Pure Prayer in Early Christianity
This post includes selections from the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, and an orthodox anthology, and the Praktikos—a guide to ascetic life—compiled by Christian mystic Evagrius Ponticus.¹ Ponticus is from the tradition of the Desert Elders beginning in the 3rd century.²
This section also includes additional selections from Prayer in St. Isaac of Ninevah in the 7th century,³ Brother Lawrence in the 17th Century,⁴ and Thomas Merton in the 20th century who continued the Christian mystic tradition.
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
— Psalm 96:9 JPS
AX 7051
Enter thou into thy chambers
and shut thy doors.
— Isaiah 26:20 JPS
AX 4763
When thou prayest enter into thy closet,
and when thou hast shut thy door,
pray to thy [Father-Mother]
which is in secret;
and thy [Father-Mother]
which seeth in secret
shall reward thee openly.⁵
— Matthew 6:06 KJV
Unto you it is given to know
the mystery of the kingdom of God.
— Mark 4:11 KJV
AX 8047
The hour cometh, and now is,
when the true worshippers shall worship
the Father in spirit and in truth.
— John 4:23 KJV
AX 8126
Seek ye first the kingdom of God,
and God’s righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you.
— Matthew 6:33 KJV
AX 8048
The one who truly prays
is the one who
has seen the place of God.
This is what it means to be a…mystic.
Not only do these two activities and states
coincide at their highest states,
they also coincide every step of the way.⁶
— Desert Elder
Growth in pure prayer
leads to deepened regard
for the dignity of one’s fellow being.
Theologically, the idea is founded
on the view of every person
as the image of God.⁷
— Desert Elder
By true prayer one becomes
the equal of an angel.
By one’s contemplation one also becomes
a temple of God.
Finally, it elevates one
to the knowledge of
the very Trinity itself.⁸
— Desert Elder
[Pure] prayer is the rejection
[the transcendence] of concepts.⁹
— Desert Elder
[Pure prayer is] the ladder to the Kingdom.
Enter eagerly into the treasure house
that lies within you,
and so you will see the treasure house of heaven:
for the two are the same,
and there is but one single entry to them both.
The ladder that leads to the Kingdom
is hidden within you,
and is found in your own soul.
Dive into yourself
and in your soul you will discover
the rungs by which to ascend.¹⁰
— St. Isaac the Syrian
Happy is the one
who becomes free of all matter
and is stripped of all at the time of prayer.¹¹
— Desert Elder
Happy is the one
who attains to complete unconsciousness
of all sense experience at the time of prayer.¹²
— Desert Elder
Prayer is the laying aside—
[the transcendence]—of thoughts.¹³
— Desert Elder
True wisdom is gazing at God.
Gazing at God is silence of the thoughts.
Stillness of mind is tranquility
which comes from discernment.¹⁴
— St. Isaac the Syrian
We pray with words
until the words are cut off
and we are left in a state of wonder.¹⁵
— St. Isaac the Syrian
Luminous meditation on God
is one of the highest stages of prayer:
from thence, there is only one step
to mystical wonder,
a state when the intellect
is totally withdrawn from this world
and entirely captivated by God.¹⁶
— St. Isaac the Syrian
Spiritual prayer,
which begins beyond the borders of pure prayer,
is the descent of mind
to a state of peace and stillness:
it is synonymous with teoryia-contemplation…
the vision of God…
In this state, the soul rushes forward
and becomes as one drunken in awestruck wonder
of one’s continual solicitude for God.¹⁷
— St. Isaac the Syrian
From here onwards one finds
the senses continuously stilled
and the thoughts bound fast
with the bond of wonder;
one is continually filled
with a vision replete with the praise
that takes place without the tongue’s movement.
Sometimes, again, while prayer remains for its part,
the intellect is taken away from it
as if into heaven, and tears fall like fountains of waters,
involuntarily soaking the whole face...¹⁸
— St. Isaac the Syrian
Very often, one will not be allowed even to pray:
this in truth is the state of cessation—above prayer—
when one remains continually in amazement
at God’s work of creation,
like people who are crazed by wine...¹⁹
— St. Isaac the Syrian
Not only do the lips
cease from the flow of prayer and become still,
but the heart too dries up from all thoughts,
due to the amazement that alights upon it...
Blessed is the person who has entered this door
in the experience of his own soul,
for all the power of ink, letters and phrases
is too feeble to indicate the delight of this mystery.²⁰
— St. Isaac the Syrian
The mystical experience…
is of a very active and dynamic nature.
