Question
What prayer rule do you recommend?
Fr. Arsenie
I will tell you this - and if you don’t do it, it’s not my responsibility anymore! Every moment can be a time, and every sigh can be a prayer! That is all!
I was asked by the Metropolitan of Germany, whom I respect very much and whom I’ve known for a long time…(Interviewer: Metropolitan Serafim!) - Serafim - whom I have known since he was very young. He asked me to send him two-three words and a photo for publication in their magazine Deisis. And they published what I wrote: “Love! Love much, love beautifully, love the wound and the one who made the wound. A moment can be a time, and a sigh can be a prayer.”
This is prayer: to always be present. God doesn’t need your “rules, rules, and nothing in the heart” (note: this rhymes in Romanian). He needs your continuous presence.
You know many such cases, and I find it hard to talk about such an example which is very well known, because I am afraid to fall into banalities. But for the sake of truth and for my great desire for all of us to benefit from a word, I will tell it to you: a Bishop was traveling with his entourage in foreign lands, and they met three poor people who didn’t know any prayers. But they were saying constantly: “You are Three (note: meaning the Holy Trinity) and we are three, save us!” and they were happy. The Bishop asked them if they knew the Lord’s Prayer, and they said they didn’t. So the Bishop taught them the prayer and when he was satisfied that they learned it, he departed with his retinue by ship. The three people left behind started to say the Lord’s Prayer, but they couldn’t remember some words. And they started to run after the ship, walking on water: “Wait, wait, we forgot the prayer!”. And when the Bishop saw this, he told them to go back and do what they used to do their own way.
And so: we need to be in a state of continuous feeling. Humans are guilty and can’t call themselves human anymore when they lose their permanent relationship with God. We have to remember that He created us, He gave us riches, He made us beautiful, He can even make us into gods above the angels! Even more, as a holy father was saying, we can compete with the heavenly powers in our askesis, in our work of deifying ourselves more and more. This is God’s gift to us - and we don’t acknowledge it, we don’t think of Him except from time to time, we wait for a certain time during the day to fulfill our prayer rule. I have nothing against a prayer rule - but if you don’t have permanence in your prayer, you lose very much.
This is what interests me: for us to be God’s people at every moment, even with a simple startle. And please believe me that I give this advice as a canon rule to my spiritual children. A state of permanence. That is all.
Translated from Romanian. Original recording: