The Prayer of the Heart

The center of St. Nilus of Sora’s whole teaching is the prayer of the heart — the hesychast practice of inner stillness (hesychia) and the continual, attentive invocation of the name of Jesus, by which the mind is gathered out of its dispersion and held in the unceasing remembrance of God. Following Gregory of Sinai and the Athonite fathers, Nilus describes both the inner act of this “mental prayer” and the bodily and psychological disciplines that support it. This file sets out his teaching on the Jesus Prayer and the work of stillness that is the heart of Russian hesychasm.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (hesychast; “Non-Possessors”)

Mental Prayer and Hesychia

For Nilus, as for the whole hesychast tradition, the goal of the monastic life is union with God, and the privileged means to it is mental prayer (umnaia molitva, “prayer of the mind” or “intelligent prayer”) practiced in stillness (hesychia) (Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986). Hesychia is not mere silence or idleness but a profound interior quiet — the stilling of the passions and the wandering of the mind so that the soul can attend wholly to God. The monk withdraws from outward distraction into the cell, calms the body and the senses, and turns the attention inward to the heart, there to occupy the mind with the unceasing remembrance of God (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973). This is the inner counterpart of the outer withdrawal that the skete itself embodies (see The Skete as a Third Way).

The instrument of this remembrance is the Jesus Prayer — the short invocation of the name of the Lord Jesus, repeated continually until it becomes the steady undercurrent of the mind’s life (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973). Nilus, following Gregory of Sinai, teaches the monk to say the prayer of the name — in forms such as “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me” — slowly, attentively, and without ceasing, so that the single occupation of the name crowds out the multitude of distracting thoughts and unites the mind to the one it names (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; on the prayer in the wider tradition, see The Jesus Prayer).

The Mind Gathered into the Heart

The distinctive note of the hesychast method, which Nilus transmits with full understanding, is the gathering of the mind into the heart. In the ordinary state the nous — the mind or spiritual intellect — is scattered, running out among the senses and the objects of the world. The work of prayer is to recall it from this dispersion and to bring it down into the heart, the spiritual center of the person, and there to hold it in attentive union with God through the invocation of the name (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Meyendorff 1974). “Descending with the mind into the heart” is the classic hesychast formula, and Nilus teaches it as Gregory of Sinai had taught it: the attention is to be fixed in the heart, the prayer of the name said there, and the mind kept from straying back out to the thoughts (Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986).

This is what makes Nilus’s prayer a prayer “of the heart” and not merely of the lips or even of the discursive mind. The aim is not the recitation of words but the union of the whole person — mind, heart, attention, love — with God in the continual remembrance of his name (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Fedotov 1966, vol. II; Maloney 1973).

The Bodily Disciplines

Nilus, faithfully transmitting Gregory of Sinai, describes also the bodily and psychosomatic aids to inner prayer that the Athonite hesychasts practiced: a quiet posture, often seated and slightly bowed; the lowering of the head and the fixing of the attention; and the regulation of the breath, the prayer being joined to the rhythm of breathing so that body and mind together are gathered into the single act of invocation (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Meyendorff 1974). These techniques — which were among the points the hesychasts’ fourteenth-century critics had mocked and St. Gregory Palamas had defended (see St. Gregory Palamas) — Nilus presents soberly, as servants of attention and not as ends in themselves (Maloney 1973; Meyendorff 1974).

He is careful, here as everywhere, about measure and discernment. The bodily methods are aids for those who need them, to be used with the guidance of an experienced elder and without strain or excess; the essential thing is the inner attention and the union of the mind with God, to which the bodily disciplines are wholly subordinate (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973). The danger of mistaking the technique for the prayer, or of forcing the body into harmful exertion, Nilus knows and warns against — consistent with his constant insistence on moderation (see The Skete Rule (Ustav)).

Tears, Compunction, and the Gift of Grace

Mental prayer, in Nilus’s teaching as in Symeon the New Theologian’s and Isaac the Syrian’s, is not a self-generated technique that compels God but a discipline that disposes the soul to receive grace (Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II; see The Philokalic Inheritance). Its companions are compunction (penthos) and the gift of tears — the heartfelt sorrow for sin and the tender love of God that soften the heart and open it to grace (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986). The fruit, when God gives it, is a stilling of the passions, a warmth and sweetness in prayer, and a foretaste of the contemplation of God — what the tradition calls the passage from active asceticism (praxis) toward contemplation (theoria) (Maloney 1973; Meyendorff 1974).

Nilus, with the sobriety of a true master, neither promises these gifts as the automatic reward of method nor dwells on extraordinary experiences. He keeps the monk’s attention on the humble, persevering work — the invocation, the watchfulness, the tears, the patience — and leaves the higher gifts to God’s freedom, warning always against the spiritual delusion (prelest) that comes of seeking experiences rather than God (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973). This combination of full hesychast method with humble restraint about its fruits is the mark of his teaching.

The Inner Aim of the Skete

The prayer of the heart is the reason for everything else in Nilus’s project. The poverty of the skete, the solitude of the cell, the small brotherhood, the freedom from estates and administration — all of it exists to make this inner prayer possible (see The Skete on the Sora). And the guarding of the thoughts, treated in the companion file, is the necessary discipline that clears the ground for the prayer of the name to take root (see Guarding the Thoughts). At the center of the whole stands this: a monk in his cell, in stillness, the mind gathered into the heart, calling without ceasing on the name of Jesus — the prayer that Nilus brought from Athos and planted in the Russian north, and that the later Russian revivals would recover as the heart of their own renewal (Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II; see The Modern Rediscovery).

See Also

References

  • Maloney, George A., S.J. Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. (Nilus’s teaching on mental prayer, the Jesus Prayer, the gathering of the mind into the heart, and the bodily disciplines, drawn from Gregory of Sinai.)
  • Goldfrank, David M., trans. and ed. Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings. Cistercian Studies 221. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2008. (Translation of the Ustav on inner prayer and stillness.)
  • Maloney, George A., S.J., trans. Nil Sorsky: The Complete Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 2003. (The Ustav on the prayer of the heart.)
  • Meyendorff, John. St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974. (The hesychast method, the prayer of the heart, and the psychosomatic technique defended by Palamas.)
  • Fedotov, Georges P. The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. (Nilus’s contemplative ideal and the prayer of the heart.)
  • Špidlík, Tomáš. The Spirituality of the Christian East. Trans. Anthony P. Gythiel. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986. (Hesychia, the Jesus Prayer, compunction, and tears in the Eastern tradition.)