Mother Natalia

Theophane wasn't just preaching this to the world.

I'm sure he was speaking to a particular person who asked for a word or something, and he knew this person's heart and all of that.

Yeah.

And God encounters us in authenticity.

He encounters us in reality, right?

He's not encountering us in something that's

unreal.

And so if we are acknowledging the reality of our poor prayer and of saying, Lord, this is what I have to offer you, and I'm distracted 500 times, but that means I come back 500 times, then I do think that He receives that and blesses that.

And the heart, yeah, this is a complicated concept, so I don't want to delve into it too deeply because I'm not educated enough to speak accurately to it.

But what I will say is that the fathers talk often of guarding the heart.

And they're not talking about, when they say guarding the heart, they're not talking about like...

make sure you don't feel certain feelings because I think we think of heart these days as where I feel things.

When they talk about guarding the heart, which the Jesus Prayer helps us to do because we have the name of the Lord always on our lips or in our mind or on our heart.

Guarding the heart means,

not allowing unhelpful or distracting thoughts to penetrate our inmost being.

The inmost being is what the fathers are talking about when they talk about the heart.

instead of just throwing up a cacophony of noise.

And I do think too, you know, St.

Theophane is, there could also be hyperbole there, you know, for the sake of driving home his point, because I do think that the point that he's getting at is a very valid one.

And this is what you're describing of, it might be better for you to sit in the presence of the Lord