Prayer Without Ceasing

Extract

Sine intermissione orate (I Thess, v, 17)

The following notes have been suggested to the writer by the reading of Récita sincères d’un pélerin à son père spirituel, a French translation of a MS. found on Mount Athos and published at Kazan in 1882. They are set down here as they may be not without interest to others. Of this book Professor Arseniev writes (Mysticism and the Eastern Church): The experience of the old Oriental Fathers, those guides to the ascetic mystical life, as they are collected in the Philokalia, spring into fresh life in that remarkable monument of Russian folk mysticism of the middle of the nineteenth century… The Candid Narrative of a Pilgrim to his Confessor… is by a man of great capacity for intense inward prayer. This pilgrim is possessed by the sweetness of inward prayer and thereby his life is transfigured.