Canon
... Try to fulfill the rule, reading the Psalter orally, the established canons and the rosary rule, and all this with great humility and self-reproach, not as if doing good, but doing what should be done, and I do not recommend raising the mind to heaven; As I personally told you and wrote repeatedly, I repeat now: this is sheer delight (Venerable Macarius of Optina).
Choose for yourself a rule that corresponds to your strengths. What the Lord said about the Sabbath, that it is for man, and not man for it (Mark 2:27), can and should be applied to all pious deeds, as well as to the prayer rule. The prayer rule is for the person, and not the person for the rule: it should contribute to a person’s achievement of spiritual success, and not serve as an inconvenient burden (onerous duty), crushing bodily strength and confusing the soul. Moreover, it should not serve as a reason for proud and harmful conceit, for harmful condemnation and humiliation of others.
Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov).
According to the following Psalter
According to the Followed Psalter, before beginning the rule, seven short prayers are read:
- God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
- God, cleanse my sins and have mercy on me.
- Lord, who created me, have mercy.
- Without number of sins, Lord, forgive me.
- My Lady, Most Holy Theotokos, save me, a sinner.
- My holy Guardian Angel, save me from all evil.
- Saint (apostle, martyr, reverend father “name”) pray to God for me.
Next: Compline, canons (Canons and akathists, which are included in the rule, in monasteries are read at Compline, and kathismas, prostrations and prayers are performed in the cell), four kathismas with troparions and prayers, prophetic songs, 300 prostrations, 600 Prayers of Jesus and 100 to the Mother of God . Novice and weak monks were allowed to read three kathismas, then perform 100 bows, 300 Jesus Prayers and 100 to the Mother of God. In some ancient monasteries this rule was followed in full, except for the reading of nine prophetic songs according to the Psalter.
The Psalter also indicates that there is a practice of reading 12 psalms during the rule of the Order.
Notes
- In almost all monasteries, centurions were performed separately from the canons of Compline, and if they were performed in church, then some time after Compline or after the evening meal.
- Where the canons were not performed at Compline or who could not attend Compline, the canons were performed in the cell.
- It is better to begin the cell rule according to the Psalter.
- It is advisable to complete the centurions as shown above, according to the Sarov and Yuryevsky charters: “Glory and now,” “Hallelujah,” and so on, which was done in many monasteries.
- In the Riga Charter, “Through the prayers of the saints, our fathers” is placed after “Our Father.” This is the opening prayer of the nuns, instead of the priestly exclamation: “Blessed is our God.”
February 10, 2014 Source: Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church 2007
Report within the framework of the Regional stage of the XXIV International Christmas educational readings, direction “Ancient monastic traditions in modern conditions” (Ekaterinburg Metropolis, Monastery of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers in the Ganina Yama tract, November 5, 2015)
A monk’s personal prayer rules are a very difficult and even painful topic, since the circumstances that modern man faces are very complex and seem insurmountable to many. But has God really placed us in such a world and at such a time when “working out our salvation” is more difficult than in another place and at another time? Of course we don't think so. The Lord gives His gifts to every era, every place, every civilization, helping in the building of the Church and the salvation of people. However, we often become embarrassed because of the difficulties we encounter in fulfilling the most important duty of monastic life (as well as secular life), that is, when performing our prayer rule. How to perform it?
I myself find it very difficult to speak on this subject which you will discuss at your meeting, since my spiritual life is very meager, and I must confess that I myself am still struggling and experiencing many difficulties. I ask you to be lenient with my little experience and pray for me so that the Lord will forgive me.
We all remember the Gospel story about the ministry of Martha and Mary. The Lord praised Mary for sitting at His feet and listening to Him. Mary is the image of people who devoted themselves to prayer and contemplation, people who have chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from them [1]. Blessed, therefore, are those who spend several hours every night in prayer - they choose the best part, and it will no longer be taken away from them!
