On the Prayer Rule

A prayer rule is a fixed amount of prayer kept at fixed times. This page sets out what the Church's sources say about how much, and the forms a rule commonly takes.

Where the rule comes from

The oldest surviving Christian manual of practice is the Didache, from around the year 100. Its rule of prayer is three Our Fathers a day.

Thrice in the day thus pray.

The Didache 8 · tr. M. B. Riddle, 1886 · read in the Library

Two chapters earlier the same document states the measure, and it is the earliest thing the Church wrote down on the subject:

For if you are able to bear all the yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you are not able, what you are able that do.

The Didache 6 · tr. M. B. Riddle, 1886 · read in the Library

Everything in the prayer books came later. And a rule of set hours serves prayer without exhausting it: the Apostle's pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) is the wider measure, and St John Cassian, recording the Egyptian fathers, puts it sharply.

For he prays too little, who is accustomed only to pray at the times when he bends his knees.

St John Cassian, The Conferences 10.14 · tr. Edgar C. S. Gibson · read in the Library

The forms a rule takes

These are the shapes a lay rule commonly has, ordered by how much of a day each asks for. It is not a ladder to climb: the first is what the hesychast fathers describe as the whole of prayer, and what those furthest along the way are given in place of everything written. Which one applies to you is a question for your spiritual father.

When you cannot keep your rule

Travel, illness, night work, small children, grief and exhaustion all interrupt a rule. Two of the texts above bear on that directly. The Didache does not present its rule as all or nothing: where the whole yoke cannot be borne, "what you are able that do". And Cassian reproaches those who reckon their prayer only by the times they bend the knee - which places prayer outside those times within the reckoning, not outside it.

What the Fathers make the condition of approaching

The Order of Preparation is a real good and a real inheritance. It is not what makes a person able to receive. St John Chrysostom takes up the question of how often and how much, and refuses to answer it in those terms:

What then? Which shall we approve? Those [who receive] once [in the year]? Those who [receive] many times? Those who [receive] few times? Neither those [who receive] once, nor those [who receive] often, nor those [who receive] seldom, but those [who come] with a pure conscience, from a pure heart, with an irreproachable life. Let such draw near continually; but those who are not such, not even once.

St John Chrysostom, Homily 17 on Hebrews · tr. Frederic Gardiner · read in the Library

The criterion he names is the state of the conscience, not a number. St John Cassian addresses the other half of it under a chapter heading that says the thing plainly: that although we acknowledge that we cannot be without sin, yet still we ought not to suspend ourselves from the Lord's Communion.

Yet we ought not to suspend ourselves from the Lord's Communion because we confess ourselves sinners, but should more and more eagerly hasten to it for the healing of our soul, and purifying of our spirit, and seek the rather a remedy for our wounds with humility of mind and faith, as considering ourselves unworthy to receive so great grace.

St John Cassian, Conferences 23.21 · tr. Edgar C. S. Gibson · read in the Library

Abstaining from a sense of unworthiness, he argues, is itself the greater presumption: the one who abstains until he is worthy supposes that on some other day he would be. The Mysteries are not a reward for the pure but, in his words, would make us saints and pure by taking them.

This is not a lowering of the standard. It is the standard, and the Church puts it in the mouth of everyone who approaches:

I believe, O Lord, and I confess that Thou art truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, Who camest into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first.

The prayer before receiving · after 1 Timothy 1:15 · read in the prayer book

The Apostle's own words are Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief, and the Church did not leave them in the epistle: she took them into the service, and gave them to every communicant to say in the first person, on the day he receives. The saints are those who said that sentence and meant it, not those who reached a point where it stopped applying.

What this means in practice

The Order is not among the canonical conditions. No canon of the Church requires it before receiving, and the fixed printed sequence is later than the canons; how much of it is said is set by one's spiritual father.

What the tradition does name is a conscience not resting in unrepented sin, peace with one's neighbor, the eucharistic fast, and obedience to one's spiritual father on confession.

