with the blessing of His Grace Simon, Bishop of Murmansk and Monchegorsk
Trifonov Pechenga Monastery
"The ark"
Moscow
2004
What is prayer
In the Christian catechism, that is, in the instruction on the Christian faith, it is said about prayer this way: “Prayer is the offering of the mind and heart to God and is a person’s reverent word to God.” Prayer is the threads of the living fabric of the church body, going in all directions; The prayer connection permeates the entire body of the Church.
Prayer connects each member of the Church with the Heavenly Father, members of the earthly Church with each other, and members of the earth with those in heaven.
The content of prayer is: praise, or glory; thanksgiving; repentance; a request for God's mercy, for the forgiveness of sins, for the granting of mental and physical blessings, heavenly and earthly. Prayer happens for oneself and for others. Praying for one another expresses the mutual love of Church members.
Spiritual worship is necessarily accompanied by physical worship due to the close connection between soul and body. Prayer is expressed in a variety of external forms. This includes genuflection, the sign of the cross, raising of hands, the use of various liturgical objects and all external actions of public Christian worship.
Prayer has extraordinary power. “Prayer not only defeats the laws of nature, not only is it an insurmountable shield against visible and invisible enemies, but it even holds back the hand of the Almighty God Himself, raised to defeat sinners,” writes the saint.
But reading the words of a prayer from memory or from a prayer book, standing in front of an icon at home or in a temple, making bows is not yet prayer. “Reading prayers, standing in prayer and bowing constitute only prayerful standing,” writes the saint, “and prayer, in fact, comes from the heart. When this one is not there, there is none. Prayer without feelings is the same as a dead miscarriage.” Prayer itself, as St. Theophan the Recluse writes, “is the emergence in our heart of one after another reverent feelings for God - feelings of self-abasement, devotion, thanksgiving, glorification, forgiveness, diligent prostration, contrition, submission to the will of God, and so on.”
Most of all, during prayer, we must take care that these and similar feelings fill our soul, so that when we read prayers out loud or internally, during bows, our heart is not empty, so that it rushes to God. When we have these feelings, then our prayer, our bows are prayer...
Why you need to pray according to the prayer book
The Fathers of the Church were very careful about those prayers that were composed by the believers themselves.
“Do not dare to bring to God verbose and eloquent prayers composed by you... they are the product of a fallen mind and... cannot be accepted on the spiritual altar of God,” wrote. Our example in praying in other people's words is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. His prayerful exclamations during the sufferings of the cross are lines from the psalms ().
Books for home prayers contain many prayers written by the Holy Fathers of the Church.
These prayers were written many centuries ago by the monks and Macarius of Egypt, Roman the Sweet Singer, the saints, and other great prayer books. Filled with a prayerful spirit, they put into words what this spirit inspired and conveyed these words to us. Great prayerful power moves in their prayers, and whoever attends to them with attention and diligence will certainly experience a feeling of prayer. Reading prayers connects a person with their creators - the psalmists and ascetics. This helps to gain a spiritual mood akin to their heartfelt burning.
What prayers are included in the prayer book
Books for home prayers, most often called, have many similarities with each other, because they contain the same prayers. The prayer books contain prayers for those coming to bed and morning prayers, an akathist to the Sweetest Jesus, an akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos, an akathist to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, a canon of repentance to our Lord Jesus Christ, a canon of prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos, sung in every spiritual sorrow and situation, a canon to the Guardian Angel , following before Holy Communion and prayers for Holy Communion.
The word akathist comes from the Greek akathistos gymnos - “non-seated hymn”, a hymn that is sung while standing. An akathist is a contemplation of a miracle; it is, as it were, a verbal icon of a sacred person or a blessed event, which explains its static nature. The Akathist consists of 12 double songs - sequentially alternating ikos and kontakia. Kontakion is a short Orthodox chant, which sets out the dogmatic or historical significance of the celebrated event or person; in the kontakion, any moment of the Church’s teaching about one of the mysteries of God is revealed. Each kontakion ends with the exclamation “Alleluia.” The kontakion is followed by an ikos, which reveals the content of the kontakion and concludes a more extensive development of the theme contained in the kontakion.
A canon is one of the forms of the Orthodox hymn. The canon consists of nine songs arranged in thanksgiving and praise to God. The song of the canon is divided into irmos (from the Greek verb “I bind”, “I unite”) and several troparia (a song depicting the lifestyle of a saint or the celebration of a holiday). The Canon of the Guardian Angel contains a prayer service to the Guardian Angel, a prayer canon to the Most Holy Theotokos - a prayer for the aversion of internal mental and physical illnesses and, in particular, for the healing of sinful ulcers that affect the soul, as the very content of the songs and verses of the canon shows.
What prayers should a layperson’s prayer rule consist of?
The prayer rule of a layman consists of morning and evening prayers, which are performed daily. This rhythm is necessary, because otherwise the soul easily falls out of the prayer life, as if waking up only from time to time. In prayer, as in any big and difficult matter, inspiration, mood and improvisation are not enough.
There are three basic prayer rules:
1) a complete prayer rule, designed for monks and spiritually experienced laity, which is printed in the Orthodox Prayer Book;
2) a short prayer rule designed for all believers; in the morning: “Heavenly King”, Trisagion, “Our Father”, “Virgin Mother of God”, “Rising from sleep”, “Have mercy on me, O God”, “I Believe”, “God, cleanse”, “To You, Master”, “ Holy Angel”, “Most Holy Lady”, invocation of saints, prayer for the living and the dead; in the evening: “Heavenly King”, Trisagion, “Our Father”, “Have mercy on us, Lord”, “Eternal God”, “Good King”, “Angel of Christ”, from “The Chosen Governor” to “It is worthy to eat”; these prayers are contained in any prayer book;
3) a short prayer rule for the saint: three times “Our Father”, three times “Virgin Mother of God” and once “I Believe” - for those days and circumstances when a person is extremely tired or very limited in time.
The duration of prayers and their number are determined by spiritual fathers and priests, taking into account everyone’s lifestyle and spiritual experience.
You cannot completely omit the prayer rule. Even if the prayer rule is read without due attention, the words of the prayers, penetrating the soul, have a cleansing effect.
Saint Theophan writes to one family person: “In case of emergency, one must be able to shorten the rule. You never know how many coincidences there are in family life. When things do not allow you to complete the prayer rule in full, then perform it abbreviated.
But one should never rush... The rule is not an essential part of prayer, but is only its external side. The main thing is the prayer of the mind and heart to God, offered with praise, thanksgiving and petition... and finally with complete devotion to the Lord. When there are such movements in the heart, there is prayer there, and when not, there is no prayer, even if you stood on the rule for whole days.”
A special prayer rule is performed during preparation for the Sacraments of Confession and Communion. On these days (they are called fasting and last for at least three days), it is customary to fulfill your prayer rule more diligently: whoever usually does not read all morning and evening prayers, let him read everything in full; whoever does not read the canons, let him read at least on these days. one canon. On the eve of communion, you must be at the evening service and read at home, in addition to the usual prayers for going to bed, the canon of repentance, the canon to the Mother of God and the canon to the Guardian Angel. The canon for communion is also read and, for those who wish, an akathist to the Sweetest Jesus. In the morning, morning prayers are read and all the prayers for holy communion are read.
During fasting, prayers are especially long, in order, as the righteous saint writes, “so that through the duration of fervent prayer we can disperse our cold hearts, hardened in prolonged bustle. For it is strange to think, much less to demand, that a heart matured in the vanity of life could soon be imbued with the warmth of faith and love for God during prayer. No, this requires work and time. The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and those who use force delight it (). The Kingdom of God does not come to the heart soon when people run so diligently from it. The Lord God Himself expressed His will that we pray not briefly when He presents as an example a widow who went to the judge for a long time and bothered him for a long time (for a long time) with her requests ().”
When to make your prayer rule
In the conditions of modern life, given the workload and accelerated pace, it is not easy for the laity to set aside a certain time for prayer. We must develop strict rules of prayer discipline and strictly adhere to our prayer rules.
Morning prayers are best read before starting any task. As a last resort, they are pronounced on the way from home. The evening prayer rule is recommended by prayer teachers to be read in free minutes before dinner or even earlier - late in the evening it is often difficult to concentrate due to fatigue.
How to Prepare for Prayer
The basic prayers that make up the morning and evening rules should be known by heart so that they penetrate deeper into the heart and so that they can be repeated in any circumstances. First of all, in your free time, it is advisable to read the prayers included in your rule, translate the text of the prayers for yourself from Church Slavonic into Russian in order to understand the meaning of each word and not pronounce a single word meaninglessly or without precise understanding. This is what the Church Fathers advise. “Take the trouble,” writes the monk, “not during the hour of prayer, but at another, free time, to think about and feel the prescribed prayers. Having done this, even during prayer you will not encounter any difficulty in reproducing the content of the prayer being read.”
It is very important that those who begin to pray should expel resentment, irritation, and bitterness from their hearts. The saint teaches: “Before prayers, you must not be angry with anyone, not be angry, but leave all offense behind, so that God himself will forgive your sins.”
“When approaching the Benefactor, be beneficent yourself; when approaching the Good, be good yourself; approaching the Righteous One, be righteous yourself; when approaching the Patient One, be patient yourself; when approaching the Humane, be humane; and also be everything else, approaching the Kind-hearted, the Benevolent, the Sociable in good things, the Merciful to everyone, and if anything else is seen of the Divine, becoming like in all this by will, thereby acquiring the boldness to pray,” writes the saint.
How to make your own prayer rule at home
During prayer, it is recommended to retire, light a lamp or candle and stand in front of the icon. Depending on the nature of family relationships, we can recommend reading the prayer rule together, with the whole family, or for each family member separately. General prayer is recommended primarily on special days, before a festive meal and on other similar occasions. Family prayer is a type of church, public prayer (the family is a kind of home church) and therefore does not replace individual prayer, but only complements it.
Before starting prayer, you should sign yourself with the sign of the cross and make several bows, either from the waist or to the ground, and try to tune in to an internal conversation with God. “Stay silently until your feelings calm down, place yourself in the presence of God to the consciousness and feeling of Him with reverent Fear and restore in your heart a living faith that God hears and sees you,” says the beginning of the prayer book. Saying prayers out loud or in a low voice helps many people focus.
“When starting to pray,” the saint advises, “in the morning or evening, stand a little, or sit, or walk, and try at this time to sober up your thoughts, distracting it from all earthly affairs and objects. Then think about who is the One to whom you will turn in prayer, and who you are who now have to begin this prayerful appeal to Him - and arouse in your soul the corresponding mood of self-abasement and reverent fear of standing before God in your heart. This is all the preparation - to stand reverently before God - small, but not insignificant. This is where prayer begins, and a good beginning is half the battle.
Having thus established yourself internally, then stand in front of the icon and, having made several bows, begin the usual prayer: “Glory to Thee, our God, glory to Thee,” “To the Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Soul of Truth,” and so on. Read slowly, delve into every word, and bring the thought of every word to your heart, accompanying it with bows. This is the whole point of reading a prayer that is pleasing and fruitful to God. Delve into every word and bring the thought of the word to your heart, otherwise, understand what you read and feel what you understand. No other rules are required. These two - understand and feel - when performed properly, adorn every prayer with full dignity and impart to it all its fruitful effect. You read: “cleanse us from all defilement” - feel your defilement, desire purity and seek it with hope from the Lord. You read: “forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors” - and in your soul forgive everyone, and in your heart, which has forgiven everyone, ask the Lord for forgiveness. You read: “Thy will be done” - and in your heart completely commit your fate to the Lord and express an unquestioning readiness to graciously meet everything that the Lord wants to send you.
If you act like this with every verse of your prayer, then you will have a proper prayer.”
In another of his instructions, Saint Theophan so briefly systematizes advice on reading the prayer rule:
“a) never read hastily, but read as if in a chant... In ancient times, all the prayers read were taken from the psalms... But nowhere do I see the word “read”, but everywhere “sing”...
b) delve into every word and not only reproduce the thought of what you read in your mind, but also arouse the corresponding feeling...
c) in order to trigger the urge to hastily read, make it a point - not to read this and that, but to stand for a reading prayer for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour... how long you usually stand... and then don’t worry... how many prayers you read - and how the time has come, if not If you want to stand any further, stop reading...
d) having put this down, however, do not look at the clock, but stand in such a way that you can stand endlessly: your thoughts will not run ahead...
e) in order to promote the movement of prayerful feelings in your free time, reread and rethink all the prayers that are included in your rule - and re-feel them, so that when you begin to read them according to the rule, you know in advance what feeling should be aroused in the heart...
f) never read prayers without interruption, but always break them up with personal prayer, with bows, whether in the middle of prayers or at the end. As soon as something comes to your heart, immediately stop reading and bow. This last rule is the most necessary and most necessary for cultivating the spirit of prayer... If any other feeling is very consuming, you should be with it and bow down, but leave reading... so until the very end of the allotted time.”
What to do when distracted during prayer
Praying is very difficult. Prayer is primarily a spiritual work, therefore one should not expect immediate spiritual pleasure from it. “Do not look for pleasures in prayer,” he writes, “they are by no means characteristic of a sinner. The desire of a sinner to feel pleasure is already self-delusion... Do not prematurely seek high spiritual states and prayerful delights.”
As a rule, it is possible to maintain attention on the words of the prayer for several minutes, and then thoughts begin to wander, the eye glides over the words of the prayer - and our heart and mind are far away.
If someone prays to the Lord, but thinks about something else, then the Lord will not listen to such a prayer,” writes the reverend.
At these moments, the Fathers of the Church advise to be especially attentive. Saint Theophan the Recluse writes that we must prepare in advance for the fact that when reading prayers we are distracted, often mechanically reading the words of the prayer. “When a thought runs away during prayer, return it. If he runs away again, come back again. It's like that every time. Every time you read something while your thoughts are running away and, therefore, without attention or feeling, do not forget to re-read. And even if your thought wanders off in one place several times, read it several times until you read it with concept and feeling. Once you overcome this difficulty, another time, perhaps, it will not happen again, or it will not happen again with such force.
If, while reading the rule, a prayer breaks through in your own words, then, as St. Nicodemus says, “do not let this opportunity pass by, but dwell on it.”
We find the same thought in St. Theophan: “Another word will have such a strong effect on the soul that the soul will not want to extend further in prayer, and although the tongue reads prayers, the thought keeps running back to the place that had such an effect on her. In this case, stop, do not read further, but stand with attention and feeling in that place, nourish your soul with them, or with the thoughts that it will produce. And don’t rush to tear yourself away from this state, so if time is pressing, it’s better to leave the unfinished rule, and don’t ruin this state. It will overshadow you, perhaps all day, like a Guardian Angel! This kind of beneficial influence on the soul during prayer means that the spirit of prayer begins to take root and that, therefore, maintaining this state is the most reliable means of nurturing and strengthening the spirit of prayer in us.”
