Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Prayer for Beginners

About the word of prayer (Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh)

...When we read prayers, there are some things that we, together with the saints, can say on our own; there are things that we can say, as I just said, by an effort of faith, trust; there are things about which you can say: Lord, I don’t know this, I haven’t experienced it, I can’t even understand how this can be; I can’t say this on my own, but I will repeat it not only to you, but to myself, so that it takes root in me, and so that, like a seed that is thrown into the ground, these words gradually grow, turn into a sprout and grow, maybe maybe a whole tree.

And there are places that I cannot repeat, which I must leave in Your hand, saying: Lord, on my own, even repeating the words of the saint, even trying to merge with his experience, I cannot say this, I have not matured, forgive me! ...

When you pray in the evening, read your prayers and say to God, for starters, at least honestly: this, Lord, I can say on my own behalf, I can merge with these words with my whole soul, my whole life. I can agree with these words; although they surpass my understanding, my understanding, I trust both You and the saint who experienced this and could say it. But this, Lord, I cannot say on my own, I will read it so that it will be imprinted in my memory, in my soul. Maybe sooner or later I will understand, but now I can’t.

If we pray like this, think through each prayer like this, not when we begin to pray, but when we have half an hour of time to take a prayer book and think about the first prayer, the second, the third, then gradually we will understand ourselves, we will understand, although would be embryonic, the experience of that saint who captured his experience in these words. And perhaps we will also understand something about God that we did not suspect before.

I would like to draw your attention to some more points. I said that, on the advice of St. Theophan the Recluse, we must read into the prayers that we will use prayerfully, whether in the evening, in the morning, or during the day, read into them so as to understand what is said in them. And this requires an attentive attitude to the words, but also an attentive attitude to what this or that saint wants to convey to us through these words.

You probably know what happens when there is a conversation between two people: one speaks, and the other listens superficially, because he is already preparing an answer, or a question, or a rebuke. And therefore, the listener does not have real silence inside, and he cannot hear behind the words that reach his ears, those feelings, those thoughts that the speaker wants to convey to him.

And one of our tasks is to learn to be silent enough to hear. You probably know from experience what I just mentioned. In order to hear, you need to open up, and for this you need to be completely silent internally, to the very depths.

It may seem to you that this has nothing to do with prayer and the reading of prayers; on the contrary, it seems to me that it has a very big bearing. Because when we read prayers, even when we read them with attention, we look at them through our condensation, through our half-blindness. And we can see and hear in these prayers what is contained in them only if we free ourselves from ourselves, only if we can say to ourselves: do not look at yourself, do not think your thoughts in parallel with the thoughts expressed by the saint, listen to his words , think about his thoughts, get used to his feelings.

And this is conveyed to us, of course, through the words of prayer, which are written in a book or which we already know by heart, but for the most part we do not hear them, because we are so accustomed to them that the words glide through our attention, they no longer cut into our consciousness , they do not hurt us and do not heal us. And we need to learn that deep inner silence that is necessary in order to perceive the experience of another person - whether a saint or a sinner. When we read the prayers that the Church gave us, collected over thousands of years and recorded in small prayer books, so that we come to life with grace, spiritual depth and the life of saints, then we must learn to remain silent.

The first thing I want to say about this practically is that before we start reading prayers, whether by heart or from a prayer book, we need to stand before God, stand silently and listen to the silence of our room, the silence, which surrounds us, and say: Lord! How wonderful it is that You are here, and that You allow me to stand before You, to be in Your presence, that You do not close yourself off from me! - and stand in amazement. And this amazement can be repeated day after day, because after each such experience some new depth opens in our soul.

And so let us learn to stand in the invisible presence of God, in His sometimes imperceptible presence, by faith to stand before Him, by faith in the sense in which this word means confidence: Omnipresent, Who is everywhere, as they say in prayer to the Holy Spirit, He is here, to me I don’t even need to feel it, it’s enough for me to know it. He is here, and He allows me, me, insignificant, unworthy, sinner, to stand in His presence...

Sometimes after some time of standing like this - I’m talking about minutes, not hours - it becomes so quiet and calm around us and within ourselves: there is nowhere to strive, nothing to achieve, to be here with Him is such happiness! And sometimes, if the Lord deems it necessary and useful for us, it happens that He will allow us to feel His presence with some clarity, lightness, and strength. But there is no need to achieve this.

We need to learn to trust God in such a way that we don’t fight our way to Him, but know that He wants this meeting more than us, wants our communion with Himself more than we do, wants to lead us into our own, silent depths more than we do. How wonderful it is!

Sometimes it happens that it becomes so clear: although I don’t see anything, I don’t hear anything - the Lord is here. And sometimes it happens that this feeling is not there, but by faith I know that the One who created me so that I could enter the depths of Divine life is the One who created me, and not only created, but also died for me, of course , is present here.

I remember one girl who experienced this - as much as a child can experience, but she also experienced that sometimes the Lord is so close, and sometimes, when she strives to reach Him, she cannot reach Him. And her mother told her a wonderful thing, as it seems to me, she told this girl: “You know what happens when we play hide and seek. First you close your eyes and stand quietly and wait.

And at some point, when I hide, I will come back; and you will open your eyes and try to follow the sound that you heard, you will walk in one direction, in the other, search. When I see that you are confused, I will come back again; and you will find a more direct path in the direction where I am. And you will find me.

And sometimes you suddenly get scared that you are alone and I have gone somewhere: where could I have gone, that you don’t see me? And if only I notice that you have become scared and lonely, that tears have appeared in your eyes, I will come out of my hiding place and run to you, and you will rush into my arms.”

And she added: “This is how it happens with God. When we are looking for Him, He comes back to us, and then lets us search in order to be sure how much we need to find Him, how much we want to find Him, how our whole soul yearns for Him. And so that we also realize how lonely it is without Him, how scary, how in full sunlight without God it becomes dark around us.” This is what we need to learn in order to start praying: learn to stand before God, knowing that He is here, and in amazement, tremblingly know that He allows me, a sinner, unworthy, blind, to stand before Him and be with Him, even if I don't feel it. What a wonder, what a joy!

When we realize, either by faith in His presence, or by experience, that God is here, we can begin to say certain prayers. And it seems to me that prayers need to be chosen. In evening and morning prayers, in akathists, in rites, there are prayers that strike us in the heart, that touch us, that touch us, that have already become partially our experience, not necessarily prayerful, but everyday.

