Rev. Fr. John Parker: Hello, our friends in the world. This is Fr. John Parker, the dean at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, and I’m joined today by my dear friend, Archimandrite Sergius, Fr. Sergius, who is the abbot of St. Tikhon’s Monastery just across the road. Fr. Sergius, hello.

Archimandrite Sergius (Bowyer): Hello, Father. How are you doing?

Fr. John: Doing okay. How are you today?

Fr. Sergius: Good, good.

Fr. John: This is the strangest thing for both of us. Fr. Sergius and I spend a fair amount of time together, especially in the church services, but under these coronavirus restrictions, I called Indiana today in order to talk to Fr. Sergius across the street. How is the brotherhood these days, Fr. Sergius?

Fr. Sergius: Well, thank God everybody here is well. Can you hear me okay?

Fr. John: I can hear you perfectly, thank you.

Fr. Sergius: Okay, good. Thank God. It’s been a struggle. We are on lockdown. We’re quarantined because we have a lot of members in our community that either are immune-compromised or are older, so we have to be very careful with everybody. So we’ve been in quarantined since, about, I don’t know, March 17, something like that. We’ve locked everything down, and the monastery is officially closed at least for the time being. We are still serving all the services and doing our life of prayer and repentance, and the normal work that happens inside the monastery is still going on. It’s just we’re not visible or accessible to the public right now.

Fr. John: I can say a few things, Fr. Sergius. First, I am so very grateful to know that the services continue, around the clock really, over there at the monastery, and it means the world to me, it means the world to the seminary, it means the world to the world, honestly, if I could speak on behalf of the world, to know that you are over there praying for us by name and celebrating the holy services, the Presanctifieds and so forth. So first I want to thank you very much for continuing that labor for us and for the world.

Fr. Sergius: Oh, you’re welcome. I mean, I have in my pocket I have a list of hundreds, if not a thousand, names that I’ve been commemorating as the services are going by. Just yesterday we had quite a heavy liturgical day. It was about seven hours, give or take. Maybe a little more than seven and a half hours of services yesterday, but we are remembering everybody who not only is at the seminary and at the monastery, but all those who send in commemorations. People can send in requests for prayers at the liturgies at sttikhonsmonastery.org. You can see that button there to click if you’d like to submit names. That is a service that we’ve always provided, but now it just seems a lot more appropriate and important, especially since some people, many people can’t get to church right now. So we’re continuing to pray on behalf of the Church.

I’ve been at the monastery twenty years, this monastery for twenty years, and it’s always been a privilege to do that, to offer those names and to pray for the people. I’ve seen so many miracles that have happened just constantly for people that are sick, people that are unwell, people that have difficulties in certain situations in their life, when they’re offered at this altar which is consecrated by St. Raphael, prayed at by all of those saints, and has had daily services for 115 years. I’ve seen just the words “from your mouth to God’s ear,” when I give the names to the priest at the altar.

Fr. John: Did we lose you, Fr. Sergius? Oh my. My friends, we’ve found ourselves in an unsurprising situation where, in the middle of the Great Fast, where the devil is prowling around, looking for someone to devour, we’ve lost Fr. Sergius on our connection for a moment. I’ll go ahead and just say a few words while we’re retrieving Fr. Sergius from across the street. You’re listening today to a special episode of The Spirit of Saint Tikhon’s. Fr. Sergius, are you back?

Fr. Sergius: Yeah, I’m here.

Fr. John: Very good. I was just telling our listeners that we’re on a special Spirit of Saint Tikhon’s today.

Fr. Sergius: Can you hear me?

Fr. John: I can hear you, yep. We’re live, and you are more than welcome to call in today to ask a question of Fr. Sergius or of me, although Fr. Sergius is the guest of honor and the expert today. If you wish to call in, you could dial 1-855-AF-RADIO; it’s 855-237-2346. We have our first call of the day, and so we’d like to welcome our caller. Please go ahead.

Mr. James Bell: Hello, Fr. Sergius. This is James Bell, living in Lexington, Tennessee. I don’t know if you remember me.

Fr. Sergius: Hi, James. I remember you. How are you doing? Nice to hear from you.

Mr. Bell: My question is: Yesterday would have been my mother’s 87th birthday, even though she’s not Orthodox, and [I want to know] what your recommendations are when something like that comes about during a time of this pandemic where we’re isolated at home. What do you suggest that we do when… You know, yesterday was kind of a struggle, remembering my mother who passed away in 2017.

Fr. Sergius: I’m sorry.

Mr. Bell: This would kind of be, I guess, for a lot of people out there who’ve experienced death in their family. My wife lost her dad last year. Also, yesterday would have been her mother and father’s 59th wedding anniversary. That’s all.

Fr. Sergius: What’s your mom’s name?

Mr. Bell: My mother’s name was Arlene, and my father-in-law was named Jerry.

Fr. John: Arlene and Jerry.

Fr. Sergius: Well, we’ll put them on the prayer list. We’ll remember them. The most important thing is for you to remember them and to do whatever good things you can in their memory, whether it’s giving five dollars at your local church or to somebody who’s poor, or doing good in their name, and it’ll be a blessing for them and for you as well. The most important thing we do is pray and do good things in their remembrance. When we do that, the Lord helps them and helps us and hears us and answers our prayers. May God grant them rest.