How to end your prayer rule
It is good to end the prayer with thanksgiving to God for the gift of communication and contrition for one’s inattention.
“When you finish your prayer, do not immediately move on to any of your other activities, but also, at least for a little while, wait and think that you have accomplished this and what it obliges you to, trying, if you are given something to feel during prayer, to preserve it after prayers,” writes St. Theophan the Recluse. “Do not immediately rush into everyday affairs,” teaches St. Nicodemus, “and never think that, having completed your prayer rule, you have finished everything in relation to God.”
When getting down to business, you must first think about what you have to say, do, see during the day, and ask God for blessings and strength to follow His will.
How to learn to spend your day in prayer
Having finished our morning prayers, we should not think that everything is complete in relation to God, and only in the evening, during the evening rule, should we return to prayer again.
The good feelings that arise during morning prayers will be drowned out in the bustle and busyness of the day. Because of this, there is no desire to attend evening prayer.
We must try to make sure that the soul turns to God not only when we stand in prayer, but throughout the entire day.
Here is how Saint Theophan the Recluse advises learning this:
“First, it is necessary throughout the day to more often cry out to God from the heart in short words, judging by the need of the soul and current affairs. You start by saying, for example: “Bless, Lord!” When you finish the job, say: “Glory to you, Lord!”, and not only with your tongue, but also with the feeling of your heart. Any passion that arises, say: “Save me, Lord, I am perishing!” The darkness of confusing thoughts finds itself, cry out: “Bring my soul out of prison!” Wrong deeds lie ahead and sin leads to them, pray: “Guide me, Lord, on the path” or “Do not let my feet become troubled.” Sins suppress and lead to despair, cry out in the publican’s voice: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” So anyway. Or simply say often: “Lord, have mercy; Lady Mother of God, have mercy on me. Angel of God, my holy guardian, protect me,” or cry out in some other word. Just make these appeals as often as possible, trying in every possible way so that they come from the heart, as if squeezed out of it. When you do this, we will often make intelligent ascents to God from the heart, frequent appeals to God, frequent prayer, and this frequency will impart the skill of intelligent conversation with God.
But in order for the soul to begin to cry out like this, it must first be forced to turn everything into the glory of God, every one of its deeds, big and small. And this is the second way to teach the soul to turn to God more often during the day. For if we make it a law to fulfill this apostolic commandment, so that we do everything for the glory of God, even whether you eat, drink, or whatever you do, you do everything for the glory of God (), then we will certainly remember God in every action, and we will not just remember , but with caution, so as not to act wrongly in any case and not to offend God in any way. This will make you turn to God with fear and prayerfully ask for help and admonition. Just as we almost constantly do something, we will almost constantly turn to God in prayer, and, therefore, almost continuously go through the science of lifting up prayer in our souls to God.
But in order for the soul to perform this, that is, doing everything for the glory of God, as it should, it must be set up for this from early morning - from the very beginning of the day, before a person goes out to do his work and to do his work until the evening. This mood is produced by the thought of God. And this is the third way of training the soul to frequently turn to God. Thought on God is a reverent reflection on the Divine properties and actions and on what knowledge of them and their relationship to us obliges us, this is a reflection on the goodness of God, justice, wisdom, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, on creation and providence, on the dispensation of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ, about the goodness and word of God, about the holy sacraments, about the Kingdom of Heaven.
Whichever of these subjects you don’t think about, this reflection will certainly fill your soul with a reverent feeling for God. Start thinking, for example, about the goodness of God, and you will see that you are surrounded by God’s mercies both physically and spiritually, and unless you are a stone, you will not fall before God in the outpouring of humiliated feelings of gratitude. Start thinking about the omnipresence of God, and you will understand that you are everywhere before God and God is before you, and you cannot help but be filled with reverent fear. Begin to reflect on the omniscience of God - you will realize that nothing in you is hidden from the eye of God, and you will certainly decide to be strictly attentive to the movements of your heart and mind, so as not to offend the all-seeing God in any way. Begin to reason about the truth of God, and you will be convinced that not a single bad deed will go unpunished, and you will certainly intend to cleanse all your sins with heartfelt contrition and repentance before God. So, no matter what property and action of God you begin to reason about, every such reflection will fill the soul with reverent feelings and dispositions towards God. It directs the whole being of a person directly to God and is therefore the most direct means to accustom the soul to ascend to God.
The most decent, convenient time for this is the morning, when the soul is not yet burdened with many impressions and business concerns, and precisely after morning prayer. When you finish your prayer, sit down and, with your thoughts sanctified in prayer, begin to reflect today on one thing, tomorrow on another of God’s properties and actions, and create a disposition in your soul according to this. “Go,” said the saint, “go, holy thought of God, and let us immerse ourselves in meditation on the great deeds of God,” and his thoughts passed through either the works of creation and providence, or the miracles of the Lord Savior, or His suffering, or something else, thereby touching his heart and began to pour out his soul in prayer. Anyone can do this. There is little work, all you need is desire and determination; and there is a lot of fruit.
So here are three ways, in addition to the prayer rule, to teach the soul to ascend in prayer to God, namely: to devote some time in the morning to contemplation of God, to turn every matter to the glory of God and often turn to God with short appeals.
When the thought of God is well accomplished in the morning, it will leave a deep mood for thinking about God. Thinking about God will force the soul to carefully carry out every action, both internal and external, and turn it into the glory of God. And both will put the soul in such a position that prayerful appeals to God will often be expelled from it.
These three - thinking about God, all creation for the glory of God and frequent appeals are the most effective tools of mental and heartfelt prayer. Each of them lifts the soul to God. Whoever sets out to practice them will soon acquire in his heart the skill of ascent to God. This work is like climbing a mountain. The higher someone climbs the mountain, the freer and easier he breathes. So here, the more one gets used to the exercises shown, the higher the soul will rise, and the higher the soul rises, the more freely prayer will act in it. Our soul by nature is an inhabitant of the heavenly world of the Divine. There she should have been undiminished in both thought and heart; but the burden of earthly thoughts and passions drags and weighs her down. The methods shown tear it off the ground little by little, and then completely tear it off. When they are completely torn away, then the soul will enter its own region and will sweetly dwell in grief - here heartily and mentally, and then with its very being it will be honored before the face of God to dwell in the faces of Angels and Saints. May the Lord vouchsafe all of you with His grace. Amen".
How to force yourself to pray
Sometimes prayer doesn’t come to mind at all. In this case, Saint Theophan advises doing this:
“If this is prayer at home, then you can put it off a little, for a few minutes... If it doesn’t happen after that... force yourself to fulfill the prayer rule forcibly, straining, and understand what is being said, and feel... just like when a child does not want to bend over, they take him by the forelock and bend over... Otherwise, this is what can happen... now you don’t feel like it, tomorrow you don’t feel like it, and then the prayer is completely over. Beware of this... and force yourself to willingly pray. The work of self-compulsion overcomes everything.”
What you need for successful prayer
“When you desire and seek success in your prayer work, adapt everything else to this, so as not to destroy with one hand what the other creates.
1. Maintain your body strictly in food, in sleep, and in rest: do not give it anything just because it wants it, as the apostle commands: Do not turn care for the flesh into lust (). Give no rest to the flesh.
2. Reduce your external relations to the most inevitable. This is for the time of teaching yourself to pray. Afterwards, the prayer, acting in you, will indicate that without prejudice to it it can be added. Take special care of your senses, and most of all, your eyes, your ears, and your tongue. Without observing this, you will not take a step forward in the matter of prayer. Just as a candle cannot burn in the wind and rain, so prayer cannot be warmed by the influx of impressions from the outside.
3. Use all your free time after prayer for reading and meditation. For reading, choose primarily books that write about prayer and, in general, about inner spiritual life. Think exclusively about God and Divine things, about the Incarnate Economy of our salvation, and in it especially about the suffering and death of the Lord Savior. By doing this, you will plunge into the sea of Divine light. Add to this going to church as soon as you have the opportunity. One presence in the temple will overshadow you with a prayer cloud. What will you get if you spend the entire service in a truly prayerful mood!
4. Know that you cannot succeed in prayer without succeeding in general in the Christian life. It is necessary that there should not be a single sin on the soul that has not been cleansed by repentance; and if during your prayerful work you do something that troubles your conscience, hasten to be cleansed by repentance, so that you can boldly look to the Lord. Always keep humble contrition in your heart. Do not miss a single upcoming opportunity to do some good or to demonstrate any good disposition, especially humility, obedience and renunciation of your will. But it goes without saying that zeal for salvation should burn unquenchably and, filling the entire soul, in everything, from small to great, should be the main driving force, with the fear of God and unshakable hope.
5. Having thus tuned in, bother yourself in the work of prayer, praying: now with ready-made prayers, now with your own, now with short invocations to the Lord, now with the Jesus Prayer, but without missing out on anything that can help in this work, and you will receive what you are looking for. Let me remind you what Saint Macarius of Egypt says: “God will see your prayer work and that you sincerely desire success in prayer - and will give you prayer. For know that although prayer done and achieved through one’s own efforts is pleasing to God, real prayer is the one that settles in the heart and becomes persistent. She is a gift of God, a work of God's grace. Therefore, when you pray about everything, do not forget to pray about prayer” (Rev.).
How to learn to fall before God in prayer
Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt writes:
“In prayer, the main thing that you need to take care of first of all is a living, clairvoyant faith in the Lord: imagine Him vividly before you and in yourself, and then, if you want, ask for Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit, and you will have it. Ask simply, without hesitation, and then your God will be everything for you, performing great and wonderful deeds in an instant, just as the sign of the cross accomplishes great powers. Ask not for yourself alone, but for all the faithful, for the entire body of the Church, spiritual and material blessings, not separating yourself from other believers, but being in spiritual unity with them, as a member of the one great body of the Church of Christ - and loving everyone, as your children in Christ, the Heavenly Father will fill you with great peace and boldness.
If you want to ask God for some good from God through prayer, then before praying, prepare yourself for undoubted, strong faith and take remedies in advance against doubt and unbelief. It’s bad if, during the prayer itself, your heart becomes weak in faith and does not stand in it, then don’t even think that you will receive what you asked God for in doubt, because you have offended God, and God does not give His gifts to a scolder! Whatever you ask in prayer with faith, you will receive (), and, therefore, if you ask in disbelief or with doubt, you will not accept. If you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but if you also say to this mountain: be taken up and cast into the sea, it will happen (). This means that if you doubt and don’t believe it, you won’t do it. Let (every person) ask with faith, without doubting at all, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, lifted and tossed by the wind. Let such a person not think of receiving anything from the Lord. A person with double thoughts is not firm in all his ways, says the Apostle James ().
A heart that doubts that God can grant what is asked is punished for doubt: it painfully languishes and is embarrassed by doubt. Do not anger the Almighty God with even a shadow of doubt, especially you, who have experienced God’s omnipotence many, many times. Doubt is blasphemy against God, a bold lie of the heart or a spirit of lies nestling in the heart against the Spirit of truth. Fear him like a poisonous snake, or no, what am I saying, neglect him, do not pay the slightest attention to him. Remember that God, at the time of your petition, expects an affirmative answer to the question He internally offers you: Do you believe that I can do this?! Yes, you must answer from the depths of your heart: I believe, Lord! (Wed:). And then it will be according to your faith. May the following reasoning help your doubt or unbelief: I ask God:
1) existing, and not just imaginary, not dreamy, not fantastic good, but everything that exists received existence from God, because Everything began to be through Him, and without Him nothing began to be (), and, therefore, nothing exists without Him, what happens, and everything either received existence from Him, or by His will or permission happens and is done through the means of His powers and abilities given to creatures from Him - and in all that exists and happens, the Lord is the sovereign Ruler. In addition, He calls not existing, but existing (); This means that if I asked for something that does not exist, He could give it to me by creating it;
2) I ask for the possible, and for God our impossible is possible; This means that there is no obstacle on this side either, because God can do for me even what, according to my concepts, is impossible. Our misfortune is that our faith is interfered with by myopic reason, this spider that catches the truth in the nets of its judgments, conclusions, and analogies. Faith suddenly embraces, sees, and reason reaches the truth in a roundabout way; faith is a means of communication between spirit and spirit, and reason - the spiritually sensual with the spiritually sensual and simply material; that one is spirit, and this one is flesh.”
You say, I asked many times and did not receive it. Undoubtedly, this is because you asked poorly - either with unbelief, or with pride, or something that was not useful to you; if you asked often for something useful, then not with persistence... If you do not ask with effort and great persistence, then you do not receive. First you need to wish, and having wished, ask truly with faith and patience for what is useful to everyone, and so that your conscience does not condemn you in anything as asking carelessly or frivolously - and then you will receive if God wants it. After all, He knows better than you what is good for you, and, perhaps, as a result of this, He postpones the fulfillment of the request, wisely forcing you to be diligent towards Him, so that you know what the gift of God means and guard what is given with fear. After all, they try to preserve everything that is acquired with great effort, so that, having lost what they have received, they do not lose even the great efforts and, having rejected the grace of the Lord, do not find themselves unworthy of Eternal Life...
What to ask God for in your prayers
“Carnal verbosity and floridity in prayer are forbidden to us,” writes Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, “petitions for earthly blessings and advantages are forbidden, petitions with which only the prayers of pagans and carnal people similar to pagans are filled.”
What should a Christian ask God for in his prayers?
“If we are commanded to abstain from worldly goods, even when we have them, then how pitiful and unhappy we turn out to be if we ask God for what He commanded us to reject,” writes the saint. - God will hear us if:
First, we are worthy to receive what we ask for;
secondly, if we pray in accordance with the commandments of God;
thirdly, if we pray unceasingly;
fourthly, if we do not ask for anything worldly;
fifthly, if we ask for something useful;
sixthly, if we fulfill our duty on our part and, being mortal by nature, through communication with God we ascend to Immortal Life.”
“In prayer, ask only for truth and the Kingdom, that is, virtue and knowledge, and everything else will be added to you ()...
Pray
firstly, about cleansing from passions;
secondly, about deliverance from ignorance and, thirdly, about salvation from all temptation and abandonment” (Rev.).
“The objects of our prayer should be spiritual and eternal, and not temporary and material. The main and initial prayer should consist of requests for forgiveness of sins... Do not be reckless in your requests, so as not to anger God with your cowardice: he who asks the King of kings for something insignificant humiliates Him... Ask for what you consider necessary and useful for yourself, but fulfillment and Leave your request to the will of God..." writes Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov.