And we must begin with these prayers, so that these prayers will melt our hearts, enlighten our minds, give strength to our will, our aspiration for God. Sometimes these are not even necessarily prayers that are supposed to be read at one time or another, but prayers that now tell me something very important.

I will give you an example: the prayer that I often begin to pray in the evenings has nothing to do with evening prayers, it is a prayer that is said after eating: We thank Thee, Christ our God, for Thou hast satisfied us with Thy earthly blessings; do not deprive us of Your Heavenly Kingdom. But as you came among your disciples, O Savior, giving them peace, come to us and save us.

I say this prayer in the plural, as if including into it, or rather containing in my soul, all those who are dear to me, all those I know, all those whom I remember, all those who once passed through my life, all those whom I failed to love, when it was possible and necessary to love, all, all without exception, all of God’s creation.

And when I stand like this in prayer and say: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, I turn to the One who so loved me and all those whom I want to remember, without even remembering their names, that I can do this, transcending yourself, embracing the whole world. And I thank Him.

And then - not always, not every time, because otherwise the same words can turn into mechanical repetition - I begin to think: why do I thank You, Lord, today? Sometimes for the fact that He created me, that I am, sometimes with special power for the way, miraculously, He entered my life. I am grateful that I had parents who loved me and whom I loved and love and who taught me to love... I will not talk now about everything that I can thank God for, but I gave this to you as an example.

And so you can stand for a long, long time, as if going through your entire life in memory, the entire content of your life, and offering it in words of gratitude: God! You gave it to me. I could not have achieved this or achieved this on my own, but You gave it to me. And this is earthly happiness, this is earthly beauty, this is earthly joy.

But we are called to more, yes, more. And then the words go: Do ​​not deprive us of Your heavenly Kingdom... Everything for which I thank You, Lord, is not only earthly, it is permeated with Your grace, it is sanctified by Your blessing. O God, make sure that everything that was earthly in my life is permeated, permeated with the grace and presence of the All-Holy Spirit, so that everything, everything earthly becomes at least in the beginning the Kingdom of Heaven!

And from here it is so easy to move on to prayer for those whom we loved on earth, whom we thank for their lives and for their love, and to begin to pray also, especially for those who have now rested in the Kingdom of God. Sometimes we can pray with joy that their death was a triumph—a triumph of eternal life.

Before his death, my spiritual father, Father Afanasy, who had been ill for some time, wrote me a note: “I have learned the secret of contemplative silence, I can now die peacefully.” And three days later he died in my arms. This is the secret of contemplative silence. But you have to look for this. And seek in such a way that everything on earth becomes the Kingdom of God, as this prayer says after eating.

But we may think: how can this be? how can I hope for such a miracle? for such a miracle of communion with God, His endless closeness, His constant closeness even in moments when I do not feel it? I don't realize this? And then the prayer says words that can comfort us: But as You came in the midst of Your disciples, O Savior, giving them peace, come to us and save us - just as You came to Your disciples, come to us and save us.

I would like to partially return to the thoughts that I expressed last time about the need to carefully think through those words, those expressions that we use in prayer - be they expressions that we find in the writings of the Church Fathers, ascetics, in the prayers of the evening and morning rules, or even in your own prayers, so that every word has its true, full meaning.

This is not always easy, because most of the prayers that we find in the prayer book were not written in Slavic, but either in Middle Greek, Byzantine, Syriac or other languages. We read the translation, and this translation, of course, expresses how the original words were understood by the translators.

And sometimes this is of great importance, because some words in our soul give rise to a deep experience as such, because they are connected in our life, in the life of our people, in the life of sometimes our family with something very important. Sometimes this or that word immediately opens the soul to some kind of understanding.

Now I suddenly remembered the words of one of the good Austrian writers, who in one of his very complex poems says: “And he conveyed a lot to the listener who said the word “sadness.”

Yes, those of us who have experienced something in life that has hurt them deeply or that has left behind a trail of unhealed sadness, when they hear the word “sorrow” or “sadness” or “longing” or “pain” - will respond to this. But, of course, those who, either due to youth or due to life circumstances, have never known any of those experiences that fit into the word “sadness”, “suffering”, will not perceive this word that way.

Sometimes it happens that this or that word, even in the Slavic language, does not reach us with the meaning that translators put into it when they translated certain prayers from Byzantine or Eastern languages, say, Ephraim the Syrian, Isaac the Syrian. This is what I'm thinking about now. There is a place in the Gospel where Christ says: Whoever does not hate father or mother and follow Me is not worthy of Me (Luke 14:26).

And many times people turned to me and said: how is it possible that Christ, Who commanded us love - love to the point of being ready to give one’s life for one’s neighbor, not just for a loved one, a personally loved one, but for every neighbor who needs love - can put it that way? And if you think about this, you have to look, maybe even into the dictionary, and find out that at the time when the Gospel was translated into the Slavic language, the word “hate” did not mean at all or did not mean only a negative, hostile, hateful attitude towards to another person.

“Hate” comes from the word “see,” and, in essence, Christ is saying: if anyone is unable to turn away from his father or mother in order to follow Me, he is not My disciple. And this is completely different from positive hatred, positive negation of love. You can love your father and mother in the deepest way, but say: yes, but the Lord is calling me to such a feat, to such a life that does not leave me the opportunity to give all my life, all my time to you.

This is one example, but we can find similar examples in other places. I remember how naively, perhaps, one person told me: how cruel some psalms are; it says: “I will lift up my eyes to the Lord” (Ps. 24:15, Slavic). Am I really ready to pluck out my eyes in order to serve God? No, it’s just that in the Slavic language the word “vynu” means “always”: My eyes are always turned to the Lord.

We constantly make such mistakes when we read some texts, prayers in particular, the Gospel, and the psalms, or even when we speak with other people in a language that is not native to us. And the Slavic language, in a sense, no matter how deeply the Russian language is rooted in it, is not native to us. We must read the text, find out the meaning of the words at the time the text was translated, and draw a conclusion from this for ourselves.

And this is very important, because if you read the Gospel this way, if you read the prayers that are offered to us in the form of evening, morning prayers, canons and so on, then they come to life, otherwise only a shell remains, yes, words remain that are something... that's what they mean. And we often think: which probably mean more than I can understand, but that’s all.

