by Gabriel Bunge

Read during Lent, 2024. Translated by Michael J. Miller. I really liked the pen and ink illustrations by Francesco Riganti found throughout the text.

This book is not too long, but very rich. I suppose it’s an exhortation to embrace the methods and teachings on prayer of the Desert Fathers. He especially talks about how the contemplative and the “external”/practical aspects of prayer are not two separate things, but two facets of the same thing, like quality and quantity.

Evagrius of Pontus (345–399), or Evagrius Ponticus, or Evagrius the Solitary, is one of the most quoted Desert Fathers in this book, an ecclesiastic who had a promising career in Constantinople who left it to become a monk, first in Jerusalem, then later in Egypt.

I also observe that throughout there is a great emphasis on the actual presence of God. God is present, so our body must act accordingly. https://www.academia.edu/3842296/Augustine_Casiday_Gabriel_Bunge_and_the_study_of_Evagrius_Ponticus http://ldysinger.com/Evagrius/00a_start.htm

Introduction - “Lord, teach us to pray”

• P. 11, If the faith is not practised, it evaporates
  • “Tell me how you pray, and I will tell you what you believe”, one could say, as a variation on lex orandi lex credendi
• P. 12, Origen on man being made in the image and likeness of God
  • The “image of God” means “the image of the Divine Image” (the Son)
  • Man’s destiny is to be both “image and likeness” of God, that is, he is meant to pass from being the “image of God” to being “made like unto” the Son
  • The image of God means having a face, like God does
  • A face is that side of a person that he turns towards another person when entering into a relationship with them
  • 1 Cor xiii, 12: “We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face.”
  • This spiritual “facing” has expression in our bodies, for to face someone is not indifferent, rather of profound, symbolic meaning

Chapter I - “No one after drinking old wine desires new…”

1. “That which was from the beginning”

• P. 19, Tradition (παράδοσις) is preserving fellowship (κοινωνία) with the “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word”, and through them, fellowship with him about whom they testify
  • Tradition is being in fellowship with “that which was from the beginning” (1 John i, 1; Matt. xix, 8)
  • 1 John i: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life: For the life was manifested; and we have seen and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal, which was with the Father, and hath appeared to us: That which we have seen and have heard, we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.”
  • Whoever wishes to have this fellowship can never disregard those who held that fellowship before him
  • Christ’s Church is that Church which is an unbroken, living chain of fellowship with the Apostles
• P. 23, imitating the Fathers means imitating their tried and tested ways, not absolutely everything they did
  • Anyone who imitates in every detail the anchoritic life will be the laughing-stock of demons
  • There is an important difference between personal charism and tradition
  • Fellowship implies not unthinking adherence but something living
• P. 25, man, though bound by space and time, when he enters into living fellowship with “that which was from the beginning, he enters into the mystery of the Son, who is not constrained by space and time, “is the same yesterday, today, and for ever”, who is “in the beginning”
  • This is our source of continuity and identity in a world of constant flux

2. “Spirituality” and “the spiritual life”

• P. 28, the word “spiritual” can have many meanings for us today, but in Scripture and the Church Fathers it (πνευματικός) refers unambiguously to the Person of the Holy Spirit
  • The Holy Spirit is that “other Paraclete” whom the Son, our true Paraclete (παράκλητος, advocate, intercessor) before the Father, sent
  • The spiritual man (πνευματικός) is he who is taught by the Holy Spirit and thus able to judge spiritual things (τὰ πνευματικά) spiritually (πνευματικῶς)
  • This is in contrast to the natural man (ψυχικός), the unaided human soul, who cannot receive or understand the things of the Spirit, God’s wisdom remains folly to him
  • “Spiritual” in St. Paul and elsewhere means “endowed with the Spirit”, wrought or inspired by the Holy Spirit, and is by no means casual
• P. 30, prayer is often called spiritual (πνευματική), the quintessence of the spiritual life
  • We would not even know how to pray as we ought unless the Holy Spirit visited us in our unknowing
  • Evagrius, De Oratione, “The Holy Spirit, who ‘bears with us in our weakness’ (Rom. viii, 26), visits us even when we are still impure. And when he finds the intellect simply praying to him and full of love for the truth, he comes upon it and destroys the entire phalanx of thoughts or imaginations that besiege it and urges it on to an ardent longing for spiritual prayers.”

