder, also known as a spiritual father or abbot, is a monastic leader who provides guidance and oversight to monks. The script stresses the importance of obedience to a spiritual elder for maintaining spiritual discipline and avoiding self-guidance.

💡Repentance

Repentance is the act of seeking forgiveness for sins and turning away from wrongdoing. The script explains that the black color of prayer ropes symbolizes mourning and repentance, aligning with the use of the Jesus Prayer.

💡Handiwork

Handiwork in a monastic context refers to the manual labor performed by monks, such as making prayer ropes. The script discusses how this work helps monks focus on prayer and avoid distractions, illustrating its spiritual benefits.

💡Temptation

Temptation is the inclination to sin or stray from spiritual practices. The script mentions how monks faced the temptation of the devil untying their prayer knots and how the angel's method of making prayer ropes with crosses helped overcome this.

💡Community

Community in the monastic sense refers to the collective life and shared spiritual practices of monks. The script highlights how individual efforts, such as making prayer ropes, contribute to the spiritual well-being of the entire monastic community.

Highlights

Introduction to the topic of prayer ropes, how they are made, and their use in monastic tradition.

The historical use of small stones for counting prayers in the early monastic tradition.

Transition from using stones to making knots in ropes to keep track of prayers.

The story of an angel teaching monks how to make prayer ropes with nine crosses in each knot to prevent the devil from untying them.

Explanation of the significance of obedience in Orthodox monastic life, placing it above prayer.

Discussion on the danger of becoming one's own guide in spiritual life without obedience.

Traditional materials and colors used in making prayer ropes and their symbolic meanings.

Various prayers that can be used with prayer ropes, including the Jesus Prayer and its variations.

The importance of manual work in monastic life for maintaining focus and spiritual discipline.

How doing simple work can either invite the Holy Spirit or reveal personal spiritual enemies.

The role of a spiritual elder in guiding novices away from work that they enjoy to prevent idolatry of their talents.

The process of detachment from personal skills to focus on spiritual growth and later returning to those skills under guidance.

The story of St. John the Dwarf and his intense focus on prayer while doing manual work.

Encouragement to hold on to spiritual practices even during times of despondency, trusting that grace will return.

Closing blessings and exhortations to stay safe, do good, avoid evil, and grow together in the Spirit.

Transcripts

Hello, my dear ones! May God bless  you wherever you are in the world.  

I want to talk to you today about prayer ropes,  about how they are made and why they are being  

used, how they are being used and so on and  so forth. I want to do that simply because for  

the last one or two weeks I've been making prayer  ropes, I'm going blind making them because we are  

trying our best to send as many as we can to you  before Christmas; we are going to fail sending all  

of them, we've just finished the October orders  yesterday so we probably will be working our way  

through mid-November but that's all we can do,  we are going to get all the icons and all the  

prayer books out to you on time but with the  prayer ropes there's no way we can make it.  

They used prayer ropes from the very beginning  of the monastic tradition; they are not in the  

shape and form we know of today, that is true:  initially, in the desert at least, they used small  

stones, and as they were working they had a little  pile of stones, let's say 33 or 100 of them,  

and as they said the Prayer they would  move one stone from one side to the other  

until the entire pile was moved on that side and  then they started doing it the other way around;  

later on, because this was  obviously not very comfortable,  

they started making simple knots: they would  just get a rope of any kind and just make knots  

on it so that they could keep count of how many  prayers they they were saying during the day.  

I wouldn't completely dismiss the idea of using  little stones or any other little objects because  

I've personally used shells like these, just  the shells that we are using for our prayers,  

and particularly when I travel I like to keep  10 of those in my, in my pocket because I don't  

want people to kind of wonder what am I doing  with a prayer rope, I don't want to look like  

as if I'm praying, it just feels uncomfortable  and it doesn't, it doesn't benefit me somehow,  

so I just keep those shells in my pocket and I  just release them one by one as I say the Prayer.  

It's also a good way to to help me  as I travel because I miss Mull,  

I miss the island, I miss the ocean, I miss  the wind, so having some shells with me,  

it's like I'm carrying all these islands with  me into your homes and into your parishes---but  

getting back to our story about prayer ropes,  they used simple knots for a while until one  

common temptation seemed to be generalized in the  desert, as the monks were saying the prayer rope  

and counting their prayer the devil was untying  those simple knots in order for them to lose track  

of how many prayers they'd said, so they prayed to  God that they receive help against this temptation  

and God sent them an angel; there is the story  in the Desert Fathers of the angel who taught  

the first monastic how to make the prayer ropes  in the same way we still make them to this day:  

as you tie the knots you are actually weaving nine  crosses, there are nine crosses in each of these  

knots in a prayer rope, and because of the  presence of the Cross and because of what  

the Cross symbolizes and the power of the  Cross, the devil cannot untie them any more.  

Now unless you are a monastic or unless you  are familiar with the Orthodox tradition  

and Orthodox prayer and spirituality it may seem  completely bonkers to you the fact that we want to  

count how many prayers we say; why would you want  to count something that is not to be counted?  

