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The Way of a Pilgrim 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. 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.[1] 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."[2]
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The pilgrim's inner journey begins when he is struck upon hearing the words of Paul (in 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.[3]
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.
The most widely used English edition was translated by Reginald Michael (R. M.) French (b. 1884), and first published in 1931. In his Translator's Note, French wrote of the pilgrim that "everyone will appreciate the sincerity of his conviction and few probably will doubt the reality of his experience". French wrote that the events described in the book "appear to belong to a Russia prior to the liberation of the serfs [in] 1861". French also observed that the Pilgrim's narrative mentions the Crimean War, which began in 1853. Therefore, it was "between those two dates," 1853 and 1861, that the Pilgrim arrived at Irkutsk and found a spiritual father, two of the major events in the Pilgrim's narrative.[2]
The Way of a Pilgrim is the focus of the story "Franny" from the 1961 collection of short stories, Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. Franny, a young college student, is fascinated with The Way of a Pilgrim, describing it as a way "to see God," and saying that the Jesus Prayer is similar to techniques in Hinduism and Buddhism. Franny and Zooey became an international best-seller, and was influential in spreading the popularity of The Way of a Pilgrim outside of monastic traditions and to people of different religious backgrounds.[4][5]