3. “Action” and “contemplation”

• P. 34, Psalm 86: “The Lord loveth the gates of Sion above all the tabernacles of Jacob.”
  • Evagrius’ Scholia in Psalmos: “The Lord loves both the πρακτικός [actio] and also the θεωρητικός [contemplatio]. More than the former, nevertheless, he loves the θεωρητικός. For Jacob [who symbolizes the practical man] means ‘takes by the heel’, whereas Sion [which here symbolizes the contemplative intellect] is translated as ‘observation post’.”

• P. 37, the πρακτικός is to the θεωρητικός as Jacob is to Israel
  • They are one and the same person but at different stages
  • Jacob, the πρακτικός, after he has wrestled with the angel and seen God face to face, becomes Israel, the θεωρητικός, the seer
  • Similarly Jacob works for seven years to win the unloved Lia, the active and laborious, then works seven more years to win the beloved Rachel, the contemplative
• The “theoretical” manner of prayer, contemplation of the triune God and his creation, is also called θεολογική and φυσική (knowledge about the natures of things)
• The “practical” manner of prayer, ἡ πρακτική, is a spiritual method of prayer that cleanses the passionate part of the soul
  • Keeping the commandments
  • Asceticism in the broad sense
  • Practices to restore the soul to health, to ἀπάθεια (freedom from sicknesses or passions, πάθαι, that estrange it from God)
  • P. 41, these external aspects of prayer, and the practical way of prayer in general, are bound up with difficulties, just as was Jacob’s ascetical life which led him to eventually win the beloved Rachel
• P. 39, θεωρία (contemplatio) is the natural “horizon” of πρᾶξις, which leads step by step to the former, its goal

4. “Psalmody”—“Prayer”—“Meditation”

• P. 44, “To be able to make the entire Psalter one’s own and to transform it into genuinely Christian prayer—including those unpopular passages—requires zeal in practising ‘meditation’.”
  • The Psalmist and the Fathers understood meditation, μελέτη, to be a constant repetition of verses or passages from Scripture sotto voce (in an undertone), with the goal of grasping their hidden spiritual sense
• P. 46, When meditating on the Bible, reflection on the histories of the Hebrew people, or on one’s own destiny in which this history is repeated, should never be an end in itself
  • Meditation should always lead us to remembrance of God, and thus to prayer in the strict sense
• P. 48, the Psalms and Scripture in general should be accepted in their entirety
  • Spiritualizing the Old Testament must not be done through toned-down translations, and certainly not censoring out problematic verses
  • Only true and inspired meditation is able to spiritualize the Scriptures

Chapter II - Places and Times

• P. 51, the human being consists of a soul and a body, and the body is tied up with space and time
  • Therefore human prayer also occurs in space and time
  • Choosing a suitable place and the most appropriate hours of the day are by no means inessential to what the Fathers call “true prayer”

1. “When you pray, go into your room”

• P. 55, distraction and vainglory are two dangers to take into consideration during public prayer
  • They are not the ultimate reason why solitude should be sought for “true prayer”
  • Things occur when one is alone with God that by their very nature are not meant for the eyes and ears of others
  • Arsenius 27: “A brother went to the cell of Abba Arsenios at Scetis. He looked through the window and then saw the elder as if completely on fire. The brother, though was worthy of seeing this. And when he knocked, the elder came out and saw the brother quite alarmed and said to him: ‘Have you been knocking for long? Have you perhaps seen something here?’ And he replied, ‘No.’ And after speaking with him, he sent him away.”
  • Other Fathers also speak of this “incandescent prayer”
    • occurs principally at night when the visible world withdraws into darkness
    • Typically occurs in the barren desert or high mountain, places that separate us from everything, and when these are not accessible, the hidden room

2. “Look toward the east, O Jerusalem!”