When intending to ask (for something from the Lord), before you resort to the Giver, consider your request, whether it is pure, carefully delve into the reason prompting the request. If the motive for which we ask entails harm, then (the Lord)... may he block the sources of our petitions... If you ask God for something of your own, then ask not in such a way that you will certainly receive from Him, but leaving it to Him and His will . For example, bad thoughts often oppress you, and you are sad about it, and you want to beg God to free you from the battle. But often it serves you well. For this often happens to you, so that you do not become arrogant, but be humble in your mind... Also, if some kind of sorrow or distress has befallen you, do not ask to be sure to get rid of them, because this, my brother, is often useful; I tell you, it often happens that during prayer you neglect your salvation, as was the case with the Israelites... And also, if you ask for something, do not ask in order to receive it without fail. For I say: you, as a person, often consider something useful for yourself that is useless. But if you leave your will and decide to walk according to God’s will, you will be safe. He, who foretells everything before its fulfillment, in His condescension shepherds us, but we do not know whether what we ask is useful to us. Many, having achieved what they wanted, subsequently repented, and often fell into great troubles; without carefully examining whether this was the will of God, but thinking that it was good for them, and under some pretexts that had the appearance of truth, deceived by the devil, they were exposed to extreme dangers. Many such deeds are accompanied by repentance, because we followed our own wishes in them. Listen to what the apostle says: we do not know what to pray for as we should (). For: everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial; everything is permissible for me, but not everything edifies (). So, what is useful and edifying for each of us, God Himself knows, therefore leave it to Him. I say this not to prevent you from turning to God with your petitions; On the contrary, I also beg you to ask Him for everything, from small to great. And this is what I tell you: when you pray, you reveal to Him what is in your heart, tell Him: however, not My will, but Yours be done (); if it is useful, as you yourself know, do it. For it is thus written: Commit your way to the Lord and trust in Him, and He will accomplish (). Look at our Lord Jesus Christ, the Builder, who prays and says: My Father! if possible, let this cup pass from Me; however, not as I want, but as You (). Therefore, if you ask God for something, stand firm in your request, opening up to Him and saying: “If it is Your will, Master, for this to happen, then do it and make it successful. And if it is not Your will for this, do not let this happen, my God! Do not betray me to my own desire, for you know my foolishness... but as You Yourself know, so save me by Your condescension!” If you pray because of sorrow and thoughts, then say: Lord! Do not rebuke me in Your wrath, and do not punish me in Your anger. Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am weak (). Look what the prophet says: To You, O Lord, I cry: my stronghold! do not be silent for me, so that in Your silence I do not become like those who descend into the grave (); but give glory to Your name, you who are unforgettable, do not remember my sins and hear me. And, if possible, may sorrow pass me by, however, not my will, but Yours, be done, only strengthen and preserve my soul, and I will be able to endure this, so that I may find grace before You both in the present age and in the future.” And commend your sorrow to the Lord, and He will do what is good for you. For know that He, as the Good One, wants what is necessary for our salvation. That is why this good Shepherd laid down His soul...
“Do not indignate yourself with prayer, but ask for what is worthy of God. And when you ask for something worthy, do not give up until you receive it... In prayer one should ask not for the fulfillment of one’s own will, but to leave everything to God, who is useful in building the house,” writes the saint.
“If your deeds are not pleasing to God, then do not ask Him for great gifts, lest you end up in the position of a person who tempts God. Your prayer must be consistent with your lifestyle... The desire of each person is shown by his activity. Whatever his efforts are directed towards, he must strive for that in prayer. He who desires great things should not practice the unimportant. Do not ask God for what He Himself gives us without our asking, according to His providence, which gives not only to His own and beloved, but also to strangers the knowledge of Him” (Rev.).
Why are our prayers unheard?
If prayer is so powerful, then why doesn’t everyone get what they ask for? To this the holy Apostle James gives the following answer: You ask and do not receive, because you ask for the wrong thing (). He who wants to receive must ask well. If those who ask do not always receive, then it is not prayer that is to blame, but those who do not pray well. Just as someone who does not know how to manage a good ship well does not sail to the intended destination, but is repeatedly broken on the rocks, and it is not the ship that is to blame, but its poor management, so prayer, when the one praying does not receive what he asks for, is not to blame for this, but the one who doesn't pray well.
The only people who do not receive what they ask for are those who are either evil themselves and do not want to evade evil in order to do good, or who ask God for an evil thing, or, finally, although they ask for a good thing, they ask not well, not as they should . Prayer is powerful, but not just any prayer, but perfect prayer, the prayer of those who pray well.
What kind of prayer is this? Talking about this requires more than one day, and therefore I will briefly remember at least something.
The prayer of one who obeys the Lord is heard and pleasing to God. Whoever obeys the words of the Lord, as the Lord Himself told us: Not everyone who says to Me: “Lord! Lord!”, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Heavenly Father (), who walks in the law of the Lord () and does His will, the Lord will fulfill his desire and hear the prayer of those who obey Him. Humble prayer, not pharisaical, ascends high, to the Third Heaven, to the very Throne of the Most High, the prayer of the humble will pass through the clouds. This, for example, was the prayer of the humble publican: God! be merciful to me, a sinner! (), and Manasseh, king of Jerusalem. The wings of prayer, on which it flies to the Most High, sitting on the six-winged Seraphim, are all kinds of virtues, especially humility, fasting and alms, as the Archangel Raphael, who flew from Heaven, told Tobias: A good deed is prayer with fasting and almsgiving and justice ... It is better to give alms than to collect gold (). As in any virtue, so especially in prayer, diligence and zeal are necessary: The intense prayer of the righteous can do much (). “It was not in vain that our Savior said: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you (),” writes St. Demetrius of Rostov (103, 361-362).
“The Lord never refuses gifts. If he sometimes refuses ahead of time, he refuses so that the gift becomes more precious for those receiving and so that the recipient is more diligent in prayer... The mouth can ask for everything, but God fulfills only what is useful... The Lord is the wise Distributor. He cares about the benefit of the person asking and, if he sees that what is asked is harmful or, at least, useless to him, he does not fulfill the request and refuses the imaginary benefit. He listens to every prayer, and the one whose prayer is not fulfilled receives from the Lord the same saving gift as the one whose prayer is fulfilled... In all possible ways, God shows that He is a merciful Giver, He gives us His love and shows us mercy Yours. And therefore he does not answer any incorrect prayer, the fulfillment of which would bring us death and destruction. However, even in this case, refusing what we ask does not leave us without a very useful gift; by the very fact that He removes what is harmful from us, He already opens for us the door of His bounties. In this Giver there is no place for the foolishness of the one asking: to the unwise, who in his simplicity, contrary to reason, asks for something harmful to himself, God gives wisely. He refuses gifts to those who do not fulfill His commands. Any other course of action would be unreasonable for the omniscience of the Giver. Therefore, be sure that any request that is not fulfilled is undoubtedly harmful, but a request that is heard is beneficial. The Giver is righteous and good and will not leave your requests unfulfilled, because in His goodness there is no malice and in His righteousness there is no envy. If He delays in fulfilling it, it is not because He repents of the promise, on the contrary. He wants to see your patience” (Reverend).
How to Pray for Other People
Prayer for other people is an integral part of prayer. Standing before God does not alienate a person from his neighbors, but binds him to them with even closer ties.
“When praying for the living and the dead and calling them by name,” writes the holy righteous John of Kronstadt, “one must pronounce these names with all my heart, with love, as if carrying in my soul those faces whose names you remember, just as a milkmaid carries and warms her children (), - remembering that they are our members and members (members - Ed.) of the Body of Christ (cf.:). - It is not good in the presence of God to only go over their names with the tongue, without the participation and love of the heart. We must think that God looks at the heart - that the persons for whom we pray also demand from us, out of the duty of Christian love, brotherly sympathy and love. There is a great difference between an insensitive list of names and between a heartfelt remembrance of them: one is separated from the other as heaven is from earth. But the name of the Lord Himself, His Most Pure Mother, the holy Angels and holy men of God must always be invoked primarily from a pure heart, with faith and ardent love; In general, the words of the prayer do not need to be sorted out only with the tongue, as if turning over sheets of paper with a finger in a book or as if counting out a coin; It is necessary that the words come out like a spring of living water from its spring, so that they are the sincere voice of the heart, and not be someone else’s borrowed clothes, someone else’s hands.”
How to pray for offenders and enemies
We should not limit ourselves to just praying for people close and dear to us. Praying for those who have caused us grief brings peace to the soul, has an impact on these people and makes our prayer sacrificial.
“When you see shortcomings and passions in your neighbor,” writes the holy righteous John of Kronstadt, “pray for him; pray for everyone, even your enemy. If you see a proud and obstinate brother speaking proudly to you or others, pray for him, so that God will enlighten his mind and warm his heart with the fire of His grace, say: Lord, teach Your servant, who has fallen into the pride of the devil, meekness and humility, and drive away (drive away - Ed.) from his heart the darkness and burden of satanic pride! If you see an evil one, pray: Lord, do good to Thy servant through Thy grace!
If you are money-loving and greedy, say: Our treasure is incorruptible and our wealth is inexhaustible! Grant to this Thy servant, created in Thy image and likeness, to know the flattery of wealth, and how all earthly things are vanity, shadow and sleep. The days of every man are like grass, or like a spider, and as You alone are our wealth, peace and joy!
When you see an envious person, pray: Lord, enlighten the mind and heart of this Thy servant to the knowledge of Thy great, countless and unsearchable gifts, and they will be received from Thy innumerable bounties, for in the blindness of my passion I have forgotten Your rich gifts and impoverished my life. , who is rich in Thy blessings, and for this reason he gazes charmingly at the good of Thy servants, with them, O most unspeakable Blessing, he rewards everyone, in every way against his strength and according to the intention of Thy will. Take away, O all-merciful Master, the veil of the devil from the sight of the heart of Thy servant and grant him heartfelt contrition and tears of repentance and gratitude, so that the enemy does not rejoice over him, captured alive from him into his will, and may he not tear him away from Thy hand.
When you see a drunken person, say with your heart: Lord, look mercifully on Your servant, seduced by the flattery of the belly and carnal joy, grant him to know the sweetness of abstinence and fasting and the fruits of the spirit that flow from it.
When you see someone who is passionate about food and places his bliss in it, say: Lord, our sweetest food, which never perishes, but remains in eternal life! Cleanse this Thy servant from the filth of gluttony, which created all flesh and is alien to Thy Spirit, and grant him to know the sweetness of Thy life-giving spiritual food, which is Thy Flesh and Blood and Thy holy, living and effective word.
Pray in this or a similar way for all who sin and do not dare to despise anyone for his sin or take revenge on him, for this would only increase the ulcers of those who sin; correct with advice, threats and punishments that would serve as a means to stop or keep evil within the boundaries of moderation.”
HOW TO READ MORNING AND EVENING PRAYERS CORRECTLY
Prayer there is a conversation or conversation between us and God. It is necessary for us just like air and food. We have everything from God and have nothing of our own: life, abilities, health, food and everything is given to us by God. Therefore, in joy and in sorrow, and when we need something, we must turn to God in prayer.
The main thing in prayer is faith, attention, reverence, contrition of heart and a promise to God not to sin. The reading technique should not obscure the meaning of what is being read. Prayers are usually read evenly and calmly, without any exaggerated intonation.
Saint Theophan the Recluse wrote in the article “How to Pray”: The work of prayer is the first task in Christian life. If in relation to the usual order of affairs the saying is true: “Live forever, learn forever,” then all the more does it apply to prayer, the action of which should not have an interruption and the extent of which has no limit.
The ancient holy fathers, greeting each other on a date, usually asked not about health or anything else, but about prayer: how, they say, prayer goes or how it works. The action of prayer was a sign of spiritual life for them, and they called it the breath of the spirit.
There is breath in the body - and the body lives; When breathing stops, life stops. So it is in the spirit: there is prayer - the spirit lives; no prayer - no life in the spirit.
But not every performance of prayer, or prayer, is prayer. Standing in front of an icon in a church or at home and bowing down is not yet prayer, but only an accessory to prayer.
Prayer itself is the emergence in our hearts of one after another reverent feelings towards God: self-abasement, devotion, thanksgiving, glorification, forgiveness, diligent prostration, contrition, submission to the will of God and others.
All our concern should be that during our prayers these and similar feelings fill our soul so that when the tongue reads prayers or the ear listens and the body bows, the heart does not remain empty, but that there is some kind of feeling directed towards God.
When these feelings are present, our prayer is prayer, and when they are not there, then it is not yet prayer.
It seems, what would be simpler and more natural for us, like prayer, or the aspiration of the heart to God? And yet it does not happen to everyone and does not always happen. It must be aroused and then strengthened, or, what is the same, cultivate a prayerful spirit in oneself.
The first way for this is reading or listening prayer. Do it properly, and you will certainly awaken and strengthen the ascent in your heart to God, and you will enter into the spirit of prayer.
Our prayer books contain the prayers of the holy fathers Ephraim the Syrian, Macarius of Egypt, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and other great prayer books. Being filled with a spirit of prayer, they expressed what was inspired by this spirit in word and conveyed it to us.
A great prayer power moves in their prayers, and whoever looks into them with all his zeal and attention, by virtue of the law of interaction, will certainly taste the power of prayer as his mood approaches the content of the prayer.
In order for our prayer to become a valid means for us to cultivate prayer in ourselves, we must perform it in such a way that both the thought and the heart perceive the content of the prayers that make it up. Here are the three simplest techniques for this:
- do not start praying without preliminary, albeit brief, preparation;
- don’t do it haphazardly, but with attention and feeling;
- do not immediately after finishing your prayers go on to your usual activities.
Prayer rule - daily morning and evening prayers that Christians do. Their texts can be found in the prayer book.
The rule can be general - mandatory for everyone, or individual, selected for the believer by the confessor, taking into account his spiritual state, strength and employment.
Consists of morning and evening prayers, which are performed daily. This vital rhythm is necessary, because otherwise the soul easily falls out of the prayer life, as if waking up only from time to time. In prayer, as in any big and difficult matter, “inspiration”, “mood” and improvisation are not enough.
Reading prayers connects a person with their creators: the psalmists and ascetics. This helps to gain a spiritual mood akin to their heartfelt burning. Our example in praying in other people’s words is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. His prayerful exclamations during the suffering of the cross are lines from the psalms (Ps. 21:2; 30:6).