That's why I draw your attention to this. Do you read the Gospel, do you read outside of prayer time, but in order to understand them, morning and evening prayers, pay attention to the words, because they are sometimes so full of depth and humanity. Take, for example, the psalm, where King David speaks such a harmonious speech to God and suddenly, speaking in modern language, between two commas he exclaims: Oh, You are my Joy!

This spontaneous, living, direct attitude that we find so clearly in him in this example, we can find in so many other places both in Holy Scripture and in the prayers of saints. Therefore, I advise you to follow the advice of St. Theophan the Recluse: of course, pray evening and morning prayers, of course, read the psalms, but read these prayers with meditation at the moment when you are not praying, in order to understand what is being said and what you you will speak to God so that you do not speak empty words, so that you speak in real words, so that every word is truly meaningful for you.

What I’m talking about now is not that these words arouse any special feelings, but that they reach the consciousness, because if they don’t reach the consciousness, then they won’t reach the heart. We cannot hope that the sonority of words will always bring us understanding. However, we must remember here that it was not in vain that many of the prayers were set to music. But they were set to music in two ways.

In later times, composers took one or another prayer and, inspired by their musical experience, clothed them in the music of their time, the 19th and 18th centuries, and sometimes made them completely alien to what was put into them by the prayer books of the desert, the prayer books who labored heroically in the fight against all the evil that was in them. And that is why it is so important (as we try to do in our church and as it is now being revived in Russia) to look for those melodies that express the depth and truth of the text, that do not decorate it, do not make it “attractive,” but express musically what what is stated verbally.

I will now quote something to you again. There is a German writer Maria von Ebner-Eschenbach, she wrote a little quatrain that always amazes me: what is there in a little song that can be loved so much? It has a little euphony, a little songfulness and a whole soul... And from the euphony, from the songfulness, we can sometimes get as close as possible to the soul from which these or those words burst out. And we need to listen attentively, and not just read into the words, because sometimes their sonority reaches us and conveys to us something that we simply cannot comprehend with our minds and heads.

And here I want to say something else, as if departing from a systematic presentation. It is very important that children are immersed in parental prayer. I remember that the same Theophan the Recluse, who is one of the greatest spiritual mentors, says that while the child is in the mother’s womb, from the very moment of his conception, everything that happens to the mother happens to him.

From a biological point of view, it is clear that there is nothing to argue about. But the remarkable thing is that they really constitute one whole, one life, and that if a mother prays, then she says this prayer as if together with the child who is conceived in her. And if the mother sings some prayers, then not only the words reach the child (I, of course, am not saying that a child conceived in the womb understands the words that are spoken), but also the experience that the mother puts into these words. If these words are set to a song that corresponds to their meaning, their content, then they are somehow connected in an even deeper way, intertwined with the life of this child, not only psychologically, but also physically.

This is why I say that when there are children, it is so important that the mother pray both silently and out loud while the child is still in the womb, because everything that she experiences, the child experiences at the same time as her - not consciously, of course, but in some way -in an incomprehensible way. If she can translate these prayers into singing, then this too will reach him. And when the child comes out of the womb and lives independently, we need to pray over him, we need to sing prayers to him so that they are intertwined - I constantly use this word because I can’t find another - intertwined with his soul and so that these words, these motives became one with his spiritual life.

This also applies to people who later come to faith. But for this, as I already said, we need to think about the meaning of the words, we need to listen to their sonority, we need to connect these words with everything that we know from our own experience. I mentioned the word “sadness” to you. Of course, a person, say a child, who has not experienced sadness, will not particularly feel this word. But an adult who has gone through sadness, or suffering, or pain, when these words are spoken, cannot pass them by, they hit him in the soul. But for this it is necessary that these words seem to deepen in our consciousness.

There are words in prayers that we pronounce with emotion and at the same time without great understanding, with relative understanding, or even without understanding at all. For example, the prayer that we read during Great Lent, the prayer of Ephraim the Syrian: Lord and Master of my life! Do not give me the spirit of idleness, despondency, covetousness, idle talk. Grant the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to me, Your servant. Hey, Lord the King! Grant me to see my sins, and not to condemn my brother, for blessed art thou forever. Amen.

All these words reach us because we hear them in the context of Lenten prayers and Lenten services. But if you ask each of us what each of these words means, what is embodied in this word, what we understand when we pronounce this or that word, it turns out that we do not understand a lot in these words.

I held a series of conversations here on this prayer several years ago, and it was a revelation for me and for others, because I then returned to the sources: what these words meant in the Byzantine language, what these words meant in the Slavic language, what this means in the experience of each of us.

In each of the evening or morning prayers there are words that are very rich in content, but to which we are so accustomed that we no longer grasp this content, it does not hit us in the soul, does not hit us in the heart, does not hurt, does not disturb and does not elevate. And that’s why I insist so much that we must read and think through the words that we use in prayer.

We must ask ourselves the question: what do I know about this? What do I know about chastity? What do I know about humility? what do I know about love? and so on. And if you think through these words carefully, from year to year, from decade to decade, you somehow begin to become familiar to those saints who composed these words, who chose these words in order to express their experience.

It may seem uninteresting to you what I am saying, my insistence that we need to go deeper into the meaning of words. But we do this all the time outside of church and outside of prayer. Who among us has not read Russian poetry? Who among us has not experienced one or another poem depending on our age, on our human experience, on what we were taught? Take any collection of poems and you will see that some things come to us only because we have some kind of rudimentary experience, and this experience deepens as we read.

I just remembered, now I don’t remember whose, a poem.

The valley is foggy, the air is damp, a cloud covers the sky. The dim world looks sadly, The wind howls sadly. Do not be afraid, my traveler, - On earth everything is a battle, But peace, Strength and prayer live in you.

Each of these words can reach us. For a child, maybe less, because he has no experience of certain experiences, but for an adult who may have gone through pain, fear, horror, melancholy, these words can be saving, they can open his heart to cry - and this is also very important. The Fathers of the Church talk a lot about the fact that we need to pray with tears. But they are not talking about reading prayers sentimentally, but reading them in such a way as to excite yourself and others.