The ultimate goal of any prayer
is in fact this spiritual state,
when prayer ceases and gives place
to what Isaac [of Nineveh] calls pure prayer,
meditation, wonder or inebriation.
In this state, a person’s intellect is ravished,
and one remains silent
before the Mystery
that surpasses all human understanding.²¹
— St. Isaac the Syrian
When everything that can be taken
from us is removed,
all that remains is God’s being,
and we are that.
That is the practice
of the presence of God.²²
— Brother Lawrence
A door opens in the center of our being
and we seem to fall through it
into immense depths which,
although they are infinite,
are all accessible to us;
all eternity seems to have become ours
in this one placid and breathless contact.
God touches us with a touch
that is emptiness and empties us....
Our mind swims in the air
of an understanding,
a reality that is dark
and serene and includes in itself everything.
Nothing more is desired....
You seem to be the same person
and you are the same person
that you have always been:
in fact, you are more yourself
than you have ever been before....
You feel as if you were at last fully born....
Now you have come out into your element.
And yet now you have become nothing.
You have sunk to the center
of your own poverty,
and there you have felt the doors fly open
into infinite freedom, into a wealth
which is perfect because none of it is yours
and yet it all belongs to you.
And now you are free to [consciously] go in and out of infinity.²³
— Thomas Merton
See also Pure Prayer: An Overview
Waves of the Ocean
[1] The Desert Fathers, Mysticism: Evagrius Ponticus and John Cassian, a web-based bibliography on the emergence of early Christian cosmology • https://desertfathers.blogspot.com/2014/02/mysticism-evagrius-ponticus-and-john.html • 01.23.2022
[2] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers 11.03.2024
[3] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_the_Syrian 11.03.2024
[4] John J. Canon, Heroes of the Faith: Brother Lawrence, https://canonjjohn.com/2022/10/08/heroes-of-the-faith-brother-lawrence/ 11.03.2024
[5] [Father-Mother] replaces “Father”
[6] Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos & Chapters On Prayer, (Cistercian Publications, 1972), p. xcii • [one] replaces “man” AX 7052
[7] Ibid., p. 75 • [being] replaces “man,” [every person] replaces “man”
[8] Ibid., p. 48 • [one] replaces “a monk” and “he” and “him”
[9] Ibid., p. 48 • [transcendence] replaces “rejection”
[10] Igumen Chariton of Valamo, The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, (Faber and Faber Ltd, 1966), p. 164 AX 3547
[11] Ibid. p. 75 • [one] replaces “spirit”
[12] Ibid., p. 75 • [one] replaces “spirit,” [sense] replaces “sensible”
[13] Evagrios [Evagrius ] Ponticus, On Prayer 61, in the Philokalia, http://truthisone.org/docs/majorpaths/ceasingthoughts/nothoughts-christianity.htm • 05.18.2002
[14] St. Isaac the Syrian in the Sebastian Brock translation of Homily 64 • http://truthisone.org/docs/majorpaths/ceasingthoughts/nothoughts-christianity.htm • 05.18.2002
[15] St. Isaac the Syrian recorded by Evagrios [Evagrius ]of Ponticus, On Prayer 61 • http://truthisone.org/docs/majorpaths/ceasingthoughts/nothoughts-christianity.htm • 05.18.2002 • for further study: https://saintsophiadc.org/prayers-st-isaac-syrian/• 01.12.2022 • see also the section entitled, The Highest Stages of Prayer, https://jbburnett.com/resources/alfeyev_prayer-in-isaac-syr.pdf • 01.12.2022 AX 7060
[16] Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, Prayer in St Isaac of Nineveh Paper, delivered at the Conference on Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church, Melbourne, Australia, August 1995. Based on Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian (Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2000). • https://jbburnett.com/resources/alfeyev_prayer-in-isaac-syr.pdf • 05.22.2022
[17] Ibid., p. 15 [one’s] replaces “her”
[18] Ibid., p. 16
[19] Ibid. [one] replaces “he”
[20] Ibid., p. 16-17
[21] Ibid., p. 17
[22] Rupert Spira, The Heart of Prayer, (Sahaja Publications, 2023), p. 5
[23] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, (New Directions, 1961), p. 228 • with thanks to http://www.monasticdialog.org/bulletins/72/soring1.htm 10.08.2024
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