neighbors, that I have no religious belief, and that I am filled with pride and
sensuality. All this I actually find in myself as a result of detailed examination of my
feelings and conduct, thus:
1. I do not love God. For if I loved God I should be continually thinking about Him
with heartfelt joy. Every thought of God would give me gladness and delight. On the
contrary, I much more often and much more eagerly think about earthly things, and
thinking about God is labor and dryness. If I loved God, then talking with Him in
prayer would be my nourishment and delight and would draw me to unbroken
communion with Him. But, on the contrary, I not only find no delight in prayer, but
even find it an effort. I struggle with reluctance, I am enfeebled by sloth and am ready
to occupy myself eagerly with any unimportant trifle, if only it shortens prayer and
keeps me from it. My time slips away unnoticed in futile occupations, but when I am
occupied with God, when I put myself into His presence, every hour seems like a
year. If one person loves another, he thinks of him throughout the day without
ceasing, he pictures him to himself, he cares for him, and in all circumstances his
beloved friend is never out of his thoughts. But I, throughout the day, scarcely set
aside even a single hour in which to sink deep down into meditation upon God, to
inflame my heart with love of Him, while I eagerly give up twenty-three hours as
fervent offerings to the idols of my passions. I am forward in talk about frivolous
matters and things which degrade the spirit; that gives me pleasure. But in the
consideration of God I am dry, bored, and lazy. Even if I am unwillingly drawn by
others into spiritual conversation, I try to shift the subject quickly to one which
pleases my desires. I am tirelessly curious about novelties, about civic affairs and
political events; I eagerly seek the satisfaction of my love of knowledge in science
and art, and in ways of getting things I want to possess. But the study of the law of
God, the knowledge of God and of religion, make little impression on me, and satisfy
no hunger of my soul. I regard these things not only as a nonessential occupation for
a Christian, but in a casual way as a sort of side-issue with which I should perhaps
occupy my spare time, at odd moments. To put it shortly, if love for God is recognized
by the keeping of His commandments ("If ye love Me, keep My commandments,"
says our Lord Jesus Christ), and I not only do not keep them, but even make little
attempt to do so, then in absolute truth the conclusion follows that I do not love God.
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That is what Basil the Great says: "The proof that a man does not love God and His
Christ lies in the fact that he does not keep His commandments."
2. I do not love my neighbor either. For not only am I unable to make up my mind
to lay down my life for his sake (according to the gospel), but I do not even sacrifice
my happiness, well-being, and peace for the good of my neighbor. If I did love him as
myself, as the gospel bids, his misfortunes would distress me also, his happiness
would bring delight to me too. But, on the contrary, I listen to curious, unhappy stories
about my neighbor, and I am not distressed; I remain quite undisturbed or, what is
still worse, I find a sort of pleasure in them. Bad conduct on the part of my brother I
do not cover up with love, but proclaim abroad with censure. His well-being, honor,
and happiness do not delight me as my own, and, as if they were something quite
alien to me, give me no feeling of gladness. What is more, they subtly arouse in me
feelings of envy or contempt.
3. I have no religious belief. Neither in immortality nor in the gospel. If I were
firmly persuaded and believed without doubt that beyond the grave lies eternal life
and recompense for the deeds of this life, I should be continually thinking of this. The
very idea of immortality would terrify me and I should lead this life as a foreigner who
gets ready to enter his native land. On the contrary, I do not even think about
eternity, and I regard the end of this earthly life as the limit of my existence. The
secret thought nestles within me: Who knows what happens at death? If I say I
believe in immortality, then I am speaking about my mind only, and my heart is far
removed from a firm conviction about it. That is openly witnessed to by my conduct
and my constant care to satisfy the life of the senses. Were the holy gospel taken into
my heart in faith, as the Word of God, I should be continually occupied with it, I
should study it, find delight in it, and with deep devotion fix my attention upon it.
Wisdom, mercy, and love are hidden in it; it would lead me to happiness, I should find
gladness in the study of the law of God day and night. In it I should find nourishment
like my daily bread, and my heart would be drawn to the keeping of its laws. Nothing
on earth would be strong enough to turn me away from it. On the contrary, if now and
again I read or hear the Word of God, yet even so it is only from necessity or from a
general love of knowledge, and approaching it without any very close attention I find
93
it dull and uninteresting. I usually come to the end of the reading without any profit,
only too ready to change over to secular reading in which I take more pleasure and
find new and interesting subjects.