• P. 60, Basil the Great, De Spiritu Sancto XXVII: “Therefore we all look to the east during prayer, but few know that we are in search of our original home, Paradise, which God planted in the Garden of Eden, to the east.”
  • This is the first and most important reason why Christians consider the east more honourable than the other directions
  • We have been driven out, but placed “over against” (Gen. iii, 24) Paradise, and we live remembering it, keeping it in view
• P. 62, The second reason is soteriological
  • St. John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa IV
    • Christ is the Orient (Zach. iii, 8; Luke i, 78), we were cast out to the west of Paradise, the Tabernacle of Moses had the veil and propitiatory to the east, the tribe of Juda pitched tents to the east, the temple of Solomon was to the east, the Lord was crucified facing west, he ascended to the east, the Son of Man’s coming shall be from the east to the west “as lightning” (Matt. xxiv, 27)
    • We have a visible or sensitive and an invisible or intellectual nature, and thus our worship to God is also twofold
    • When the Christian worships God in spirit, the body must adopt a fitting expression of that prayer, and turn to the Lord also
    • Facing east if facing the crucified Christ, and also the risen and ascended Christ
• P. 69, According to Clement of Alexandria, most pagan temples faced west
  • According to Origen, this was a legacy of the tower of Babel, people no longer spoke the original “language of the orient”, and converting to Christ was a turning away from the idols in the west and facing east
    • The divine Pedagogue in action
  • Israel was alone in preserving this remembrance of the orient, hence why they became the “portion of the Lord” (Deut. xxxii, 9)
• P. 71, orientation in prayer actually preserves you from flight into non-essentials
  • The Muslim knows why he prays towards Mecca, regardless of the architecture of the room he’s in
  • The Zen disciple knows he does not need any orientation, since there is no “other”
  • The Christian knows that his sanctification is solely in union with God while maintaining his “otherness”
    • Similar to the unconfused unity of God himself which maintains three distinct persons
    • The Christian is reminded of this when he faces east both spiritually and physically towards the Lord

3. “Seven times a day I praise Thee”

• P. 72, practice makes perfect with prayer
  • It is not enough to play a few measures on the piano now and then in order to become a good pianist
  • A “practising” Christian in the mind of the Fathers is not one who merely fulfills his Sunday obligation
  • A practising Christian is one who day after day, his whole life long, prays to God many times a day, that is practises his faith regularly
• P. 76, that practice of prayer at regular scheduled times of day and night has the purpose of building bridges that help our inconstant mind ford the river of time
  • Practice gives the mind the dexterity and facility of movement that every craftsman needs
• P. 77, the regular practice of prayer is beset by many difficulties
  • The most prominent is a certain weariness or repugnance, which can afflict us even when there is ample leisure time for prayer
  • To combat this you should exercise your will to force yourself to at least observe all the hours of prayer, even if in a reduced way
  • Joseph Hazzaya (Joseph the Visionary): “If this battle against you increases in force, my Brother, and stops your mouth and does not allow you to recite the office, not even in the way that I have described above, then force yourself to get on your feet and walk up and down in your cell, while saluting the Cross and making prostrations before it, and our Lord in his mercy will allow [this battle] to pass.”
  • When words seem to have lost their meaning, the only thing left is the physical gesture

4. “Blessed is he who is awake!”

• P. 79, Biblical men and the Fathers slept certainly, but the night-time was nonetheless the preferred time for prayer
• 1 Thess. v: “But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. For all you are the children of light, and children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep, as others do; but let us watch, and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that are drunk, are drunk in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober.”
• P. 83, watching and praying is more than just asceticism
  • The eschatological “waiting for the Lord” changes the character of time
  • It furnishes time with a fixed goal, and thus all of life is tending towards that goal
  • We are called not to “live for today”, but to hold in mind the uncertainty of the “day of the Lord” and therefore wisely make “the most of time” (Eph. v)

Chapter III - Manners of Praying

1. “Prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears”

• P. 97, Tears and prayer were inseparable for the Fathers, were by no means considered sentimentality
  • The Fathers had a very realistic view of the fallen human condition
  • The primordial state of mankind was joyful but now we live in a “vale of tears”
  • Tears are in fact necessary for fallen man
• P. 99, during the first stage of spiritual life, the principle concern is “repentance”, “conversion,”, “a change of heart”, “μετάνοια”
  • Evagrius speaks of a characteristic internal “wildness” (ἀγριότης), or spiritual “insensitivity” (ἀναισθησία) and dullness which is overcome only by tears of spiritual “sorrow” (πένθος)
  • De Oratione 5: “Pray first for the gift of tears, so as to soften through contrition the wildness that dwells in your soul, s that by ‘confessing your transgressions to the Lord’ (Psalm xxxi, 5), you may obtain forgiveness from him.”
• P. 101, tears must not become an end in themselves
  • This is actually a temptation for any ascetical practice, for it to become autonomous, and end in itself
  • De Oratione 8: “If it seems to you that you no longer need tears on account of sins as you pray, then take heed of how far you have strayed from God, whereas you ought to be with him constantly, and then you will shed tears even more bitterly.”

