When it is said
A monk asked how he should pray as he sat making nets. St John told him to say psalms by heart and, at the end of each psalm, to pray the first line where he sat.
If thoughts troubled him, he was to add the second line. When he had finished three rows of the net, he was to stand up, kneel and pray.
The two lines fit any moment of the day when a longer prayer is too much.
Where it comes from
Author known
The elders of Gaza
Two elders named Barsanuphius and John lived near Gaza in the 5th and 6th centuries, and people wrote to them with their questions: hermits, monks, bishops and lay people. Barsanuphius lived shut away near a monastery and sent his answers through its abbot, Seridos. Some 850 of their questions and answers survive in one book.
The answers of Sts Barsanuphius and John, in Russian, on Azbyka.ru
Whose words are they?
In the book this answer is John’s. The Russian monk St Nil Sorsky quotes a form of it in his rule as the words of Barsanuphius, for the heavy days of despondency: “Lord, look upon my affliction and have mercy on me! O God, help me, a sinner!”
The answers of Sts Barsanuphius and John, answers 73 and 74; St Nil Sorsky, the Rule, the sixth thought (despondency)
The Scripture in it
I will be glad and rejoice in Your loving devotion, for You have seen my affliction; You have known the anguish of my soul.
But the tax collector stood at a distance, unwilling even to lift up his eyes to heaven. Instead, he beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Russian
«Боже, помилуй меня окаянного!»
Если же беспокоят тебя помыслы, то прибавлять:
«Боже! Ты видишь скорбь мою, помоги мне».
From the answers of Sts Barsanuphius and John in Russian, on Azbyka.ru.