I don’t want to expand on this now, but I advise you: think about what these or other words mean in your experience? You can start by reading Russian poetry or prose and asking yourself the question: what do I know about this or that? This poet put his soul, his joy, his suffering, his melancholy, his hope into the words - am I involved in them or not? I think this is very important. And if we learn to pray like this, delve into the meaning of words, simply their meaning, and delve into the echo that they awaken in us, then we will begin to pray with the words of the saints with some kind of living feeling.

I keep repeating the same thing because it seems so important to me, so desperately important. Because you constantly hear: read these prayers and that will be enough... For what and for whom? God has heard these prayers dozens, thousands, millions of times, they are not new to Him, the feeling that you put into this prayer would be new to Him. When King David said, “Lord, forgive me, I have sinned before You,” this prayer was said by him, as I already told you, after he caused the murder of a man whose wife he stole.

And suddenly he came to his senses and with horror began to shout to God: Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy! According to the multitude of Your mercies, cleanse my iniquity... His iniquity - he knew what it was: this is murder, this is adultery, this is the destruction of everything holy. Then these words could not fail to reach God. But when we read them without any feeling that we have sinned, but simply as a statutory reading, are we praying? Maybe it will come to us sooner or later.

This does not mean that you shouldn’t pray with these words, but you need to realize that today I didn’t put any content into them, and stop and say: Lord, forgive me! I told you this, and neither my heart nor my consciousness was in these words. Forgive me and accept these words of shame and repentance as prayer, and not those words that I repeated in vain.

It seems to me that you need to work on this all your life, and work as if for your own joy, work so that your soul deepens, becomes more sensitive, comes to life, and so that it unites deeper and deeper with God through the consciousness and experience of those saints, who poured these prayers out of their souls like blood and who passed them on to us, saying: look, this is my blood, this is my soul! Connect with what I experienced because it was real.

I have already said that there are places in prayers that we can say together with the saint on our own behalf, but there are places that we have not reached. Then we must admit: Lord, I say this by faith, trusting the holy, trusting You, I say by faith that this is so, but I still cannot pour my soul into these words. And sometimes it happens - I also mentioned this - that I cannot say certain words, because now my only answer to these words is: No, Lord!..

Orthodox Life

In the story of the Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:22-28) we see how Christ, at least at first, refuses to answer the prayer; this is an example of prayer subjected to an extremely difficult test.

The woman is asking for something completely fair, she comes with full faith and does not even say “if you can,” she simply comes confident that Christ can, that He will, and that her child will be healed. And the answer to all this faith is “no.” It’s not that the prayer was unworthy or the faith was insufficient, it’s just that the petitioner is not one of those people to whom Christ came: Christ came for the Jews, and she is a pagan; He didn't come for her. But she insists, saying: “Yes, I am not one of those, but even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” And she stands, believing in the love of God, despite what God says, believing with such humility, despite His arguments. She does not even appeal to the love of God, she only refers to its manifestation in everyday life: I do not have the right to whole bread, give me just a few crumbs... Christ's clear and categorical refusal tested her faith, and her prayer was fulfilled.

How often do we pray to God, saying: “God, if..., if You will..., if You can...,” like that father who said to Christ: “Your disciples were not able to heal my son, but if you can , do” (Mk.9

:18-22).
Christ responds to this with another “if”: “if you can believe a little, all things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23
).
Then the man says: “I believe, Lord! help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24
). One “if” depends on the other, because where there is no faith, there is no possibility for God to enter a specific situation.

The fact that a person turns to God already seems to speak about his faith; but this is true only to a certain extent; we believe and do not believe at the same time, and faith shows its measure in overcoming our own doubts. When we say, “Yes, I doubt, but I trust in the love of God more than I trust my own doubts,” then God is able to act. But if our faith lives by law and not by grace, if we believe that the world as we know it, with its mechanical laws, is a machine, because God willed it to be nothing more than a machine, then here there is no place for God. However, the experience of the heart, as well as modern science, teaches us that there is no such thing as an absolute law, which people believed in in the nineteenth century. Every time the Kingdom of God is created again by faith, the opportunity opens up for the laws of the Kingdom to operate, and God can enter a certain situation - enter with His wisdom, His ability to make good out of evil, without, however, turning the whole world upside down. . Our “if” refers not so much to the power of God as to His love and His care for us; God's answer, “if you can believe in My love, all things are possible,” means that a miracle cannot happen unless the Kingdom of God is present—even if only in the beginning.

A miracle is not a violation of the laws of the fallen world, but the restoration of the laws of the Kingdom of God; a miracle happens if we believe that the law does not depend on force

God, but from His love. Even though we know that God is omnipotent, as long as we think that He doesn’t care about us, a miracle is impossible; to create a miracle would then mean for God to commit violence against our will, but God does not do this, because at the very basis of His attitude towards the world, even the fallen one, lies absolute respect for human freedom and rights. The moment when we say: “I believe and that’s why I turn to You,” means: “I believe that You will want this, that there is love in You, that You really care about every particular case.” When there is this seed of faith, the right relationship is established, and then a miracle becomes possible.

In addition to such “ifs”, which are generated by our doubt in the love of God and are therefore incorrect, there is also a completely legitimate category of “ifs”. We can say: “I ask this if it is in accordance with Your will, or if it is for good, or if there is no secret evil thought in me when I ask for it,” etc. All these “ifs” are more than legal, since they indicate a lack of confidence in oneself; and every petitionary prayer must be accompanied by such a “if” clause.

Since the Church is a continuation of Christ's presence in time and space, every Christian prayer must be Christ's prayer, although this presupposes a purity of heart that we do not have. The prayers of the Church are Christ’s prayers, especially the Eucharistic canon, which is all Christ’s prayer; but any other prayer in which we ask for something related to a specific situation is always conditioned by such an “if”. In most cases, we do not know what Christ would pray for in a given situation; therefore we add "if," which means that, as far as we can see, as far as we know God's will, we would desire this very thing to happen in order to fulfill His will. But “if” also means: “I put into these words my desire for the best to happen, and therefore You can change this request of mine the way You want, accepting my intention, my desire for Your will to be done, even if I and I am foolish in expressing exactly how I would like it to be accomplished” (Rom. 8

:26). When, for example, we pray for someone's recovery or return from a journey at a certain moment for some reason that seems significant to us, our real intention is the good of that person; but we do not have clairvoyance on this matter, and our calculations and plans may be erroneous. “If” means: “So far as I can judge what is right, so be it; but if I am mistaken, then accept not my word, but my intention.” Elder Ambrose of Optina had such insight that allowed him to see the true good of a person. One day, the monastery icon painter received a large sum of money and was about to go home. He probably prayed to set off on the road immediately; but the elder deliberately detained the artist for three days and thus saved his life, since one of the workers planned to kill him and rob him. When he left, the villain had already left his ambush, and only many years later the painter learned from what danger the old man had saved him.

