This article shows why forgetfulness of God is not merely a weakness of memory, but a spiritual condition that nourishes the passions and is healed through remembrance, prayer, and daily order.
Introduction
There is a passion-laden condition that few people name, because it cannot be seen. It leaves no mark like anger, does not burn like lust, does not weigh visibly like greed. And yet, without it, the other passions could not work in man with the same power. This is forgetfulness of God — the state in which the soul, though it believes, does not remember; though it has received grace, no longer keeps the awareness of God’s presence; though it bears the name of Christian, lives whole hours and days as if God were not.
The Holy Fathers regarded this condition with a gravity that the modern person can scarcely understand. For them, forgetfulness was not a passing weakness of memory, but the gate through which every other passion enters. St Mark the Ascetic, in his Letter to Nicolas the Solitary — included in the Philokalia, volume one — places forgetfulness alongside ignorance and listless laziness as one of the three powerful giants of the enemy: "Those three giants are the vices already mentioned: ignorance, the source of all evils; forgetfulness, its close relation and helper; and laziness, which weaves the dark shroud enveloping the soul in murk. This third vice supports and strengthens the other two, consolidating them so that evil becomes deep-rooted and persistent in the negligent soul. Laziness, forgetfulness and ignorance in their turn support and strengthen the other passions."
This statement is not a rhetorical metaphor. It is a precise description of the mechanism by which sin enters man. Before every sin committed with full will go these three giants: man either no longer knows the good, or has forgotten it, or no longer cares to do it. And of these three, forgetfulness is the close helper of ignorance — for often man was not untaught, but has forgotten what he learned.
This article is not a discussion of memory as a psychological faculty. It is about that spiritual forgetfulness which makes man live a divided life: on the one hand confessing the faith, on the other hand forgetting it hour by hour in deeds, thoughts and decisions. It is about how this forgetfulness is born, how it works, what fruits it bears — and, above all, how it can be overcome through the unceasing remembrance of God, which is the foundational work of the entire neptic tradition.
I. What forgetfulness of God is
It is not ordinary forgetting
A distinction must be made from the outset. Man forgets many things naturally: names, events, debts. This forgetting belongs to the weakness of fallen nature and has no spiritual value in itself. We may forget where we put a book and still stand before God with a wakeful heart.
The forgetfulness the Fathers speak of is something else. It is forgetfulness of the heart, not of the mind. It is the state in which man no longer bears God within himself — no longer lives before Him, no longer does what he does as before Him, no longer feels that he is seen, heard, known. The mind knows that God exists, but the heart lives as if He did not. This is spiritual forgetfulness: a separation of the inner life from the remembrance of God, while the outward confession remains unchanged.
This is why forgetfulness is so hard to recognize. Who would say of himself that he has forgotten God? We go to church, we bow, we read the prayers, we sign ourselves with the Cross. How could we say we have forgotten? And yet, if we look carefully at the hours of the day — the hours of work, of meals, of conversation, of rest — we may ask ourselves sincerely: in how many of these did the soul stand before God? In how many did we remember Him, even once? In how many did we feel that everything, down to the smallest thought, is before Him?
The answer, for most of us, is troubling.
Forgetfulness as separation from remembrance
For the Holy Fathers, the opposite of forgetfulness is not mere intellectual recall, but remembrance — a state of the heart in which the name and presence of God are carried unceasingly. "At the times when you remember God, increase your prayers, so that when you forget Him, the Lord may remind you," writes St Mark the Ascetic in On the Spiritual Law, text 25 (Philokalia, vol. 1).
This sentence places the question in its true proportions. There is a reciprocity between man’s remembrance and God’s remembrance. Not because God would forget us in any proper sense — He never forgets — but because His active, felt, working presence in our lives is bound to our openness toward Him. He who remembers Him opens himself to His work. He who forgets Him is not forgotten by God, but closes himself to the sense of grace and remains, through his own negligence, in the darkness of forgetfulness.
Forgetfulness, therefore, is not a passive absence. It is a work — or, more precisely, an active non-working. The soul that forgets is not an empty soul, but a soul filled with other things: cares, fancies, pleasures, fears, plans. All these occupy the place that the remembrance of God claims for itself. Forgetfulness is the expression of a heart that has turned elsewhere.