Mr. Bell: Thank you, Fr. Sergius.

Fr. Sergius: Thanks. Nice to talk to you, James. Good to hear from you.

Fr. John: Thank you for calling in. Fr. Sergius, today the theme of our time together in a more formal fashion is to talk about the liturgy of the heart. We here on the seminary side of the road are like many parish churches all around. We have basically ourselves no access to a church service. I myself haven’t been inside a church building since the 17th of March, and find ourselves without the Divine Liturgy on the weekends, without the Presanctified Liturgies on the weekdays, and as a priest I could say—I’m sure it’s in the hearts of our listeners among the laity as well—sometimes we don’t know what to do with ourselves in this most strange of situations. You’ve given a couple of reflections recently called the Liturgy of the Heart. Maybe summarize that for us and let’s have a conversation about the liturgy of the heart.

Fr. Sergius: Sure. Well, I think that it’s important to realize that the inner life is just as real as the outer life. We tend to take for granted that we live in a world that we look outside and we can see all these things, but the reality is that if we look inside we can also see a lot as well, and that’s where the Fathers of the Church, the patristic consensus, it tells us about all the different passions and vices and about the process of thoughts and imagination. There’s so much going on inside that it’s quite astounding when you look at not only the writings of the Fathers and look at the inner life, but just to kind of be able to be open to that fact, that just as there’s an outer life and an outer world, there’s also an inner world. And exploring that inner world is something that behooves every Orthodox Christian to take seriously and to try to put some effort into, because basically, in one sense, it’s an examination of our own heart that prepares us for the world to come, and some of the saints get so far in the inner life that they begin to taste of that world to come today, like Fr. Sophrony—now Saint Sophrony—he saw the uncreated light many times in prayer, but it was only in the deep recesses of his own heart, where he stood before God and oftentime weeping for his sins and the sins of the world that that light dawned.

So we might not necessarily see that light, but to know that that light exists and to know that there is an inner world and that we are, in a way, obligated to explore that inner world, because really it’s the arena of the heart… I mean, if anything, the heart is the door to the world to come. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a shared space. As Orthodox Christians, Christ dwells in the heart, and in baptism he has imparted an amount of grace to us which is actually himself. So he lives in the heart now in a way that’s hidden, and we need to work to uncover that kingdom which is within, as the Lord speaks about in the Gospel.

Fr. John: One of the challenging aspects of what you’ve just said—I’ll just speak very personally—is we live—I live—in a very busy world. I mean, it’s probably no different at the seminar than it is anyplace else. I go from one thing to the next. I go from teaching a class to a meeting, I go from the meeting to a class, I go from a class to the airport or whatever. Just like those of us out in the working world, let’s just say, you have to be still a little bit in order to go there, don’t you?

Fr. Sergius: Yeah.

Fr. John: And here we are.

Fr. Sergius: That is the Psalmist’s own words: “Be still and know that I am God.” And the way to the knowledge of God is not through the head where we think about God and we think about how God is love or maybe think about how God is this or that, which all may be true, but the reality is that it’s only in that stillness in the heart that I will actually be able to experience God as he is in the energies of God. No imagination, no expectation, but rather a commitment to kind of meet the Lord in that place and to do it on a very consistent daily level, daily attempt, whether in the early morning or in the late evening, but definitely taking a specific time where we’re very consistent about learning how to listen to God.

And we’re not expecting God to say anything audibly to us, but really it’s in that silence that we find the peace and the presence of God. He’s already there waiting, and so that stillness which the Fathers call hesychia was defended so ardently by St. Gregory Palamas. And St. Gregory is commemorated every second Sunday of Lent, that time when the Church returns to prayer and to fasting and so forth, because it’s so paramount and so important in our Church to remember that there’s two ways: there’s the way of the head and there’s the way of the heart. And if we go the way of the heart, it doesn’t necessarily dispense with the way of the head; it just puts it into its proper context, and it helps us to kind of have a balance point, because the head and the thoughts can be so unruly, they can almost take over and make us mad, crazy almost.

So the task for us is to find the heart, to learn how to abide in the heart, and a lot of times it’s only through a bit of pain and suffering that the heart is opened and that we can actually speak to God from that place when we have our difficulties, when we have our dire straits that we might be in, because we all face those at different times. That’s really when we speak to God the clearest and the loudest and when we can also hear and have that sense of— It’s so important to approach prayer as a dialogue and being able to listen in prayer, so that maybe as we use the Jesus prayer, we use it as a tool to listen with rather than to speak with. It’s a tool to kind of hold onto, and we use it as we sit before God. We are speaking to the Lord, but we are also listening, just like we would if someone else was present, like a friend or a spouse.

Fr. John: Yeah. Father, I appreciate those words very much. I want to remind our listeners that you could call in at 855-237-2346 if you’d like to ask Fr. Sergius a question. I can’t help but think, Fr. Sergius, that—let’s see, the 18th was a Wednesday, 17th, 16th, 15th—the 15th of March was a Sunday. That Sunday, the 15th of March was the second Sunday…

Fr. Sergius: It was St. Gregory Palamas.