Sometimes we pray for a person we love and who needs something, but we cannot help him. Very often we don’t know what exactly is needed, we don’t find the words to help, even the one we love most. Sometimes we know that nothing can be done except remain silent, although we are ready to give our lives just to help. In such a state of spirit, we can turn to God, surrender everything to Him and say: “God, You know everything, and Your love is perfect; take this life into Your hand, do what I long to do, but cannot.” And since prayer is a guarantee, we cannot truly pray for those whom we ourselves are not ready to help. Following Isaiah, we must be ready to hear the word of the Lord: “Whom shall I send? and who will go for Us? - and answer: “Here am I, send me” (Isa. 6

:8).

Many people are embarrassed by the thought of praying for the dead; they wonder what the purpose of this prayer is, what we hope to achieve with it. Can the fate of the dead change because they are prayed for? Can prayer convince God to be unfair and give them what they do not deserve?

If you believe that praying for the living helps them, why don't you think it is possible to pray for the dead? Life is one, for, as the Evangelist Luke says, “God... is not God

dead, but alive” (Luke
20:38
).
Death is not the end, but a certain stage in human destiny, and this destiny does not freeze like stone at the moment of death. The love that our prayers express cannot be in vain; if love has power on earth, but has no power after death, this tragically contradicts the word of Scripture that “love is strong as death” (Song 8
:6), and the experience of the Church, which testifies that love is stronger than death , for Christ conquered death in His love for the human race. It is wrong to think that a person’s connection with life on earth ends at the moment of his death. Throughout his life, a person sows seeds. These seeds germinate in the souls of other people, influence their destiny, and the fruit born from these seeds truly belongs not only to those who brought it, but also to those who sowed it. Written or spoken words that change a person's life or the destinies of mankind - the words of preachers, philosophers, poets or politicians - remain the responsibility of those to whom they belong, responsibility for both bad and good consequences. The fate of these people inevitably depends on the influence they have on those who live after them.

The influence of each person's life continues until the Last Judgment, and the eternal, final fate of a person is determined not only by the short time that he lived on earth, but also by the results of his life, its good or bad consequences. Those who, like fertile soil, accepted the sown seed, can influence the fate of the departed, prayerfully asking God to bless the person who transformed, changed their lives, and gave meaning to their existence. By turning to God in an act of unceasing love, fidelity and gratitude, they enter that eternal Kingdom for which there are no boundaries of time, and can influence the fate and condition of the departed. We do not ask God for injustice; we ask Him not just to forgive a person despite all the bad he has done, but to bless him for the good that he has done, as evidenced by other lives.

Our prayer is an act of gratitude and love insofar as our life is a continuation of something that that person lived. We do not ask God to be unjust, nor do we imagine that we have more compassion and love than He does; we do not ask Him to be more merciful than He would have been without our request, but we bring new testimony to the court of God and pray that this testimony will be accepted and God's blessing will fall abundantly on the one who meant so much in our lives. And this is important to understand: the purpose of such a prayer is not to convince God of something, but to bring evidence that this person did not live fruitlessly: without loving and without awakening love.

Anyone who in any way has been a source of love has protection before the judgment of God; but those who remain have a duty to bear witness to what he has done for them. Here again, it’s not just a matter of goodwill or emotion. Saint Isaac the Syrian says: do not reduce your prayer to words, make your whole life a prayer to God. Therefore, if we want to pray for our departed, our life must confirm the prayer. It is not enough to awaken certain feelings for them from time to time and then ask God to do something for them. It is important that every seed of goodness, truth, holiness, sown by them, bears fruit, because then we can stand before God and say: he sowed goodness, there were qualities in him that prompted me to act righteously, and this piece of goodness is not mine, but him, and, in a sense, she is his glory and redemption.

The Orthodox Church has very specific views on death and burial. The funeral service begins with the words “Blessed be our God...”; you need to understand how much this means, because these words are spoken in spite of death, in spite of bereavement, in spite of suffering. The service is built on the basis of Matins - the service of doxology and light; loved ones stand with burning candles in their hands, a symbol of resurrection. The main idea of ​​the service is that we really face death, but death no longer frightens us when we look at it through the Resurrection of Christ.

At the same time, the service conveys the duality of death, its two sides. It is impossible to accept death, it is monstrous; we are created to live; and yet in a world made monstrous by human sin, death is the only way out. If our world of sin were fixed as unchangeable and eternal, it would be hell; death is the only thing that allows the earth, along with suffering and sin, to escape from this hell.

The Church sees both sides; Saint John of Damascus wrote about this with extreme, naked realism, because a Christian cannot fall into romanticism when it comes to death. To die means to die, and in this sense, when speaking about the cross, we must remember that it is an instrument of death. Death is death with all its tragic ugliness and monstrosity, and yet, ultimately, death is the only thing that gives us hope. On the one hand, we long to live; on the other hand, if we long enough to live, we long to die, because in this limited world the fullness of life is impossible. Undoubtedly, death is corruption, but corruption, which, in combination with the grace of God, leads to a measure of life that we would never otherwise have had. “Death is gain,” says the Apostle Paul (Phil. 1

:21), for while living in the body we are separated from Christ. When a certain measure of life is fulfilled - regardless of the time lived - we must throw off this limited life in order to enter the unlimited life.

The Orthodox funeral service is emphatically centered around the open casket because the Church continues to see man in his wholeness, as body and soul, for which she cares equally. The body is prepared for burial; the body is not a worn-out garment, discarded in order for the soul to be freed, as supposedly pious people like to say. The body for a Christian is something much more; nothing can happen to the soul in which the body does not also take part. The perception of this world - and not only it, but also the divine world, partially occurs through the body. Each sacrament is a gift of God, communicated to the soul through physical actions; baptismal waters, oil of confirmation, bread and wine of communion - everything is taken from the material world. We cannot do anything good or bad except in union with the body. The body does not exist only for the soul to be born, mature and then leave, leaving it; from the first day to the last, the body was a co-worker with the soul in everything and, together with the soul, constitutes a complete person. It forever remains as if marked with the stamp of the soul and the common life they spent together. Connected with the soul, the body is also connected through the sacraments with Jesus Christ Himself. We partake of His Blood and Body, and thus the body, by its own right, is united with the divine world with which it comes into contact.