Diadochos: when passion impedes remembrance
St Diadochos of Photiki describes in On Spiritual Knowledge (Philokalia, vol. 1) the mechanism by which passions produce forgetfulness: the intellect cannot hold fast to the remembrance of God no matter how hard one tries, when the soul is disturbed by anger or sunk in deep depression. Being entirely darkened by the fury of the passions, it becomes wholly estranged from its own sensibility. The thing desired finds no place to imprint its seal, so that the mind might bear without forgetfulness a firm image — for the memory of the discursive faculty has hardened on account of the harshness of the passions.
This is an observation of great subtlety. Forgetfulness of God is not, in the first place, a problem of will. A man may wish to remember and yet be unable to. For passion — be it anger, lust, sorrow, vainglory — darkens the mind and deprives it of its own sense. The soul becomes like hardened wax: the seal of remembrance can no longer impress itself.
Thus the overcoming of forgetfulness is not done directly, through an effort of memory, but through the purification from passions. The more the soul is freed from its inner fury, the more the remembrance of God becomes natural, unceasing, sweet. Conversely, the more strongly the passions work, the more deeply forgetfulness takes hold.
II. The roots of forgetfulness
The scattering of the mind
The first root of forgetfulness is dissipation. The mind of man, in its fallen state, has no stability: it runs from one thought to another, from one fancy to another, without rest. This unceasing running makes the steady remembrance of God impossible. How can a mind that leaps from place to place carry God in its depths?
St Isaac the Syrian links this dissipation to a false, external, spiritually shallow knowledge. He prays: "Make me worthy, O Lord, to know You and to love You, not through that knowledge which comes in the scattering of the mind and is born of effort, but make me worthy of that knowledge through which the mind, seeing You, glorifies with vision Your nature, which removes the sense of the world from the understanding." Knowledge in the scattering of the mind is knowledge that does not bring the soul to rest. It is information, not vision. It is effort, not grace. And where the mind is scattered, forgetfulness is inevitable.
In our age, this dissipation has reached proportions the Fathers could not have foreseen. Modern man lives in an unbroken flow of information, image, sound and demand. Every minute calls his mind elsewhere. The mobile phone, more than any other tool in history, has made dissipation the normal condition of existence. The phone itself is not the evil, but the way it fragments our attention. The mind no longer has time to gather itself. Every free moment is occupied — on the bus, in the waiting room, at table, in the queue, even in the bathroom. And where there is no longer any free moment, the remembrance of God has nowhere to settle. We no longer need to fall into forgetfulness through labour: we fall into it through the simple ordering of the day.
The passions
The second root — and the deepest — is the passions, as we have already seen in Diadochos. Each passion produces, in its own way, a particular form of forgetfulness:
Anger forgets that the neighbour is the image of God. In the moment of anger, the mind no longer sees God anywhere — not in itself, not in the other, not in the circumstance. All sense is absorbed by the pain of the offence and the desire for retribution.
Lust forgets that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. The soul becomes entirely the sensing of the object of desire, and in that moment God is absent from consciousness — not because man has denied Him, but because there is no longer room for Him.
Love of possessions forgets that everything belongs to God and that man is only a steward. He who counts in the night what he has earned and what he must still earn has forgotten, in that reckoning, that he will take nothing with him.
Vainglory forgets that every good in man is gift. He who boasts of his virtue has forgotten that that virtue is not his own.
Worldly sorrow forgets the goodness and providential care of God. The soul plunged in sorrow no longer sees a way out, because it no longer looks to the One who is the way out.
Listless laziness forgets the purpose of life. He who is gripped by it no longer knows why he was born, why he lives, where he is going.
Each passion, therefore, is not only a sin in itself, but a producer of forgetfulness. And forgetfulness, in turn, opens the gate for new passions. The circle closes.
The loss of the remembrance of death
The third root is the loss of the remembrance of death. The patristic tradition is unanimous: he who remembers death does not easily forget God, and he who has forgotten death has already, in a hidden way, forgotten God.
St Anthony the Great says, in a saying preserved in Philokalia I: "If a man holds death in his mind, it is immortality to him; if he does not hold it in his mind, it is death to him."
St John of the Ladder devotes Step VI of the Ladder to this remembrance: "The remembrance of death is a daily death." And at the end of the same Step, recounting the story of Hesychius of the Horeb — once a careless father who shut himself in his cell for twelve years shedding ceaseless tears — he records his last words: "Forgive me! No one who has acquired the remembrance of death will ever be able to sin."