But what about the others? What about the Marthas, who must take care of a lot of work and who do not have free time or energy to sit at the feet of the Lord? Has the Lord abandoned or condemned them, Who Himself commanded us to serve each other?
It seems to me that bliss is not promised to the one who carries out this or that ministry - the ministry of Martha or Mary. Bliss is promised to everyone who keeps peace in their hearts, who does not care or fuss about many things [2], because there is only one thing that is needed [3]: inner peace. Both Martha and Mary can and must acquire it equally.
Let us now briefly consider some specific problems associated with the monastic prayer rule.
1. Let's start with the immutable truth that the prayer rule is necessary in monastic life. The rule is the breathing of a monk, this is his daily meeting with the Lord and Teacher, Who Himself comes to visit him. The rule is the obligatory service of a monk, called to intercede with his prayer for the whole world.
Therefore, a monk must regularly fulfill his rule under the guidance and blessing of his spiritual father. One of the first conditions in order to achieve something in prayer is the regularity of fulfilling the rule. The rule should always be of the same duration and occur at the same time, as far as possible. And if, due to some circumstances, the monk is not able to fulfill his rule, then he must return to his normal mode as soon as possible at the first opportunity.
Now let's look at what difficulties there are in prayer and how they can be overcome.
In general, these are generally known things. All patristic works about prayer and spiritual life tell about this, and this literature is familiar to all monastics. You just need to refer to it as often as possible, read it and re-read it. And we must firmly know that it is possible to perform prayer in our time, and that this is the norm to which each of us should strive to the best of our ability. This is our goal, this is our struggle, this is our participation in the work of Christ for the salvation of the world. And we cannot shirk this ministry without violating our calling.
Of course, first of all, we need to talk about such a temptation as absent-mindedness, about thoughts that bother us during prayer like annoying insects in order to distract our spirit from the divine presence. The means of combating them are known: despise all thoughts and rush deep into your heart, away from them. Thoughts are like flashing pictures, a movie, constantly generated by our mind, which can hardly be stopped. But our heart is located deeper, our deepest will is rooted there and there our spirit can dwell in the presence of God.
We know that some ascetics advise replacing bad thoughts with holy and pious thoughts. Personally, I don’t really believe in this and have never seen any effective results from it. And the Holy Fathers say that most often the struggle at the level of thoughts is useless. I think that prayer is performed at the level of the heart, that is, at the level of our deepest will. What do we do when we are listening to an interesting program on the radio, and children are making noise around us and disturbing us? We strain our ears, move closer to the receiver, sharpen our attention. I think that the same thing happens in prayer: we despise thoughts and temptations, do not pay attention to them, as if they were some annoying insects, and try to pay more attention to the presence of God in our heart.
In addition, in the life of a praying person, even the most zealous one who strictly fulfills his rule, periods of dryness and lack of taste for “spiritual things” are inevitable, periods of despondency when he does not see success in himself or feels (perhaps even rightly) that he is moving backwards. In this case, he, on the one hand, must realize that thoughts of despondency are ordinary devilish attacks aimed at turning him away from prayer, making him believe that he will never achieve anything in prayer. On the other hand, we must know that it is not our efforts and endeavors that give us God. Our efforts are necessary, our struggle is the only thing we can truly bring to God. But only the Lord knows which way to lead us. And He gives Himself to us when He wants and how He wants. Our “feelings” (that is, the spiritual feelings we think we are experiencing) are not an indication of our actual relationship with God.
The prayer rule is also hampered by two destructive passions, regarding which we must be sober in every possible way. The first is pride, or vanity. Considering our progress, satisfaction with the state in which we come during prayer - all this immediately leads to a fall. The prayer immediately disappears. If a person considers himself successful, thinks that he is on the right path, considers his successes, then he will lose prayer and, with God’s permission, will fall into the strongest temptations. The Lord allows this in order to give a person the opportunity to return to living communication with God. Another passion, opposite to the first, but no less dangerous, is despondency arising from excessive self-reproach. Both states, if a person is immersed in them, cause spiritual lethargy, aversion to prayer, cooling towards the rule, and as a result, this can lead to abandonment of prayer.