A body without a soul is just a corpse and has no relation to what is being discussed here, and a soul without a body, even the soul of a saint going “straight to heaven,” does not yet experience that bliss to which man is called at the end of time, when the glory of God will shine in soul and body.

As Saint Isaac the Syrian says, even eternal bliss cannot be forced on a person without the consent of the body. This statement about the importance of the body is especially striking from St. Isaac, one of the greatest ascetics, one of those about whom others could say that he spent his entire life killing his body. But, according to the expression of the Apostle Paul, the ascetics put to death “the body of sin” (Rom. 6

:6), in order to reap eternity from corruption, and did not kill the body in order for the soul to be freed from captivity.

Therefore, a dead body is the subject of the care of the Church, even if it is the body of a sinner; and all the attention we pay to him during his lifetime cannot compare with the reverence shown in the funeral service.

In the same way, the body is connected with the soul in the life of prayer. Every perversion, every excess, every vulgarity to which we ourselves subject the whole body humiliates one of the members of this community so as to harm the other. This can be expressed differently: the humiliation to which we are subjected from the outside can be overcome by prayer; the humiliations to which we subject ourselves destroy prayer.

The distinctive feature of Christian prayer is that it is the prayer of Christ, offered to His Father from generation to generation, all in new and new circumstances, by those who, by grace and communion, are the presence of Christ in this world; it is an ongoing, unceasing prayer to God that God's will be done, that everything will happen according to His wise and loving plan. This means that our prayer life is at the same time a struggle against everything that is not Christ. We prepare the ground for our prayer every time we throw off something that is not Christ’s, that is unworthy of Him; and only the prayer of one who, like the Apostle Paul, can say: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2

:20), is genuine Christian prayer.

However, instead of praying for God's will to be done, we often try to convince God to arrange everything the way we want. Can such a prayer not be disgraced? No matter how well we pray, we must realize at every moment that we may be mistaken in our best feelings and thoughts. No matter how sincere, no matter how true our intentions are, no matter how perfect they may seem to us, every prayer can at some point go the wrong way, and therefore, when we have told God everything we intended, we must add, like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Matt. 26

:39). With the same attitude, we can resort to the intercession of saints: we bring them our good intentions, but leave them to formulate our desires in accordance with the will of God, which is known to them.

“Ask, and it will be given to you” (Matt.7

:7).
These words are a stumbling block for the Christian consciousness; we can neither accept them nor reject them. To reject them would be to reject God's infinite goodness, but we are not yet sufficiently Christian to accept them. We know that a father will not give a stone instead of bread (Matthew 7
:9), but we do not look at ourselves as children who are not aware of their true needs and do not know what is good for them and what is bad. Meanwhile, this is precisely the explanation why so many prayers remain unanswered. It can also be found in the words of St. John Chrysostom: “Do not be upset if you do not immediately receive what you ask for: God wants to give you greater good through your constancy in prayer.”

“Perhaps God’s silence is just a tragic aspect of our own deafness?”

“Truly I also say to you that if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by My Father who is in heaven” (Matt.18

:19). This statement is sometimes used as a stone to be thrown at Christians, because very often several people pray earnestly together for something and yet do not receive what they ask for. But objections collapse as soon as we understand that this “together” was purely earthly, agreement was a mere coalition, not unity, and the belief that God can do whatever He wants was understood as the friends who consoled Job.

The apparent untruth of the words “whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive” (Matt.21

:22) finds the answer in the Gethsemane prayer of Christ, and also partly in the Apostle Paul (Heb.
11
:36-40): “Others experienced mockery and beatings, as well as chains and prison, were stoned, sawn apart, tortured, died from swords, wandered in mantles and goatskins, enduring disadvantages, sorrows, and bitterness; those whom the whole world was not worthy of wandered through deserts and mountains, through caves and gorges of the earth. And all these, who testified in faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.”

Without a doubt, in all these circumstances, these people prayed a lot - they prayed, perhaps, not for deliverance, for they were ready to lay down their lives for God, but for help; and yet they were not given all that they could have expected. When God sees that we have enough faith to withstand His silence or to accept torment - moral or physical - for the greater completeness of the accomplishment of His Kingdom, He can remain silent, and the answer to prayer will only be given in the end, but in a completely different way than we expected this.

The Apostle Paul says (Heb.5

:7), that Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane was heard and God raised Him from the dead. He is not talking here about the immediate response of God, who could have carried the cup past, which is what Christ prayed for, but about the fact that God gave Christ the power to accept His will, to suffer, to do His work, and it was the absoluteness of His faith that made it possible for God to say "No". But this same absoluteness of Christ's faith made it possible that the world was saved.

Many of our prayers are petitionary prayers, and people tend to think that petition is the lowest level of prayer; then comes thanksgiving, then doxology. In fact, gratitude and praise are expressions of less deep relationships. At our level of half-faith, it is easier to praise or thank God than to trust Him enough to ask Him for something in faith. Even semi-believing people can turn to God with gratitude when something pleasant happens to them; and there are moments of elation when everyone is able to sing to God. But it is much more difficult to have such undivided faith as to ask God with all your heart and all your mind with complete trust. We should not look down on prayers of supplication, because the ability to offer them is a test of the reality of our faith.