This connection runs very deep in the Tradition of the Fathers. The man who lives as if he will not die inevitably lives as if God does not exist. For if God is, if judgment is, if eternity is — then death is not the end but a passage, and each hour of life takes on eternal weight. He who forgets this forgets God Himself, even if he still pronounces His name.
Insensibility — hardness of heart
The fourth root, and the gravest, is insensibility or hardness of heart. This is no longer a cause of forgetfulness, but its consummate form. The soul has forgotten so much, so deeply, that it has ceased to feel that it has forgotten. It no longer aches. It is no longer saddened. It stands at prayer without feeling anything, reads Scripture without trembling, receives Communion without quaking.
St John of the Ladder devotes Step XVII of the Ladder to this state, which he calls "on insensibility, that is, on the death of the soul before the death of the body." The title itself is the definition. The insensible soul is the soul dead before death. It has forgotten God so completely that it no longer has even the consciousness of forgetting.
This state is terrifying, but not without a way out. The Fathers show that the very pain over the absence of pain — the cry to God, "have mercy on me, for I have forgotten You so much that I no longer even feel that I have forgotten" — is already a sign that grace has not entirely withdrawn. He who sees himself as insensible is not yet fully insensible.
III. The fruits of forgetfulness
Before speaking of the remedy, we must look clearly at the fruits of forgetfulness — for only then do we understand why the Fathers counted it among the three roots of all our falls.
The divided life
The first fruit of forgetfulness is the divided life. Man confesses the faith but lives as an unbeliever; goes to church on Sunday but on Monday speaks, judges and handles money as if God did not exist; keeps the fast in food but not with the tongue, not with the eyes, not with the heart.
This division is not usually conscious hypocrisy. It is forgetfulness. Man does truly believe — when he remembers. But he remembers rarely, and briefly, and without depth. The rest of the time he lives in forgetfulness, and forgetfulness is an unbelief of fact, even where the confession of faith remains unchanged.
The weakening of the fear of God
The second fruit is the weakening of the fear of God — that pure, filial fear of which the Fathers speak, not the dread of a slave. He who remembers God cannot fail to tremble before Him, if only for a moment, when he pronounces His name. He who has forgotten no longer trembles. He confesses that God sees all, but in secret does things he would not do before a man. He confesses that God hears all, but speaks words he would not utter before his spiritual father.
This is proof that, inwardly, man no longer lives before God. His confession is one thing, his life another. And this separation is forgetfulness.
The multiplication of the other passions
The third fruit — and the most evident — is the multiplication of the other passions. As St Mark the Ascetic says, "Laziness, forgetfulness and ignorance in their turn support and strengthen the other passions." Forgetfulness is not one passion among others: it is the one that sustains them all.
Anger multiplies because man has forgotten the patience of Christ. Lust multiplies because he has forgotten that the body will decay. Love of possessions multiplies because he has forgotten that he will take nothing. Vainglory multiplies because he has forgotten that all is gift. Sorrow multiplies because he has forgotten the providence of God.
If, by some impossibility, man could truly remember God — unceasingly and deeply, in the very moment of temptation — the temptation would weaken of itself. For no passion works with force in a soul that stands, in that moment, before God.
Prayer without feeling
The fourth fruit is a particular kind of prayer — prayer made out of habit, without feeling, without warmth, without fear. Man reads his rule, but his mind runs elsewhere. He stands at the service, but is not at the service. He pronounces the name of Jesus, but his heart remains cold.
This does not mean that such prayer is in vain — the Fathers teach us not to abandon prayer because we cannot make it perfectly. But it shows that between man and God a thin veil of forgetfulness has settled, and must be lifted.
IV. The remedy: unceasing remembrance
The whole neptic tradition, from the Desert Fathers to the Athonite hesychasts, is essentially a science of overcoming forgetfulness through unceasing remembrance. There is no Orthodox spiritual method that does not reduce, in the last analysis, to this: to carry God unceasingly in the heart, through His name, through the fear of Him, through the recollection of His benefits, through the remembrance of death, through attention to one’s own thoughts and deeds.
The remembrance of the Name
The centre of this work is the remembrance of the name of the Lord Jesus. St Diadochos of Photiki says, in On Spiritual Knowledge, text 31 (Philokalia, vol. 1): "If the intellect at that time cleaves fervently to the remembrance of the glorious and holy name of the Lord Jesus and uses it as a weapon against Satan’s deception, the deceitful deceiver will depart."
