Should you talk about your prayer life and spiritual experiences?

Everything about our inner life is between us and God and our spiritual father, and that's it. It's the same reason we don't talk about our prayer life, our prayer rule, how we fast, our spiritual life, anything that we've ever experienced. We don't go to coffee hour and say, "Oh, that was the most amazing liturgy. I felt so much grace." We don't do that. That's not our ethos.

Everything in our spiritual life should be hidden. That's how the saints were. Look at St Silouan the Athonite. Once he died, the majority of the monks at the monastery had no idea. They didn't even think he was a saint. They just thought he was a very good monk. He didn't disclose all the miraculous things that had happened in his spiritual life to anyone, really just to St Sophrony.

And after he died, Sophrony told his whole life story, wrote everything, and published it, and then people said, "Wow, he was a great saint." They didn't realize the depth of the spiritual experiences he had, because it was all hidden. He didn't talk about it. He didn't share it with anybody. It should be the same for us. Obviously we're probably not having profound experiences like St Silouan, but our whole interior life, our whole life of prayer and fasting, should really be private.