Fr. John: Yeah, that’s the whole point. We had his Sunday, and then the vast majority of us went into enforced silence. I mean, not technical silence, but in our homes. You’re a man of great practicality. I want to ask… I’m going to ask you a question and then put it on pause for a moment, because it looks like we have a call. But the question I’ll ask after the call is: Maybe give us a practical way to learn how to be still. For the moment, however, let’s see if there’s a call on the line. Maybe not. I see three here, nevertheless… Go for it, Fr. Sergius! You’re a man of great practical spirituality. How… Teach me to be still. Give me some practical lessons.

Fr. Sergius: Well, you know, it’s not something that we really accomplish. A lot of times in the arena of the world, we accomplish things, we build things. So it’s actually kind of a kenosis; it’s an emptying. It’s a being able to allow God some space, because the essence of humility is giving all the space to the other. So if I was to speak with you, and I really wanted to listen to you, I would put all my attention into what you were saying, and my body would kind of have that sense of expectation and attention. In the same way with God when we pray, it is an art. There is an art to prayer. So many times we take it for granted that there’s an art of music, there’s an art to painting—but there’s also an art to prayer. Cultivating that art is something that takes a whole lifetime.

One of the first things that we have to do if we’re going to pray is we really need to return to ourselves, just like the prodigal son, where it said, “He came to himself,” and then he went back to his father’s house. The same thing for us: the first step toward stillness is actually physically placing my attention back in my own heart. Everybody kind of has a different sense of what that is, but it’s very important from a patristic standpoint to return the nous, which is the attention, back to its house. And where is its house, if not the heart?

When I begin to pray, I need to come to myself. A lot of times I advocate the five-and-five rule, which is basically five prostrations using the Jesus prayer, and then five minutes saying the Jesus prayer, and then you read a chapter from the Gospel, say, “It is truly meet…” then “Glory… Now…” and then you’re done. But those first five prostrations…

Fr. John: All right, stop, stop, stop!

Fr. Sergius: I’ll come back to that. I’ll come back to that, but just let me…

Fr. John: Drinking from a fire hose! Go ahead.

Fr. Sergius: As we come back to ourselves, then we can speak to God. You can’t just… And we’re not talking about Buddhist stillness or some kind of emptiness. Really it’s a deep, watchful presence, as we stand and come to realize that God is here, God is present, and I am becoming present to that fact. I am becoming present to God who is everywhere present and filling all things. That sense of God’s presence is something that is not necessarily palatable, but as St. Theophan says, it’s not that we think we see God, but that we remember that God sees us, no matter where we are at.

So that beginning of prayer always is a return back to our own heart, so prostrations are the easiest way to begin to come back to ourselves. So that’s why I always advocate: If you’re going to start to pray, do five prostrations saying the Jesus prayer, making the sign of the cross: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.” Go all the way down to the floor if you can, or do a deep bow or however it is that you can utilize your body in prayer. And then when you begin to say the Jesus prayer, say it a bit slowly, maybe fast if you’re distracted, but the most important thing is that you actually put your physical attention into your physical heart which is actually where your spiritual heart and center is. The spiritual and the material co-adhere in each other.

The patristic consensus is this: that the nous or the attention, which is like everywhere, going all over the place—it’s shopping, it’s doing this… We could be sitting in a chair, and the nous is everywhere, our attention, you know? To physically place it back in its home or in its house, which is the heart, and then to speak to God from that place. To not allow it to keep going out and doing things, as it were, even though we’re not going anywhere. But just our attention being kind of pulled back to our own physical heart, over and over again, and this return is what characterizes prayer. It’s not like we accomplish prayer. It’s something that we continue to try to do. We continue to make the return back to ourselves and then back to God, over and over and over again. That’s why in the services we hear that word: “Again and again in peace let us pray to the Lord.” It’s like this constant reiteration of movement back to my own heart and then to God.

If we use that five-and-five rule, which again is just five prostrations, I say the Jesus prayer—“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me”—I make the sign of the cross and I go all the way down to the floor. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me,” again, five times, and then, kneeling, standing but not sitting, I just use the prayer rope in front of the icon corner. I have an icon on my wall, a candle, the gospels open: I have an area where I have consecrated to prayer. And then I begin to say the Jesus prayer, but from that inner place where I have gathered myself, and then I return my attention back to my heart, and from there I say, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.”

Fr. John: Beautiful.

Fr. Sergius: And we can do this for five minutes, and just for five minutes, using it as a tool, not as an end in and of itself, so not “I did five minutes of the Jesus prayer, now where is my reward?” It’s more like we’re looking for something, we’re being watchful, we’re being extremely present, we’re becoming many-eyed like the cherubim, as they say. We’re being present to God, and we’re saying the Jesus prayer with sometimes a lot of space in between it so that we can just be present and attentive and listening, not necessarily for words, but for that peace and that stillness that God is in.

Fr. John: Fr. Sergius, I’m going to digest that one for a moment. In the meantime, we also have a call on the line, and it could be the strangest of all moments. I believe we have Fr. John Parker—the junior Fr. John Parker—calling in from Western PA. Fr. John, is that you? [Laughter]

Fr. John Parker, Jr.: Yes, it is. Fathers, how are you?

Fr. Sergius: Hey, Father.