This remembrance is not a mechanical repetition, nor a magic formula. It is the placing of the mind in the heart, with the name of Jesus, in the invocation: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Or, more briefly, the name alone: "Jesus, have mercy on me." Or, in moments of great need, simply: "Jesus."
For the Christian of today, the beginning cannot be unceasing prayer — this is the gift of the advanced. The beginning is simple: to pronounce the name of Jesus several times a day, consciously, slowly, with attention. On waking. Before opening the phone. Before a meal. On the road. Before a difficult meeting. Before sleep. The more often we pronounce it, the thinner forgetfulness becomes.
The counsel of St Theophan the Recluse
St Theophan the Recluse, in his writings on the spiritual life, often speaks of "walking before God" as the normal state of the Christian. This means living conscious that God is present at every moment, in every place, in every deed. It is not a wearisome concentration, like a man straining his mind on a single thought, but a gentle, steady settling of the soul in the presence of God — as a child stands beside its father without always looking at his face, but knowing, feeling, that the father is there.
St Theophan recommends, for beginners, several concrete means: short prayers spoken often through the day (sometimes called "little prayers"); the sign of the Cross before every undertaking; remembrance of death at bedtime; a short but unyielding rule of prayer morning and evening; daily reading, even briefly, from Scripture or the Fathers; frequent confession and Communion, according to the spiritual father’s blessing.
All these together weave remembrance into the fabric of the day. There is no longer an hour of prayer and a secular remainder. There is one whole day settled under the gaze of God.
St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain: the inner struggle
St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, in Unseen Warfare, describes with great finesse the struggle with the thoughts that lead to forgetfulness. His counsel is clear: do not let yourself be carried off by the first thought that comes, but hold attention firmly upon your inner being. Let the first thought of the day be for God. Let the first movement of the soul, on waking, be the remembrance of the Name. Then, through the day, whenever you notice that the mind has wandered, bring it gently back, without anger and without self-condemnation, like a child who has strayed a little from its father.
This repeated, patient, unbroken return is the inner struggle itself. It is not done all at once. It is learned over years. But every return thins the veil of forgetfulness and opens the heart.
Remembrance of God’s benefits
Another means, recommended by St Mark the Ascetic in his Letter to Nicolas the Solitary, is the steady remembrance of God’s benefits — and above all, of the Incarnation and the Passion of Christ. He who remembers that Christ died for him cannot easily forget Him. He who often contemplates the Cross, the Resurrection, the love that God has shown him personally — not as an abstraction, but through Blood poured out — keeps in his heart a warmth that forgetfulness can hardly extinguish.
Remembrance of death
Of the remembrance of death we have already spoken. It is only to be added here that this must not be morbid, nor disturbing, but peaceful. The Fathers often call it the blessed remembrance of death, for it brings the soul to truth and lifts it out of the day’s illusion. "The remembrance of death is a daily death," says the Ladder — a death to the passions, to dissipation, to all that daily steals from us the remembrance of God.
To remember death is to look at today from the perspective of the last hour. And as soon as we do this, things fall into place: what to do, what to leave, whom to forgive, for whom to pray, what to stop saying. The remembrance of death is a light that disperses the fog of forgetfulness.
V. The settings that keep remembrance awake
The inner work is not done in a vacuum. The Holy Fathers, even the greatest hesychasts, knew that man needs outward settings to support remembrance — orderings of life, rhythms, places, people, without which the inner struggle dissolves. For the Christian in the world, these settings are not optional: they are the very practical condition of a spiritual life.
The Jesus Prayer in daily life
The foundation of the Jesus Prayer has been spoken of in the previous section. Here it need only be added that, for one in the world, it is kept simply, under the guidance of the spiritual father: spoken in the mind, slowly, in those spaces of the day when the hands or attention are not bound to a particular work — on the road, washing dishes, before sleep, on waking, on the bus, in the waiting room. A prayer rope is not necessary (though it helps), a prayer corner is not necessary (though it is of great benefit), a set time is not necessary. What is needed is only the heart which, growing used to the Name, begins to ask for it of itself. The Name settles in the heart over years, not days. But from the moment it has begun to settle, forgetfulness loses its dominion.
