22. Evergetis - Dumbarton Oaks

ELEVENTH CENTURY
take place when the catechesis is read as has been made clear; otherwise the trisagion should be
omitted and the prayer should be recited to follow the other prayer before the catechesis.
All the prayers should be said with hands held up in accordance with the following, “Lift up
your hands in the sanctuaries, and bless the Lord” (Ps. 133 [134]:2), and “The lifting of my hands
as an evening sacrifice” (Ps. 140 [141]:2), and “In every place lifting holy hands without anger or
quarreling” (I Tim. 2:8). When the aforementioned prayer has been said and the priest has spoken
his customary one also, all of you should immediately fall on your faces and hearing the superior
asking for your prayers like this, “Brothers, pray for me in the Lord that I may be delivered from
passions and the snares of the Evil One,” you should answer, “May God save you, honored father,
and you, pray for us, holy father, that we may be delivered from passions and the snares of the Evil
One.” Then again the superior praying should say, “May God through the prayers of our fathers
save you all.”
Then you should stand up and depart to your cells, avoiding all meeting together and foolish
distraction, idle chatter, and disorderly laughter. For what comes of such things? Clearly, the
lapsing into disgraceful talk, abuse, and condemnations because your mind is relaxed by this and
you forget what is really good, and reaching your cells in a dilatory and lazy frame of mind you
sink at once into a sleep of akedia and pass almost all the day in idleness without engaging in any
beneficial activity whatever, as the great Basil also says, “To lapse from a fitting spiritual state is
easy when the soul indulges in unrestrained laughter, and it is easier for a concern for goodness to
be dissipated and lapse into disgraceful talk.” 6
May this not be the case with my fathers and brothers, but let each go away to his cell in a
sober frame of mind most vigilant, always doing what is pleasing to God. But if perhaps some are
discovered to be at fault in this matter, whether they are young or old, advanced in the monastic
life or novices, they are to be admonished with the laws of love by the disciplinary official, [p. 23]
and if they do not mend their ways they are to be punished. For it is not fitting that novices who
behave carelessly should be punished, but rather those who have spent many years in the monastic
way of life but are careless and lazy, as [John Klimakos] the author of The Ladder says somewhere
concerning this. 7 Going away to your cells you should carry out the whole obligatory
canonical procedure, with the customary prayers and genuflections in the manner mentioned above,
I mean the six psalms, the third hour and the sixth according to custom when the semantra are
struck. For genuflections should not be carried out in the church only when “God is the Lord” (Ps.
117 [118]:27) is sung, as we have said. So when you pray in your cells you should always kneel
down, but we will avoid 8 this also in our cells whenever there is a vigil because of the weariness
that comes from that, also during the twelve days of Christmas, during Easter week, and further,
during the nine days after the feast for the Dormition of our most holy Lady, the Mother of God
Evergetis. 9 So the ritual of the third, sixth, and first hours should be like that on the days of the
year that are free from fasting.
5. Concerning the holy liturgy, and that no one is to receive communion without an instruction
from the superior, nor should anyone think himself unworthy of communion without informing
him.
It is necessary now also to speak about the divine mystery, which must of necessity be cel-
[ 474 ]