The Pilgrim and the Jesus Prayer

The Way of a Pilgrim is the tale of an anonymous Russian wanderer who, hearing the command to “pray without ceasing,” sets out to learn how — and is taught the Jesus Prayer by a starets and by the Dobrotolyubie, which he carries in his knapsack. First published at Kazan in 1884, it became the single most effective popularizer of the Philokalic tradition, carrying the Jesus Prayer to millions of readers in Russia and, in the twentieth century, across the world.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox

The Story

The Way of a Pilgrim (Russian Otkrovennye rasskazy strannika dukhovnomu svoemu ottsu, “Candid Narratives of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father”) is a first-person narrative in the form of four “tales” told by a nameless strannik — a wandering pilgrim, a recognizable type in nineteenth-century Russia, a man without home or property who journeys from shrine to shrine (on the work and its title, see the standard editions, e.g. The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way, trans. R. M. French, and The Pilgrim’s Tale, ed. Aleksei Pentkovsky, trans. T. Allan Smith, Classics of Western Spirituality, Paulist Press, 1999, Introduction). The pilgrim, a Russian peasant with a withered arm, hears read in church the apostolic command, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and is seized by the question of how such unceasing prayer is possible. He wanders in search of an answer until he finds a starets — a spiritual elder — who teaches him the Jesus Prayer and gives him the Dobrotolyubie to read.

Under the elder’s direction the pilgrim begins to recite the Jesus Prayer — “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” — first a set number of times each day, then thousands of times, until the prayer becomes continuous and, in the book’s famous phrase, begins to “say itself” in his heart, so that he prays even in his sleep and the prayer becomes a source of unceasing joy (the narrative of the pilgrim’s growth in the prayer, The Way of a Pilgrim, tales 1–2; see The Jesus Prayer and the Prayer of the Heart). The remaining tales follow his wanderings across Russia, his encounters with a range of characters to whom he explains the prayer, and his continual return to the Dobrotolyubie, which he reads and re-reads as his companion and guide.

The Dobrotolyubie in the Knapsack

The Philokalia is not merely mentioned in The Way of a Pilgrim; it is the pilgrim’s constant companion and the book’s second protagonist. The Dobrotolyubie he carries — St. Theophan the Recluse’s Russian version being the form available to the book’s readers (see Theophan the Recluse and the Russian Dobrotolyubie) — is his manual, his authority, and his treasure; he buys it for two rubles, keeps it in his knapsack, sleeps with it, and quotes it continually (the role of the Dobrotolyubie in the narrative, The Way of a Pilgrim, throughout; Pentkovsky, Introduction to The Pilgrim’s Tale, 1999). The book dramatizes, in a single vivid figure, exactly the relationship the Philokalia presupposes: a text of the neptic fathers, a living elder to interpret it, and a disciple who puts it into practice. In doing so it made the Philokalia imaginable and desirable to readers who would never open the folio itself.

The pilgrim’s use of the Dobrotolyubie also reflects the book’s popular, and at points simplified, presentation of the tradition. He is taught to recite the prayer a very large and increasing number of times a day, and he speaks of the physical aids — the coordination with the breath — in a way that later teachers, wary of technique, treated with more caution (the pilgrim’s counting and breathing practice, The Way of a Pilgrim, tale 1; cf. the reservations of Theophan and Ignatius, Ignatius Brianchaninov and the Neptic Revival). The book is a work of popular edification, not a technical manual, and its charm and its limitations both flow from that.

Why It Spread

The Way of a Pilgrim achieved what no edition of the Philokalia itself could: it made the Jesus Prayer beloved. Its reasons for spreading are not hard to see. It is short, warm, and narrative where the Philokalia is long, austere, and aphoristic; it puts the highest teaching of the tradition into the mouth and life of a simple, appealing figure with whom any reader can identify; and it presents unceasing prayer not as a remote monastic feat but as something a poor wanderer, and by implication anyone, might receive as a gift (Pentkovsky, Introduction to The Pilgrim’s Tale, 1999; Ware, “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia,” in Bingaman and Nassif, eds., The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality, Oxford University Press, 2012, on the Pilgrim as popularizer). First printed at Kazan in 1884 (see The Question of Authorship for the complicated textual history behind that date), it ran through many Russian editions before the Revolution.

In the twentieth century its reach became global. Translated into English, French, German, and many other languages, it became one of the most widely read works of Orthodox spirituality in the West, introducing countless non-Orthodox readers to the Jesus Prayer; it appears, famously, in J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey (1961), through which a whole American generation first heard of the prayer (on the Western reception, Ware, “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia,” 2012; see The Philokalic Renaissance). For a great many people in the modern world, Orthodox and not, The Way of a Pilgrim was the doorway to the Philokalia and the Jesus Prayer — the popular carrier through which an ancient monastic tradition became a living option for ordinary Christians.

A Message and Its Cautions

The book’s central message is simply the possibility and the joy of unceasing prayer — that the apostolic command to “pray without ceasing” is not an impossible ideal but an invitation, fulfilled through the humble, persistent invocation of the Name of Jesus until the prayer descends into the heart and prays itself (the message of the whole work; see The Jesus Prayer and the Prayer of the Heart). Read within the tradition, this message is true and precious. But the book’s very accessibility carries a risk the tradition itself flags: it can suggest that the prayer may be taken up from a book, by counting and technique, apart from the discipline of repentance, the keeping of the commandments, and the guidance of an elder that the neptic fathers insist upon (the standard cautions; see Reading the Philokalia). The pilgrim himself, it should be noted, has a starets and lives a life of poverty and repentance; the book does not actually teach a technique-only prayer. Read whole and in context, it points its readers not away from the tradition but into it — which is exactly why it has served, for well over a century, as the most effective introduction to the Philokalia ever written.

See Also

References

  • The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way. Trans. R. M. French. London: SPCK, 1954 (and later editions). (The standard older English translation; the narrative, the Jesus Prayer, and the Dobrotolyubie.)
  • The Pilgrim’s Tale. Ed. and intro. Aleksei Pentkovsky; trans. T. Allan Smith. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1999. (The critical edition and the scholarly introduction on the text, its date, and its sources.)
  • Ware, Kallistos. “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia.” In The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality, ed. Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif, 9–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. (The Pilgrim as popularizer of the Philokalia and the Jesus Prayer; the Western reception.)
  • Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (“Pray without ceasing”) — the verse that sets the pilgrim on his way.