Reading the Gospel and Holy Scripture
No setting nourishes remembrance more surely than the daily reading of the Word of God. The Holy Fathers place it alongside prayer as a work indispensable to the Christian’s life — for Scripture is not information about God, but encounter with Him.
The simple rule recommended by all spiritual guides of recent centuries is this: each day, a few verses or one chapter of the Gospel, read slowly, with attention, before any other reading of the day. Not to cover much, but to receive little deeply. A single verse pondered in stillness, allowed to sink into the heart, works more than ten chapters read in haste.
Alongside the Gospel, the Psalter is the second wellspring of remembrance. The Psalms have been the prayer of the Church from of old, the daily food of monks and saints. He who grows accustomed to reading even one kathisma a day — or, for those too burdened, a few chosen psalms — will feel how, gradually, their words begin to resound in him even outside the time of reading. A psalm that has entered the heart returns of itself in the hours of the day, without effort, as spontaneous remembrance.
The Apostle and the rest of the Old Testament are added in measure. The Orthodox tradition also knows the daily rule of reading from the Synaxarion — the Lives of the Saints of the day, the troparion of the feast, the pericopes appointed for the services. All these set the mind under the Word and under the remembrance of the saints, and do not leave it empty.
It is important to distinguish two kinds of reading. One is study — which has its place and its use, but works the mind. The other is spiritual reading — which works the heart. In the latter, what matters is not quantity but depth: we read in order to be read. We let the word see us before we see it.
Reading without prayer becomes empty knowledge. Prayer without reading grows thin. Together they are the two wings of remembrance.
Reading the Holy Fathers
In the prolongation of Scripture, but not in its place, comes the reading of the Fathers. The Philokalia, the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Paterikon), the Ladder of St John, the homilies of St Macarius, the teachings of St Isaac the Syrian, of Elder Cleopa, of Elder Arsenie Papacioc — all these are books of remembrance. He who opens the Paterikon in the morning, if only for two or three sayings, enters the day with the mind set differently.
The counsel is simple: one book at a time, read with measure; not jumping from one to another out of curiosity; not seeking lofty experiences, but food for this day; what stirs the heart, we note and return to; what we do not understand, we let settle with time.
A word of discernment must also be spoken. Not every book that bears a spiritual name on its cover is a spiritual book. Today there are many writings which, though they speak of Orthodoxy, are thin, sentimental, lacking patristic sap, or on the contrary overloaded with polemics and fears that disturb more than they nourish. The Fathers teach us to ask the spiritual father for guidance on what to read, especially at the beginning. Better one trusted book read ten times than ten untrustworthy books read once.
An Orthodox household
The strongest outward support of remembrance is a household in which God is present. This does not mean a perfect house, nor one without disagreements — no such house exists. It means a house in which faith is the common air, not a subject reserved for Sunday.
A few signs of such a house: an icon in every room, not only in a hidden corner; a lamp kept burning unbroken before the icons; prayer spoken before meals, even briefly, even in a whisper; the sign of the Cross made on leaving the house and on returning; the fast kept together, according to strength; the great feasts lived as feasts, not as days off; remembrances of the departed in the evening prayer; blessed bread brought from church and shared in the house.
Where these things are present, remembrance happens without effort, through the very air of the house. Children grow in it without need of long explanations. Husband and wife keep one another in the remembrance of God, even in the hours when one of them grows faint. The house becomes a small church — and forgetfulness finds fewer places to settle.
Where these things are absent, or only half present, the house itself becomes a place of forgetfulness. Man leaves church on Sunday and enters an environment in which God has no place. For those in this situation — married to someone less believing, or raised in a family in which faith is not spoken of — the Fathers’ counsel is not to force anyone, but to keep remembrance in secret, through one’s own prayer, through one’s own inner ordering, through the small signs that can be made without disturbing the others. With time, the house changes slowly, through the very presence of the one who prays in it. Without such domestic anchors, remembrance remains only a good intention, not a state worked daily.
The Church and the liturgical life
No setting is more powerful than the service of the Church. The Divine Liturgy, Vespers, Matins, the small intercessory services, the akathists — all these are forms through which the Church herself reminds us of God, not by our effort, but by her common work.
For this reason, regular participation in the services — not only on Sunday, but as often as possible — is, for the Christian in the world, one of the most effective works against forgetfulness. At the service, man does not remember God alone: he is remembered together with the whole Church, living and departed, and this remembrance carries him even on days when alone he could not.