Well, the reason for that is that above prayer,  the first monastics and all the Saints of this  

Church of Christ, all the Saints have placed  obedience above prayer. You see when you  

no longer obey to anyone else, when you are the  one who decides what prayer to say and for how  

long to pray or how many times you should say  a prayer or, you know, I'm just going to say  

the prayer for as long as I feel like saying the  prayer; what you are doing in fact is that you are  

becoming your own guide. You may think there is no  guide in your spiritual life but in truth you are  

your own guide, so you become a blind man leading  the same blind man into the spiritual life.  

Now in the Orthodox tradition and particularly in  the monastic life, obedience to a spiritual elder,  

obedience to a spiritual father or an abbot is  the foundation of everything else; we are not  

being taught anything until we are being taught  how to obey because that obedience makes it  

safe for us to pray, otherwise you may be  praying, you may be saying the Jesus Prayer,  

you may be saying the Lord's Prayer but in fact  the only God you are serving is yourself, your own  

pride or your own weakness, your own will,  your own choices, and we have seen from the  

beginning of the history of humanity where our  own choices lead, we just have to look at Adam  

and his fall to see where self-will and  self-determination leads a human being.  

We make them out of wool traditionally because  we are the sheep, we are the flock of Christ  

and he is our shepherd, and we make them out of  black wool because black symbolizes mourning:  

The main, the most common prayer we use when  we use a prayer rope is the Jesus Prayer:  

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon  me a sinner; and this is a prayer of repentance  

so black fits perfectly the mourning of  a repentant son, a repentant servant who  

returns to his Lord after he had fallen. You can  use the prayer rope with other prayers as well,  

you can say short prayers to any of the Saints or  the Mother of God, you can say the Lord's Prayer,  

you can just repeat the name of Christ in  a shortened version of the Jesus Prayer,  

you can just say: Lord Jesus, have mercy on  me; or I've known monastics who simply said:  

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ; or: Christ, my  Lord, Christ, my Saviour; or just simply: Jesus.  

In times of utter despondency saying just the  simple name of Christ is enough to drive away the  

devils that attack us. When you do work such as  making a prayer rope or cooking for the community  

or cleaning for the community, when you're doing  the work which was entrusted to you by your  

superior, by the community of the monastery, you  are in fact participating in the gifts, you are  

partaking in the gifts of the entire community so  that when you are fallen under the weight of your  

sin or your repentance or despondency, when  there is no real spiritual life left in you,  

you can at least keep on doing your work, whatever  that work may be and as you do that work as  

you become this empty shell that works based  mostly on an instinct, like memory of a muscle  

rather than personal involvement; you are still  part of the community and even though you may not  

acquire grace on behalf of your own soul and the  community, someone else, one of my brothers or one  

of my sisters is praying and is present before  the face of the Lord and in his or her grace I  

also partake as one of the community; this is the  beauty of us being one in a monastery or indeed in  

a family, if that family is built not on lust,  not on interest but on spiritual foundations,  

seeking the salvation of our souls. I've once  mentioned to you in some past videos about  

prayer by night that work is one of the most  important and useful tools. When you work,  

your mind is emptied by all thoughts and all  worries, all concerns about what you need to do  

further in the day or tomorrow; your mind is  simply focused on the work at hand and if the work  

at hand is simple it will allow your mind to be  completely empty of the world and the nothingness  

of the world so that it may be filled with  the Spirit of Grace that comes through prayer.  

Two things can happen when you pray while  you do your obedience, while you do your  

handiwork, either, one, the Holy Spirit descends  upon you and your heart, and your mind is filled  

with the prayer; or, if you fail, that is also  a blessing if you do obedience, because then  

your mind is not going to be filled with just some  random temptation, a random thought but precisely  

with the thoughts that are your personal  enemies. It's like a clear mirror:  

either you pray or your main enemies are going to  be present before the eyes of your heart and your  

mind and the benefit of that is that once you  know who your enemies are, once you know that  

your personal enemies are lust or greed or despair  or laziness or whatever they may be, you can then  

bring them out into the open in confession and  you can then receive the proper advice in order  

to fight them and defeat them by the grace of God,  so you will be given clarity, you will be given  

discernment or prayer and both those are  immense blessings, graces from the Lord.  

