Vigils Reading

TRUE PRAYER

From the writings of St Macarius2

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The person, that wishes to come to the Lord and to be deemed worthy of eternal life and to become the dwelling place of Christ and to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that he may be able to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit and perform the commandments of Christ purely and blamelessly, ought to begin first by believing firmly in the Lord and giving himself completely to the words of His commands and renouncing the world in all things so that his whole mind may be taken up with nothing ephemeral…

Then the Lord, seeing such an intention and his good diligence, how he strives to remember the Lord and always seeks to do good and is humble and meek and loving, how he guides his heart, whether he wishes or not, to the best of his ability with force, has mercy on him and frees him from his enemies and the indwelling sin. He fills him with the Holy Spirit. And gradually without force or struggle he keeps all the Lord’s commandments in truth. Or, rather, it is the Lord who keeps in him His very own commandments and then He brings forth the fruits of the Spirit purely.

It is, however, necessary at first for one coming to the Lord to force himself thus to do good and even if he should not in his heart be so inclined, he must constantly await His mercy with unshakened faith and push himself to love, even if he does not have love. He ought to push himself to meekness, even if he has none, to mercy and to have a merciful heart. He must force himself to be disregarded, and when he is looked down by others, let him rejoice. When he is made light of or dishonored, let him not become angry according to the saying: “Beloved, do not avenge yourselves”. Let him push himself to prayer even when he does not possess the prayer of the Spirit. And so, God, seeing him striving so and pushing himself by determination, even if the heart is unwilling, gives him the authentic prayer of the Spirit, gives him true charity, true meekness… true kindness, and, simply put, fills him with the fruits of the Spirit.

But, if anyone pushed to attain for himself only prayer… but he does not strive earnestly for meekness and humility and charity and all the other commandments of the Lord, neither taking pains or struggling and battling to succeed in these…sometimes he may be given a grace of prayer… but he has the same traits he had before. He has no meekness because he did not seek it with effort and he did not prepare himself beforehand to become such. He has no humility since he did not ask for it and did not push himself to have it. He has no charity toward all men because he was not concerned with this and did not strive for it in his asking for the gift of prayer. And in doing his work, he has no faith nor trust in God since he did not know himself, that he appeared without it… For just as he forces himself to prayer even when unwilling, so everyone must push himself likewise to trust, so also to humility, so to charity, so to meekness, sincerity and simplicity…

Let us pray that the Spirit may teach us true prayer which now we are unable to accomplish even through our earnest striving. He will teach us how to accomplish, with hearts of compassion, kindness and all the other commandments of the Lord truly without any trouble and force since the Spirit Himself knows how to fill us with His fruit. And so we fulfill the commandments of God through His Spirit who alone knows the will of the Lord