4. I am full of pride and sensual self-love. All my actions confirm this. Seeing
something good in myself, I want to bring it into view, or to pride myself upon it before
other people or inwardly to admire myself for it. Although I display an outward
humility, yet I ascribe it all to my own strength and regard myself as superior to
others, or at least no worse than they. If I notice a fault in myself, I try to excuse it; I
cover it up by saying, "I am made like that" or "I am not to blame." I get angry with
those who do not treat me with respect and consider them unable to appreciate the
value of people. I brag about my gifts: my failures in any undertaking I regard as a
personal insult. I murmur, and I find pleasure in the unhap- piness of my enemies. If I
strive after anything good it is for the purpose of winning praise, or spiritual self-
indulgence, or earthly consolation. In a word, I continually make an idol of myself and
render it uninterrupted service, seeking in all things the pleasures of the senses and
nourishment for my sensual passions and lusts.
Going over all this I see myself as proud, adulterous, unbelieving, without love for
God and hating my neighbor. What state could be more sinful? The condition of the
spirits of darkness is better than mine. They, although they do not love God, hate
men, and live upon pride, yet at least believe and tremble. But I? Can there be a
doom more terrible than that which faces me, and what sentence of punishment will
be more severe than that upon the careless and foolish life that I recognize in
myself?
On reading through this form of confession which the priest gave me I was
horrified, and I thought to myself, "Good heavens! What frightful sins there are hidden
within me, and up to now I've never noticed them!" The desire to be cleansed from
them made me beg this great spiritual father to teach me how to know the causes of
all these evils and how to cure them. And he began to instruct me.
"You see, dear brother, the cause of not loving God is want of belief, want of
belief is caused by lack of conviction, and the cause of that is failure to seek for holy
and true knowledge, indifference to the light of the spirit. In a word, if you don't
believe, you can't love; if you are not convinced, you can't believe, and in order to
94:
reach conviction you must get a full and exact knowledge of the matter before you.
By meditation, by the study of God's Word, and by noting your experience, you must
arouse in your soul a thirst and a longing—or, as some call it, 'wonder'—which brings
you an insatiable desire to know things more closely and more fully, to go deeper into
their nature.
"One spiritual writer speaks of it in this way: 'Love,' he says, 'usually grows with
knowledge, and the greater the depth and extent of the knowledge the more love
there will be, the more easily the heart will soften and lay itself open to the love of
God, as it diligently gazes upon the very fullness and beauty of the divine nature and
His unbounded love for men.'
"So now you see that the cause of those sins which you read over is slothfulness
in thinking about spiritual things, sloth which stifles the feeling of the need of such
thought. If you want to know how to overcome this evil, strive after enlightenment of
spirit by every means in your power, attain it by diligent study of the Word of God and
of the holy Fathers, by the help of meditation and spiritual counsel, and by the
conversation of those who are wise in Christ. Ah, dear brother, how much disaster we
meet with just because we are lazy about seeking light for our souls through the word
of truth. We do not study God's law day and night, and we do not pray about it
diligently and unceasingly. And because of this our inner man is hungry and cold,
starved, so that it has no strength to take a bold step forward upon the road of
righteousness and salvation! And so, beloved, let us resolve to make use of these
methods, and as often as possible fill our minds with thoughts of heavenly things;
and love, poured down into our hearts from on high, will burst into flame within us.
We will do this together and pray as often as we can, for prayer is the chief and
strongest means for our renewal and well-being. We will pray, in the words holy
church teaches us: 'O God, make me fit to love Thee now, as I have loved sin in the
past.'"20 I listened to all this with care. Deeply moved, I asked this holy Father to hear
my confession and to give me communion. And so next morning after the honor of
my communion, I was for going back to Kiev with this blessed viaticum. But this good
father of mine, who was going to the Lavra21 for a couple of days, kept me for that
time in his hermit's cell, so that in its silence I might give myself up to prayer without
hindrance. And, in fact, I did spend both those days as though I were in heaven. By
95:
the prayers of my starets I, unworthy as I am, rejoiced in perfect peace. Prayer
flowed out in my heart so easily and happily that during that time I think I forgot
everything, and myself; in my mind was Jesus Christ and He alone.
In the end, the priest came back, and I asked his guidance and advice—where
should I go now on my pilgrim way? He gave me his blessing with these words, "You
go to Pochaev, make your reverence there to the wonder-working footprint22 of the
most pure mother of God, and she will guide your feet into the way of peace." And
so, taking his advice in faith, three days later I set off for Pochaev.
For some 130 miles or so I traveled none too happily, for the road lay through pot-
houses and Jewish villages and I seldom came across a Christian dwelling. At one
farm I noticed a Russian Christian inn and I was glad to see it. I turned in at it to
spend the night and also to ask for some bread for my journey, for my rusks were
coming to an end. Here I saw the host, an old man with a well-to-do air and who, I
learned, came from the same government that I did—the Orlovsky. Directly I went
into the room, his first question was, "What religion are you?"
