The Conferences 9.21–10.4

“Next: “Give us this day our epiousios bread,” that is, our supersubstantial bread, which another evangelist called “daily.” The former signifies the character of its nobility and substance, namely that it is above all substances and the height of its magnificence and holiness exceeds all creatures; the latter expresses the special nature of its use and benefit. For when he says “daily,” he shows that without it we cannot receive spiritual life on any day. When he says “this day,” he shows that it must be taken every day and that yesterday’s supply of it is not enough unless it is given to us today as well. Our daily need of it should remind us that we ought to pour out this prayer at every time, for there is no day on which we do not need to strengthen the heart of our inner man by eating and receiving it. Yet the words “this day” can also be understood of the present life, that is: while we sojourn in this world, grant us this bread. For we know that it will be given in the future also to those who have deserved it from you, but we ask that you bestow it on us today, since unless one has deserved to receive it in this life, he will not be able to share in it in that life.

“And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” O ineffable mercy of God! Not only has he given us a form of prayer and established a discipline of conduct acceptable to him, and through the necessity of the form he handed down, by which he commanded that he always be prayed to, torn out the roots of anger and of sadness alike; he has also given those who pray an occasion and opened a way by which they may call forth a merciful and kind judgment of God upon themselves. In a way he has given us power to moderate the sentence of our judge, constraining him by the example of our own forgiveness to pardon our offenses, when we say to him: “Forgive us as we also have forgiven.” So whoever has been forgiving toward his own debtors, and not merely toward his Lord’s, will ask pardon for his sins with confidence in this prayer. For some of us (which is worse) are accustomed to show ourselves gentle and most merciful toward things done to God’s injury, however great the crimes, but to be found harsh and inexorable exactors of the debts of even the smallest offenses against ourselves. Whoever, then, has not forgiven from the heart a brother who has wronged him will obtain by this prayer not pardon but condemnation for himself, and by his own profession will ask to be judged more severely, saying: “Forgive me as I too have forgiven.” When it is paid back to him according to his request, what else will follow but that he is punished, after his own example, with implacable wrath and an unremitted sentence? And therefore, if we want to be judged mercifully, we too must be merciful toward those who have wronged us. For we will be forgiven as much as we have forgiven those who have harmed us with any malice. Some, fearing this, when this prayer is sung together by the whole people in church, silently pass over this part, lest by their own profession they seem to bind themselves rather than excuse themselves. They do not understand that they are trying in vain to put forward these quibbles to the judge of all, who wished to show his suppliants beforehand how he will judge. For since he does not want to be found harsh and inexorable toward them, he has laid down the pattern of his judgment, so that as we wish to be judged by him, so we should judge our brothers if they have wronged us in anything; for “judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.”

“Then follows: “And lead us not into temptation,” from which no small question arises. For if we pray not to be allowed to be tempted, how will the virtue of steadfastness be proved in us, according to the saying: “Every man who has not been tempted has not been proved,” and again: “Blessed is the man who endures temptation”? So “lead us not into temptation” does not mean “do not ever allow us to be tempted,” but “do not allow us, when we are placed in temptation, to be overcome.” For Job was tempted, but he was not led into temptation: he did not “charge God with folly,” nor did he enter with impious mouth into blasphemy, the will of the tempter to which he was being drawn. Abraham was tempted, Joseph was tempted, but neither of them was led into temptation, because none of them gave consent to the tempter. Then follows: “But deliver us from evil,” that is, do not allow us to be tempted by the devil beyond what we are able, but “with the temptation make also a way of escape, that we may be able to bear it.”

“You see, then, what measure and form of prayer has been set before us by the very judge who is to be entreated by it. It contains no request for riches, no mention of honors, no petition for power and strength, no mention of bodily health or of temporal life. For the creator of eternity wants nothing perishable, nothing base, nothing temporal to be asked of him. And so whoever passes over these everlasting petitions and prefers to ask him for something transitory and perishable will do the greatest injury to his magnificence and generosity, and by the meanness of his prayer will incur the offense rather than the favor of his judge.

“So although this prayer seems to contain the whole fullness of perfection, since it was begun and established by the Lord’s own authority, it nevertheless carries his intimates forward to that higher state we mentioned above, and leads them by a more exalted step to that fiery prayer known or experienced by very few, or rather, to speak more properly, ineffable prayer. It transcends all human understanding and is marked, I do not say by no sound of the voice, but by no movement of the tongue and no utterance of words. The mind, enlightened by the inpouring of that heavenly light, does not express it in narrow human speech, but, its thoughts gathered together, pours it out abundantly as from a most copious spring and utters it ineffably to God, bringing forth in that briefest moment of time things so great that the mind, when it returns to itself, cannot easily express or run through them. Our Lord too likewise figured this state by the form of those supplications which he is described as having poured out, either withdrawing alone to the mountain or in silence, when, placed in the agony of prayer, he even shed drops of blood, an example of intensity beyond imitation.

