[Prl. 1.] I WAS feverish with the inflammation of the passions, when you revived me as you usually do with the [healing] touch of your godly letter, palliating my diseased nous (intellect) in its shameful deformity: and thus you blessedly imitated our great teacher Macarios.
And this is no surprise: for your share was the marked ones like blessed Jacob: you served well for Rachel, received Leah; and now you seek the [real] object of your longing, having fulfilled ‘the week’ [of years] (Gen 29:15-30).
For I do not deny that I had toiled all night and caught nothing: but when at your word I let down my nets (Lk 5:5) I caught an abundance of fish: I do not think they are [very] large, but there are a hundred and fifty-three of them (Jn 21:11); and I am sending them to you in the basket of love (cf. Mt 15:37; Mk 8:8) in an equivalent number of chapters, thereby fulfilling your instructions.
I am amazed at you and very jealous of your excellent purpose. For your do not simply yearn for these [texts] that came into existence through hands, ink, and paper; rather [you yearn] for chapters fixed in the nous (intellect) through love and forgetfulness of injury.
[Prl. 2.] SINCE everything is twofold, each facing the other as the wise Jesus [Ben-Sirach] says (Sir. 42:24), receive these chapters
[2] both in letter; [1] and in spirit.
Understand that nous (intellect) takes complete precedence over the letter, since without [nous] there can be no letter.
In the same way prayer also has a twofold mode:
[1] one active; [2] the other contemplative.
And it is the same with numbers:
[1] on the surface there is quantity; [2] while the inner significance is quality
[Prl. 3.] THEREFORE, in dividing my saying[s] on prayer into one hundred and fifty-three I am catering for you a ‘fish-[dinner]’ from the gospels (cf. Jn 21:12-13), to delight you with a symbolic number in which you will find both a triangular and a hexagonal form. [These] signify both:
[2] reverent knowledge of the Trinity; [1] and the boundaries of the orderly arrangement of the universe.
So, while the number one hundred by itself is ‘square’, fifty-three is a combination of ‘triangular’ and ‘spherical’; because twenty-eight is triangular, and twenty-five is spherical (five times five equals twenty-five)
So you not only have a square number, on account of the tetrad of the virtues; but also the wise knowledge of this age that resembles the number twenty-five because of the spherical nature of time.
For week after week, month after month, year after year, [time] rolls on from season to season, as we see in the movements of sun and moon, spring and summer, and the rest.
[Prl. 4.] THE triang[ular number] you may take as signifying the knowledge of the Holy Trinity.
Or else, if you obtain a hundred and fifty-three by adding up many numbers, since it is a triangular number, consider it to mean:
[1] praktiké [asceticism], [2] physiké [natural science], and [3] theologiké [theology]; or
[1] faith [2] hope, and [3] love; (1Cor 13.13) or
[1] gold [2] silver, and [3] precious stones (1Cor 3.12)
[Prl. 5.] ENOUGH, then, of these numbers. The chapters themselves are humble, but you will not be contemptuous, since you have known both plenty and want (Ph 4:12); and you have certainly not forgotten him who, far from rejecting the widow’s two coins, welcomed then more than the wealth of the many. (Mk 12:42)
You know how to preserve the fruit of goodwill and love of your genuine brethren; so pray for me in my illness that I may be healed, and then take up my bed and walk (Mk. 2:11) by the grace of Christ Amen.
ON PRAYER CHAPTERS