The eucharistic fast is canonical, not customary. The African Code of 419 required it and allowed one exception in the year; the Council in Trullo took up that canon and removed the exception:

But since nothing leads us to abandon exact observance, we decree that the Apostolic and Patristic tradition shall be followed; and define that it is not right to break the fast on the fifth feria of the last week of Lent, and thus to do dishonour to the whole of Lent.

The Council in Trullo, the Quinisext (692), Canon 29 · tr. Henry R. Percival, 1900 · read in the Library

What the canons require is the fast. Reckoning it from the previous midnight is the custom that carries it. Where the Liturgy is served in the evening - the Presanctified, and the Liturgies of Nativity, Theophany, Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday - the period is set by the bishop rather than run from midnight. Medicine that must be taken, illness, pregnancy, infancy and great age are met by one's spiritual father. Asking is not the same as being excused, and neither is a reason to stay away from the chalice.

The rules are monastic in form; the life they ask for is not

Almost every fixed rule printed in a prayer book reached its present shape in a monastery, and that is why preparation can read as though it were addressed to somebody else. The objection is old enough that St John Chrysostom puts it in his hearers' mouths before answering it:

I am not, you will say, one of the monks, but I have both a wife and children, and the care of a household. Why, this is what has ruined all, your supposing that the reading of the divine Scriptures appertains to those only, when you need it much more than they. For they that dwell in the world, and each day receive wounds, these have most need of medicines.

St John Chrysostom, Homily 2 on Matthew · tr. George Prevost · read in the Library

He refuses to legislate the desert - "I do not make it a law that you are to occupy the mountains and the deserts, but to be good and considerate and chaste, dwelling in the midst of the city" - and he is careful not to be read as disparaging the monastics, speaking "not as abusing those who have taken up with the mountains, but as bewailing those that dwell in cities, because they have banished virtue from thence." The monastic gives up his own will to an elder. The layman is given the same thing to give up, in a marriage, in work he did not choose, in the patience a household costs, and it is asked of him in a form no rule can print in advance.

Fasting and confession

Preparation is not only prayer. The Wednesday and Friday fast is the oldest part of it, and it stands in the same chapter of the Didache that gives the rule of prayer - which qualifies both halves the same way, warning not against failing to fast or to pray but against doing either as the hypocrites.

Confession before communion is expected in some traditions and not in others, and the difference is long-standing rather than a matter of laxity. Someone who has learned to prepare in one tradition and then finds himself in a parish of the other can easily take a difference of custom for a judgment on him.

In the Slavic churches - Russian, ROCOR, the OCA, Ukrainian, Serbian - confession is commonly expected before each communion. The preparation customarily includes the three canons, to the Savior, to the Theotokos and to the Guardian Angel, and often the Akathist to the Sweetest Lord Jesus, in addition to the prayers of preparation; and presence at the vigil or vespers of the evening before is expected as part of preparing rather than as a separate devotion.

In Greek, Antiochian and Romanian practice confession is more often separated from communion and kept at intervals set by one's spiritual father, frequently in the four fasting seasons. Preparation more often means the prayers of preparation rather than the full suite of canons and akathist, and the evening service is strongly encouraged without being made a condition of receiving.

Both are the settled practice of whole local churches, and each is kept under the direction of that church's clergy. A person's rule here comes from his own spiritual father, not from whichever description he happens to read first.

A closing word on measure

A rule exists so that we neither give in to laziness on the one hand nor drive ourselves past our strength on the other. St Theophan the Recluse taught that the path has two ditches: to the right, zeal without knowledge; to the left, sloth. Excess brings the beginner to exhaustion and despair when he fails, and to pride when he succeeds. St Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote that the rule exists for you; you do not exist for the rule, but live for the Lord, and must keep the freedom of discernment.

Begin small. It is better to say a few prayers with attention than to hurry through many. If you have a spiritual father, keep the rule he gives and change nothing without his blessing; if you do not yet have one, keep a modest rule suited to your strength and seek such a father. No book and no page can take the place of a living father in Christ.

Drawn from St Theophan the Recluse, A Prayer Rule, and St Ignatius (Brianchaninov) on the prayer rule · also in the Guide