There are three basic prayer rules:
1) a complete prayer rule, designed for spiritually experienced laity, which is published in the “Orthodox Prayer Book”;
2) a short prayer rule; in the morning: “Heavenly King”, Trisagion, “Our Father”, “Virgin Mother of God”, “Rising from sleep”, “God have mercy on me”, “I Believe”, “God, cleanse”, “To You, Master”, “Holy Angela", "Holy Lady", invocation of saints, prayer for the living and the dead; in the evening: “Heavenly King”, Trisagion, “Our Father”, “Have mercy on us, Lord”, “Eternal God”, “Good King”, “Angel of Christ”, from “The Chosen Governor” to “It is worthy to eat”;
3) a short prayer rule of St. Seraphim of Sarov: “Our Father” three times, “Virgin Mother of God” three times and “I Believe” once - for those days and circumstances when a person is extremely tired or very limited in time.
It is not advisable to completely omit the prayer rule. Even if the prayer rule is read without due attention, the words of the prayers, penetrating the soul, have a cleansing effect.
The main prayers should be known by heart (with regular reading, they are gradually memorized by a person even with a very poor memory), so that they penetrate deeper into the heart and so that they can be repeated in any circumstances.
It is advisable to study the text of the translation of prayers from Church Slavonic into Russian (see “Explanatory Prayer Book”) in order to understand the meaning of each word and not pronounce a single word meaninglessly or without precise understanding.
It is very important that those who begin to pray should expel resentment, irritation, and bitterness from their hearts. Without efforts aimed at serving people, fighting sin, and establishing control over the body and spiritual sphere, prayer cannot become the inner core of life..
In the conditions of modern life, given the workload and accelerated pace, it is not easy for the laity to set aside a certain time for prayer. The enemy of morning prayer is haste, and the enemy of evening prayer is fatigue.
Morning prayers It is best to read before starting anything (and before breakfast). As a last resort, they are pronounced on the way from home. Late in the evening it is often difficult to concentrate due to fatigue, so we can recommend reading the evening prayer rule in the free minutes before dinner or even earlier.
During prayer, it is recommended to retire, light a lamp or candle and stand in front of the icon. Depending on the nature of family relationships, we can recommend reading the prayer rule together, with the whole family, or with each family member separately.
General prayer is recommended before eating food, on special days, before a holiday meal, and in other similar cases. Family prayer is a type of church, public prayer (the family is a kind of “home Church”) and therefore does not replace individual prayer, but only complements it.
Before starting prayer, you should sign yourself with the sign of the cross and make several bows, either from the waist or to the ground, and try to tune in to an internal conversation with God. The difficulty of prayer is often a sign of its true effectiveness.
Prayer for other people (see memorial) is an integral part of prayer. Standing before God does not alienate a person from his neighbors, but binds him to them with even closer ties. We should not limit ourselves to just praying for people close and dear to us. Praying for those who have caused us grief brings peace to the soul, has an impact on these people and makes our prayer sacrificial.
It is good to end the prayer with thanksgiving to God for the gift of communication and contrition for one’s inattention. When getting down to business, you must first think about what you have to say, do, see during the day and ask God for blessings and strength to follow His will. In the midst of a busy day, you need to say a short prayer (see Jesus prayer), which will help you find the Lord in everyday affairs.
Morning and evening rules– this is just necessary spiritual hygiene. We are commanded to pray unceasingly (see the prayer of Jesus). The Holy Fathers said: if you churn milk, you will get butter, and so in prayer, quantity turns into quality. God bless you!
All believers offer prayers to the Lord. But some complain that their requests do not reach him. It is a sin to think that the Lord does not hear you. It’s just that people don’t always understand how to pray to God to help. Muttering a few words under your breath is clearly not enough.
How to pray to God in church?
Priests, answering the question of how to pray to God to help, advise doing it in church. There is a special atmosphere here, conducive to a frank conversation with the Lord. It is acceptable to pray in your own words, but it is better to memorize at least one passage from the prayer book. Memorizing the canonical prayer is a sign that you truly accept the teachings of Christ and follow it. But you shouldn’t cram the text mindlessly without understanding its meaning. You need to feel it in order to then pray sincerely.
It is worth keeping in mind that before entering, you should cross yourself and bow three times. Once inside, light a candle and place it in front of the icon, and also submit a note to pray for the health of the living and remembrance of the departed. This is not necessary, but it is advisable.
When leaving the church after completing the prayer, you must stop, turn to face the entrance and again cross yourself and bow three times. This is how you express your gratitude for the divine grace you have received. And the Lord will definitely notice and hear you.
How should you pray to God at home?
If it is not possible to visit the temple, then you can pray to the Heavenly Father at home. How to properly pray to God in this case:
What is the best time to pray to God?
At home, it is better to read prayers before sunrise - until 4-6 am. In the evening, it is better to do this before 10 o’clock, although you can pray at night; church canons do not prohibit this. In the temple, you can be heard at any time.
All about prayer: what is prayer? How to properly pray for another person at home and in church? We will try to answer these and other questions in the article!
Prayers for every day
1. PRAYER-MEETING
Prayer is a meeting with the Living God. Christianity gives a person direct access to God, who hears a person, helps him, loves him. This is the fundamental difference between Christianity, for example, and Buddhism, where during meditation the person praying deals with a certain impersonal super-being into which he is immersed and in which he dissolves, but he does not feel God as a living Person. In Christian prayer, a person feels the presence of the Living God.
In Christianity, God who became Man is revealed to us. When we stand in front of the icon of Jesus Christ, we contemplate God Incarnate. We know that God cannot be imagined, described, depicted in an icon or painting. But it is possible to depict God who became Man, the way He appeared to people. Through Jesus Christ as Man we discover God. This revelation occurs in prayer addressed to Christ.
Through prayer we learn that God is involved in everything that happens in our lives. Therefore, conversation with God should not be the background of our life, but its main content. There are many barriers between man and God that can only be overcome through prayer.
People often ask: why do we need to pray, ask God for something, if God already knows what we need? To this I would answer this way. We do not pray to ask God for something. Yes, in some cases we ask Him for specific help in certain everyday circumstances. But this should not be the main content of prayer.
God cannot be just an “auxiliary means” in our earthly affairs. The main content of prayer should always remain the very presence of God, the very meeting with Him. You need to pray in order to be with God, to come into contact with God, to feel the presence of God.
However, meeting God in prayer does not always happen. After all, even when meeting a person, we are not always able to overcome the barriers that separate us, to descend into the depths; often our communication with people is limited only to the superficial level. So it is in prayer. Sometimes we feel that between us and God there is like a blank wall, that God does not hear us. But we must understand that this barrier was not set by God: We We ourselves build it with our sins. According to one Western medieval theologian, God is always near us, but we are far from Him, God always hears us, but we do not hear Him, God is always inside us, but we are outside, God is at home in us, but we are in Him strangers.
Let us remember this when we prepare for prayer. Let us remember that every time we rise to pray, we come into contact with the Living God.
2. PRAYER-DIALOGUE
Prayer is a dialogue. It includes not only our appeal to God, but also the response of God Himself. As in any dialogue, in prayer it is important not only to speak out, to speak out, but also to hear the answer. God’s answer does not always come directly in the moments of prayer; sometimes it happens a little later. It happens, for example, that we ask God for immediate help, but it comes only after a few hours or days. But we understand that this happened precisely because we asked God for help in prayer.
Through prayer we can learn a lot about God. When praying, it is very important to be prepared for the fact that God will reveal himself to us, but He may turn out to be different than we imagined Him to be. We often make the mistake of approaching God with our own ideas about Him, and these ideas obscure from us the real image of the Living God, which God Himself can reveal to us. Often people create some kind of idol in their minds and pray to this idol. This dead, artificially created idol becomes an obstacle, a barrier between the Living God and us humans. “Create a false image of God for yourself and try to pray to him. Create for yourself the image of God, an unmerciful and cruel Judge - and try to pray to him with trust, with love,” notes Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. So, we must be prepared for the fact that God will reveal himself to us differently than we imagine Him to be. Therefore, when starting to pray, we need to renounce all the images that our imagination, human fantasy creates.
God's answer may come in different ways, but prayer is never unanswered. If we do not hear an answer, it means that something is wrong in ourselves, it means that we have not yet sufficiently tuned in to the way that is necessary to meet God.
There is a device called a tuning fork, which is used by piano tuners; This device produces a clear “A” sound. And the strings of the piano must be tensioned so that the sound they produce is in exact accordance with the sound of the tuning fork. As long as the A string is not properly tensioned, no matter how much you strike the keys, the tuning fork will remain silent. But at the moment when the string reaches the required degree of tension, the tuning fork, this lifeless metal object, suddenly begins to sound. Having tuned one “A” string, the master then tunes “A” in other octaves (in a piano, each key strikes several strings, this creates a special volume of sound). Then he tunes “B”, “C”, etc., one octave after another, until finally the entire instrument is tuned in accordance with the tuning fork.
This should happen with us in prayer. We must tune in to God, tune in to Him throughout our lives, all the strings of our soul. When we tune our lives to God, learn to fulfill His commandments, when the Gospel becomes our moral and spiritual law and we begin to live in accordance with God’s commandments, then we will begin to feel how our soul responds in prayer to the presence of God, like a tuning fork that responds to a precisely tensioned string.
3. WHEN SHOULD YOU PRAY?
When and for how long should you pray? The Apostle Paul says: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). Saint Gregory the Theologian writes: “You need to remember God more often than you breathe.” Ideally, the entire life of a Christian should be permeated with prayer.
Many troubles, sorrows and misfortunes occur precisely because people forget about God. After all, there are believers among criminals, but at the moment of committing a crime they do not think about God. It is difficult to imagine a person who would commit murder or theft with the thought of an all-seeing God, from whom no evil can be hidden. And every sin is committed by a person precisely when he does not remember God.
Most people are unable to pray throughout the day, so we need to find some time, even if it is short, to remember God.
In the morning you wake up thinking about what you have to do that day. Before you start working and plunge into the inevitable hustle and bustle, devote at least a few minutes to God. Stand before God and say: “Lord, you gave me this day, help me spend it without sin, without vice, save me from all evil and misfortune.” And call on God’s blessing for the beginning of the day.
Throughout the day, try to remember God more often. If you feel bad, turn to Him with a prayer: “Lord, I feel bad, help me.” If you feel good, tell God: “Lord, glory to You, I thank You for this joy.” If you are worried about someone, tell God: “Lord, I am worried about him, I hurt for him, help him.” And so throughout the day - no matter what happens to you, turn it into prayer.
When the day comes to an end and you are getting ready for bed, remember the past day, thank God for all the good things that happened, and repent for all the unworthy acts and sins that you committed that day. Ask God for help and blessings for the coming night. If you learn to pray like this every day, you will soon notice how much more fulfilling your whole life will be.
People often justify their reluctance to pray by saying that they are too busy and overloaded with things to do. Yes, many of us live in a rhythm that ancient people did not live in. Sometimes we have to do many things during the day. But there are always some pauses in life. For example, we stand at a stop and wait for a tram - three to five minutes. We go to the subway - twenty to thirty minutes, dial a phone number and hear busy beeps - a few more minutes. Let us at least use these pauses for prayer, let them not be wasted time.
4. SHORT PRAYERS
People often ask: how should one pray, in what words, in what language? Some even say: “I don’t pray because I don’t know how, I don’t know prayers.” No special skill is needed to pray. You can simply talk to God. At divine services in the Orthodox Church we use a special language - Church Slavonic. But in personal prayer, when we are alone with God, there is no need for any special language. We can pray to God in the language in which we speak with people, in which we think.
The prayer should be very simple. The Monk Isaac the Syrian said: “Let the whole fabric of your prayer be a little complicated. One word from a tax collector saved him, and one word from a thief on the cross made him heir to the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Let us remember the parable of the publican and the Pharisee: “Two men entered the temple to pray: one was a Pharisee, and the other was a publican. The Pharisee, standing, prayed to himself like this: “God! I thank You that I am not like other people, robbers, offenders, adulterers, or like this tax collector; I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of everything I acquire.” The publican, standing in the distance, did not even dare to raise his eyes to heaven; but, hitting himself on the chest, he said: “God! be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:10-13). And this short prayer saved him. Let us also remember the thief who was crucified with Jesus and who said to Him: “Remember me, Lord, when You come into Your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). This alone was enough for him to enter heaven.
The prayer can be extremely short. If you're just starting out on your prayer journey, start with very short prayers—ones that you can focus on. God doesn't need words - He needs a person's heart. Words are secondary, but the feeling and mood with which we approach God is of primary importance. Approaching God without a sense of reverence or with absent-mindedness, when during prayer our mind wanders to the side, is much more dangerous than saying the wrong word in prayer. Scattered prayer has neither meaning nor value. A simple law applies here: if the words of prayer do not reach our hearts, they will not reach God either. As they sometimes say, such a prayer will not rise higher than the ceiling of the room in which we pray, but it must reach heaven. Therefore, it is very important that every word of prayer is deeply experienced by us. If we are not able to concentrate on the long prayers that are contained in the books of the Orthodox Church - prayer books, we will try our hand at short prayers: “Lord, have mercy,” “Lord, save,” “Lord, help me,” “God, be merciful to me.” , sinner."
One ascetic said that if we could, with all the strength of feeling, with all our hearts, with all our soul, say just one prayer, “Lord, have mercy,” this would be enough for salvation. But the problem is that, as a rule, we cannot say it with all our hearts, we cannot say it with our whole lives. Therefore, in order to be heard by God, we are verbose.
Let us remember that God thirsts for our heart, not our words. And if we turn to Him with all our hearts, we will certainly receive an answer.
5. PRAYER AND LIFE
Prayer is associated not only with the joys and gains that occur thanks to it, but also with painstaking daily work. Sometimes prayer brings great joy, refreshes a person, gives him new strength and new opportunities. But it very often happens that a person is not in the mood for prayer, he does not want to pray. So, prayer should not depend on our mood. Prayer is work. The Monk Silouan of Athos said, “Praying is shedding blood.” As in any work, it takes effort on the part of a person, sometimes enormous, so that even in those moments when you don’t feel like praying, you force yourself to do so. And such a feat will pay off a hundredfold.
But why do we sometimes not feel like praying? I think the main reason here is that our life does not correspond to prayer, is not tuned to it. As a child, when I studied at a music school, I had an excellent violin teacher: his lessons were sometimes very interesting, and sometimes very difficult, and this did not depend on his mood, but on how good or bad I prepared for the lesson. If I studied a lot, learned some kind of play and came to class fully armed, then the lesson went in one breath, and the teacher was pleased, and so was I. If I was lazy all week and came unprepared, then the teacher was upset, and I was sick of the fact that the lesson was not going as I would like.
