This tale I needed this week…
A saint of Greece called Maxim, went as a young man to church and heard the reading in which it says we should pray unceasingly. He was struck by this and with resolve, went into the neighbouring mountains and set out to pray unceasingly. The Lord’s Prayer and some other prayers he knew, he recited them again and again. Then he felt very well. He was praying, he was with God, he was elated. But the sun began to go down, and it got colder and darker and he began to hear all kinds of worrying sounds – cracking branches under the paws of wild beasts, flashing eyes, the sounds of smaller prey being killed by larger animals. He felt alone and in danger, and without help unless God gave it. He no longer recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, he began to shout “Lord, have mercy on me!”
All night without sleep he cried out. Then morning came and he concluded all the beasts had gone to sleep. “Now I pray” he thought. But he felt hungry, and while eyeing the berries on the bushes he realized that those flashing eyes and savage paws must be hidden in the bushes. So he approached very softly and with every step said, “Lord Jesus Christ, save me, help me, help me, save me. O God protect me, protect me”. For every berry he collected he had certainly prayed several times.
The story continues to describe how years later the Lord came to him, and brought peace and serenity and stillness into his life. The fear of darkness and the bushes and the unseen enemy were no longer able to overwhelm him. Yet he says, even when I was serene and happy and peaceful, I went on praying, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”, because he knew that only in the divine mercy was there any peace of heart and peace of mind and stillness of body and rightness of will.
To pray, not in spite of the turmoil but because of the turmoil.
To pray. not outside of the turmoil but during the turmoil.
Those were the lessons Maxim needed, and are still the lessons for us.
I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
… The Lord watches over you.
Psalm 121:1-2, 5