When the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to ask Christ for the two best places in heaven for her sons, she came with full faith that the Lord could give what she asked; but she thought that Christ had the power to fulfill her request simply by the owner’s right to do as He wanted, and this did not correspond to His teaching: “My judgment is righteous; For I do not seek My will, but the will of the Father who sent Me” (Jn. 5

:thirty). The mother of the sons of Zebedee expected that the Lord, of His own will, would fulfill her desire and show her special mercy because she was the first to come to ask for it. Christ's refusal emphasized that what the mother was asking for would be a position based on pride, while the entire Kingdom is based on humility. The mother's prayer was determined by the Old Testament attitude towards the coming of the Messiah.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul

May 27, 2021 Life and prayer are one

Life and prayer are completely inseparable. A life without prayer is a life in which its most important dimension is missing, it is a life “on a plane”, without depth, a life in two dimensions of space and time, it is a life that is content with the visible, content with our neighbor, but our neighbor as a phenomenon on the physical plane, our neighbor, in whom we do not discover all the immensity and eternity of his fate. The meaning of prayer is to reveal and affirm through life itself the fact that everything has a measure of eternity and everything has a measure of immensity. The world in which we live is not a godless world: we ourselves profane it, but in its essence it came from the hands of God, it is loved by God. His price in the eyes of God is the life and death of His Only Begotten Son, and prayer testifies that we know this - we know that every person and every thing around us is sacred in the eyes of God: loved by Him, they become dear to us. Not to pray means to leave God outside of everything that exists, and not only Him, but also everything that He means for the world He created, the world in which we live.

It often seems to us that it is difficult to reconcile life and prayer. This is a delusion, a complete delusion. It occurs because we have a false idea of ​​both life and prayer. We imagine that life consists of fussing around, and prayer consists of going somewhere alone and forgetting everything about our neighbor and about our human condition. And this is not true. This is slander against life and slander against prayer itself.

To learn prayer, one must first of all become in solidarity with the whole reality of a person, the whole reality of his fate and the fate of the whole world: to completely accept it upon himself. This is the essence of the act performed by God in the Incarnation. This is the entirety of what we call intercession. We usually think of intercession as a polite reminder to God of what He forgot to do. In reality, it consists in taking a step that puts us in the very center of a tragic situation, a step similar to the step of Christ, Who became man once and for all. We must take a step that will put us in the center of a situation from which we can never leave again; Christian solidarity, Christ's, is directed simultaneously to two opposite poles: the incarnate Christ, true man and true God, is completely in solidarity with man when man turns to God in his sin, and is completely in solidarity with God when He turns to man. This double solidarity makes us in a sense alien to both camps and at the same time united with both camps. This is the basis of the Christian position.

You will say: “What should I do?” So, prayer is born from two sources: either this is our enthusiastic amazement at God and the works of God - our neighbor and the world around us, despite its shadows, or this feeling of tragedy - ours and especially that of others. Berdyaev said: “When I am hungry, this is a physical phenomenon; when my neighbor is hungry, this is a moral phenomenon.” And here is the tragedy that appears before us at every moment: my neighbor is always hungry, it is not always a hunger for bread, sometimes it is a hunger for a human gesture, a kind look. This is where prayer begins—in this responsiveness to the amazing and the tragic. As long as there is this responsiveness, everything is easy: in delight it is easy for us to pray and easy to pray when we are pierced by a feeling of tragedy.

Well, what about at other times? So, at other times, prayer and life should be one. I don't have time to talk about this much, but I would just like to say this: get up in the morning, put yourself before God and say, "Lord bless me and bless this day that is beginning," and then treat this whole day as a gift God and see yourself as God’s messenger in this unknown that is the beginning of the day. This simply means something very difficult, namely: no matter what happens during this day, nothing is alien to the will of God, everything without exception is the circumstances in which the Lord wished to place you, so that you would be His presence, His love, His compassion, His creative mind, His courage. And besides, whenever you encounter a particular situation, you are the one whom God put there to carry out the ministry of a Christian, to be a part of the Body of Christ and an action of God. If you do this, you will easily see that at every moment you will have to turn to God and say: “Lord, enlighten my mind, strengthen and direct my will, give me a fiery heart, help me!” At other times you will be able to say, “Oh my God, thank you!” And if you are reasonable and know how to give thanks, you will avoid the stupidity that is called vanity or pride, which consists in imagining that we have done something that we might not have done. God did it. God has given us a wonderful opportunity to do this. And when in the evening you stand before God again and quickly review the past day in your memory, you will be able to praise God, glorify Him, thank Him, cry for others and cry for yourself. If you begin to connect life with your prayer in this way, there will never be a gap between them and life will become fuel, feeding the fire at every moment, which will flare up more and more and become brighter and will gradually transform you into that burning bush that he speaks of. Scripture (Exodus 3:2).

Prayer and activity

For me, joy is to bear witness to what moves me to the depths of my heart, to what makes a dazzlingly vivid impression, sometimes fleetingly, sometimes forever, in the context, in the situations of our lives. To bear witness to what our eyes have seen, what our hands have touched, what our ears have heard (1 John 1:1), to bear witness to what has enlightened our minds, deepened our hearts, directed our will, reached our very bodies, so that it became more receptive to grace.

I will talk about prayer and activity, but I would especially like to dwell on prayer, or rather, on the complex combination of prayer and activity, which is constantly expressed both by fruitful reflection and a life nourished by deep thought and maximum sobriety in the situations of our life.

To begin with, I would like to say a few words about the connection of prayer with life, not in general, but from a more immediate point of view. Too often the life we ​​lead stands as evidence against our prayer, and only if we are able to harmonize the words of our prayer and the way we live, will prayer be filled with the power and light that we expect from it and become effective.

Too often we turn to God in the hope that He will do what we were supposed to do in His name and for His sake. Too often our prayers are like polite speeches, polished from long use, we bring them to the Lord day after day, as if it is enough to repeat to Him with a cold heart, a lazy mind, without any participation of our will, fiery words that were born in the desert, alone, in the utmost human suffering, in the most intense situations history has ever known.

We repeat prayers that bear the names of great spiritual ascetics, and we think that God listens to them, that He takes into account their content, while the only thing that is important to God is the heart of the one who pronounces these words, the will of the speaker, the aspiring to fulfill His will.

We cry: do not lead us into temptation, and immediately, cheerfully, full of greedy curiosity, we rush to where temptation awaits us. Or we say: My heart is ready, O God! (Ps 56:8). What is it ready for? If the Lord asked us this question in the evening, when we said these words before going to bed, wouldn’t we sometimes have to answer: “Finish the chapter of a detective novel”? This is the only thing our heart is ready for now. And so often our prayers are a dead letter, moreover, a deadening letter, because every time we allow our prayer to be dead, so that it does not live us, so that its inherent intensity does not penetrate us, we respond less and less to it demands, on its impact and we become less and less able to bring to life the prayer words that we pronounce.

