Ebook: The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology

This is a collection of texts on prayer, drawn from Greek and Russian sources. The spiritual teaching of the Orthodox Church appears here in its classic and traditional form, but expressed in unusually direct and vivid language.

The Art of Prayer is concerned in particular with the most frequently used and best loved of all Orthodox prayers — the Jesus Prayer. It deals also with the general question ‘What is prayer?,’ with the different degrees of prayer from ordinary oral prayer to unceasing prayer of the heart, with the dangers of illusion and discouragement, and the need for seclusion and inner peace.

Father Chariton, ‘Igumen’ or Abbot of the Russian monastery of Valamo, took his texts chiefly from the letters of Bishop Theophan the Recluse, one of the greatest spiritual guides in nineteenth-century Russia. But he used many other writers, Greek as well as Russian, and concluded with the teaching given to monks of his own community of Valamo.