A Gloss on Word For the Way for 12 May 2016
Today’s Word is on the labor of prayer, and on not waiting for prayer.
You should not wait until you are cleansed of wandering thoughts before you desire to pray. If you only begin on prayer when you see that your mind has become perfect and raised above all recollection of the world, then you will never pray.
Saint Isaac admonishes us not to wait to pray, because if we wait til we are prepared, then we will never pray. I take this as an admonition against spiritual procrastination, and link it to another saying of his, about those who plan but never execute. (i.e. Word for the Way of 20 May 2016). Both of them can be leveled at me, more so the latter quotation, but I am guilty of wanting to wait until everything is “just so” before beginning something, and then never getting it done. I’m also good at doubting my ability to do something, whether it’s write a story, complete a job interview, or especially to pray in the way that the Church prays, (when I should be praying in the way that I pray, though it may happen sometimes that it aligns with the way the Church prays).
I see echoes of Paul’s exhortations in this quote by Isaac. We can’t afford to wait, for time is short. and the days are running out. We can’t afford to be caught up in rearranging the deck chairs on Titanic while we forget about the ice berg in front of us.
He also reminds us that our prayer is a work in progress, and rightly so, for we are a work in progress until the day we breathe our last. Prayer is progress in communion with God, and even when we get to Heaven, and don’t have to worry about wandering thoughts, and “recollections of the world” we will still be growing in prayer, as our God is infinite and we are finite. In fact, it is in and through the struggle with prayer that the wandering thoughts are conquered and the recollections of the world are vanquished.
He says “You should not wait until you are cleansed of wandering thoughts before you desire to pray.” “Cleansed” here most probably means purified, or forgiven through the rite of reconciliation i.e. Confession ; “wandering thoughts” -both for the man or woman in the world and for the hermit or monastic in their cell- include anything that tears us away from prayer and recollection of God. But wandering thoughts strike us anywhere and anytime, that is why we should always be vigilant , and rely not on our own strength for this vigilance, but on the strength of the Holy Spirit, which comes when we manifest our weakness before God -via Word for the Way for 11 May 2016. “If you only begin on prayer when you see that your mind has become perfect and raised above all recollection of the world, then you will never pray.” Harsh words from a lover of compassion. But this very harshness masks a greater compassion, for he knows if we don’t begin now we won’t ever begin and if we don’t begin we risk losing what we already have, the reasonable sacrifice of “our selves our souls and bodies”, and he does not want anyone to loose this precious gift of communion with God.
118 (Keph. IV.77) The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian / tr Sebastian Brock. Oxford: SLG Press. 1997. ix, 20p. [Fifth Impression 2011]