“But who, however much experience he has, could sufficiently explain the varieties, causes, and origins of the compunctions by which the mind, inflamed and set alight, is stirred to pure and most fervent prayers? We shall set out a few of them by way of example, as far as we can remember them at present through the Lord’s enlightenment. Sometimes a verse of some psalm, as we sang it, has given occasion for fiery prayer. At times the tuneful melody of a brother’s voice has stirred the minds of the dull to intent supplication. We know too that the clear enunciation and gravity of one chanting the psalms has given great fervor even to those standing by. The exhortation of a perfect man and a spiritual conference have also often raised the disposition of those lying low to most abundant prayers. We know too that we have been carried away to full compunction no less by the death of a brother or of someone dear. The remembrance of our own lukewarmness and negligence has also sometimes brought us a saving ardor of spirit. And in this way no one doubts that countless occasions are not lacking by which, through the grace of God, the lukewarmness and sleepiness of our minds can be roused.

“But how, or in what ways, these compunctions are brought forth from the inmost chambers of the soul is no less difficult to investigate. For often the fruit of most wholesome compunction comes out through ineffable joy and eagerness of spirit, so that it even bursts out into cries because of the immensity of a joy it cannot contain, and the delight of the heart and the greatness of its exultation reach the cell of a neighbor. Sometimes, however, the mind is hidden in such silence within the secret of deep stillness that the amazement of a sudden illumination shuts off every sound of the voice, and the astonished spirit either keeps all its senses within or loses them, and pours out its desires to God “with groanings that cannot be uttered.” At times, again, it is filled with such abundance of compunction and grief that it cannot relieve it except by pouring it out in tears.

Germanus: “Even my littleness is not wholly ignorant of this feeling of compunction. For often, when tears have sprung up at the remembrance of my sins, I have been so quickened by the Lord’s visitation with this ineffable joy you have spoken of that the very greatness of the gladness told me I ought not to despair of their pardon. I think nothing is more sublime than this state, if only its renewal lay in our power. For sometimes, when I want to rouse myself with all my strength to a like compunction of tears, and set all my errors and sins before my eyes, I cannot bring back that abundance of weeping, and my eyes become as hard as the hardest flint, so that not a single drop of moisture falls from them. And so, as much as I rejoice in that flood of tears, so much do I grieve that I cannot recover it when I wish.”

Isaac: “Not every flow of tears is produced by one feeling or one virtue. The weeping that is brought forth when the thorn of sins pricks our heart flows in one way; of it is said: “I have labored in my groaning; every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with my tears,” and again: “Let tears run down like a torrent day and night; give yourself no rest, and let not the apple of your eye be still.” In another way arises the weeping that comes from the contemplation of eternal goods and the longing for that future glory, for which even richer fountains of tears burst out from unbearable joy and immense eagerness, while our soul thirsts for the mighty, living God, saying: “When shall I come and appear before the face of God? My tears have been my bread day and night,” crying out daily with wailing and lament: “Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged,” and: “My soul has long been a sojourner.” In another way flow the tears which come, not indeed from any consciousness of deadly crimes, but from fear of hell and remembrance of that terrible judgment; struck by its terror, the prophet prays to God, saying: “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no one living will be justified.” There is also another kind of tears, produced not by one’s own conscience but by the hardness and sins of others. With these Samuel is described as weeping for Saul, and with these the Lord in the gospel, and Jeremiah in former times, wept for the city of Jerusalem, the latter saying: “Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes? And I will weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.” Or again there are such tears as are sung of in the hundred and first psalm: “For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.” It is certain that these are not brought forth by the feeling with which tears come in the sixth psalm in the person of the penitent, but from the anxieties, straits, and hardships of this life by which the righteous are pressed down while they are in this world. Not only the text of that psalm but also its title shows this plainly; it is written in the person of that poor man of whom it is said in the gospel: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and runs thus: “A prayer of the poor man, when he was in anguish and poured out his prayer before God.”