2. “Pray constantly”

• P. 105, our Lord commands us to “pray at all times” (Luke xviii, 1), and St. Paul exhorts us to “pray constantly” or “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. v, 17)
  • Some of the Church Fathers understood this to mean we should pray with great frequency, but the monastic Fathers, in contrast, understood these words absolutely literally
  • Evagrius, Praktikos 49: “It has not been prescribed for us to work, to watch, and to fast constantly, yet it has been commanded that we ‘pray constantly’. This is because the first-mentioned activities, which heal the passionate part of the soul, require for their exercise the body also, which owing to its characteristic weakness would not be equal to these efforts. Prayer, on the other hand, makes the intellect strong and pure for the battle, since the intellect usually prays even without this body and fights against the demons on behalf of all the powers of the soul.”
• P. 107, the author points out a distinction made by the Fathers between “prayer” (προσευχή) and “supplication” (δέησις)
  • In a particular dialogue cited, the Our Father is given as an example of προσευχή, recited aloud
  • The same dialogue does not give an example of δέησις, but does hint that it occurs somehow “in the spirit” (Eph. vi, 18)
• In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Byzantine monks developed the hesychastic methods of prayer
  • Many are acquainted with these today via The Way of the Pilgrim and the Philokalia
  • The method involves sitting on a low stool in a bent-over posture, controlling the breathing, etc.
  • These methods are meant for “hesychasts”, that is, monks who live in absolute seclusion, directed by an experienced teacher; they are accessible to very few
  • The practices of the early Fathers however are much simpler and accessible to a greater number
• P. 108, the Pachomian monks did not even set aside their handiwork during common prayer, since they found it focussed the mind, rather than distracting it
• Barsanuphius and John’s method of praying without ceasing
  • Recite memorized psalms while doing handiwork
  • At the end of each psalm, pray sitting, “O God, have mercy on me, a miserable man.”
  • When troubled by thoughts, pray, “O God, you see my affliction, come to my aid.”
  • After three rows of the net you are making, stand to pray, genuflect, stand again, and say the above prayer
  • Essentially, interrupting one’s work at short intervals to pray and make prostrations
  • The mind is not idle during the work, but is meditating on memorized psalms
  • The interrupting prayers are short and biblical, either verbatim or the Word of God transformed into personal prayer
  • “Now when you stand in prayer, you should ask to be freed from the ‘old man’ (Eph. iv, 22; Col. iii, 9), or say the Our Father, or both together, and then sit down to your handwork.”
• P. 110, one can easily start from these simple principles of the Desert Fathers and create one’s own personal “method”, taking into account the circumstances of one’s own life and work
  • The prayer life of the Desert Fathers was not something alongside the rest of their life
  • They worked to make a living like any other men, and also rested for six hours of the night
  • Their prayer life was identical to their daily life, permeating it completely
  • Eventually the spirit “is at prayer throughout the whole day”
  • External disturbances, conversations with people, etc., no longer make any difference
  • Occasional or continual retreats into silence can be helpful, but either way, this method eventually, through God’s grace, brings the spirit into a state of praying without ceasing
  • Here the mind stands fast, does not wander idly, and turns its gaze towards God

3. “Lord, have mercy on me!”