It's the same with prayer. If our life is not a preparation for prayer, then it can be very difficult for us to pray. Prayer is an indicator of our spiritual life, a kind of litmus test. We must structure our lives in such a way that they correspond to prayer. When, saying the prayer “Our Father,” we say: “Lord, Thy will be done,” this means that we must always be ready to do the will of God, even if this will contradicts our human will. When we say to God: “And forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors,” we thereby undertake the obligation to forgive people, to forgive them their debts, because if we do not forgive debts to our debtors, then, the logic of this prayer, and God will not leave us our debts.
So, one must correspond to the other: life - prayer and prayer - life. Without this conformity we will have no success either in life or in prayer.
Let us not be embarrassed if we find it difficult to pray. This means that God sets new tasks for us, and we must solve them both in prayer and in life. If we learn to live according to the Gospel, then we will learn to pray according to the Gospel. Then our life will become complete, spiritual, truly Christian.
6. ORTHODOX PRAYER book
You can pray in different ways, for example, in your own words. Such prayer should constantly accompany a person. Morning and evening, day and night, a person can turn to God with the simplest words coming from the depths of his heart.
But there are also prayer books that were compiled by saints in ancient times; they need to be read in order to learn prayer. These prayers are contained in the “Orthodox Prayer Book”. There you will find church prayers for morning, evening, repentance, thanksgiving, you will find various canons, akathists and much more. Having bought the “Orthodox Prayer Book”, do not be alarmed that there are so many prayers in it. You don't have to All read them.
If you read the morning prayers quickly, it will take about twenty minutes. But if you read them thoughtfully, carefully, responding with your heart to every word, then reading can take a whole hour. Therefore, if you do not have time, do not try to read all the morning prayers, it is better to read one or two, but so that every word of them reaches your heart.
Before the section “Morning Prayers” it says: “Before you begin to pray, wait a little until your feelings subside, and then say with attention and reverence: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen". Wait a little longer and only then start praying.” This pause, the “minute of silence” before the start of church prayer, is very important. Prayer must grow from the silence of our heart. People who “read” morning and evening prayers every day are constantly tempted to read the “rule” as soon as possible in order to begin their daily activities. Often, such reading eludes the main thing - the content of the prayer. .
The prayer book contains many petitions addressed to God, which are repeated several times. For example, you may come across a recommendation to read “Lord, have mercy” twelve or forty times. Some perceive this as some kind of formality and read this prayer at high speed. By the way, in Greek “Lord, have mercy” sounds like “Kyrie, eleison.” In the Russian language there is a verb “playing tricks”, which came precisely from the fact that the psalm-readers on the choir very quickly repeated many times: “Kyrie, eleison”, that is, they did not pray, but “played tricks”. So, in prayer there is no need to fool around. No matter how many times you read this prayer, it must be said with attention, reverence and love, with complete dedication.
There is no need to try to read out all the prayers. It’s better to devote twenty minutes to one prayer, “Our Father,” repeating it several times, thinking about every word. It is not so easy for a person who is not accustomed to praying for a long time to read out a large number of prayers at once, but there is no need to strive for this. It is important to be imbued with the spirit that breathes the prayers of the Fathers of the Church. This is the main benefit that can be derived from the prayers contained in the Orthodox Prayer Book.
7. PRAYER RULE
What is a prayer rule? These are prayers that a person reads regularly, daily. Everyone's prayer rules are different. For some, the morning or evening rule takes several hours, for others - a few minutes. Everything depends on a person’s spiritual make-up, the degree to which he is rooted in prayer and the time he has at his disposal.
It is very important that a person follows the prayer rule, even the shortest one, so that there is regularity and constancy in prayer. But the rule should not turn into a formality. The experience of many believers shows that when constantly reading the same prayers, their words become discolored, lose their freshness, and a person, getting used to them, stops focusing on them. This danger must be avoided at all costs.
I remember when I took monastic vows (I was twenty years old at the time), I turned to an experienced confessor for advice and asked him what prayer rule I should have. He said: “You must read morning and evening prayers, three canons and one akathist every day. No matter what happens, even if you are very tired, you must read them. And even if you read them hastily and inattentively, it doesn’t matter, the main thing is that the rule is read.” I tried. Things didn't work out. Daily reading of the same prayers led to the fact that these texts quickly became boring. In addition, every day I spent many hours in church at services that spiritually nourished me, nourished me, and inspired me. And reading the three canons and the akathist turned into some kind of unnecessary “appendage”. I started looking for other advice that was more suitable for me. And I found it in the works of St. Theophan the Recluse, a remarkable ascetic of the 19th century. He advised the prayer rule to be calculated not by the number of prayers, but by the time that we are ready to devote to God. For example, we can make it a rule to pray for half an hour in the morning and evening, but this half hour must be completely given to God. And it is not so important whether during these minutes we read all the prayers or just one, or perhaps we devote one evening entirely to reading the Psalter, the Gospel or prayer in our own words. The main thing is that we are focused on God, so that our attention does not slip away and that every word reaches our heart. This advice worked for me. However, I do not rule out that the advice I received from my confessor would be more suitable for others. Here a lot depends on the individual person.
It seems to me that for a person living in the world, not only fifteen, but even five minutes of morning and evening prayer, if, of course, it is said with attention and feeling, is enough to be a real Christian. It is only important that the thought always corresponds to the words, the heart responds to the words of prayer, and the whole life corresponds to the prayer.
Try, following the advice of St. Theophan the Recluse, to set aside some time for prayer during the day and for daily fulfillment of the prayer rule. And you will see that it will bear fruit very soon.
8. DANGER OF ADDITION
Every believer faces the danger of becoming accustomed to the words of prayers and becoming distracted during prayer. To prevent this from happening, a person must constantly struggle with himself or, as the Holy Fathers said, “stand guard over his mind”, learn to “enclose the mind in the words of prayer.”
How to achieve this? First of all, you cannot allow yourself to utter words when both your mind and heart do not respond to them. If you begin to read a prayer, but in the middle of it your attention wanders, return to the place where your attention wandered and repeat the prayer. If necessary, repeat it three times, five, ten times, but ensure that your whole being responds to it.
One day in church a woman turned to me: “Father, I have been reading prayers for many years - both in the morning and in the evening, but the more I read them, the less I like them, the less I feel like a believer in God. I’m so tired of the words of these prayers that I no longer respond to them.” I told her: “And you don't read morning and evening prayers.” She was surprised: “So how?” I repeated: “Come on, don’t read them. If your heart does not respond to them, you must find another way to pray. How long do your morning prayers take you?” - "Twenty minutes". - “Are you ready to devote twenty minutes to God every morning?” - “Ready.” - “Then take one morning prayer - of your choice - and read it for twenty minutes. Read one of its phrases, be silent, think about what it means, then read another phrase, be silent, think about its content, repeat it again, think about whether your life corresponds to it, whether you are ready to live so that this prayer becomes the reality of your life . You say: “Lord, do not deprive me of Your heavenly blessings.” What does this mean? Or: “Lord, save me from eternal torment.” What is the danger of these eternal torments, are you really afraid of them, do you really hope to avoid them? The woman began to pray like this, and soon her prayers began to come to life.
You need to learn prayer. You need to work on yourself; you cannot allow yourself to utter empty words while standing in front of an icon.
The quality of prayer is also affected by what precedes it and what follows it. It is impossible to pray with concentration in a state of irritation if, for example, before starting prayer we quarreled with someone or yelled at someone. This means that in the time that precedes prayer, we must internally prepare for it, freeing ourselves from what prevents us from praying, tuning into a prayerful mood. Then it will be easier for us to pray. But, of course, even after prayer one should not immediately plunge into vanity. After finishing your prayer, give yourself some more time to hear God’s answer, so that something in you can be heard and respond to the presence of God.
Prayer is only valuable when we feel that thanks to it something changes in us, that we begin to live differently. Prayer must bear fruit, and these fruits must be tangible.
9. BODY POSITION WHEN PRAYING
In the practice of prayer of the Ancient Church, various postures, gestures, and body positions were used. They prayed while standing, on their knees, in the so-called pose of the prophet Elijah, that is, kneeling with their head bowed to the ground, they prayed while lying on the floor with outstretched arms, or standing with raised arms. When praying, bows were used - to the ground and from the waist, as well as the sign of the cross. Of the variety of traditional body positions during prayer, only a few remain in modern practice. This is primarily a standing prayer and a kneeling prayer, accompanied by the sign of the cross and bows.
Why is it even important for the body to participate in prayer? Why can’t you just pray in spirit while lying in bed, sitting in a chair? In principle, you can pray both lying down and sitting: in special cases, in case of illness, for example, or when traveling, we do this. But in ordinary circumstances, when praying, it is necessary to use those body positions that have been preserved in the tradition of the Orthodox Church. The fact is that the body and spirit in a person are inextricably linked, and the spirit cannot be completely autonomous from the body. It is no coincidence that the ancient Fathers said: “If the body has not labored in prayer, then prayer will remain fruitless.”
Walk into an Orthodox church for a Lenten service and you will see how from time to time all the parishioners simultaneously fall to their knees, then get up, fall again and get up again. And so on throughout the service. And you will feel that there is a special intensity in this service, that people are not just praying, they are are working in prayer, carry out the feat of prayer. And go to a Protestant church. During the entire service, the worshipers sit: prayers are read, spiritual songs are sung, but people just sit, do not cross themselves, do not bow, and at the end of the service they get up and leave. Compare these two ways of prayer in church - Orthodox and Protestant - and you will feel the difference. This difference lies in the intensity of prayer. People pray to the same God, but they pray differently. And in many ways this difference is determined precisely by the position of the praying person’s body.
Bowing greatly helps prayer. Those of you who have the opportunity to make at least a few bows and prostrations during your prayer rule in the morning and evening will undoubtedly feel how beneficial this is spiritually. The body becomes more collected, and when the body is collected, it is quite natural to concentrate the mind and attention.
During prayer, we should from time to time make the sign of the cross, especially saying “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” and also pronouncing the name of the Savior. This is necessary, since the cross is the instrument of our salvation. When we make the sign of the cross, the power of God is palpably present in us.
10. PRAYER BEFORE ICONS
In church prayer, the external should not replace the internal. The external can contribute to the internal, but it can also hinder it. Traditional body positions during prayer undoubtedly contribute to the state of prayer, but in no way can they replace the main content of prayer.
We must not forget that some body positions are not accessible to everyone. For example, many older people are simply not able to prostrate. There are many people who cannot stand for long. I have heard from older people: “I don’t go to church for services because I can’t stand,” or: “I don’t pray to God because my legs hurt.” God doesn't need legs, but a heart. If you cannot pray while standing, pray while sitting; if you cannot pray while sitting, pray while lying down. As one ascetic said, “it is better to think about God while sitting than to think about your feet while standing.”
Aids are important, but they cannot replace content. One of the important aids during prayer is icons. Orthodox Christians, as a rule, pray before the icons of the Savior, the Mother of God, saints, and before the image of the Holy Cross. And Protestants pray without icons. And you can see the difference between Protestant and Orthodox prayer. In the Orthodox tradition, prayer is more specific. Contemplating the icon of Christ, we seem to be looking through a window that reveals another world to us, and behind this icon stands the One to whom we pray.
But it is very important that the icon does not replace the object of prayer, that we do not turn to the icon in prayer and do not try to imagine the one who is depicted on the icon. An icon is only a reminder, only a symbol of the reality that stands behind it. As the Fathers of the Church said, “the honor given to the image goes back to the prototype.” When we approach the icon of the Savior or the Mother of God and kiss it, that is, we kiss it, we thereby express our love for the Savior or the Mother of God.
An icon should not turn into an idol. And there should be no illusion that God is exactly as He is depicted in the icon. There is, for example, an icon of the Holy Trinity, which is called the “New Testament Trinity”: it is non-canonical, that is, it does not correspond to church rules, but in some churches it can be seen. In this icon, God the Father is depicted as a gray-haired old man, Jesus Christ as a young man, and the Holy Spirit as a dove. Under no circumstances should one succumb to the temptation to imagine that the Holy Trinity will look exactly like this. The Holy Trinity is a God whom human imagination cannot imagine. And, turning to God - the Holy Trinity in prayer, we must renounce all kinds of fantasy. Our imagination must be free from images, our mind must be crystal clear, and our heart must be ready to accommodate the Living God.
The car fell into a cliff, turning over several times. There was nothing left of her, but the driver and I were safe and sound. It happened early in the morning, around five o'clock. When I returned to the church where I served in the evening of the same day, I found several parishioners there who woke up at half past four in the morning, sensing danger, and began to pray for me. Their first question was: “Father, what happened to you?” I think that through their prayers both I and the man who was driving were saved from trouble.
11. PRAYER FOR YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
We must pray not only for ourselves, but also for our neighbors. Every morning and every evening, as well as while in church, we must remember our relatives, loved ones, friends, enemies and offer prayer to God for everyone. This is very important, because people are bound together by inextricable bonds, and often the prayer of one person for another saves the other from great danger.
There was such a case in the life of Saint Gregory the Theologian. When he was still a young man, unbaptized, he crossed the Mediterranean Sea by ship. Suddenly a strong storm began, which lasted for many days, and no one had any hope of salvation; the ship was almost flooded. Gregory prayed to God and during prayer he saw his mother, who at that time was on the shore, but, as it turned out later, she sensed danger and prayed intensely for her son. The ship, contrary to all expectations, safely reached the shore. Gregory always remembered that he owed his deliverance to his mother’s prayers.
Someone might say: “Well, another story from the lives of the ancient saints. Why don’t similar things happen today?” I can assure you that this is still happening today. I know many people who, through the prayers of loved ones, were saved from death or great danger. And there have been many cases in my life when I escaped danger through the prayers of my mother or other people, for example, my parishioners.
Once I was in a car accident and, one might say, miraculously survived, because the car fell into a cliff, turning over several times. There was nothing left of the car, but the driver and I were safe and sound. It happened early in the morning, around five o'clock. When I returned to the church where I served in the evening of the same day, I found several parishioners there who woke up at half past four in the morning, sensing danger, and began to pray for me. Their first question was: “Father, what happened to you?” I think that through their prayers both I and the man who was driving were saved from trouble.
We should pray for our neighbors, not because God does not know how to save them, but because He wants us to participate in saving each other. Of course, He Himself knows what every person needs - both us and our neighbors. When we pray for our neighbors, this does not mean that we want to be more merciful than God. But this means that we want to participate in their salvation. And in prayer we should not forget about the people with whom life has brought us together, and that they pray for us. Each of us in the evening, going to bed, can say to God: “Lord, through the prayers of all those who love me, save me.”