Confession and Holy Communion, according to the spiritual father’s order, are the centre of this life. He who confesses often cleanses his heart of the passions that produce forgetfulness. He who communes often receives Christ Himself within — not by his own boldness, not by fashion, not by mechanical schedule, but with preparation, confession and blessing. And so, for days after Holy Communion, remembrance is more wakeful, the heart warmer, forgetfulness heavier. The service of the Church, then, is not merely the fulfilment of a duty — it is the very work by which remembrance is restored to us when we have lost it alone.
The spiritual father and spiritual conversations
Wakeful remembrance is not kept alone. We need a spiritual father to walk with on the way — someone who knows us, sees our weaknesses, corrects us when we err, comforts us when we falter. Authentic Orthodox tradition, from the Desert Fathers to the great spiritual fathers of recent centuries, is a tradition of spiritual obedience.
For one in the world, this ordering is harder than for a monk, but not impossible. A steady spiritual father, met at least at the major confessions, with whom we can speak not only of sins but also of the inner walk — this is the greatest gift God can grant us on the way of salvation. Let him who has him prize him. Let him who has him not ask him of God with tears, and not hasten, for the Lord chooses His hour.
Alongside the spiritual father, spiritual conversations with people of faith are a particular nourishment. Not church gossip, nor criticism of others, but settled conversation: what we have read, what we have understood, what perplexes us, how we are living what we have read. Such conversations settle the mind, bring questions to light, strengthen the will. The Holy Fathers called them words of profit — and reckoned them among the best remedies against forgetfulness and listlessness. A word spoken with someone who walks the same road rekindles remembrance where, alone, one would have fallen into dryness.
Friends who walk the same road
Almost as important as the spiritual father is to have at least a few friends who walk the same road. Not many — a few. People with whom we can speak honestly about the struggle with the passions, about the dryness of prayer, about the doubts that come, about small joys. People before whom we need not hide, because they know us and receive us, but who do not flatter us either, and tell us the truth when we need it.
Spiritual loneliness is one of the greatest trials of the Christian today. Many bear the struggle they bear without being able to share it with anyone — the spouse does not understand, old friends have drifted, in the parish they have met no one with whom to speak. This loneliness is fertile ground for forgetfulness, for discouragement, for evil thoughts.
For this reason the Fathers urge us to ask of God two or three true friends. Not dozens of acquaintances, not large groups, but two or three people with whom we can speak when the struggle grows hard. And if we do not yet have them, to wait for them and prepare for their coming, keeping ourselves clear so that we may recognize them when the Lord sends them. The spiritual friend is, in moments of weakening, the voice that rekindles remembrance when our own heart has grown tired.
Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage is a particular work of remembrance. We go to a monastery, to the relics of a saint, to a blessed place — and there, for a few days, the ordinary life with its dissipations halts. We hear the service morning and evening, eat less, speak less, venerate holy things, see the faces of monks or nuns who live differently from us.
The fruits of a pilgrimage are not those felt on the spot — often on the spot we feel more tired than spiritual. The fruits come afterwards. In the weeks that follow, we notice that something has settled in us. Remembrance comes more easily. Morning prayer has a different warmth. We recall the monk who spoke to us, the troparion sung at the service, the silence of the empty church. The sanctified place has sanctified us a little also.
For this reason it is good, at least once a year, for one who can to make a pilgrimage — even a short one, even to a nearby monastery. And for those who cannot travel, a visit to a quiet church on a working day, at an hour when no service is held, simply to stand in silence for an hour before the altar, is a pilgrimage of place. It bears the same fruits, in its measure. Pilgrimage is, at its depth, an exit from the rhythm of forgetfulness — a willed breaking of habit which, by the very breaking, reopens remembrance.
Silence and stillness
Finally, no setting bears its full fruit without a measure of silence. All the above — prayer, reading, the home, the Church, the spiritual father, friends, pilgrimage — all require a certain degree of stillness in order to bear fruit. Remembrance needs air, and its air is silence.
Not the perfect silence of the desert, which for us in the world is beyond our nature, but the silence that is possible: a few minutes of stillness in the morning, before opening the phone; a road taken in silence, without music, without a podcast; an evening without screens; the silence of the tongue when the heart wants to speak in vain; a fast from words alongside the fast from food.