Fr. John: The world is in a strange place right now, with two Fathers John Parker on the same line. Welcome back to St. Tikhon’s, and you’re talking to your friend, Fr. Sergius.

Fr. John Parker, Jr.: It’s good to be with you.

Fr. Sergius: Hey, Fr. John. How are you doing?

Fr. John Parker, Jr.: We’re doing okay. I wanted to ask you, sort of on behalf of some of my family—my sisters-in-law and folks who have children. We talked in our spirituality class how building a life of prayer is really the foundation, and that it can be harder for people with children, because you’ve reiterated a lot that we never have time for prayer; we always have to make time for prayer. Now, especially that a lot of people are back in a situation where not only are they homeschooling again, but their kids are pretty much with them 24/7, and maybe it’s harder to find that feeling of stillness or even the opportunity to have an uninterrupted time. So I guess my question would be: What are some potential challenges of being closer together in this situation we’re in, at least within our homes? And what are some of the potential strengths of that, the potential benefits for the liturgy of the heart, by being together more closely?

Fr. Sergius: There’s always a good story in Elder, now Saint, Porphyrios, who talks about some children who had a very pious parent who would always go, after the children went to bed, he would go kneel at their bed, and he would just say the Jesus prayer for them, for maybe about an hour or so. Maybe we won’t necessarily do that for an hour, but the point was that his children were like angels, they said. People would compliment them to the skies, saying, “How did you raise such wonderful children?” and—I believe it was a priest—he was at a loss to say how, but it really was that prayer that really changed and formed and helped those children to grow up in a very difficult world. So I would just say the same to you, at least on that level.

One thing that you can always do is, after they go to bed, that’s when you go and you say your prayers, and you ask God to protect them, you ask God to bless them, you ask God to enlighten them, to give them understanding and wisdom. But also, too, there is a certain aspect of prayer where you have to be kind of like… It’s like you’re going on a date, and you have to go meet this person, and you really want to see them, and you have to do everything you possibly can to make it happen. So when everybody else is watching the TV, then for ten minutes you run upstairs and you do some prayers. Or when everybody’s finally gone to bed, then you have that extra little bit of coffee and you do your prayers. Or you know that everybody gets up at six, so you’re up at five-thirty. There’s a certain sense of priority where “I’ve got to meet this person. I’ve got to have this relationship.” There’s an excitement to it, just like somebody who’s courting somebody. There is that aspect in prayer that happens, and it can happen more the more that we put a priority on it, and we learn how to meet that One who is waiting for us, which is God himself.

Fr. John Parker, Jr.: Beautiful. Thank you.

Fr. John: Fr. John, thanks for calling in. We miss you in Western PA. Hope to come out and see you sometime.

Fr. John Parker, Jr.: We miss you all, too. Hope the same to you. Bye.

Fr. Sergius: Thanks, Father. Great to hear from you.

Fr. John: Our love to your family. Fr. Sergius, he had such a beautiful question and a beautiful introduction there as you gave your answer. I would like to add, if you don’t mind, that it is critical, what you said, that we treat it almost like a date, a courtship, and so forth. On the other hand, I know that from a parent’s perspective, it can… Sometimes we think that the only prayer is prayer in a prayer corner, and we can’t live without that. On the other hand, it’s so important to remind all those who are listening, especially with children, especially these days, when the house is crawling with the children and we can hardly escape one another’s presence, that holding a child’s hand or comforting a sick child or even doing some little homework assignment with a child is also a function of service to Christ and a form of wordless prayer, really, because that attention to the child in the name of Christ is a form of adoration of Jesus, would you say?

Fr. Sergius: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the most important work… If we were to say, “What is the quintessential work of prayer for an adult who has children?” It’s to constantly offer, as the difficulties come up through the day, and the child is doing this and now the child is doing that, and then he needs this and I can’t do that—all of those vicissitudes that we might face. If we face them with just a short prayer that God would be there, that God would help, that God would bless, that God would protect… It’s so important to just include God in that most basic, daily part of life, because it really is… If we are serving our children and one another, then we’re serving Christ. And it always has to be kept in that prayerful perspective, so that it’s never absent from the Lord; God is always being invoked, not necessarily in every single outward manifestation, where we’re praying out loud and so forth, but just inwardly we’re constantly asking God to guide us, to help us, to protect us, to protect our children, to enlighten their hearts, and to thanksgiving.

A lot of times, if anything, it’s qualified. The anaphora and the liturgy of the heart is a ceaseless thanksgiving to God, for everything. This is a difficult task, because a lot of times our life is very difficult, but if we can learn to give thanks even for the most difficult things and see God in them and put God them in and ask God to be in them, in a way that’s just short prayers but frequent throughout the day, our life begins to change and our perspective begins to change. And that thanksgiving that we offer… What is more important if somebody is… We give somebody something, right? If they say, “Thank you,” and they’re so grateful, we want to give them more. How much more in the same way with God, if we are thankful for our food, thankful for the gas that we have in our car or the children that we have in our home, that people are healthy, or even for the sicknesses that we might encounter in our lives—if we can still give thanks in that, there’s a victory there that is overcoming the death that faces us. Somehow God will kind of work on those situations and they will turn out for the best.