Let us remember the living connection between us and our neighbors, and let us always remember each other in prayer.
12. PRAYER FOR THE DECEASED
We must pray not only for those of our neighbors who are alive, but also for those who have already passed on to another world.
Prayer for the deceased is necessary first of all for us, because when a loved one passes away, we have a natural feeling of loss, and from this we suffer deeply. But that person continues to live, only he lives in another dimension, because he has moved to another world. So that the connection between us and the person who left us does not break, we must pray for him. Then we will feel his presence, feel that he has not left us, that our living connection with him remains.
But prayer for the deceased, of course, is also necessary for him, because when a person dies, he moves on to another life in order to meet God there and answer for everything he has done in earthly life, good and bad. It is very important that a person on this path be accompanied by the prayers of loved ones - those who remain here on earth, who keep the memory of him. A person who leaves this world is deprived of everything that this world gave him, only his soul remains. All the wealth he owned in life, all that he acquired, remains here. Only the soul goes to another world. And the soul is judged by God according to the law of mercy and justice. If a person has done something evil in life, he has to bear punishment for it. But we, the survivors, can ask God to ease the fate of this person. And the Church believes that the posthumous fate of the deceased is made easier through the prayers of those who pray for him here on earth.
The hero of Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov,” Elder Zosima (whose prototype was St. Tikhon of Zadonsk) says this about prayer for the departed: “Every day and whenever you can, repeat to yourself: “Lord, have mercy on all who stand before You today.” For at every hour and every moment, thousands of people leave their life on this earth, and their souls stand before the Lord - and how many of them parted with the earth in isolation, unknown to anyone, in sadness and anguish, and no one will regret them ... And now, perhaps, from the other end of the earth, your prayer will ascend to the Lord for his repose, even if you did not know him at all, and he did not know you. How touching it was for his soul, standing in fear of the Lord, to feel at that moment that there was a prayer book for him, that there was a human being left on earth and one who loved him. And God will look more mercifully on both of you, for if you have already pitied him so much, then how much more will He, who is infinitely more merciful... And forgive him for your sake.”
13. PRAYER FOR ENEMIES
The need to pray for enemies follows from the very essence of the moral teaching of Jesus Christ.
In the pre-Christian era, there was a rule: “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy” (Matthew 5:43). It is in accordance with this rule that most people still live. It is natural for us to love our neighbors, those who do good to us, and to treat with hostility, or even hatred, towards those from whom evil comes. But Christ says that the attitude should be completely different: “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). During His earthly life, Christ Himself repeatedly set an example of both love for enemies and prayer for enemies. When the Lord was on the cross and the soldiers were nailing Him, He experienced terrible torment, incredible pain, but He prayed: “Father! forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). He was thinking at that moment not about Himself, not about the fact that these soldiers were hurting Him, but about their salvation, because by committing evil, they first of all harmed themselves.
We must remember that people who do us harm or treat us with hostility are not bad in themselves. The sin with which they are infected is bad. One must hate sin, and not its carrier, man. As Saint John Chrysostom said, “when you see that someone is doing you evil, hate not him, but the devil who stands behind him.”
We must learn to separate a person from the sin he commits. The priest very often observes during confession how sin is actually separated from a person when he repents of it. We must be able to renounce the sinful image of man and remember that all people, including our enemies and those who hate us, are created in the image of God, and it is in this image of God, in those beginnings of goodness that exist in every person, that we must look closely.
Why is it necessary to pray for enemies? This is necessary not only for them, but also for us. We must find the strength to make peace with people. Archimandrite Sophrony in his book about St. Silouan of Athos says: “Those who hate and reject their brother are flawed in their being, they cannot find the way to God, who loves everyone.” This is true. When hatred for a person settles in our hearts, we are unable to approach God. And as long as this feeling remains in us, the path to God is blocked for us. This is why it is necessary to pray for enemies.
Every time we approach the Living God, we must be absolutely reconciled with everyone whom we perceive as our enemies. Let us remember what the Lord says: “If you bring your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you... go, first make peace with your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23) . And another word of the Lord: “Make peace with your adversary quickly, while you are still on the way with him” (Matthew 5:25). “On the way with him” means “in this earthly life.” For if we do not have time to reconcile here with those who hate and offend us, with our enemies, then we will go into the future life unreconciled. And there it will be impossible to make up for what was lost here.
14. FAMILY PRAYER
So far we have talked mainly about the personal, individual prayer of a person. Now I would like to say a few words about prayer within the family.
Most of our contemporaries live in such a way that family members get together quite rarely, at best twice a day - in the morning for breakfast and in the evening for dinner. During the day, parents are at work, children are at school, and only preschoolers and pensioners remain at home. It is very important that there be some moments in the daily routine when everyone can gather together for prayer. If the family is going to dinner, why not pray together a few minutes before? You can also read prayers and a passage from the Gospel after dinner.
Joint prayer strengthens a family, because its life is truly fulfilling and happy only when its members are united not only by family ties, but also by spiritual kinship, a common understanding and worldview. Joint prayer, in addition, has a beneficial effect on each family member, in particular, it greatly helps children.
In Soviet times, it was forbidden to raise children in a religious spirit. This was motivated by the fact that children must first grow up, and only then independently choose whether to follow a religious or non-religious path. There is a profound lie in this argument. Because before a person has the opportunity to choose, he must be taught something. And the best age for learning is, of course, childhood. It can be very difficult for someone who has been accustomed to living without prayer since childhood to accustom himself to pray. And a person, raised from childhood in a prayerful, grace-filled spirit, who from the first years of his life knew about the existence of God and that one can always turn to God, even if he later left the Church, from God, still retained some in the depths, in the recesses of the soul, the prayer skills acquired in childhood, the charge of religiosity. And it often happens that people who have left the Church return to God at some stage in their lives precisely because in childhood they were accustomed to prayer.
One more thing. Today, many families have older relatives, grandparents, who were raised in a non-religious environment. Even twenty or thirty years ago one could say that the church is a place for “grandmothers.” Now it is grandmothers who represent the most irreligious generation, raised in the 30s and 40s, in the era of “militant atheism.” It is very important that older people find their way to the temple. It is not too late for anyone to turn to God, but those young people who have already found this path must tactfully, gradually, but with great constancy involve their older relatives into the orbit of spiritual life. And through daily family prayer this can be done especially successfully.
15. CHURCH PRAYER
As the famous theologian of the 20th century, Archpriest Georgy Florovsky, said, a Christian never prays alone: even if he turns to God in his room, closing the door behind him, he still prays as a member of the church community. We are not isolated individuals, we are members of the Church, members of one body. And we are not saved alone, but together with others - with our brothers and sisters. And therefore it is very important that every person has the experience of not only individual prayer, but also church prayer, together with other people.
Church prayer has a very special significance and special meaning. Many of us know from our own experience how difficult it can sometimes be for a person to immerse himself in the element of prayer alone. But when you come to church, you are immersed in the common prayer of many people, and this prayer takes you to some depths, and your prayer merges with the prayer of others.
Human life is like sailing across the sea or ocean. There are, of course, daredevils who, alone, overcoming storms and storms, cross the sea on a yacht. But, as a rule, people, in order to cross the ocean, get together and move on a ship from one shore to the other. The church is a ship in which Christians move together along the path to salvation. And joint prayer is one of the most powerful means for progress on this path.
In the temple, many things contribute to church prayer, and above all, divine services. The liturgical texts used in the Orthodox Church are unusually rich in content and contain great wisdom. But there is an obstacle that many who come to the Church face - the Church Slavonic language. Now there is a lot of debate about whether to preserve the Slavic language in worship or switch to Russian. It seems to me that if our worship were entirely translated into Russian, much of it would be lost. The Church Slavonic language has great spiritual power, and experience shows that it is not so difficult, not so different from Russian. You just need to make some effort, just as we, if necessary, make an effort to master the language of a particular science, for example, mathematics or physics.
So, to learn how to pray in church, you need to make some effort, go to church more often, maybe buy basic liturgical books and study them in your free time. And then all the wealth of liturgical language and liturgical texts will be revealed to you, and you will see that worship is a whole school that teaches you not only church prayer, but also spiritual life.
16. WHY DO YOU NEED TO GO TO CHURCH?
Many people who occasionally visit the temple develop some kind of consumerist attitude towards the church. They come to the temple, for example, before a long journey - to light a candle just in case, so that nothing happens on the road. They come in for two or three minutes, hastily cross themselves several times and, after lighting a candle, leave. Some, entering the temple, say: “I want to pay money so that the priest will pray for such and such,” they pay the money and leave. The priest must pray, but these people themselves do not participate in prayer.
This is the wrong attitude. Church is not a Snickers machine: you put a coin in and out comes a piece of candy. Church is the place where you need to come to live and study. If you are experiencing any difficulties or one of your loved ones is sick, do not limit yourself to stopping by and lighting a candle. Come to church for a service, immerse yourself in the element of prayer and, together with the priest and the community, offer your prayer for what worries you.
It is very important to attend church regularly. It is good to go to church every Sunday. The Sunday Divine Liturgy, as well as the Liturgy of the Great Feasts, is a time when we can, renouncing our earthly affairs for two hours, immerse ourselves in the element of prayer. It is good to come to church with the whole family to confess and receive communion.
If a person learns to live from resurrection to resurrection, in the rhythm of church services, in the rhythm of the Divine Liturgy, then his whole life will change dramatically. First of all, it disciplines. The believer knows that next Sunday he will have to give an answer to God, and he lives differently, does not commit many sins that he could have committed if he had not attended church. In addition, the Divine Liturgy itself is an opportunity to receive Holy Communion, that is, to unite with God not only spiritually, but also physically. And finally, the Divine Liturgy is a comprehensive service, when the entire church community and each of its members can pray for everything that worries, worries or pleases. During the Liturgy, a believer can pray for himself, and for his neighbors, and for his future, repent for sins and ask for God’s blessing for further service. It is very important to learn to fully participate in the Liturgy. There are other services in the Church, for example, the all-night vigil - a preparatory service for communion. You can order a prayer service for a saint or a prayer service for the health of this or that person. But no so-called “private” services, that is, ordered by a person to pray for some of his specific needs, can replace participation in the Divine Liturgy, because it is the Liturgy that is the center of church prayer, and it is it that should become the center of everyone’s spiritual life Christian and every Christian family.
17. TOUCHING AND TEARS
I would like to say a few words about the spiritual and emotional state that people experience in prayer. Let's remember Lermontov's famous poem:
In a difficult moment of life,
Is there sadness in my heart:
One wonderful prayer
I repeat it by heart.
There is a power of grace
In the consonance of living words,
And an incomprehensible one breathes,
Holy beauty in them.
Like a burden will roll off your soul,
Doubt is far away -
And I believe and cry,
And so easy, easy...
In these beautiful simple words, the great poet described what very often happens to people during prayer. A person repeats the words of prayers, perhaps familiar from childhood, and suddenly he feels some kind of enlightenment, relief, and tears appear. In church language this state is called tenderness. This is the state that is sometimes bestowed upon a person during prayer, when he feels the presence of God more acutely and stronger than usual. This is a spiritual state when the grace of God directly touches our heart.
Let us recall an excerpt from Ivan Bunin’s autobiographical book “The Life of Arsenyev,” where Bunin describes his youth and how, while still a high school student, he attended services in the parish Church of the Exaltation of the Lord. He describes the beginning of the all-night vigil, in the twilight of the church, when there are still very few people: “How all this worries me. I’m still a boy, a teenager, but I was born with a feeling of all this. So many times I listened to these exclamations and certainly the following “Amen”, that all this became, as it were, a part of my soul, and now, already guessing every word of the service in advance, it responds to everything with a purely related readiness. “Come, let us worship... Bless the Lord, my soul,” I hear, and my eyes fill with tears, for I now firmly know that there is and cannot be anything on earth more beautiful and higher than all this. And the holy mystery flows, flows, the Royal Doors close and open, the vaults of the church are illuminated brighter and warmer with many candles.” And further Bunin writes that he had to visit many Western churches, where the organ sounded, to visit Gothic cathedrals, beautiful in their architecture, “but nowhere and never,” he says, “did I cry as much as in the Church of the Exaltation in these dark and deaf evenings.”
Not only great poets and writers respond to the beneficial influence with which visiting church is inevitably associated. Every person can experience this. It is very important that our soul is open to these feelings, so that when we come to church, we are ready to accept the grace of God to the extent that it will be given to us. If the state of grace is not given to us and tenderness does not come, we do not need to be embarrassed by this. This means that our soul has not matured to tenderness. But moments of such enlightenment are a sign that our prayer is not fruitless. They testify that God responds to our prayer and the grace of God touches our heart.
18. STRUGGLE WITH STRANGE THOUGHTS
One of the main obstacles to attentive prayer is the appearance of extraneous thoughts. Saint John of Kronstadt, the great ascetic of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, describes in his diaries how, during the Divine Liturgy, at the most crucial and sacred moments, an apple pie or some kind of order that might be awarded to him suddenly appeared before his mind’s eye . And he speaks with bitterness and regret about how such extraneous images and thoughts can destroy the state of prayer. If this happened to the saints, then it is not surprising that it happens to us. In order to protect ourselves from these thoughts and extraneous images, we must learn, as the ancient Fathers of the Church said, “to stand guard over our mind.”
The ascetic writers of the Ancient Church had a detailed teaching about how extraneous thoughts gradually penetrate into a person. The first stage of this process is called “preposition,” that is, the sudden appearance of a thought. This thought is still completely alien to man, it appeared somewhere on the horizon, but its penetration inside begins when a person focuses his attention on it, enters into a conversation with it, examines and analyzes it. Then comes what the Church Fathers called “combination” - when a person’s mind already, as it were, becomes accustomed, merges with thoughts. Finally, the thought turns into passion and embraces the whole person, and then both prayer and spiritual life are forgotten.
To prevent this from happening, it is very important to cut off extraneous thoughts at their first appearance, not to allow them to penetrate into the depths of the soul, heart and mind. And to learn this, you need to work hard on yourself. A person cannot help but experience absent-mindedness during prayer if he does not learn to deal with extraneous thoughts.
One of the diseases of modern man is that he does not know how to control the functioning of his brain. His brain is autonomous, and thoughts come and go involuntarily. Modern man, as a rule, does not follow what is happening in his mind at all. But in order to learn real prayer, you need to be able to monitor your thoughts and mercilessly cut off those that do not correspond to the prayerful mood. Short prayers help to overcome absent-mindedness and cut off extraneous thoughts - “Lord, have mercy”, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” and others - which do not require special concentration on words, but encourage the birth of feelings and movement of the heart. With the help of such prayers you can learn to pay attention and concentrate on prayer.