There is a danger here and the danger is that when  you start your handiwork if you are on your own,  

if you don't have an abbot or a spiritual  father to guide you and to tell you what to do,  

the danger is that you are going to choose to  do something that gives you pleasure and---oh,  

I've seen that so, so frequently in a monastic  environment: people, novices who come to a  

monastery and they have a particular talent, they  have a particular skill which they've developed  

in the world, they are passionate photographers  and they imagine they are going to come into the  

monastery and immediately they are going to become  the photographers on behalf of the monastery;  

or they are talented with drawing and painting  and they imagine that immediately they are going  

to start painting icons, or---you know, this, this  sort of example and they go into a monastery and  

if God has led them into a monastery where the  abbot or the abbess or the spiritual elder that  

has been entrusted with their care, if they  are indeed spiritual people they will deny them  

precisely that work, and I've seen a lot of  people, young people who have left monasteries,  

good wonderful monasteries and have left  obedience of good spiritual people because they  

failed to understand that actually those guides,  spiritual guides were doing the right thing;  

you see the danger is that if you do something  that you enjoy, something that you like doing,  

your mind is going to be caught up with that  work, you are going to be fascinated by your work  

and your work is going to become your idol, your  work is going to become your idol, your mind is  

going to be so taken with the work, so taken with  questions about how you can do that work better,  

how you can make your painting or your icon  more beautiful, your photographs more beautiful,  

that in fact your mind is full of those  questions, is full of worshipping this idol  

and it never gets to that emptiness that allows  your mind either to be filled by the grace of  

God or to be shown the enemies so that he can  fight or she can fight against those enemies.  

A really spiritual father, a real abbot or  abbess will deny in most cases to a novice,  

will deny him or her the work that they expect  to do, not because they have something against  

you personally but precisely because their care  before the Lord, their responsibility before the  

Lord is not that you become the best photographer  or the best iconographer that the world has ever  

known, but that you become the Saint that God  created you to become. Later on in your monastic  

life, later on when he or she, your abbot or  your abbess perceives that the passion that was  

mixed with your love for that handiwork, when  they perceive that the passion is gone, they  

may ask you to do that work again; so you may  be in a monastery for a year or five years,  

frustrated that you are not being asked to paint  icons or, you know, I don't know, do whatever you  

like to do, then you make peace with it in your  heart and you finally find peace doing what you  

have been asked to do, and just as you find peace,  your spiritual guide is going to throw you right  

back into the obedience that you had wanted to do  for so many years, and it makes no sense to you,  

and it makes no sense in human terms, but it makes  perfect sense spiritually, because an abbot and  

an abbess or a spiritual father, their care is  not that you become the best iconographer or  

that the monastery paints the most beautiful  icons so that the monastery can sell as many  

icons as possible---all of that is secondary in  a monastery---your salvation is the only concern  

of your abbot or your abbess, they are going  to work with the tools God has given them,  

such as your passions, your skills, your talents  in order not to make you the best iconographer  

but to turn you into the Saint you were  created to become so that the monastery  

and all those who helped the monastery can partake  not of your earthly gifts but of the spiritual  

heavenly gifts you may acquire by the grace of  God in this process of becoming the Saint you are  

created to become. Our minds, when we do simple  manual work that we do not particularly enjoy,  

our minds are emptied and in this desert, in  this perfect mirror of our minds and our hearts,  

we can either receive the grace of  prayer or we can see perfectly reflected  

the ugly faces of our passions, and both,  both outcomes can lead to our salvation;  

in the first case you will partake of the gifts  of the Holy Spirit and through you, your entire  

monastic community will partake of them as well;  in the second case you will see who your enemies  

are and as you see them you can fight against  them, defeat them and then your mind can become  

pure and you can receive the grace of true prayer.  There are beautiful stories in the Sayings of the  

Desert Fathers about Saints who forgot completely  about the worries of the world as they were doing  

their handiwork and as they were saying the  Prayer in their heart and in their mind;  

my favourite one is St John, Saint John the Dwarf  as he's known, in the desert he was so taken  

by prayer that he forgot even what people  asked him to do half a second, a fraction of  

a second ago, these people would come with their  camels through the desert to collect the baskets  

which had been weaved by the hermits, they  would take the baskets into the city, sell them,  

buy food and then return to the hermits and give  them their food so they can survive; and these  

camel drivers knocked at Saint John's  door in his little cell in the desert  

and they would tell him about: We want your basket  so we can sell them; and he would go back into his  

cell which would have been, what, the size of  this altar of ours, and he forgot, he completely  

instantly forgot what he had been asked to do,  so he sat down again making the same baskets and  

saying the prayer, so those poor people had to  knock again, and again he would forget and start  

praying again, until eventually the solution was  that he would have to go into his cell saying:  

Camel---baskets---camel---baskets---camel---baskets;  so he would remember to get the baskets,  

take them to the camel driver and then  he could again sink back into the Prayer;  

prayer can work in us even when you  feel like there is nothing alive in you:  

hold on to the muscle memory of your  spiritual life, hold on to what you used to do  

when you experienced grace and in time, for your  patience, for your repentance, for your humility  

and your love, God will give back to you not only  all the gift you had before but so much more,  

unthinkably more than before. May God bless  you, my dear ones. Please stay safe and healthy;  

keep doing the good that you can do;  stay away from the evil that you can do.  

May God bless you with gifts of His grace  and may we all partake of each other's gifts  

so we grow together in the Spirit and we find  our salvation together in our one Lord and God  

Jesus Christ. Amen, my brother.  Amen, my sister. Amen, my dear ones.