Discourse 13

On the changes that occur to those who are agitated in stillness: how, providentially, God arranges this path. There is a time when purity and self-emptying, and from stillness, joy, gladness, a warm fervor, and an unaccustomed power. Thanks be to the arrangement of the path. Amen. 13. But whoever, in his mind, has determined to devote himself to solitude with himself, let him arrange himself, and in the service and order of the works of stillness, let him complete the remainder of his life. When, according to the custom of stillness, he who is disciplined providentially approaches divine grace, he enters into a hidden womb within himself, and like the rays of the sun that are hidden from the one sitting because of the density of clouds, a little of that joyful power is quickly concealed from him because of the spiritual disturbance and the growth of grace through the cloud of sufferings, and that joyful power is quickly shut off from him, and darkness, that unaccustomed one, settles upon his thought, so that his mind may not be disturbed, and it gives way to humility of soul. But let him endure, while being occupied with divine readings and prayers of petition, and let him seek help. And from stillness it is given to him, while he does not know.

For just as the rays of the sun, when the air is cleared of its darkness, are able to shine upon the face of the earth, so too the prayer of stillness can descend and drive away from the soul the cloud of passions, and can illuminate and purify the mind with the rays of joy and the gladness that the birth of thoughts brings. Especially when it is filled with the reading of the holy scriptures, and the luminous vigil of the mind, the constant meditation on the sacred writings, with a constant and imperceptible stirring, and a joy in God that fills the soul.