The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way 

by Faith Annette Sand (Author, Editor), R. M. French (Author, Translator)

The Way of a Pilgrim, or The Pilgrim's Tale is the English title of a 19th-century Russian work, recounting the narrator's journey as a mendicant pilgrim across Russia while practicing the Jesus Prayer.

Readers of The Way of a Pilgrim quickly discover two levels of narration in this simple and unassuming nineteenth-century religious classic. The first level presents a heartfelt apologia for silent prayer in the Orthodox Christian tradition, namely, the "ceaseless" prayer or the so-called Jesus prayer. Cited as the authority for the Jesus prayer is the Philokalia, a literary collection of writings of the Greek-speaking Church Fathers supporting the tradition of hesychasm. Yet The Way of a Pilgrim does not pursue theological argument. It is imminently practical in its advice to simply start praying.

The second level of narration, which underlies the entire work and arguably is the main reason for the work's simplicity and attraction, is the literal but subtle presentation of the hermit life. The narrator is a solitary and a wanderer calling himself a pilgrim. The wandering hermit's example is presented as the model existence for those who would truly lead a spiritual life.

THE WAY OF A PILGRIM

The pilgrim's inner journey begins when he is struck upon hearing the words of Paul (in I Thessalonians 5:17) to "pray without ceasing." He visits churches and monasteries to try and understand how to pray without ceasing. His travels lead him to a starets (a spiritual father) who teaches him the Jesus Prayer—"Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me"—and gives him practical advice on how to recite the prayer uninterruptedly, as a type of mantra.

The book details the gradual spiritual development and struggles of the narrator, and the effect the narrator's spirituality has on those around him. The sequel is entitled The Pilgrim Continues his Way. Translations of both documents were published together in some English editions.

It is unknown if the book is literally an account of a single pilgrim, or if it uses a fictional pilgrim's journey as a vehicle to teach the practice of ceaseless inner prayer and communion with God.

According to Thomas Hopko, the origin of The Way of a Pilgrim is in many ways a mystery. No one knows for certain if it is a literally true story written by the narrator, or an account cast in the first person about a particular pilgrim (or perhaps based on several), or even a marvelously creative piece of spiritual fiction intended to propagate a certain understanding of the practice of the Orthodox Christian faith, and the prayer of the heart, particularly the Jesus Prayer.

The Russian original, or a copy of it, was present at a Mount Athos monastery in Greece in the 19th century, and was first published in Kazan in 1884, under the Russian title that translates as "Candid Narratives of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father.

Tradition adds that The Way of a Pilgrim was composed in 1859 (the Crimean War is mentioned in the text). The famous starets Ambrose of Optino told a correspondent that a peasant had once visited the late starets Macarius. The peasant was so advanced in the spiritual life that Macarius was dumbfounded as to what to tell him and simply repeated "Be humble, be humble." This testimony conforms to the style of the narrative, and the sequel's mention of starets Ambrose is another clue to the probability that the Mt. Athos copy is genuine, while the sequel was added later.

Critical scholarship has investigated the authorship of the four original and three supplementary tales. Aleksei Pentkovsky has argued that the first four tales survive in the form of a later redaction of an original work by Archimandrite Mikhail Kozlov (1826–1884), The Seeker of Unceasing Prayer, and that the supplementary tales are the work of Arsenii Troepolskii (1804–1870). Both of these men spent time as wanderers.

ME AND THE PILGRIM

The Way of a Pilgrim is told in first person narrative but the narrator reveals very little about himself -- not even his name. The pilgrim is the universal Everyman, and is on a pilgrim's journey without real destination on earth, a pilgrim journey in which "the way" is itself the whole point.

The Way of a Pilgrim isn’t an easy book to read. And its sequel The Pilgrim Continues His Way is even harder. The reason I started to read the book was that I read about it in A. W. Tozer’s book The Pursuit of God. It is mentioned as one of the books that he read and was inspired by.

I was inspired by curiosity and many times by skepticism. The Way of a Pilgrim is an Eastern Orthodox book and many times, for an evangelist protestant, it felt too strange.

At the same time, I could agree with the message, the prayer is essential to our lives. And we need to learn to pray continually.

I have not started to pray the Jesus prayer all the time. I do pray it occasionally but I feel that we have freedom in prayer. Freedom to express ourselves and seek what is inside us.

Even though that freedom is actually a lot more responsible and scary than praying continually the Jesus prayer.

I think there are many things in the book I will continue meditating about. And it has made me hunger for more about prayer and even mysticism.