I replied that I was a Christian, and pravoslavny.23 "Pravoslavny, indeed," said he
with a laugh. "You people are pravoslavny only in word—in act you are heathen. I
know all about your religion, brother. A learned priest once tempted me and I tried it. I
joined your church and stayed in it for six months. After that I came back to the ways
of our society. To join your church is just a snare. The readers mumble the service all
anyhow, with things missed out and things you can't understand. And the singing is
no better than you hear in a pub. And the people stand all in a huddle, men and
women all mixed up; they talk while the service is going on, turn round and stare
about, walk to and fro, and give you no peace and quiet to say your prayers. What
sort of worship do you call that? It's just a sin! Now, with us how devout the service
is; you can hear what's said, nothing is missed out, the singing is most moving, and
the people stand quietly, the men by themselves, the women by themselves, and
everybody knows what reverence to make and when, as holy church directs. Really
and truly, when you come into a church of ours, you feel you have come to the
worship of God; but in one of yours you can't imagine what you've come to—to
church or to market!"
96:
From all this I saw that the old man was a diehard raskolnik.24 But he spoke so
plausibly, I could not argue with him nor convert him. I just thought to myself that it
will be impossible to convert the old believers to the true church until church services
are put right among us and until the clergy in particular set an example in this. The
raskolnik knows nothing of the inner life; he relies upon externals, and it is about
them that we are careless.
So I wanted to get away from here and had already gone out into the hall when to
my surprise I saw through the open door of a private room a man who did not look
like a Russian; he was lying on a bed and reading a book. He beckoned me and
asked me who I was. I told him.
And then he began, "Listen, dear friend. Won't you agree to look after a sick man,
say for a week, until by God's help I get better? I am a Greek, a monk from Mount
Athos. I'm in Russia to collect alms for my monastery, and on my way back I've fallen
ill, so that I can't walk for the pain in my legs. So I've taken this room here. Don't say
no, servant of God! I'll pay you."
"There is no need whatever to pay me. I will very gladly look after you as best I
can in the name of God." So I stayed with him. I heard a great deal from him about
the things that concern the salvation of our souls. He told me about Athos, the holy
mountain, about the great podvizhniki25 there, and about the many hermits and
anchorites. He had with him a copy of The Philokalia in Greek, and a book by Isaac
the Syrian. We read together and compared the Slavonic translation by Paisy
Velichovsky with the Greek original. He declared that it would be impossible to
translate from Greek more accurately and faithfully than The Philokalia had been
turned into Slavonic by Paisy.
As I noticed that he was always in prayer and versed in the inward prayer of the
heart, and as he spoke Russian perfectly, I questioned him on this matter. He readily
told me a great deal about it, and I listened with care. I even wrote down many things
that he said. Thus, for example, he taught me about the excellence and greatness of
the Jesus prayer in this way: "Even the very form of the Jesus prayer," he said,
"shows what a great prayer it is. It is made up of two parts. In the first part, 'Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God,' it leads our thoughts to the life of Jesus Christ, or, as the
97:
holy Fathers put it, it is the whole gospel in brief. In the second part, 'Have mercy on
me, a sinner,' it faces us with the story of our own helplessness and sinfulness. And it
is to be noted that the desire and petition of a poor, sinful, humble soul could not be
put into words more wise, more clear-cut, more exact than these—'have mercy on
me.' No other form of words would be as satisfying and full as this. For instance, if
one said, 'Forgive me, put away my sins, cleanse my transgressions, blot out my
offenses,' all that would express one petition only—asking to be set free from
punishment, the fear of a fainthearted and listless soul. But to say 'have mercy on
me' means not only the desire for pardon arising from fear, but is the sincere cry of
filial love, which puts its hope in the mercy of God and humbly acknowledges it is too
weak to break its own will and to keep a watchful guard over itself. It is a cry for
mercy—that is, for grace— which will show itself in the gift of strength from God, to
enable us to resist temptation and overcome our sinful inclinations. It is like a
penniless debtor asking his kindly creditor not only to forgive him the debt but also to
pity his extreme poverty and to give him alms—that is what these profound words
'have mercy on me' express. It is like saying, 'Gracious Lord, forgive me my sins and
help me to put myself right; arouse in my soul a strong impulse to follow Thy bidding.
Bestow Thy grace in forgiving my actual sins and in turning my heedless mind, will,
and heart to Thee alone.'"
Upon this I wondered at the wisdom of his words and thanked him for teaching my
sinful soul, and he went on teaching me other wonderful things.
"If you like," said he (and I took him to be something of a scholar, for he said he
had studied at the Athens Academy), "I will go on and tell you about the tone in which
the Jesus prayer is said. I happen to have heard many God-fearing Christian people
say the oral Jesus prayer as the Word of God bids them and according to the
tradition of holy church. They use it so both in their private prayers and in church. If
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