Prayer (Depth of)
“…we are given the opportunity to become men and women of deep prayer. We are given the occasion to “enter into our closet, and when we have shut the door, pray to our Father which is in secret” (Matthew 6:6), offering Him our repentance, our gratitude, and our love. We can come to understand that “prayer is a safe fortress, a sheltered harbor, a protector of the virtues, a destroyer of passions. It brings vigor to the soul, purifies the mind, gives rest to those who suffer, consoles those who mourn. Prayer is converse with God, contemplation of the invisible, the angelic mode of life, a stimulus towards the divine, the assurance of things longed for, ‘making real the things for which we hope.’” (Bishop Alexis, Theodore the Great Ascetic)
“We are to pray “in the spirit” and “at all times.” Let your deep affections enter into your praying. The inner spirit, that is, the inner man, is making his prayer with intense desire. He is praying all the time, so that even when he is not praying aloud he is still praying in the spirit…all our experiences can be our prayer. We don’t have to compartmentalize our lives into the secular and the sacred. All life is sacred.” (Marius Victorinus, Albert S. Rossi, PhD)
“…the essence of prayer consists of several components. It is impossible to speak of all of them, so let us focus on the main ones. I will mention three components without which our prayer cannot truly happen. The first is attention during prayer…We must experience and feel every word spoken in prayer with our hearts, so that an echo of every uttered word can resound in them. We must not hurry in prayer, otherwise it becomes a profanation, a counterfeit. Prayer must be offered up with reverence. Reverence, humility, and the fear of God must become the ultimate principle of our lives…The second fragrant component of prayer is humility of soul. Humility raises you out of the abyss. But praying in a state of “spiritual success”—in the sense that you think you have some significance—is a prayer of delusion, a demonic state. And the third thing that must be said: When we stand at prayer, opening our hearts, we must not become agitated; there should be no exaltation, daydreaming, sensuality, or imagination, lest we fall into spiritual delusion. Everything that comes from God is quiet and peaceful.” (Hieromonk Anatoly)
“True prayer is a movement into ever greater self-emptying. It is the normative means of our daily union with Christ. Like Christ, it broods over the lost and those who are in bondage. True prayer willingly enters with Him into Hades (both literally and figuratively) to intercede for those who are held captive. St. Paul even willed that he himself be damned if it would mean the salvation of Israel. That is the heart of Christ.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“Familiarity between people comes about through physical presence. Familiarity with God, by contrast, is built on meditation and self-abandonment to Him during prayer. Where we encounter a deficiency of rational knowledge we should do well to remember that prayer, independently of man’s intellectual capacity, can bring a higher form of cognition… of demonstrative argument; and there is the province where prayer is the passageway to direct contemplation of divine truth.” (Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov, Dr. Mary S. Ford, St. Isaac the Syrian)
Comments