The author expounds the reason of the primacy of Jesus Prayer over the ritual prayers in chanting and psalm-reading. Both ways of praying are beset by the danger of Pharisaic self-satisfaction and puffing up. Nevertheless, the internal prayer, i.e. the steady invocation of the Holy Name of Jesus has proven to be more fruitful than the external, oral prayer, although the latter is not to be undermined.
Elder Paissios Velichkovsky
translated by: Monk David Perović
pages: 205-216