Fr. John: Yes. Fr. Sergius, we’ll turn our attention for a moment to another friend who’s calling in. There’s a question on the line. Greetings!

Louise: Hello?

Fr. John: Hello.

Louise: Hi. This is Louise.

Fr. John: Hi, Louise.

Fr. Sergius: Hi, Louise. How’re you doing?

Louise: Okay.

Fr. Sergius: Nice to hear from you.

Louise: My question is: I love the image of the heart being a shared space. In regard to that, I was just wondering from a monastic point of view, what it’s like for you to look out in your church, your beautiful church, and how different is it when you know that no one is there? Well, of course the brotherhood is there, and I don’t mean it from a personal… I don’t mean a personal, emotional thing. I mean mostly, how is it different from all the 19 other years?

Fr. Sergius: Well, that’s a good question. I think that because here at the monastery we have so many different times and periods of year—sometimes the seminarians go home and we don’t have a lot of visitors, and so that’s kind of what it’s like right now. But I would say, though, that because we have all of those different time periods and we’ve experienced them so much over the years, whether with a lot of people or very few people, I think that on some basic level, because the prayer is so frequent here and so many people are commemorated here, in a way, I personally just feel that everybody’s already in my heart. I carry everybody wherever I go. So you’re in my heart, and Fr. John’s in my heart. They are there. They are there. It’s just weird to talk about it in that regard, but because prayer is so frequent here and so much here, it’s just kind of our life here. Everybody’s already here, whether they’re here or not, and it’s just as real to me as it is if they were here physically, which is kind of strange, but that’s just sometimes a monastic experience.

But we miss everybody, and we kind of are trying to make up for the lack of people here by asking for people to send in their commemorations online, whether that’s on our Facebook or on the monastery website, because we want to pray for people. We want to know… I mean, I’ve had so many people contact me and say: This person was sick, or we had this problem. I really need that, because I just want to be there for people and be a part of the difficulties and the experience that people are going through, because they need to know somebody is here. We are here, and we’re here for you, and we’re going to pray for you, and whatever it is that you need we’ll try to help you.

Louise: Great. Okay. Thank you.

Fr. John: Louise, thanks so much for calling. We’ll keep you in our prayers.

Fr. Sergius: Thanks, Louise. Nice to talk to you. Have a great day. Thank you.

Louise: Take care.

Fr. John: Fr. Sergius, before Louise’s call—thank you for calling in, Louise—you were mentioning about offering even the most difficult things to God in the form of gratitude. Of course, St. Paul instructs us to give thanks in all things, and for us it’s easy to say, “Oh, thank the Lord: it’s sunny in 60 degrees in South Canaan when it should be two feet of snow” or “Thank the Lord that I got a new job” or whatever. But thanking the Lord for the difficulties: “Thank you, Lord, for confining us to our homes and taking the Eucharist away from us,” or whatever it might be: those are far, far more difficult thanks to give. Talk a little bit about that.

Fr. Sergius: You know what, though? I would challenge everybody, though, to try it anyways.

Fr. John: Give us a practical way to do that. Be blunt.

Fr. Sergius: Sometime when I’m in my worst place, I say, “Lord, thank you even for this. Lord, I know somehow you’re in this. I know somehow this is working for good. Lord, I’m in agony right now. Thank you even for this.” Because it’s like: Why not?

Fr. John: Sure.

Fr. Sergius: Why not? Why have that thing be victorious over me on some basic level? I don’t want to give it any more room than it has to have. By giving thanks for it, it’s already something that is being changed in that process, and I just do it anyways. I don’t necessarily feel like doing it, but I do it, because I know that, not only as St. Paul says, “Give thanks for all things because this is the will of God concerning you,” but I know that because of being thankful for even the bad things, somehow God, in his great mercy, he changes them and makes them into blessings. I’ve seen countless times that it has—

Fr. John: Oh, Father, did we lose you one more time? My friends, we are experiencing one more technical difficulty. While we retrieve Fr. Sergius, thank you for your patience. Let me remind you that this is Fr. John Parker, the Dean of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, and we’re having a wonderful conversation with Fr. Sergius, the abbot of St. Tikhon’s Monastery just across the street here from the seminary. Are you back, Fr. Sergius?

Fr. Sergius: Yeah, can you hear me?

Fr. John: That’s good.

Fr. Sergius: Did I cut out?

Fr. John: Yeah, but it was good so we could give a little station identification and remind people that they can call in at 855-237-2346. Yeah, you cut out a little bit. You were just saying… We lost you in the midst of thanking God for the hard things.

Fr. Sergius: Well, just thank God anyways. It will never hurt you, and that disposition will change the situation and even us over the long term.

Fr. John: It’s a humbling thing for me to ask you, like: Fr. Sergius, be blunt, how do you thank God for a bad thing? Well, you just gave a beautiful answer. You say, “Thank you, Lord, even for this.” Thank you.

Fr. Sergius: And it’s difficult. It’s something that just doesn’t go; it goes against the grain, but the Gospel does go against the grain. It says love your enemies, it says give thanks for all things, it tells us to do things that are impossible, and out of that, we step out in that faith, believing that God will meet us in that place.

