Today’s Old Testament reading contains these amazing words: ‘The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still’. They come in the context of the Exodus from Egypt, after Pharaoh had discovered the Israelites’ departure, and pursued them with a mighty army.

‘You have only to be still …’ The eighth century Sinaitic Abbot Hesychios wrote: ‘Attentiveness is the stillness of the heart, unbroken by any thought. In this stillness the heart breathes and invokes, endlessly and without ceasing, only Jesus Christ, who is the Son and God Himself… Through this invocation enfolded continually in Christ, who secretly divines all hearts, the soul does everything it can to keep its sweetness and its inner struggle hidden from men, so that the devil … does not lead it into evil’.

May the Holy Spirit grant us true stillness of heart, and pour out His gifts and His blessing this day.