This is a life story of two spiritual mentors in the Eastern Christian Orthodox tradition, St. Leo of Optina (Nagolkin) and St. Theodore of Neamts (Polzikov). St Theodore was a disciple of St. Paisios (Velichkovsky). St Paisios re-established in several monasteries on Athos and in Romania, where he was father superior, the practice of incessant prayer to Jesus Christ. This practice is known as ‘Jesus prayer’ and he had discovered this practice in the writings of ancient Christian ascetics.

St. Leo and St. Theodore established the schools of inner prayer and revelation of thoughts amongst the monks in Optina and several other monasteries at the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th century. Inner prayer, revelation of thoughts and admonishing through acting, amongst other methods of purifying and elevating the soul for the sake of receiving the Holy Spirit, were almost forgotten by that time. In the life of the clergy the stress was put on the obedience to the superiors in the hierarchy, strict complying to the church rules and following church services and the work of penance. The inner core of the monks remained often untouched by this, they couldn’t open it to the light of the Gospel...

The author of this book, Saint Luke the Confessor (his worldly name was Valentin Yasenetsky-Voyno), is a Russian saint of the twentieth century. He was born on April 27, 1877 in Kerch, Crimea and fell asleep in the Lord on June 11, 1961 in Simferopol, Crimea. Canonized by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) in November 1995. He was a descendent of a Belarusian-Polish impoverished princely family, and he was archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church and at the same time a promi...