Fr. John: Yes. Thank you. It looks like we may have another caller on the line. Maybe not yet. Let me ask you a follow-up question, Fr. Sergius. One of the challenges that we’re facing—one of the challenges that I face—I’ll make it personal—is that when… We often hear a phrase—“I prayed to God about something”—and let’s say God answers, right? Let’s say like in a case like today, someone has this terrible virus, we ask God to have mercy on that person, we surround that person with prayer, that person is healed. So it’s common for us to say, “The Lord has heard our prayer.” But there will be many people for whom prayers are offered who are not healed or touched in that way, and in fact they may die. Could you talk a little bit about that? What does it mean when we do offer our thanks to God, when we are praying in the most difficult of circumstances—is God not hearing our prayers if they’re not healed?

Fr. Sergius: Yeah, I mean, that’s always the classic, age-old question. Does everybody who’s prayed for healing, do they get healing? I think there’s the classic answer that’s given. There’s three answers that God gives to prayer. One is “Not yet.” The other one is “Yes.” And the third one is “I have something better for you.” Those are the three answers that are typical for God to give to us when we ask in prayer. If we’re persistent, you know, Father, St. Sophrony, he often said that he would pray for somebody who was very sick, and sometimes they wouldn’t be healed, and that was something that, looking back on his life, he would have to accept and also have to help other people to accept, too, that God’s will is not always our will. That perspective, I mean, St. Sophrony could pray and he could heal people, but even his prayers weren’t always answered, because God is God, and we are not God. So it’s so important for us to honor the deferential.

We sometimes get upset with God, because things don’t always turn out the way we want them to, and sometimes it may turn out poorly. But as Fr. Zacharias reminds us, he says even with Job, he said because he continued his dialogue with God, a rich entrance was made for him into the kingdom of heaven. And it’s the same thing for us: if we continue our dialogue even in our darkest moments like Job, a rich entrance into the kingdom will be prepared for us as well. Maybe in this life we will see it, maybe in the next life, but the main thing is that continuing dialogue so that we don’t shut the Lord out because he didn’t necessarily respond the way that we thought he should.

If we continue the dialogue in the darkest moments, the light will dawn. It might not be in this world, though.

Fr. John: Right. Thank you for that.

Fr. Sergius: And even prayer, you know… Oh, you go ahead.

Fr. John: No, you go ahead. Finish up, Father.

Fr. Sergius: Okay. The idea of prayer as dialogue is so important. A lot of times we monologue in prayer, and that idea of stillness is killed by the monologue, where we think that we somehow have to do something as we go to prayer. The reality is that we have to receive something, and making that space is part of what prayer is about. As I think about stillness, it’s not about, again, Buddhism, but it’s about using the Jesus prayer as a tool to learn how to listen, to make the space, and that as I continue to try to dialogue with God, I have a sense of reception on my part. I’m trying to listen to receive, not necessarily words.

However, as I mentioned with the five-and-five rule, when you do the five prostrations and then you do the five minutes of the Jesus prayer, [then] read the Gospel, a chapter of the Gospel every day. Read it slowly, read it prayerfully, read it carefully, read it with looking at the spaces in the words and being open to sense what’s behind them, because the Gospel is an incredible power, and if we read it prayerfully, we will receive so much from that power that is in the words themselves.

But it reminds me that it’s the context of this hesychastic prayer or this prayer of stillness or the prayer that is the Church’s prayer—it’s not something that’s just for monks; it’s for everybody—but it really comes as an idea of prayer as communion. We need to start look at prayer as communion. It’s not just something we do, it’s not just something I talk about, it’s not just something I receive—really, in its true form, that art of prayer is communion. It’s communion with the Creator, it’s the bread, the super-essential bread that Christ promises in the prayer, “Our Father, give us this day our daily bread,” the “super-essential bread” in the Greek. This bread that comes down from heaven, it’s not only in the services; it’s also in the sacrament of the word, which is in the Gospel, and it’s also in the Jesus prayer.

It’s up to us to continue consistently in that practice, consistently, every single day, of meeting the Lord in those places that we will find the communion there. There’s communion hidden there. It’s up to us to dig it out and find it and to ingest it and make it our own. That understanding is so monastic because so many times monks lived in the caves and so forth, they didn’t go to church very often, they didn’t have that, but they found communion. They found prayer as communion, and this understanding is so important for us to embrace and to understand, to make our own, because it’s true.

Fr. John: Both an important and new lesson for many of us who live in the world to find that communion. We could have that kind of communion daily, just in the stillness of our heart.

Let’s turn for just a moment. We have Carolyn calling in from Virginia. Hello, Carolyn.

Carolyn: Hello.

Fr. John: Thanks for calling in.

Fr. Sergius: Hi, Carolyn.

Carolyn: Thanks for listening. Hi! It’s a blessing to be able to speak with both of you. I’m finding your words to be very inspiring. Your five-and-five and Gospel is part of your prayer rule from your Acquiring the Mind of Christ which I use daily, and it’s just wonderful and I thank you for that.

I have two questions, one about in our spiritual life, you mentioned it’s both the heart and the intellect. When I have spoken with people seeking the faith, as I was, I approached it like reading the early Church Fathers and all of the theology and of that. And in the end, when I converted it was a call from God to my heart. My question is: In daily life, we deal with this; how do we discern the balance between intellect and heart?