This stillness, even partial, is the air in which remembrance can grow. Without it, all means are in vain — for the inner and outer noise will not let forgetfulness be overcome.
The Holy Fathers teach us that silence is not merely the absence of word, but a positive work. He who is truly silent is not empty, but full — full of the remembrance of God. And he who learns to be silent even for a few hours a day discovers that God Himself speaks to him in that silence, in a hidden way, through good thoughts, through unexpected tears, through peace.
VI. A simple rule against forgetfulness
If all that has been said above seems too much at once, the beginning may be very small. The Fathers teach us not to despise our measure, but to begin with what we can keep day by day. Here is a rule that any Christian in the world can embrace without his outward life being changed:
- Morning, before the phone: three minutes of prayer — if only the simplest, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, a few short prayers from the morning rule.
- Before every meal: the sign of the Cross and a short prayer, even silently.
- At the beginning of every work: "Lord, help me."
- When temptation comes: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
- In the evening, before sleep: two minutes of examination — "Where did I forget You today, Lord?"
- On Sunday: the Divine Liturgy as the centre of the week, unshaken, regardless of tiredness or others’ plans.
These six points are not a great struggle. They are the beginning. He who keeps them steadily will notice, in a few months, that remembrance has entered the fabric of his day — and that, when he wishes to add more, he will have something to add to. He who leaps over this small measure and throws himself into great efforts without foundation usually loses everything.
VII. What we should not expect
This word must be spoken, lest we fall into discouragement. We must not expect never to forget again. This expectation is not realistic, nor in keeping with the measure of the patristic tradition. The Saints themselves, in their humility, confessed that forgetfulness touched them. It is not a state overcome once for all in this life.
What we may expect is something else: that forgetfulness become shorter, rarer, less deep. That when it comes, we may observe it and return. That the awakenings — the moments in which we remember and the heart shudders — become more frequent. That, little by little, the hour of prayer may lengthen into the rest of the day, and the rest of the day may no longer be wholly separated from the hour of prayer.
This is the realistic measure. Not perfection, but direction. Not the total absence of forgetfulness, but an unceasing struggle with it, in which we conquer today a little more than yesterday.
St Mark the Ascetic himself says, in the word cited above: "At the times when you remember God, increase your prayers, so that when you forget Him, the Lord may remind you." The Saint takes it for granted that we will forget Him. What he asks of us is to use the hours of remembrance to fulfil, through prayer, what the hours of forgetfulness will lose.
This is the good economy of spiritual life: do not wait for a state you do not have, but work fully in the hour you do.
Conclusion
Forgetfulness of God does not begin with denial, but with postponement. We do not say: "There is no God." We say only: "Later I will pray. Later I will turn back. Later I will take salvation seriously." And this "later", repeated day by day, becomes the most common form of forgetfulness. So it enters the Christian’s life: not through one door, but through a thousand small unnoticed postponements.
The Holy Fathers show us that this state is not overcome at once, nor through a single struggle, but through the daily weaving of remembrance: the name of Jesus spoken often, gently, in the depth of the heart; the Word of God read with attention; the meditation on death as the light of the day; the recollection of God’s benefits, and above all of the Cross; silence as the air of prayer; the unceasing return of the mind whenever it strays. All these, supported by the outward settings of Orthodox life — the home, the Church, the spiritual father, friends, pilgrimage — weave layer upon layer over the veil of forgetfulness, until it grows thin.
For this reason the remedy begins now, not tomorrow: a sign of the Cross, a "Lord, have mercy", a return of the mind, a tear, a halt from dissipation. This is what God asks at the beginning. And if man remembers Him in little, God raises him to more.
"At the times when you remember God, increase your prayers, so that when you forget Him, the Lord may remind you."
In these words of St Mark is contained the whole teaching about forgetfulness of God, and the whole way of its overcoming.
Sources cited
- St Mark the Ascetic, On the Spiritual Law, in The Philokalia, vol. I, trans. Palmer / Sherrard / Ware.
- St Mark the Ascetic, Letter to Nicolas the Solitary, in The Philokalia, vol. I.
- St Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination: One Hundred Texts, in The Philokalia, vol. I.
- St Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies.
- St John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step VI (On the Remembrance of Death) and Step XVII (On Insensibility).
- St Anthony the Great, On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life: 170 Texts, in The Philokalia, vol. I.
- St Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation and What is the Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It.
- St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, Unseen Warfare.