• P. 113, readers of The Way of the Pilgrim are often surprised that the Jesus Prayer, the centrepiece of the hesychastic tradition, is penitential
  • “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
  • But if you’ve read Chapter III.1 (of this book, not The Way of the Pilgrim) on tears of metanoia you will not be surprised by this any longer
• The tradition of the one-word prayers (ἡ μονολόγιστος εὐχή), regularly saying prayers consisting of short invocations, goes back to the beginning of the Desert Tradition
  • St. Augustine testifies that this Egyptian tradition was known outside of Egypt (Epistola CXXX), he compares the ejaculations to “spear thrusts” (“quodam modo jaculatas”)
• P. 115, St. John Cassian, contemporary of Evagrius, learned from his Egyptian master the one-word prayer of Psalm lxix, 2: “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me,” which is suitable for many situations in life
• P. 117, one-word prayers vary in form, but they have a common spirit: cries for help of the man who is assailed
  • Praying not like the Pharisee but like the tax collector
  • The spirit of metanoia
  • The sermons of the Apostles preserved in Acts (e.g. ii, iii, v, and xvii) almost all end with a call to conversion or metanoia
  • This metanoia is not a single act however, humility is not attained once and for all
  • A lifetime is not sufficient to learn this spirit of humility from Christ, which he himself tells us is his distinguishing characteristic, Matt. xi, 29: “Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls.”
  • The practice of repeating audibly or in one’s heart this “supplication” (cf. Ch. III, 2, p. 107) in the spirit of the remorseful tax collector is the best means of vigilantly maintaining one’s desire for metanoia
• P. 120, contrast our Lord’s injunction to “pray at all times” (Luke xviii, 1) with his warnings against the pagan practices of “rattling on” and “heaping up empty phrases” (Matt. vi, 7)
  • We should understand that there is nothing inherently wrong with repetition, since the “practical” way of prayer requires practice and therefore repetition
  • At the same time, mere quantity does not make prayer pleasing to God, it need its corresponding quality, its Christian content
  • “In the little ejaculatory prayers, which anyone can say effortlessly and in all circumstances, which even in the presence of others can be said ‘mentally’, and also in the Our Father when it is recited audibly and devoutly ‘in one’s room’, the Fathers have found a way of combining ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’, that is, of praying ‘at all times’ and ‘unceasingly’ without falling into mindless prattle.”

4. “Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud”

• P. 125, the Fathers taught that even the “prayer of the heart” should be recited sotto voce, in an undertone, that is audibly, at least in the beginning until it has become united with one’s heartbeat, since as with reading in an undertone, this is an excellent way of bringing distractions under control
  • Passing rosary beads through one’s fingers has a similar effect of focussing the attention
• P. 128, ultimately prayer does not depend on whether it is said aloud or silently, whether it is together with others or alone by ourselves
  • It depends on whether we pray “in a routine way”, or “with feeling”
  • Evagrius, De Oratione, 43, citing Romans viii, 26: “The feeling (αἴσθησις) that accompanies prayer is [a certain] seriousness, combined with reverence, contrition, and grief of soul in acknowledging one’s failings ‘with loud sighs’.”
• P. 129,. Another reason for praying aloud, is that demons can hear it
  • Barsanuphius and John, Epistola 711, “Even if you are not conscious [of the meaning], the demons are still conscious of it, and they hear and tremble! Therefore do not stop reciting psalms and praying, and by and by your hardness of heart will be alleviated with God’s help.”
  • Regarding the “problematic” psalms that get censored in modern liturgy
    • the Fathers knew that “the just man is not cursing but praying” (Evagrius, In Psalmos 108)
    • They spiritualized these texts, relating them to the great enemies of mankind, the demons

5. “A time to keep silence and a time to speak”

• P. 131, As we’ve seen the demons hear our bodily voice, but not our thoughts
  • It makes sense to conceal from demons the content of our intimate conversations with God
  • St. John Cassian, Collationes, IX: “Therefore one should pray in the most profound silence, no only so as to avoid distracting the brothers around us by our whispering and calling, or disturbing the sentiments of those who are at prayer, but also so that the purpose of our petition might remain hidden from our enemies themselves.”
• P. 133, St. Clement of Alexandria defines prayer as a conversation (ὁμιλία) with God
  • Evagrius: “a conversation of the intellect with God without any mediation whatsoever”
  • The “via negativa” of prayer
    • Our words, thoughts, and mental images (νοήματα) stand in the way of this pure and immediate conversation with God
    • These are not only passionate and sinful thoughts, but all thoughts about created things, or even thoughts about God himself, no matter how sublime
    • In order to “pray in truth” according to Evagrius a man must cast aside all such mental images in a process of “withdrawal”
    • This withdrawal is a step-by-step process, corresponding to ascent in the spiritual life
    • It is not a technique that you can learn, such as we might find in non-Christian methods of “meditation”
    • Man does his share, but the real transcendence is not within his power
    • God inclines himself to man in absolute freedom