And second question is: When we are in the desert, sometimes we are very close to God; other times we are in the desert. Is it possible to bring our own heart out and close to God, or must we wait on him to call us out of the desert?

Fr. John: Great questions.

Fr. Sergius: Well, the first one is, I think, that balance between the head and the heart: the heart has to have the predominant place, and that’s why a lifetime of prayer is needed to kind of station us in the heart more than in the head. If the thoughts are overwhelming us, if the thoughts in our mind are causing us to do crazy things or to think badly about people or to kind of be the predominant force in our life, that’s when we need to try to—even in the midst of that swirling tornado of thoughts—we need to try to pray. A lot of times when I’m kind of at my bottom and don’t feel well, I drop to my knees immediately, and I just say the Jesus prayer for ten minutes, just wherever I’m at. This is kind of my way of pressing the reset button, because the thoughts are just getting too crazy, and my pain is too much, and I can’t… I don’t know what to do. So that’s the first go-to.

It helps me to refocus, being too much in the head, back to the heart, at least a little bit. It is a journey. His Eminence told me: The longest journey you’re ever going to take is from your head to your heart. So it’s something we do gradually. It’s something we do gradually, and it’s something we need to continue to do, to allow God, through his grace… It helps us as we soak in prayer and just be with God, as we do that on a daily basis, just that being with God helps us to reorient. The heart becomes the more primary instrument of our cognition, and the head becomes an instrument whereby we ascertain and use, in a way that’s subservient to the heart; it’s not the dominating master. It’s something that’s a tool that the heart utilizes in order to help us.

Carolyn: Thank you. Oh, that’s so helpful. And on the second one, I had one instance when I was so close to God. It was after an anointing, and I was transported. It was transcending; it was a different place, where light, time stopped. It was light and warmth. I can’t explain where I was until someone came up to talk to me, and I just felt that was the grace of God. I have never attained that again. At times, I’ve felt I am not where I need to be, as close to God, and this world is intruding too much. Can we, on our own, bring ourselves back through prayer and repentance, or does God call us back?

Fr. Sergius: No. Yeah, we can’t get back to those places. They’re really given to us for a reference point. They’re not a permanent place to sit down. They’re a constant reference point in our life to know exactly where we need to be and where the bar is. We do everything we can, but then ultimately it’s up to God—if he’s going to—to grant us those kind of moments of grace. But a lot of times, again, those moments of grace are either given to us as a reference point or as in a preparation for a battle or some kind of spiritual warfare. So whenever grace comes we need to be very careful, because it’s not always just a gift; it’s oftentimes a preparation for possibly a more difficult situation in our lives. So we have to be very careful what we ask for, and when it’s given we just bow our heads and we say, “Thank you, Lord.”

Fr. John: Oh, wow.

Carolyn: That was at a time when I was… before I converted to the faith, and it was a very difficult struggle, as I was ordained deacon/elder in another church, and it was a very big struggle for me, but I couldn’t not answer God’s call; it was clear. But I guess we just have to wait for God to call us to these moments of grace, and if we don’t get them, we know where we’re going eventually.

Fr. Sergius: Exactly. It’s our reference point. We just need to be available. It’s up to God to offer us what he would like to, in the sense of what he can give, but we just have to be available, show up and be available. That’s like the first spiritual rule.

Carolyn: Thank you so much. And just one last thing: Did you ever consider streaming? I’ve been watching Holy Transfiguration, the women’s monastery in Ellwood City. Have you ever considered streaming your services from your monastery?

Fr. Sergius: Yeah, we’ve been talking about it. We’re working on audio right now, because we don’t have internet up at the church, because all of our buildings up here are very old. We’re trying to get enough signal up here so that we can do an audio stream, which I think would be… A lot of times in a monastic context, one of the fathers used to tell me, the services are meant to be heard and not seen, because we’re supposed to pray and listen to them, but just to pray them, so to go in. At the very least we’re going to try to have the audio services, hopefully for Holy Week and Pascha.

Carolyn: Oh, that would be wonderful. Yes, I often close my eyes when I’m watching the streaming, so I understand that. Again, thank you so much. I appreciate your time and your insights. Bye-bye.

Fr. John: Take care.

Fr. Sergius: You’re welcome. God bless you. Thanks

Fr. John: Fr. Sergius, I know we’re coming close to our time, but we have one more call on the line, and I believe it’s a dear friend from South Carolina. Ruby, are you still there?

Ruby: Yes, sir. Hello, Fr. John.

Fr. John: Nice to hear your voice. Hello, Ruby. Please, you speak with Fr. Sergius. So glad to have you call in.

Ruby: Hello, Fr. Sergius.

Fr. Sergius: Hello there. Hi, how’re you doing?

Ruby: I’m doing fine, thank you. I hope y’all are doing well. I have a question: Even though you do the Jesus prayer, how do you know that it’s from the Lord? And how do you know if the answer is from the Lord?