“From these tears, then, those that are squeezed out of dry eyes when the heart is hardened differ greatly. We do not believe them wholly fruitless (for the attempt to shed them is made with a good purpose, especially by those who have not yet been able to reach perfect knowledge or to be cleansed thoroughly from the stain of past or present vices). Yet those who have already passed into a settled disposition of the virtues ought by no means to wring out a flow of tears in this way, nor should the weeping of the outer man be sought with great effort; even if it is produced in some fashion, it will never reach that abundance of spontaneous tears. Rather, by his own efforts it will drag down the soul of the one praying, humble it, sink it in human things, and bring it down from that heavenly height on which the astonished mind of the one praying ought to be fixed unswervingly; and, the intentness of his prayers slackened, it will make the mind grow sick over a few barren, forced drops of tears.

“And so that you may grasp the disposition of true prayer, I will give you, not my own opinion, but that of blessed Antony. We know that he sometimes persisted in prayer so long that, while he was praying in this same ecstasy of mind, when the sunrise began to pour in, we heard him cry out in fervor of spirit: “Why do you hinder me, sun, rising now for this, to draw me away from the brightness of this true light?” His too is this heavenly and more than human saying about the end of prayer: “That prayer is not perfect,” he said, “in which the monk understands himself, or even the very fact that he is praying.” And so that we too, according to the measure of our slenderness, may dare to add something to this wonderful saying, we shall set out the signs, as far as we have experienced them, of prayer that is heard by the Lord.

“When no hesitation interrupts us as we pray, and no despair casts down the confidence of our petition, but we feel in the very outpouring of prayer that we have obtained what we ask, let us not doubt that our prayers have effectively reached God. For one will deserve to be heard and to obtain in the measure that he believes either that he is regarded by God or that God is able to grant it. For that saying of our Lord cannot be withdrawn: “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you will receive, and it will come to you.”

Germanus: “We believe that this confidence of being heard certainly flows from purity of conscience. But how can we, whose heart is still pricked by the thorn of sins, have it, when we have no merits to plead for us by which we might confidently presume that our prayers will be heard?”

Isaac: “The words of the gospels and of the prophets testify that there are different grounds for being heard, according to the different and varied states of souls. You have the fruit of being heard marked by the Lord’s voice in the agreement of two, according to the saying: “If two of you agree on earth about anything whatever that they ask, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven.” You have another in the fullness of faith, which is compared to a grain of mustard seed: “For if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed,” he says, “you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” You have it in constancy in prayer, which the Lord’s word called importunity because of its unwearied perseverance in asking: “Truly I say to you, if not for friendship, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as much as he needs.” You have it in the fruit of almsgiving: “Shut up alms in the heart of the poor,” he says, “and it will pray for you in the time of trouble.” You have it in amendment of life and works of mercy, according to the saying: “Loose the bonds of wickedness, undo the burdens that press down,” and a little after, where the barrenness of fruitless fasting is rebuked: “Then you will call, and the Lord will hear you; you will cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’” Sometimes, indeed, the very excess of tribulations causes one to be heard, according to the saying: “In my trouble I cried to the Lord, and he heard me,” and again: “Do not afflict the stranger, for if he cries to me, I will hear him, for I am merciful.” You see, then, in how many ways the grace of being heard is obtained, so that no one should be broken by despair of his own conscience in asking for the things that are saving and eternal. For suppose I grant, considering our miseries, that we are utterly destitute of all the virtues we have mentioned above, and have neither that praiseworthy agreement of two, nor that faith compared to a grain of mustard seed, nor those works of piety which the prophet describes: surely we cannot fail to have importunity, which is within reach of anyone who wishes, and by which alone the Lord promises that he will give whatever he is asked? And therefore we must persist in prayer without the unbelief of hesitation, and not doubt in the least that by its constancy we shall obtain all that we have asked according to God. For the Lord, wishing to bestow what is eternal and heavenly, urges us in a way to constrain him by our importunity. He not only does not despise or reject the importunate, but even invites and praises them, and most kindly promises that he will grant them whatever they have hoped for with perseverance, saying: “Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened”; and again: “All things whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive,” and “nothing will be impossible for you.” And therefore, if all the grounds of being heard that we have mentioned are wholly lacking to us, let at least the persistence of importunity encourage us, which lies within the power of anyone who wishes, without any difficulty of merit or of labor. But let no one who prays doubt that he will certainly not be heard if he doubts that he is heard. That we must pray to the Lord tirelessly we are also taught by the example of blessed Daniel: though he was heard from the first day on which he began to pray, he obtained the effect of his petition only after the twenty-first day. Hence we too ought not to cease from the intentness of prayer we have begun if we feel that we are heard rather slowly, lest perhaps the grace of being heard is usefully delayed by the Lord’s dispensation, or the angel who has gone out from the face of the Almighty to bring us the divine benefit is held up by the devil’s resistance. It is certain that he cannot bring the desire of the gift sent to us if he finds that we have ceased from the intentness of the petition we set before us. This could surely have happened to the prophet mentioned above too, had he not with incomparable strength drawn out the perseverance of his prayers to the twenty-first day. Let us therefore not be broken by any despair from confidence in this faith when we feel that we have not obtained what we prayed for, nor let us hesitate over the Lord’s promise that says: “All things whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” For we should reflect on that saying of the blessed evangelist John, by which the ambiguity of this question is clearly resolved: “This is the confidence we have toward him, that whatever we ask according to his will, he hears us.” So he told us to have full and undoubting confidence of being heard only concerning those things that agree not with our own advantage or temporal comforts but with the Lord’s will. This too we are commanded to include in the Lord’s Prayer, saying “Thy will be done,” that is, yours, not ours. For if we also remember the apostle’s words, that “we do not know what we should pray for as we ought,” we understand that we sometimes ask for things contrary to our salvation, and that what we ask is most beneficially refused us by him who sees our advantage more rightly and truly than we do. There is no doubt that this happened even to the teacher of the Gentiles, when he prayed that the angel of Satan be taken from him, who had been set by the Lord’s will to buffet him for his good, saying: “For this I asked the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he said to me: ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’” Our Lord too, praying in the person of the man he had taken up, so that he might give us by his example a pattern of praying as of everything else, expressed this sense when he prayed thus: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as you will,” although his will did not differ from the Father’s will. For he had come “to save what was lost” and “to give his life as a ransom for many,” of which he himself says: “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” In his person, concerning the unity of will which he always had with the Father, it is also sung by blessed David in the thirty-ninth psalm: “To do your will, my God, I have willed.” For though we read of the Father: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,” we find no less of the Son: “who gave himself for our sins.” And as it is said of the one: “who did not spare his own Son but delivered him up for us all,” so it is told of the other: “He was offered because he himself willed it.” And so the will of the Father and of the Son is shown to be one in all things, so that even in the very mystery of the Lord’s resurrection their work is taught not to have been discordant. For as the blessed apostle proclaims that the Father worked the resurrection of his body, saying: “and God the Father, who raised him from the dead,” so the Son declares that he will raise the temple of his body, saying: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And therefore, taught by these examples of the Lord that we have cited, we too ought to close all our supplications with a like prayer, and always add this word to all our petitions: “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” It is quite plain, however, that one who prays with an intent mind cannot keep to that number of three bows which is customarily made in the gatherings of the brothers to close the synaxis.