Finally, if we want to be able to fulfill our rule, it is absolutely necessary throughout the day to struggle to become aware of our passions and to control them. Thus, by struggling with passions, we prepare for our rule long ago. If during the day we allow our passions to operate freely, then it is obvious that during prayer, when we try to find silence in our hearts, passions and thoughts will come like a whirlwind, and there is a great danger that they will completely take possession of us!
2. Until now we have talked about making the rule in normal conditions of monastic life, when monks and nuns have the happiness of living like the Gospel Mary. But it often happens (and perhaps in our days even more often than before) that external conditions, peculiarities of upbringing, the need to serve others and the Church hinder the embodiment of this ideal.
In fact, now many monasteries have to be restored or rebuilt, often with meager funds and the strength of a small brotherhood. And in well-maintained monasteries there are always monks who bear especially heavy loads, perform complex, responsible obediences that they cannot leave. Some monks devote all their strength to various cares and concerns. This manifests love for neighbors and complete self-denial for the sake of the brothers or sisters of the monastery or for the sake of parishioners and pilgrims, who, of course, expect hospitality, attention, advice and who force the monks to bear burdens that are heavy, all-consuming and exhausting... There is no need to multiply examples, everyone knows , what responsibilities and hard work monasteries are forced to bear. Of course, all these burdens seem to crucify a monk who wants to regularly perform the cell rule. So what to do?
We all know: in order to spend part of the night in prayer, fulfilling his rule, a monk or nun should not be exhausted from fatigue! Otherwise, they will inevitably fall asleep or doze off. But can everyone in the monastery desire or demand peace for themselves? Can an abbot or abbess not get tired? Then he or she needs to stop talking with his spiritual children, stop accepting thoughts from them, stop receiving visitors who knock on the monastery doors. Can a cook or a housekeeper not get tired? Then the first one needs to leave the kitchen completely, and the second one should not go anywhere, not conduct any business, not supervise any work, and so on. But who will do it for them? Isn't their obedience an expression of love for their brethren? After all, Martha’s service was also an expression of her love for Christ, an expression of her reverent veneration of the Lord. Of course, we must try to avoid overwork, but this is not always possible and not for everyone... But we must at least be aware that a monk who is overly tired in obedience cannot pray at night as he should! It seems to me that to solve this problem we need to adhere to several principles.
We must humble ourselves before God with complete trust in Him, that is, humbly accept the circumstances in which we find ourselves. And at the same time firmly believe that we are constantly in the presence of God. And we need, as soon as the opportunity arises, to return, as to some kind of ideal, to the regular implementation of the rule. It is necessary to carry out the rule every time there is even the slightest opportunity for this, and to carry it out as completely as circumstances allow. God never demands the impossible from us, He asks us to do what we can and always try to maintain inner peace.
Humility means that I recognize that a prayer rule is necessary, and at the same time I trust that God sees my difficulties, and if I fail to fulfill the rule, He can find other ways to create a living connection between Him and by me.
Complete trust means conscious faith. The Prophet Ezra spoke about it this way: Lord God of Israel... here we are before Your face in our iniquities (that is, mistakes) [4]. This complete trust consists in always living as if under the gaze of God, doing everything you undertake in the name of the Lord, constantly praying to Him, placing all your thoughts, mistakes, and temptations before Him. Complete trust in God is also expressed in realizing that the Lord, having become incarnate, became who we are, and during Communion we partake of His life. For our sake He overcame human nature, and we live in Him. And through Him we participate in the lives of all our neighbors, acquaintances and strangers, living and deceased. In a word, trust in God is a community of life with Christ, which a monk can feel throughout the whole day: fulfilling his obedience, being in temptation, experiencing consolation and joy. Trust in God can be expressed in our heartfelt aspiration to Him without words or in the utterance of short sayings from the psalms or other passages of Scripture. It can be expressed in thanking God, or in prayerfully asking for forgiveness, or in calling on God’s help. Trust in God is expressed both in acceptance of the will of God or the will of man, and in meek patience during trials - external or internal, and so on. In short, to trust God and humble yourself before Him means to constantly and consciously live in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Of course, this daily experience of standing before God does not replace a personal prayer rule. On the contrary, he prepares a person so that he can perform the cell rule, feeling the presence of God. However, when it is impossible to complete the rule completely, let us remember that God is not limited in His actions, and you can always find a way to be in conscious communication with Him.
