Degrees of Prayer

There are various degrees of prayer. The first degree is bodily pryaer, consisting for the most part in reading, in standing, and in making prostrations. In all this there must needs be patience, labour, and sweat; for the attention runs away, the heart feels nothing and has no desire to pray. Yet in spite of this, give yourself a moderate rule and keep to it. Such is active prayer.

The second degree is prayer with attention: the mind becomes accustomed to collecting itself in the hour of prayer, and prays consciously throughout, without distraction. The mind is focused upon written words to the point of speaking them as if they were its own.

The third degree is prayer of feeling: the heart is warmed by concentration so that what hitherto has only been thought now becomes feeling. Where first it was a contrite phrase now it is contrition itself; and what was once a petition in words is transformed into a sensation of entire necessity. Whoever has passed thourgh action and thought to true feeling, will pray without words, for God is God of the heart. So that the end of apprenticeship in prayer can only be said to come when in our prayers we move only from feeling to feeling. In this state reading may cease, as well as deliberate thought; let there be only a dwelling in feeling with specific marks of prayer.

When the feeling of prayer reaches the point where it becomes continuous, then spiritual prayer may be said to begin. This is the gift of the Holy Spirit praying for us, the last degree of prayer which our minds can grasp.

But there is, they say, yet another kind of prayer which cannot be comprehended by our mind, and which goes beyond the limits of consciousness: on this read St. Isaac the Syrian.


St. Theophan the Recluse
What is Prayer? The Test of Everything
page 52, The Art of Prayer - An Orthodox Anthology
Compiled by Igumen Chariton of Valamo
Translated by E. Kadloubovsky and E. M. Palmer
1966 (sixth printing 1985)
faber and faber - London and New York