“Above all, that gospel precept must be observed most carefully, that we should enter our room, shut the door, and pray to our Father. This will be fulfilled by us as follows. We pray within our room when, withdrawing our heart completely from the din of all thoughts and anxieties, we disclose our prayers to the Lord in secret, as it were, and familiarly. We pray with the door shut when, with closed lips and in complete silence, we make supplication to him who searches not voices but hearts. We pray in secret when with the heart alone and an intent mind we lay open our petitions to God only, so that not even the hostile powers can recognize the kind of petition we make. For this reason we must pray in the greatest silence, not only so as not to distract the brothers standing by with our whispers or cries and disturb the thoughts of those praying, but so that the aim of our petition may be hidden also from our enemies themselves, who lie in wait for us most of all when we pray. For thus we shall fulfil that precept: “Guard the doors of your mouth from her who sleeps in your bosom.”

“For this reason we should pray often, but briefly, lest, if we linger, the enemy lying in wait may be able to insert something into our heart. For this is the true sacrifice, since “the sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit”; this is the saving offering, these are the pure libations, this is “the sacrifice of righteousness,” this is “the sacrifice of praise,” these are the true and fat victims, these are the “burnt offerings full of marrow,” which are offered by contrite and humbled hearts. Offering them with the discipline and intentness of spirit we have described, we shall be able to sing with effective power: “Let my prayer be directed as incense in your sight, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” The coming of that very hour and of night also reminds us to pay this with fitting devotion. Although, for the measure of our slenderness, much seems to have been said on this subject and the conference has been drawn out long, yet for the sublimity and difficulty of the matter we believe that very little has been discussed.” Astonished rather than filled by these words of holy Isaac, after celebrating the evening synaxis we rested our limbs a little in sleep, and, having agreed to return at first dawn for a fuller treatment, we went back to our quarters, rejoicing both in the acquisition of the precepts and in the assurance of what had been promised. For we felt that the excellence of prayer had only been shown to us in outline in those discussions, but that we had not yet fully grasped the method and power by which its perpetuity is to be acquired or kept.

