Prayer

 “It is necessary that the Holy Spirit enter our heart. Everything good that we do, that we do for Christ, is given to us by the Holy Spirit, but prayer most of all, which is always available to us.”- St. Seraphim of Sarov 

    If the Divine Liturgy is the participation of the Christian in the divine on earth, prayer is the participation of the Christian in the work of the Holy Spirit.  Without prayer, the Christian has nothing. It is the act in which the Holy Spirit works in the life of the Christian healing it from the stains and the scars of the passions.  As Orthodox Christians, we believe that sin, is not just an offence against God, but also a sickness that effects all of us.  Prayer is the medicine that heals this sickness and creates in us a clean heart.  That is why in most Orthodox services, Psalm 50 (Psalm 51 in Western bibles) is prayed, because it lays out the very nature of our soul.  We pray within that Psalm that God would restore to us the joy of our salvation, and that he would not take His Holy Spirit from us.  We see from the lives of people like King Saul and King Solomon that our actions can effect the Holy Spirit and that without a successful fight against the passions that God will and can withdraw himself from us.  Prayer corrects this.  When you love someone, like I do my wife, you wish to spend as much time with them as possible. When I first met my wife, we would spend hours upon hours conversing, discovering who we were, and getting to know each other.  In the same way, God who is the creator of all, wants us to show Him our love, to delve into the depths of his infinite powers and draw closer to him.  Now, unlike in the West, the East understands that God is unknowable, that we can only scratch the surface of the eternal Creator.  It is one thing to have a list of facts and dogmas that one can rattle off, as so many in the west can, through their use of Bible Drills and various children's church activities, and it is another entirely to know God and to see God through uniting our hearts and minds with His in absolute communion.  When we pray we openly seek to take our human nature, our hearts and our minds and to draw God in.  Some would say, as the Calvinists do, that God forces himself upon us, you're either with God, or against God.  However, the experience and tradition of the Church teaches us that God is free and loving, and humble enough that he does not force himself on us.  Prayer must be a willing act, an act of submission to the Divine Logos and the enthronement of God in our hearts.  For some, like the monastics on Mount Athos, prayer is short.  Prayer does not have to be long. So many today drone on and on about Father God, and Loving God, and try to flatter God with many words.  Trust me, I've seen in first hand in Protestant churches here in America where the Pastor just continues on and on without really saying anything.  That is not prayer.  When we pray we must open our hearts to the will of God. We must make our requests known, even though God, who knows all things already knows what is best for us.  We must not be vain, we don't seek a comfortable life here on earth, we don't need that new Mercedes or that Lambo in the front yard.  What we do need is God.  Prayer allows us to achieve this, and as St. Theophan the Recluse says, “If you are not successful in your prayer, you will not be successful in anything, for prayer is the root of everything." So my suggestion to all of you reading this blog, is to take the simplest of prayers, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner", and pray this continuously throughout the day.  It does need to be a long period of time, two-three minutes, maybe five.  And use it to draw yourself closer to God.  Uniting yourself with the uncreated energies of the Divine Creator.  

May God have Mercy on us all. 

Amen