Chapter IV - Prayer Gestures

• P. 139, Western prayer today is largely devoid of gestures, but there was once a common heritage in both east and west of such prayer gestures
  • Joseph (Youssef) Bousnaya: “For without prostrations, bows, stretching out the hands, and genuflections, the Office of the brothers will be routine, cold, and shallow, as will be the prayers said during it.”
  • Such things could have been written in the west at one time, cf. the “Nine Ways of Prayer” of St. Dominic
    • In an illustrated manuscript of this we see deep bows, prostrations (venia), genuflections, standing, praying with hands outstretched in the form of a cross, meditation while sitting, in each case facing a crucifix on the eastern cell wall

1. “Rise and pray”

• P. 141, not only prayer but the life in general of the west is very sedentary
  • the hallmark of Biblical and Patristic prayer however is standing, and standing at the cost of some effort
  • Mark xi, 25 does not say “cum orabitis”, but “cum stabitis ad orandum”
  • Arsenius: “It was also said [of Abba Arsenius] that on Saturday evening, as the Lord’s day began, he let the sun set behind him and stretched out his hands to heaven in prayer, until the sun shone again in his face. Then he would sit down.”
• P. 145, Origen, De Oratione, XXXI: there must be a perfect correspondence between the condition of the soul during prayer and the posture of the body that we assume
  • Like sacramental actions, the gestures of prayer must also be meaningful
  • The body must visibly reproduce what is taking place in the soul
• Standing is a sign of reverence, reverence of creature before Creator
  • An inferior always stands to greet a superior and remains standing as long as the superior is present
• P. 146, Joseph Busnaya: without the effort of standing our prayers never attain their proper fervour
• Regarding prayer gestures, tradition, and inculturation
  • In the course of salvation history, once a suitable prayer gesture has been formed, then it is harmful for an individual’s interior condition to forgo using it
  • There are always limits to inculturation
  • The Fathers were always ready to adopt existing customs or Christianize them, but they were not willing to renounce things that had entered into salvation history by revelation
  • “For this reason, when it comes to a conflict, biblical tradition becomes a fearless critique of culture as well.”
  • Tertullian, De Oratione, 16, no validity to the heathen custom of sitting after prayer: “If it shows disrespect to sit down in the presence of someone greatly feared and honoured, how much more is such conduct quite irreligious in the presence of the living God, when considering the angel of prayer is still standing there (Tob. xii, 15; 1 Cor. xi, 10), unless we are remonstrating with God because the prayer has wearied us!”

2. “Let the lifting up of my hands be before thee as an evening sacrifice”

• P. 151, the lifting up of the hands in prayer, even in the Old Testament, is a substitute for material sacrifices
  • “It ‘ascends ike incense’ to God, and ‘the lifting up of my hands’ is to hi ‘as an evening sacrifice.’” (Ps. cxl, 2)
• P. 153, the lifting up of hands was even associated with prayer by the pagans
  • E.g. Aeacus, son of Zeus, a model of meekness and piety, caused a shower of rain to fall upon the arid land by lifting up his “pure hands”
• P. 154, Tertullian, De Oratione, 29: “Indeed, all the angels pray, too. Every sort of creature prays: the cattle and the wild animals pray (Ps. cxlviii). They, too, bend their knee, and when they come out of their stalls or their lairs, they do not look up to heaven with an idle mouth, but rather make the breath move, each in its own way. The birds, when they come out of their nests, set out in the direction of heaven, and instead of hands they spread out their wings in the form of a cross and say something that might seem to be a prayer.”
  • The raising of the hands in prayer is mysteriously prefigured in creation

3. “To thee I lift up my eyes, O thou who art enthroned in the heavens”