Among these sublime institutions of the anchorites, which, by God’s gift, have been set out somehow, though in an unskilled style, the very order of the narrative compels us to insert and weave in something that may seem to put a kind of blemish on a beautiful body. Yet I do not doubt that even from this no small instruction will be given to the simpler sort about the image of almighty God of which we read in Genesis, especially since the question concerns so great a doctrine that ignorance of it cannot exist without great blasphemy and harm to the catholic faith.

In the region of Egypt this custom is kept by ancient tradition: when the day of Epiphany is over, which the priests of that province regard as the day both of the Lord’s baptism and of his birth according to the flesh, and so they celebrate the solemnity of both mysteries not separately, as in the western provinces, but in the one festival of this day, letters of the bishop of Alexandria are sent throughout all the churches of Egypt, by which the beginning of Lent and the day of Easter are announced, not only in all the cities but also in all the monasteries. In accordance with this custom, then, a very few days after the earlier conference with Abba Isaac had been held, the festal letters of Theophilus, bishop of that city, arrived. In them, together with the announcement of Easter, he also discussed at length the foolish heresy of the Anthropomorphites and demolished it with an abundant discourse. This was received with such bitterness by almost the whole body of monks who lived throughout the province of Egypt, through the error of simplicity, that, on the contrary, the greater part of the elders decreed that the said bishop should be abhorred by the whole brotherhood as corrupted by a most serious heresy, since he seemed to attack the teaching of Holy Scripture by denying that almighty God is formed in the fashion of a human figure, when Scripture testifies most plainly that Adam was created in his image. In the end this letter was rejected even by those who lived in the desert of Scetis and who surpassed all in the monasteries of Egypt in perfection and knowledge, to such a degree that, apart from Abba Paphnutius, the presbyter of our congregation, none of the other presbyters who presided over the other three churches in that desert would allow it even to be read or recited at all in their assemblies.

Among those who were held by this error was a man named Sarapion, of the most ancient strictness and perfect in every way in the practical discipline. His ignorance about the opinion on the said doctrine was the more prejudicial to all who held the true faith, the more he surpassed almost all the monks in the merit of his life and in length of years. When he could not be brought to the path of right faith by the many exhortations of the holy presbyter Paphnutius, because this persuasion seemed to him new and never known or handed down by those before, it happened that a certain deacon named Photinus, a man of the highest learning, came from the parts of Cappadocia from a desire to see the brothers living in that desert. The blessed Paphnutius welcomed him with the greatest joy and, to confirm the faith contained in the letter of the said bishop, brought him forward before all the brothers and asked him how the catholic churches of the whole East interpreted what is said in Genesis: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” He explained that the image and likeness of God is taught by all the leaders of the churches not according to the lowly sound of the letter but spiritually, and proved this with an abundant discourse and many testimonies of the Scriptures: that nothing of this kind can apply to that immense, incomprehensible, and invisible majesty, such as could be circumscribed by a human composition and likeness, since it is an incorporeal, uncompounded, and simple nature, which can no more be grasped by the mind than it can be seen by the eyes. At last the old man, moved by the many and very strong arguments of this most learned man, was drawn to the faith of the catholic tradition. His assent filled Abba Paphnutius and all of us with boundless joy, that the Lord had by no means allowed a man of such great age and perfect in such virtues, who erred only through ignorance and rustic simplicity, to stray from the path of the right faith to the end. But when we rose to give thanks and were pouring out prayers to the Lord together, the old man was so confused in mind during the prayer, because he felt that the anthropomorphic image of the Godhead which he had been accustomed to set before himself in prayer was being wiped from his heart, that he suddenly burst into the bitterest weeping and repeated sobs, threw himself on the ground, and cried out with a loud wail: “Alas, wretch that I am! They have taken my God from me, and I have none now to hold, nor do I know whom to adore or to address.” Greatly moved by this, and with the power of the earlier conference still settled in our hearts, we returned to Abba Isaac, and, seeing him face to face, addressed him with these words.

“Even apart from this new thing that has lately arisen, the desire for the earlier conference, which was held on the state of prayer, was calling us to put everything aside and hurry back to your blessedness. Yet the grievous error of Abba Sarapion, conceived, as we think, by the cunning of the most wicked demons, has added something to this longing. For we are cast down in no small despair when we consider that through the fault of this ignorance he has not only entirely lost the great labors which he has carried out so laudably for fifty years in this desert, but has even incurred the danger of eternal death. First, then, we want to know from where and why so grievous an error crept in upon him. Then we ask to be taught how we can reach that quality of prayer about which you discoursed the other day not only fully but also magnificently. For that admirable conference has so far affected us that it has only struck our minds with amazement, but has not shown us how we might achieve or grasp it.”