PRAYER & FASTING
WHat is PRAYer?
“There is nothing more worthwhile than to pray to God and to converse with him, for prayer unites us with God as his companions. As our bodily eyes are illuminated by seeing the light, so in contemplating God our soul is illuminated by him…
Prayer is the light of the soul, giving us true knowledge of God. It is a link mediating between God and man. By prayer the soul is borne up to heaven and in a marvellous way embraces the Lord. This meeting is like that of an infant crying on its mother, and seeking the best of milk. The soul longs for its own needs and what it receives is better than anything to be seen in the world.
Prayer is a precious way of communicating with God, it gladdens the soul and gives repose to its affections. You should not think of prayer as being a matter of words. It is a desire for God, an indescribable devotion, not of human origin, but the gift of God's grace. As Saint Paul says: we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. (Excerpts from the homilies of St John Chrysostom - Hom 6 on Prayer)
WHY IS Prayer IMPORTANT
Prayer is the primary need of every soul. It is a tree of life which nourishes us, and renders us incorruptible, because it enables us to partake in the life of the incorruptible God. Just as there can be no human life without a soul, there can be no life in Christ apart from prayer. (+ Elder Aimilianos, The Prayer of the Holy Mountain)
“He who is able to pray correctly, even if he is the poorest of all people, is essentially the richest. And he who does not have proper prayer, is the poorest of all, even if he sits on a royal throne.” (St John Chrysostom)
WHAT ARE ITS BENEFITS
“Through prayer we enter into Divine life; and God praying in us is uncreated life permeating us”. (Archimandrite Sophrony (His Life is Mine, Chapter 8)
“With the [Jesus] prayer man becomes like a child. It brings him back to the simplicity and innocence that Adam had in Paradise before the fall. With the prayer one acquires blessed, holy dispassion. Through the prayer you sanctify the place you are sitting and the work you are doing. Prayer arranges all things. It enables you to walk on water. It eliminates distances between you and others. It changes the will of others. It gives courage, faith, and patience in life. (This excerpt is from Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: The Lives & Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece)
HOW SHOULD I PRAY
When we talk about internal prayer of the heart, we do not say petition of the heart, but "prayer". When we speak of petition, however, we mean that our prayer is directed towards a particular person, its aim being union with that person. While prayer is static..[an] enjoyment of a place where God also is. There is a distinction you see. Petition, is turning to a person. It follows that...the active presence of this Person must exist for me. I have to be able to become familiar with His presence and His existence. Christ, the indwelling [One] Who is everywhere present, becomes present for me in my life through my participation in worship, and more particularly, through my participation in Holy Communion.
It follows that worship and Holy Communion are indissolubly united. And what do they do? They make God present and alive for me...and what then remains? For me to speak to Him, to address Him Who comes to me. and so He, through worship, tends towards me and I...tend towards Him, until our total union occurs...I cannot say that I will go to church if I have not been praying.
It is superfluous for me to go to church and unnecessary for me to attend the Liturgy and useless for me to take Holy Communion if I am not continuously at prayer. And it is superfluous for me to pray if I have no part in what we have just been speaking about...You know how to plant a flower: you dig the earth there, you put in manure..so that the root will take. If you don't put in that fertilizer, if the soil is not suitable...it's a waste of time planting the root.
Prayer is sterile and does not go higher than our heads -- how much less does it reach beyond the clouds and up into the heavens - if it does not have its mystical realm..which is in particular, vigil, study and fasting. ...Do you know what it means for flesh to enter the realm of the spirit? Flesh, [carnality] which does not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, to enter into God? Do you know what it means for God, Whom nothing can contain, to find room in my soul?. ..So when I pray, I feel at once this insurmountable obstacle blocking me off from God: the fact that I am flesh, that is I am a carnal creature [in the sense of the Gospel meaning here], the fact that I am flesh and He is Spirit...