• P. 157, The sky is only a symbol of God’s dwelling place, since in reality he is enthroned “above the heavens of the heavens” (Ps. lvi, 6, 12, etc.)
  • When we pray we direct our bodily eyes in the same direction of our spiritual eyes, “ever towards the Lord (Ps. xxiv, 15), just as the eyes of servants are fixed on the hands of their master and the eyes of a maid are on the hands of her mistress (Ps. cxxii, 2)
• Our Lord too frequently raised his eyes toward heaven in prayer
  • In his case, the gesture has greater depths, since it is the expression of the utterly unique relationship between the Son and the Father
  • It is only in Christ that we Christians actually dare to lift our eyes up to heaven, just as in him we dare to say, “Our Father who art in heaven…”
• P. 159, lifting up the eyes to the heavens, the symbolic dwelling place of God, makes the body into an icon, that is, a representation of our striving towards the spiritual world
• Facing east, and raising the eyes heavenwards are equivalent gestures, they are both turning towards the Lord
  • P. 160, Many prayer gestures if done in public could arouse curiosity, or admiratio, in others, but raising the eyes heavenwards is an exception to this, it is more discreet, recognizable only to the initiated

5. “Adore the Lord in his holy court”

• P. 173, the gesture of falling down in worship, or “making a metania” (prostratio, μετάνοια, or “metany”)
  • The gesture of the most profound humility
  • It underscores the plea for forgiveness in prayer, hence μετάνοια, remorse, penance, conversion
  • At least one of the Fathers has claimed that Satan caused Adam to hide himself after the Fall in Paradise so that he would not make a metany when he met God and thus be forgiven
  • P. 174, Listed among the “Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic”
    • Retained among Dominicans well into modern times as the venia, a way of humbling oneself before one’s confrères
    • https://web.archive.org/web/20231002012458/https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2008/07/dominican-venia-and-kissing-scapular.html
    • “The Venia is made (Caeremoniale (1869), n. 791), ‘by extending the whole body on the ground, not on the stomach but on the right side, with the left leg on top of the right.’”
  • In the Byzantine church there is a distinction between greater and lesser metanies
    • Greater: hands, knees, and forehead all touch the ground
    • Lesser: only the right hand touches the ground, the same as the profunda of Latin monks
• P. 177, Isaac of Nineveh on the power of metanies:
  • When one experiences a period of internal darkness when one cannot bring oneself to even utter a single prayer, the dark night of the soul, a condition very familiar to modern man
  • Isaac recommends performing repeated metanies as a refuge from this condition, even if it is without feeling and one still feels cold inside
  • Nothing frightens the devil more than this gesture of profound obeisance, and he will use all his wiles to prevent us making is (as he did to Adam, p. 173)
• P. 178, repeated metanies, even when the prayer is just “external”, are just as effective as the gift of tears at breaking up the interior “wildness” and insensitivity that kills the spiritual life (Ch. III.1, p. 100)

6. “… let him take up his cross daily”

• P. 181, the Sign of the Cross identifies the Christian as a Christian, as one whose salvation only comes from Christ’s death on the Cross, into which he has been drawn mysteriously by Baptism

Conclusion

• P. 187, As was said in the introduction, the faith is evaporating because it is not “practised”
  • Joseph Busnaya: where the externals are of faith and prayer are lacking, the internals become cold and shallow too, and eventually disappear
  • In our society, praxis/discipline and faith/belief are regarded as two independent dimensions, which can be detached without any problems
    • E.g. “Zen is not a belief system but a discipline” (R. Resch)
• It is better to think of this twofold manner of prayer, the contemplative (θεωρητικός) and the practical (πρακτικός), as intimately related, like “quality” and “quantity”, or in Biblical terms the Spirit/meaning (πνεῦμα/νοῦς) and the letter
  • The contemplative and practical manners of prayer affect one another!
  • The practical manner of prayer is the form assumed by the contemplative manner, and has no separate existence
  • For Origen, the gestures of Christian prayer are the image of the “special condition of the soul” during the prayer offered in the body
  • According to Evagrius, the “method” of prayer is not a “technique”, but rather the sensual-perceptible side of the “spiritual method” of prayer
  • The “practices” discussed in this book are the formation of Biblical-Christian prayer, as it was realized in salvation history
  • The “practices” are not time-bound externals, but the “earthen vessels” in which the imperishable “treasure” has come down to us