19. JESUS PRAYER
The Apostle Paul says: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). People often ask: how can we pray unceasingly if we work, read, talk, eat, sleep, etc., that is, we do things that seem to be incompatible with prayer? The answer to this question in the Orthodox tradition is the Jesus Prayer. Believers who practice the Jesus Prayer achieve unceasing prayer, that is, unceasing standing before God. How does this happen?
The Jesus Prayer sounds like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” There is also a shorter form: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” But prayer can be reduced to two words: “Lord, have mercy.” A person who prays the Jesus Prayer repeats it not only during worship or at home prayer, but also on the road, while eating and going to bed. Even if a person speaks to someone or listens to another, then, without losing the intensity of perception, he nevertheless continues to repeat this prayer somewhere in the depths of his heart.
The meaning of the Jesus Prayer lies, of course, not in its mechanical repetition, but in always feeling the living presence of Christ. This presence is felt by us primarily because, when saying the Jesus Prayer, we pronounce the name of the Savior.
A name is a symbol of its bearer; the one to whom it belongs is, as it were, present in the name. When a young man is in love with a girl and thinks about her, he constantly repeats her name, because she seems to be present in his name. And because love fills his entire being, he feels the need to repeat this name again and again. In the same way, a Christian who loves the Lord repeats the name of Jesus Christ because his whole heart and being is turned to Christ.
When performing the Jesus Prayer, it is very important not to try to imagine Christ, imagining Him as a person in some life situation or, for example, hanging on a cross. The Jesus Prayer should not be associated with images that may arise in our imagination, because then the real is replaced by the imaginary. The Jesus Prayer should be accompanied only by an inner feeling of the presence of Christ and a feeling of standing before the Living God. No external images are appropriate here.
20. WHAT IS JESUS’ PRAYER GOOD?
The Jesus Prayer has several special properties. First of all, it is the presence of the name of God in it.
We very often remember the name of God as if out of habit, thoughtlessly. We say: “Lord, how tired I am,” “God be with him, let him come another time,” without thinking at all about the power that the name of God has. Meanwhile, already in the Old Testament there was a commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” (Ex. 20:7). And the ancient Jews treated the name of God with extreme reverence. In the era after liberation from Babylonian captivity, pronouncing the name of God was generally prohibited. Only the high priest had this right, once a year, when he entered the Holy of Holies, the main sanctuary of the temple. When we turn to Christ with the Jesus Prayer, pronouncing the name of Christ and confessing Him as the Son of God has a very special meaning. This name should be pronounced with the greatest reverence.
Another property of the Jesus Prayer is its simplicity and accessibility. To perform the Jesus Prayer, you do not need any special books or a specially designated place or time. This is its huge advantage over many other prayers.
Finally, there is one more property that distinguishes this prayer - in it we confess our sinfulness: “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” This point is very important, because many modern people do not feel their sinfulness at all. Even in confession you can often hear: “I don’t know what I should repent of, I live like everyone else, I don’t kill, I don’t steal,” etc. Meanwhile, it is our sins that, as a rule, are the causes of our main troubles and sorrows. A person does not notice his sins because he is far from God, just as in a dark room we see neither dust nor dirt, but as soon as we open the window, we discover that the room has long needed cleaning.
The soul of a person far from God is like a dark room. But the closer a person is to God, the more light there is in his soul, the more acutely he feels his own sinfulness. And this happens not due to the fact that he compares himself with other people, but due to the fact that he stands before God. When we say: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner,” we seem to put ourselves in the face of Christ, comparing our life with His life. And then we really feel like sinners and can bring repentance from the depths of our hearts.
21. PRACTICE OF THE JESUS PRAYER
Let's talk about the practical aspects of the Jesus Prayer. Some people set themselves the task of saying the Jesus Prayer during the day, say, a hundred, five hundred or a thousand times. To count how many times a prayer is read, a rosary is used, which may have fifty, a hundred or more balls on it. Saying a prayer in his mind, a person touches his rosary. But if you are just beginning the feat of the Jesus Prayer, then you need to pay attention first of all to quality, not quantity. It seems to me that you need to start by very slowly saying the words of the Jesus Prayer out loud, ensuring that your heart participates in the prayer. You say: “Lord... Jesus... Christ...”, and your heart should, like a tuning fork, respond to every word. And do not try to immediately read the Jesus Prayer many times. Even if you say it only ten times, but if your heart responds to the words of the prayer, that will be enough.
A person has two spiritual centers - the mind and the heart. Intellectual activity, imagination, thoughts are associated with the mind, and emotions, feelings, and experiences are associated with the heart. When saying the Jesus Prayer, the center should be the heart. That is why, when praying, do not try to imagine something in your mind, for example, Jesus Christ, but try to keep your attention in your heart.
The ancient church ascetic writers developed a technique of “bringing the mind into the heart,” in which the Jesus Prayer was combined with breathing, and while inhaling, one said: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” and while exhaling, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” A person’s attention seemed to naturally switch from the head to the heart. I don’t think that everyone should practice the Jesus Prayer in exactly this way; it is enough to pronounce the words of the prayer with great attention and reverence.
Start your morning with the Jesus Prayer. If you have a free minute during the day, read the prayer a few more times; in the evening, before going to bed, repeat it until you fall asleep. If you learn to wake up and fall asleep with the Jesus Prayer, this will give you great spiritual support. Gradually, as your heart becomes more and more responsive to the words of this prayer, you can come to the point that it will become incessant, and the main content of the prayer will not be the utterance of words, but the constant feeling of the presence of God in the heart. And if you started by saying the prayer out loud, then you will gradually come to the point that it will be pronounced only by the heart, without the participation of the tongue or lips. You will see how prayer will transform your entire human nature, your entire life. This is the special power of the Jesus Prayer.
22. BOOKS ABOUT THE JESUS PRAYER. HOW TO PRAY CORRECTLY?
“Whatever you do, whatever you do at all times - day and night, pronounce with your lips these Divine verbs: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s not difficult: both while traveling, on the road, and while working - whether you’re chopping wood or carrying water, or digging the ground, or cooking food. After all, in all this, one body works, and the mind remains idle, so give it an activity that is characteristic and befitting of its immaterial nature - to pronounce the name of God.” This is an excerpt from the book “On the Caucasus Mountains,” which was published for the first time at the beginning of the 20th century and is dedicated to the Jesus Prayer.
I would like to especially emphasize that this prayer needs to be learned, preferably with the help of a spiritual leader. In the Orthodox Church there are teachers of prayer - among monastics, pastors and even lay people: these are people who themselves, through experience, have learned the power of prayer. But if you do not find such a mentor - and many complain that it is now difficult to find a mentor in prayer - you can turn to books such as “On the Caucasus Mountains” or “Frank Tales of a Wanderer to His Spiritual Father.” The last one, published in the 19th century and reprinted many times, talks about a man who decided to learn unceasing prayer. He was a wanderer, walked from city to city with a bag on his shoulders and a staff, and learned to pray. He repeated the Jesus Prayer several thousand times a day.
There is also a classic five-volume collection of works of the Holy Fathers from the 4th to the 14th centuries - “Philokalia”. This is a rich treasury of spiritual experience; it contains many instructions about the Jesus Prayer and sobriety - attention of the mind. Anyone who wants to learn to pray for real should be familiar with these books.
I cited an excerpt from the book “On the Caucasus Mountains” also because many years ago, when I was a teenager, I had the opportunity to travel to Georgia, to the Caucasus Mountains, not far from Sukhumi. There I met hermits. They lived there even in Soviet times, far from the bustle of the world, in caves, gorges and abysses, and no one knew about their existence. They lived by prayer and passed on from generation to generation the treasure of prayer experience. These were people as if from another world, who had reached great spiritual heights and deep inner peace. And all this thanks to the Jesus Prayer.
May God grant us to learn through experienced mentors and through the books of the Holy Fathers this treasure - the unceasing performance of the Jesus Prayer.
23. “OUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN”
The Lord's Prayer has special significance because it was given to us by Jesus Christ Himself. It begins with the words: “Our Father, who art in heaven,” or in Russian: “Our Father, who art in heaven.” This prayer is comprehensive in nature: it seems to concentrate everything that a person needs for earthly life , and for the salvation of the soul. The Lord gave it to us so that we would know what to pray for, what to ask God for.
The first words of this prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven” reveal to us that God is not some distant abstract being, not some abstract good principle, but our Father. Today, many people, when asked whether they believe in God, answer in the affirmative, but if you ask them how they imagine God, what they think about Him, they answer something like this: “Well, God is good, it’s something bright, It’s some kind of positive energy.” That is, God is treated as some kind of abstraction, as something impersonal.
When we begin our prayer with the words “Our Father,” we immediately turn to the personal, living God, to God as the Father - the Father about whom Christ spoke in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Many people remember the plot of this parable from the Gospel of Luke. The son decided to leave his father without waiting for his death. He received the inheritance due to him, went to a distant country, squandered this inheritance there, and when he had already reached the last limit of poverty and exhaustion, he decided to return to his father. He said to himself: “I will go to my father and say to him: Father! I have sinned against heaven and before you and am no longer worthy to be called your son, but accept me as one of your hired servants” (Luke 15:18-19). And when he was still far away, his father ran out to meet him and threw himself on his neck. The son did not even have time to say the prepared words, because the father immediately gave him a ring, a sign of filial dignity, dressed him in his former clothes, that is, he completely restored him to the dignity of a son. This is exactly how God treats us. We are not mercenaries, but sons of God, and the Lord treats us as His children. Therefore, our attitude towards God should be characterized by devotion and noble filial love.
When we say: “Our Father,” it means that we pray not in isolation, as individuals, each of whom has his own Father, but as members of a single human family, a single Church, a single Body of Christ. In other words, by calling God Father, we thereby mean that all other people are our brothers. Moreover, when Christ teaches us to turn to God “Our Father” in prayer, He puts Himself, as it were, on the same level with us. The Monk Simeon the New Theologian said that through faith in Christ we become brothers of Christ, because we have a common Father with Him - our Heavenly Father.
As for the words “Who art in heaven,” they do not point to the physical heaven, but to the fact that God lives in a completely different dimension than we do, that He is absolutely transcendent to us. But through prayer, through the Church, we have the opportunity to join this heaven, that is, another world.
24. “HOLY HOLY NAME”
What do the words “Hallowed be Thy name” mean? The name of God is holy in itself; it carries within itself a charge of holiness, spiritual power and the presence of God. Why is it necessary to pray with these exact words? Will not the name of God remain holy even if we do not say “Hallowed be thy name”?
When we say: “Hallowed be Thy name,” we first of all mean that the name of God must be hallowed, that is, be revealed as holy through us, Christians, through our spiritual life. The Apostle Paul, addressing the unworthy Christians of his time, said: “For your sake the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles” (Rom. 2:24). These are very important words. They talk about our inconsistency with the spiritual and moral norm that is contained in the Gospel and by which we, Christians, are obliged to live. And this discrepancy, perhaps, is one of the main tragedies both for us as Christians and for the entire Christian Church.
The Church has holiness because it is built on the name of God, which is holy in itself. Members of the Church are far from meeting the standards that the Church puts forward. We often hear reproaches, and quite fair ones, against Christians: “How can you prove the existence of God if you yourself live no better, and sometimes worse, than pagans and atheists? How can faith in God be combined with unworthy actions?” So, each of us must ask ourselves daily: “Am I, as a Christian, living up to the gospel ideal? Is the name of God sanctified through me or blasphemed? Am I an example of true Christianity, which consists of love, humility, meekness and mercy, or am I an example of the opposite of these virtues?”
Often people turn to the priest with the question: “What should I do to bring my son (daughter, husband, mother, father) to church? I tell them about God, but they don’t even want to listen.” The problem is that it's not enough speak about God. When a person, having become a believer, tries to convert others, especially his loved ones, to his faith, with the help of words, persuasion, and sometimes through coercion, insisting that they pray or go to church, this often gives the opposite result - his loved ones develop rejection of everything ecclesiastical and spiritual. We will be able to bring people closer to the Church only when we ourselves become real Christians, when they, looking at us, say: “Yes, now I understand what the Christian faith can do to a person, how it can transform him, change him; I’m starting to believe in God because I see how Christians are different from non-Christians.”
25. “THY KINGDOM COME”
What do these words mean? After all, the Kingdom of God will inevitably come, there will be an end of the world, and humanity will move into another dimension. It is obvious that we are not praying for the end of the world, but for the coming of the Kingdom of God to us, that is, so that it becomes reality our life, so that our current - everyday, gray, and sometimes dark, tragic - earthly life is permeated with the presence of the Kingdom of God.
What is the Kingdom of God? To answer this question, you need to turn to the Gospel and remember that the preaching of Jesus Christ began with the words: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Then Christ repeatedly told people about His Kingdom; He did not object when He was called the King - for example, when He entered Jerusalem and He was greeted as the King of the Jews. Even standing at the trial, mocked, slandered, slandered, to Pilate’s question, asked, apparently with irony: “Are you the King of the Jews?”, the Lord answered: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:33-36) . These words of the Savior contain the answer to the question of what the Kingdom of God is. And when we turn to God “Thy Kingdom come,” we ask that this unearthly, spiritual, Kingdom of Christ become the reality of our lives, so that that spiritual dimension appears in our lives, which is talked about a lot, but which is known to so few from experience.
When the Lord Jesus Christ spoke to the disciples about what awaited Him in Jerusalem - torment, suffering and godmotherhood - the mother of two of them said to Him: “Tell that these two sons of mine sit with You, one on your right side, and the other on your left. Thy kingdom” (Matthew 20:21). He talked about how He had to suffer and die, and she imagined a Man on the royal throne and wanted her sons to be next to Him. But, as we remember, the Kingdom of God was first revealed on the cross - Christ was crucified, bleeding, and above Him hung a sign: “King of the Jews.” And only then was the Kingdom of God revealed in the glorious and saving Resurrection of Christ. It is this Kingdom that is promised to us - a Kingdom that is given through great effort and sorrow. The path to the Kingdom of God lies through Gethsemane and Golgotha - through those trials, temptations, sorrows and suffering that befall each of us. We must remember this when we say in prayer: “Thy kingdom come.”
26. “THY WILL BE DONE AS IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH”
We say these words with such ease! And very rarely do we realize that our will may not coincide with the will of God. After all, sometimes God sends us suffering, but we find ourselves unable to accept it as sent by God, we grumble, we are indignant. How often do people, when they come to a priest, say: “I cannot agree with this and that, I understand that this is the will of God, but I cannot reconcile myself.” What can you say to such a person? Don’t tell him that, apparently, in the Lord’s Prayer he needs to replace the words “Thy will be done” with “My will be done”!