With God's holiness and brightness I immediately comprehend my weakness. I feel that I can do nothing and that I am starting a dreadful struggle, a battle, as the Old Testament so beautifully presents it to us with that battle, that..wrestling match of Jacob's at his famous ladder. Here must I, a puny human being, break through into Heaven and besiege God and..it follows that we experience prayer when we start ..as a struggle. ..
Not a struggle in the sense that I want to go, for instance and eat and I say: "No I shall continue to pray". I do not mean that struggle. That is the ascetic struggle and..different altogether. I am speaking of the struggle we have, not with ourselves - but the struggle we have with God. I wrestle with God..When Paul said "contend with me in prayer", he meant something like that. ..He was saying "You struggle with God, too with your prayers, so that our struggles may be united and in this way..we can wrestle with Him..[Just as Jacob did] and defeat Him"... When you have an opponent, you tense up immediately. Your punch gets stronger at once. You see your muscles ...and realize you're hitting and being hit. When I do not have the sense of this struggle with God, as you will realize, I have not even begun to pray.....What matters is that there should issue forth [from the heart] a cry from the depths, which like a powerful bomb, like an earthquake, should shake the Heavens and make God answer, in the end, and [respond to us]... .God wants us to sense Him first [and the struggle to reach Him] with the powerful distress of the cry from the depths of our beings which we raise to Him.... (Excerpts from The Authentic Seal: Spiritual Instruction and Discourses, Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra)
“One who wants to practice noetic prayer systematically should not wait for particular moments which he sets aside for the prayer. The sanctified Elder, as a teacher of prayer, emphasizes: "Always say the prayer: sitting or in your bed or walking or standing. 'Pray without ceasing, give thanks in all things,' says the Apostle. You should not only pray when you lie down. It wants struggle: standing, sitting. When you tire, sit down, and then stand again. If you eat or work, don't stop the prayer."
The prayer, according to the blessed Elder, is the breath of life for the soul. And he advised concerning it: "Let 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me' be as your breath." (Presuppositions of the Prayer: The Warfare of the Devil in this Work) Therefore, great are the gifts, great the consolation, outstanding the sweetness, indescribable the happiness, inexpressible the joy, deep the peace, infinite the love which are received on account of the prayer of Jesus.
The chief message of the Holy Mountain to the pious people of God is: As much as you can, say the prayer. Whatever we say, whatever we explain, is incapable by words to express the depth and breadth of the good results of the prayer of Jesus. ( Elder Joseph the Hesychast and the Teaching of Mental Prayer Which Flowed from His Letters - A homily by Abbot Ephraim of Vatopaidi Monastery)
WHAT PRAYERS SHOULD I SAY, HOW OFTEN & WHEN SHOULD I PRAY
The saints in their writings stress the need for a specific format of prayer called the “rule of prayer”. The idea is to choose a set of prayers, with the blessing of your spiritual father, and to continue this program everyday. This rule should come out of an Orthodox prayer book which contains prayers written by holy people. The rule is a discipline which helps develop our relationship with God, and because the prayers were written by people who came very close to God, they help us enter that mindset . We can speak to God in our own words, but this is in addition to our rule of prayer.
The Church Fathers tell us that prayer should include:
Praise- expressing the awe, honour, and love that we have for God, He who created us out of nothing and who saved us
Thanksgiving- for all that God has done for us, blessings that are apparent and not apparent
Petition- we can express our needs to God, but need to acknowledge that God knows what is best for us better than we do, and we need to primarily ask that God’s will be done in our lives. We ask God to guide us, help us to live His way, to serve Him, His Church and other people. Our primary request in prayer needs to be for the pardon of our sins.
We can pray for others, in general terms and for specific people, mentioning their names, for living people and for people who have died. Hopefully we do not hate anyone, but, if we do, we need to pray for them.
A regular time for prayer each day helps us to build a strong link with God and this to deeply experience His love and personal blessing on us. We may be busy, however we need to set priorities in our lives, if we crowd out prayer we are cheating ourselves. (Very Rev. Dimitri Kokkinos, Parish Priest of St. John The Forerunner – Parramatta (NSW)