Fr. Sergius: I think a lot of times there will be a symphony of answers and they’ll all be the same, if it’s really from God. Not only will our prayer point at it… Because we can’t necessarily just completely trust ourselves, but our husband or our wife or our friend or our neighbor, they’ll also come up and say something to the same thing. And then maybe we’ll also read it that morning in the Gospel. And then we’ll see something outside that, if we’re really kind of plugged into it, we’ll see it being spoken to from multiple places. And in that multitude of counsel there’s safety, as the Scripture says. So we have to look for it not just in ourselves, but also, too: if we just put it to somebody else, somebody that we trust—a spouse, our wife, our husband, whatever—“Hey, what do you think about this? Do you think we’re going the right way if we do this? I think this…”

A lot of the times if we pray that God would guide us through those people, he will, and say, “Yeah, that sounds good.” But it’s always done in that prayerful way that, if we’re able to submit, then the word can be confirmed. If we can’t submit and we say, “No, this person is wrong,” and then, “No,” if we put up a fight, that’s how in a patristic context we know that we’re going the wrong way and that the word is not from God, if we have to defend it, because even if we were wrong and say, “Oh, I’ll submit to this,” somehow God will enlighten us and God will guide us anyways. Through that humility he’ll be able to work even more with us. It’s just we have to be careful and always looking for that multitude of counsel in which there is safety.

Ruby: Okay. Thank you.

Fr. Sergius: You’re welcome

Fr. John: Ruby, thank you so much for calling in. Please tell Stephen we said hello, and greet the faithful at Holy Ascension.

Ruby: Thank you, Fr. John. We miss y’all!

Fr. John: God bless you. Fr. Sergius, I know we’re coming close to our time. You’re prepping to go over to the church for services this evening. A closing word for us about the liturgy of the heart?

Fr. Sergius: Just remember that we’re here, praying for you. If you want commemorations, you can always send them through the website, sttikhonsmonastery.org. We want to hear from you and we want to help you in whatever way we can during this difficult time. But in the meanwhile, as we look at communion, there is communion in the services, but there’s also communion in prayer, and that prayer as communion is one of the most important perspectives we can learn to embrace, because really the heart is an altar. We need to learn how to serve liturgy there. The easiest way to do that is to say, “Thank you, Lord, for everything.” Every time I’m walking around the monastery, or a lot of times if I’m thinking about it, I’ll be saying, “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord.” And then maybe, “Forgive me, Lord. Thank you, Lord,” just every step. “Thank you, Lord. Forgive me, Lord,” because God is giving us every breath, every blood vessel that’s pumping through, blood that’s going through our bodies, the air that’s coming into our noses—it’s all just gift. It’s all gift, everything: the water, the sun.

It’s a magnificent orchestration of events to keep us alive. And to be mindful of that and to be thankful of that, just at the very basic level, that our life is sacred and that it’s God-given, it’s God-made, it’s God-breathed. We cannot… Well, what else can we do except give thanks? So the more thankful that we are, even in the midst of our difficulties and the more that we try to serve other people in that prayerful way when we’re asking God to help them and to bless them, even those who may be causing us difficulties, this is a good beginning of how to serve the liturgy at the heart.

However, that consistent prayer rule is really the key that opens the doors so that when we return to church, communion becomes even more incredible and even more powerful, because the more we prepare, the more we receive. It’s just a basic patristic rule. But that idea of being able to listen to God, to be receptive to God, and to receive from God, it’s so important to just kind of be in God’s presence, because God is here. And if I come to myself… St. John of Damascus has a beautiful quote in the Homily on the Transfiguration. He says—this is kind of a paraphrase, but he says: In order to come to communion with God, we first need to come into communion with ourselves.

So allowing the heart to settle and for me to just learn how to be in God’s presence, it’s not just something that happens in a minute or even maybe ten minutes; it takes like an hour to do, where we can actually become sensitive to God’s presence, and that’s why the Lord said in the garden of Gethsemane, he said, “Couldn’t you watch with me one hour?” And in the same way he offers that to every one of us; he says, “Couldn’t you just be with me for one hour?” Even once a week, once a day, once a month. Just to be in God’s presence for an hour is a beginning that kind of opens that door of God’s presence. It could happen in any amount of time, and we shouldn’t necessarily be looking for signs and wonders and so forth, but still, once the heart comes into communion with itself, which is not something that takes… it’s not a short amount of time—then we can come into communion with God.

So we go from communion with ourselves to communion with God. We speak from our own heart, our own physical heart, and from that place we speak to the Lord. And slowly, slowly, slowly the kingdom of God becomes apparent inside of us and is manifest to us.

Fr. John: Beautiful. Fr. Sergius, it’s a great joy to spend an hour with you this afternoon. It’s a great gift that you’ve given to me personally and to all those who are listening. I thank you for your time. I urge you, please, pray for us as you go to church this evening. Remember us.

Fr. Sergius: Always, Father.

Fr. John: Those who are listening, we thank you, and we thank Bobby Maddex for helping us with the technicalities of our show today.

Fr. Sergius: Thanks, Bobby!

Fr. John: Join us next week, April 9, when at two o’clock in the afternoon we’ll have a similar show. I will meet with my friend, Fr. Chad Hatfield, the president of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and we’ll talk about the question of vocation: How do we know if God is calling us? So once again, Fr. Sergius, thank you. Brothers and sisters listening, God bless you and keep you, as we continue on these days. Thank you.

Fr. Sergius: Thank you, Father.