3. Finally, I want to consider another important question: how to prepare for a personal prayer rule?
The greatest help in fulfilling the cell rule is preparation for it the night before, when we read the lives of the saints. This reading not only gives us a certain mood, but also introduces us into living communion with the saints. The saints convey to us their heartfelt passion, help us to strive with all our hearts towards the Lord, proclaim to us what joy love for God brings when we give our lives to Him. In addition, reading the lives of the saints, we feel how time disappears, how it becomes no longer powerful over us. The saints become so close to us (not due to some emotions, but due to the feeling of a common life in Christ) that they really become our “contemporaries” and are co-present with us throughout the day, as well as during our prayer rule. They are awake with us and protect us.
Reading the patristic works also helps us understand the laws of spiritual life; it introduces us to an atmosphere of prayer, so that it becomes easier for us to get up at night and perform our vigil, to fulfill our prayer calling. Through reading, we “start the engine” of our prayer, so to speak, and the Holy Spirit does the rest. “Reasonable”, that is, watered by the Holy Spirit, reading of the Old and New Testaments is also very important. We must perceive this reading as the living and active word of God spoken personally to us. Then it will arouse in us a desire to respond to the love of God, it will teach us how God works, it will reveal to us who God is, how He makes Himself available, what He expects from us, what His nature is. All this is immediate preparation for prayer. This preparation gives us strength to overcome the inevitable difficulties during the rule and helps us to consistently fulfill our rule or to resume it if, through negligence or necessity, we have stopped fulfilling it.
An obstacle to fulfilling the prayer rule is very often the feeling that we do not know how to pray! Who knows how to pray? Anyone who thinks that he knows how to pray does not really pray, because he looks at himself and not at God. This is also one of the temptations. Let us remember that our job is to have an aspiration for prayer, and not only during the rule. We can only, so to speak, listen to God, entrust ourselves to Him, live in His presence to the best of our ability. The Lord does the rest; it is He who shows us the path of prayer. There is no need to rush, there is no need to demand anything, but you just need to leave all thoughts and descend into the heart, where God remains in silence, hidden but present. To know and feel this is a gift of God’s grace, which He certainly gives to those who seek it and do not think about whether they know how to pray or not. Think about it: we’re not asking whether we can breathe!
In conclusion, I would like to draw a distinction between the personal, inner prayer of a monk and the prayer rule consisting of certain prayer books written by the Holy Fathers. We can read these prayers from a book or by heart. We need this rule in order for us to enter a “prayerful state.” During this rule, we surrender ourselves to God, express our desire to follow Him, as He wants, for what He wants and when He wants. This is the good part that will not be taken away from us, this is the only thing we need, which Christ told Martha about.
But our main aspiration should extend to personal, inner prayer, to dialogue with the Lord in the depths of our hearts, where we are united in Christ with all humanity. And this is a prayer that is possible always and everywhere. We need a prayer rule, consisting of prayers, in order to prepare us for personal inner prayer. And having begun our rule by reading certain prayers, it is natural for us to end it with the Jesus Prayer of the rosary, done in inner silence or sometimes in inner struggle, but still in full confidence that God hears our prayer and that He will answer. We do not know in what form He will answer, but He will definitely answer, for God does not leave any prayer unanswered. —————————————- [1] See Lk. 10, 42. [2] See Lk. 10, 41. [3] See Lk. 10, 42. [4] See 1 Rides. 9, 15.
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