Each of us needs to fight to ensure that our will coincides with the good will of God. We say: “Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth.” That is, the will of God, which is already being accomplished in heaven, in the spiritual world, must be accomplished here on earth, and above all in our lives. And we must be ready to follow the voice of God in everything. We must find the strength to renounce our own will for the sake of fulfilling the will of God. Often, when we pray, we ask God for something, but we do not receive it. And then it seems to us that the prayer was not heard. You need to find the strength to accept this “refusal” from God as His will.
Let us remember Christ, Who on the eve of His death prayed to His Father and said: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.” But this cup did not pass from Him, which means that the answer to prayer was different: the cup of suffering, sorrow and death Jesus Christ had to drink. Knowing this, He said to the Father: “But not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39-42).
This should be our attitude towards God's will. If we feel that some kind of sorrow is approaching us, that we have to drink a cup for which we may not have enough strength, we can say: “Lord, if it is possible, let this cup of sorrow pass from me, carry it through.” pass me by". But, like Christ, we must end the prayer with the words: “But not my will, but Thine be done.”
You need to trust God. Often children ask their parents for something, but they do not give it because they consider it harmful. Years will pass, and the person will understand how right the parents were. This happens to us too. Some time passes, and we suddenly realize how much more beneficial what the Lord sent us turned out to be than what we would like to receive of our own free will.
27. “GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD THIS DAY”
We can turn to God with a variety of requests. We can ask Him not only for something sublime and spiritual, but also for what we need on a material level. “Daily bread” is what we live on, our daily food. Moreover, in prayer we say: “Give us our daily bread today”, that is today. In other words, we do not ask God to provide us with everything we need for all the subsequent days of our lives. We ask Him for daily food, knowing that if He feeds us today, He will feed us tomorrow. By saying these words, we express our trust in God: we trust Him with our lives today, just as we will trust it tomorrow.
The words “daily bread” indicate what is necessary for life, and not some kind of excess. A person can take the path of acquisitiveness and, having the necessary things - a roof over his head, a piece of bread, minimal material goods - begin to accumulate and live in luxury. This path leads to a dead end, because the more a person accumulates, the more money he has, the more he feels the emptiness of life, feeling that there are some other needs that cannot be satisfied with material goods. So, “daily bread” is what is needed. These are not limousines, not luxurious palaces, not millions of sums of money, but this is something that neither we, nor our children, nor our relatives can live without.
Some understand the words “daily bread” in a more sublime sense - as “supra-essential bread” or “super-essential.” In particular, the Greek Fathers of the Church wrote that the “super-essential bread” is the bread that comes down from heaven, in other words, it is Christ Himself, whom Christians receive in the sacrament of Holy Communion. This understanding is also justified, because, in addition to material bread, a person also needs spiritual bread.
Everyone puts their own meaning into the concept of “daily bread”. During the war, one boy, praying, said this: “Give us our dried bread this day,” because the main food was crackers. What the boy and his family needed to survive was dried bread. This may seem funny or sad, but it shows that every person - both old and young - asks God for exactly what he needs most, without which he cannot live a single day.
Prayers that every Orthodox Christian should know: Our Father, Heavenly King, Prayer of thanksgiving, Invoking the help of the Holy Spirit for every good deed, The Most Holy Theotokos, May God rise again, the Life-giving Cross, The Holy Great Martyr and Healer Panteleimon, The Most Holy Theotokos, For the pacification of those at war, For the sick, Living in help, Rev. Moses Murin, Creed, other daily prayers.
If you have anxiety in your soul and it seems to you that everything in life is not working out the way you want, or you don’t have enough strength and confidence to continue what you started, read these prayers. They will fill you with the energy of faith and prosperity, surround you with heavenly power and protect you from all adversity. They will give you strength and confidence.
Prayers that every Orthodox Christian should know.
Our Father
"Our Father who art in heaven! Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done both on earth and in heaven; give us our daily bread this day; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive debtors ours; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen."
Heavenly King
Heavenly King, Comforter, Soul of truth, Who is everywhere and fulfills everything, Treasure of good things and Giver of life, come and dwell in us, and cleanse us from all filth, and save, O Good One, our souls.
Prayer of thanksgiving(Thanksgiving for every good deed of God)
From time immemorial, believers have read this prayer not only when their deeds, through prayers to the Lord, ended successfully, but also glorifying the Almighty, and thanking Him for the very gift of life and constant care for the needs of each of us.
Troparion, tone 4:
Give thanks to Thy unworthy servants, O Lord, for Thy great good deeds upon us; we glorify Thee, bless, thank Thee, sing and magnify Thy compassion, and slavishly cry out to Thee in love: O our Benefactor, glory to Thee.
Kontakion, tone 3:
As a servant of indecency, having been honored with Your blessings and gifts, Master, we earnestly flow to You, giving thanks according to our strength, and glorifying You as the Benefactor and Creator, we cry out: Glory to You, All-Bountiful God.
Glory even now: Theotokos
Theotokos, Christian Helper, Your servants, having acquired Your intercession, cry out to You in gratitude: Rejoice, Most Pure Virgin Mother of God, and always deliver us from all our troubles with Your prayers, One who will soon intercede.
Invoking the help of the Holy Spirit for every good work
Troparion, Tone 4:
O God, Creator and Creator of all things, the works of our hands, begun for Thy glory, hasten to correct with Thy blessing, and deliver us from all evil, for one is all-powerful and Lover of mankind.
Kontakion, Tone 3:
Quick to intercede and strong to help, present yourself to the grace of Thy power now, and bless and strengthen, and bring about the good work of Thy servants to accomplish the good work of Thy servants: for all that thou desirest, for the mighty God is able to do.
Holy Mother of God
“O Most Holy Lady Theotokos, Heavenly Queen, save and have mercy on us, Thy sinful servants; from vain slander and all misfortune, adversity and sudden death, have mercy in the daytime hours, morning and evening, and at all times save us - standing, sitting, on on every path that walks, on those who sleep at night, provide, intercede and cover, protect. Lady Theotokos, from all enemies visible and invisible, from every evil situation, in every place and at every time, be to us, O Most Blessed Mother, an insurmountable wall and strong intercession. always now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen."
May God rise again
"May God rise again, and let His enemies be scattered, and let them flee from His face. As smoke disappears, let them disappear; as wax melts before the face of fire, so may demons perish from the presence of those who love God and signify themselves with the sign of the cross, and say in joy: Rejoice , Most Honest and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, drive away demons by the power of You, the cradled Lord Jesus Christ, who descended into hell and trampled upon the power of the devil, and gave us His Honest Cross to drive away every adversary. O Most Honorable and Life-giving Cross of the Lord! Help me with the Holy Our Lady the Virgin Mary and with all the saints forever. Amen."
Life-giving cross
“Protect me, Lord, by the power of Your Honest and Life-giving Cross, save me from all evil. Weaken, forgive, forgive, God, our sins, voluntary and involuntary, both in word and in deed, both in knowledge and not in ignorance, as day and night, both in mind and in thought, forgive us everything, as you are Good and Lover of Mankind. Forgive those who hate and offend us, O Lord, Lover of Mankind. Do good to those who do good. Grant to our brothers and relatives forgiveness and eternal life even for salvation. In weaknesses Visit those who are and grant healing. Rule the sea. Travel to those who travel. Grant remission of sins to those who serve and have mercy on us. Those who commanded us, the unworthy, to pray for them, have mercy according to Your great mercy. Remember, O Lord, our fathers and brothers who have fallen before us and give them rest, where the light of Thy countenance abides. Remember, O Lord, our captive brothers, deliver them from every situation. Remember, O Lord, those who bear fruit and do good in Thy holy churches, give them the way to salvation through petition and eternal life. Remember, O Lord, us, the humble and sinners and unworthy Thy servants, and enlighten our minds with the light of Thy mind, and make us follow the path of Thy commandments, through the prayers of our Most Pure Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary and all Thy saints, for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen".
Holy Great Martyr and Healer Panteleimon
“O Great Saint of Christ and glorious healer, Great Martyr Panteleimon. With your soul in heaven, stand before the Throne of God, enjoy the tripartite glory of His glory, but rest in your holy body and face on earth in divine temples, and by the grace given to you from above, emanate various miracles. Look with your merciful eye on the people ahead and more honestly than your icon, praying and asking you for healing help and intercession, extend your warm prayers to the Lord our God and ask for forgiveness of sins for our souls. Behold, raise your voice of prayer to Him, in the Divine unapproachable glory with a contrite heart and a humble spirit for you, mercifully intercessor to the Lady and we call for a prayer book for us sinners. For you have received grace from Him to drive away illnesses and heal passions. We ask you, do not despise us unworthy who pray to you and demand your help; be a comforter to us in sorrows, a doctor in severe ailments to those who suffer, a giver of insight, with those who exist and babies in sorrow, the most prepared intercessor and healer, intercede for everyone, everything useful for salvation, as if by your prayers to the Lord God, having received grace and mercy, we glorify all the good sources and Gift-Giver of the One God in the Holy Trinity of the Glorious Father and Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and ever. Amen".
Holy Mother of God
“My Most Holy Lady Theotokos, with Your saints and all-powerful prayers, take away from me, Your humble and accursed servant, despondency, oblivion, foolishness, negligence and all nasty, evil and blasphemous thoughts.”
To pacify the warring
“O Lord, Lover of Mankind, King of the ages and Giver of good things, who destroyed the enmity of the mediastinum and gave peace to the human race, grant now peace to Thy servants, quickly instill Thy fear in them, establish love for each other, quench all strife, take away all disagreements and temptations. Like You "is our peace, we send up glory to You. To the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen."
About those who are sick
Master, Almighty, Holy King, punish and do not kill, strengthen those who fall and raise those who have been cast down, correct the bodily sorrows of people, we pray to Thee, our God, Thy servant... visit the weak with Thy mercy, forgive him every sin, voluntary and involuntary. To him, Lord, Thy healing power was sent down from heaven, touch the body, extinguish the fire, steal away passion and all lurking infirmity, be the doctor of Thy servant, raise him from the bed of sickness and from the bed of bitterness, whole and all-perfect, grant him to Thy Church, pleasing and doing will. Yours, yours is, to have mercy and save us, our God, and to you we send up glory, to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen".
Alive in Help
“He who is alive, in the help of the Most High, will dwell in the shelter of the Heavenly God. He says to the Lord: My God is my intercessor and my refuge, and I trust in Him. For He will deliver you from the snare of hunters and from the words of rebellion; His blanket will cover you, under His wings you have trusted His truth will surround you with weapons. There will be no slaughter from the fear of the night, from the arrow that flies during the days, from things that come in darkness, from the clogs and the demon of the midday. A thousand will fall from your country, and darkness will be at your right hand, but it will not come close to you, otherwise Look into Your eyes and see the reward of sinners. For You, O Lord, are my hope; You have made the Most High your refuge. No evil will come to you, and no wound will come near your body, as He commanded His angels about you, to keep you in all your ways. On They will take you in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone, tread on the asp and the basilisk, and cross over the lion and the serpent. I am in his tribulation, I will destroy him and glorify him, I will fill him with long days, I will show him My salvation.”
Venerable Moses Murin
Oh, the great power of repentance! O immeasurable depth of God's mercy! You, Reverend Moses, were formerly a robber. You were horrified by your sins, grieved over them, and in repentance came to the monastery and there, in great lamentation over your iniquities and in difficult deeds, you spent your days until your death and received Christ’s grace of forgiveness and the gift of miracles. Oh, venerable one, from grave sins you have achieved wonderful virtues, help the slaves (name) who pray to you, who are drawn to destruction because they indulge in the immeasurable consumption of wine, harmful to the soul and body. Bow your merciful gaze upon them, do not reject them or despise them, but listen to them as they come running to you. Pray, holy Moses, the Lord Christ, that He, the Merciful, will not reject them, and may the devil not rejoice at their death, but may the Lord have mercy on these powerless and unfortunate (name), who were possessed by the destructive passion of drunkenness, for we are all God’s creations and redeemed by the Most Pure One By the blood of His Son. Hear, Reverend Moses, their prayer, drive away the devil from them, grant them the strength to overcome their passion, help them, stretch out your hand, lead them from the slavery of passions and deliver them from wine drinking, so that they, renewed, in sobriety and a bright mind, will love abstinence and piety and eternally glorified the All-Good God, who always saves his creatures. Amen".
Symbol of faith
“I believe in one God, the Father, Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, visible to all and invisible, in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, who was born of the Father before all ages; Light from Light, God the truth and from God the truth , born, not created, consubstantial with the Father, by whom all things were. For our sake, man and for our salvation came down from heaven and became incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried. And rose again on the third day according to the Scripture. And He ascended into heaven, sitting at the right hand of the Father. And again He will come with the living and the dead, His Kingdom will have no end. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord Life-Giving, who proceeds from the Father. Who is worshiped with the Father and the Son and glorify the prophets who spoke. Into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. I look forward to the Resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century. Amen."
Prayer of spouses without children
“Hear us, Merciful and Almighty God, may Your grace be sent down through our prayer. Be merciful, Lord, to our prayer, remember Your law about the multiplication of the human race and be a merciful Patron, so that with Your help what You have established will be preserved. He created everything out of nothing and laid the foundation for everything that exists in the world - He created man in His image and with a high secret sanctified the union of marriage as a foreshadowing of the mystery of the unity of Christ with the Church. Look, O Merciful One, on us, Your servants, united in a marital union and begging for Your help , may Thy mercy be upon us, may we be fruitful and may we see the sons of our sons even to the third and fourth generation and to the desired old age, live and enter the Kingdom of Heaven by the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom all glory, honor and worship is due Holy Spirit forever. Amen."
Daily Prayers
When you wake up in the morning, mentally say the following words:
“In our hearts is the Lord God, in front is the Holy Spirit; help me with you to start, live and finish the day.”
When going on a long journey or just for some business, it’s good to mentally say:
"My angel, come with me: you are ahead, I am behind you." And the Guardian Angel will help you in any endeavor.
To improve your life, it is good to read the following prayer daily:
“Merciful Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ and the Power of the Holy Spirit, save, preserve and have mercy on me, the servant of God (name). Take away from me the damage, the evil eye and bodily pain forever. Merciful Lord, cast out the demon from me, the servant of God. Merciful Lord, heal me, God's servant (name). Amen."
If you are worried about your loved ones, say the following prayer until calm comes:
“Lord, save, preserve, have mercy (names of loved ones). Everything will be fine with them!”