This is a problem that each of us must resolve in our lives. All expressions of our prayer should become rules of life. If we have told God that we ask for His help against temptation, we must, with all the aspiration of our souls, with all our strength, avoid any chance of falling into temptation. If we told God that it breaks our hearts to think that such and such a person is hungry, thirsty, alone, we must hear the voice of God answering us: whom should I send? - and stand before Him and say: Here I am, Lord! (Isaiah 6:8) - and act immediately. We must never allow delay, an extraneous thought to penetrate our good intention, to wedge itself between God’s instructions and our action, because the thought that slithers like a snake will immediately suggest: “Wait!” or: “Is it really necessary to do this?”, “Doesn’t God have someone else more suitable for this task?” And while we dodge in tricks, the energy that we received from prayer and the answer from above will fade away in us.

This is very significant. The connection we must establish between life and prayer ourselves, the act of will that we perform, is very important. It will not arise by itself, but it can profoundly change our lives. Read the prayers that are offered to us in the prayer book, morning and evening prayers. Choose some prayer and make it a program of life, and you will see that this prayer will never get boring, will never fade, because day after day it will be sharpened, life itself will give it sharpness. If in the morning you asked the Lord to protect you from such and such a need, such and such a temptation, such and such a problem, and you yourself will fight as you should, with all your human capabilities, to the best of your human weakness, filled, like a sail with the wind, with a breath of Divine power , then by evening you will have accumulated a lot to share with God. You will be able to thank Him for the help given, you will have to repent of how you used this help, you will be able to joyfully sing to Him for what He has given you to do His will with your weak, fragile hands, weak human hands, to be His seeing eye, His attentive hearing, His presence, His love, His embodied compassion, alive, creative. No one can do all this for each of us, otherwise life and prayer will diverge. For some time, life goes on as usual, but prayer continues to murmur less and less clearly, disturbing our conscience less and less, its pressure weakens. And since life persistently makes its demands, and prayer comes from God - a meek God, a loving God, Who calls us and never imposes itself by force - then prayer dies. And then, to console ourselves, we say that now we have brought our prayer to life and our activity is now our prayer.

This is not how we treat our friends, our family, or those we love. Of course, we do everything we should do for them, but does this mean that we forget them in our hearts, that we never think about them? Of course not! And is it really only God who is worthy of our service, but we never look in His direction, our heart does not light up with love when we hear His name? Is it really only God that we serve with indifference? This is a reason to learn something and draw some conclusions.

There is another aspect of prayer associated with life: it is the inclusion of prayer in life itself. At every moment we are faced with situations that exceed our strength. If only we approached these situations with prayer, then from hour to hour, from day to day, we would have more than enough cases for our prayer to become constant and not stop. Do we always remember that our human calling transcends any human strength? After all, we are called to be living members of the Body of Christ, to be in some sense, all together, but also each individually, a continuation of the incarnate presence of Christ in our days. We are called to be temples of the Holy Spirit. Our calling is to be fully Christ in the Only Begotten Son, we are called to become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). This is our human vocation in its very essence. And besides, this calling covers everything that the will and action of God covers. We are called to be the presence of the Living God in the entire world He created. How could we do anything in this regard if God Himself did not work in us and through us? Of course no. How might we become living members of the Body of Christ? How could we receive the Holy Spirit, become the temple where He dwells, and not be scorched by this Divine fire? How could we truly participate in the Divine nature? And how could we, sinful people, perform the work of mercy, the work of Divine love, as we are called to do? Is this not the basis for constant prayer? It must grow, become more and more demanding, so that we are grafted into the life-giving vine. Is there life in us, can we bear any fruit, are we capable of anything? So it is obvious: if we want our prayer not to be at odds with life, so that our prayer does not gradually lose power under the pressure of a difficult, cruel life, under the attacks of the prince of this world (John 12:31), we must pour our prayer into everything. what constitutes our life, we must throw it like a handful of yeast into the dough of our life in its entirety.

If, upon waking up in the morning, we would appear before God with the words: “Lord, bless me and bless this beginning of the day!”, and then realize that we are entering a new day of creation, a day that has never happened before, a day that blossoms as an unknown, infinitely deep possibility! If, with God's help, we would realize that we are entering this day to carry out the ministry of Christians in it in the power and in the glory that this title implies, how respectfully, how thoughtfully, with what reverent joy, and with what hope, and with what With tender love we would greet the day gradually unfolding before us! From hour to hour we would accept it as a gift from God, we would accept every circumstance that confronts us as from the hand of God, not a single meeting would be accidental, every person on our way, every appeal to us would be a call to respond in the wrong way, how we sometimes respond only on a human level, but respond with all the depth of that hidden heart of man (1 Pet 3:4), in the very depths of which is the entire Kingdom of God and God Himself. And throughout this day we would not be left with the reverent feeling that we were walking through it together with the Lord. Every moment we would find ourselves in situations where wisdom is required - and we would have to ask for it, where strength is required - and we would turn to the Lord for strength, where forgiveness from above is required - because we have done wrong, or in situations , which evoke in us an outburst of gratitude, because, despite our blindness, our coldness, we were given the opportunity to do something that we could never have done only on our own. Many examples could be given; It's clear what I'm talking about. And then we will understand that life never stops us from praying, never! - because life is that living substance into which we throw a life-giving handful of yeast - our prayer, our presence, to the extent that we ourselves abide in God and God in us, or at least we strive for Him and He condescends to us.

Very often we could do this, but two things prevent us. The first is that we are not accustomed to prayerful effort. If we do not make this effort constantly, if we are not ready to gradually make more and more unremitting efforts, more and more constant, more and more prolonged, then in a short time our spiritual energy, our mental energy, our ability to gather attention, as well as our ability to respond with all our hearts to the events and people that appear in front of us, will begin to freeze. On the other hand, in this teaching of constant prayer, nourished by life, we must act with the sobriety that the Fathers command us: we must advance step by step, remember that along with the feat of effort there is the discipline of rest, there is a wise attitude towards the body, towards consciousness and towards will and that one cannot strive without interruption and with all one’s might towards one goal.

Perhaps you remember an episode from the life of St. John the Theologian. It is said that a hunter heard that the beloved disciple of Christ lived in the mountains near Ephesus, and set out on a journey to visit him. He reached a clearing and saw an old man on all fours playing among the green grass with a guinea fowl. The hunter approached and asked if the old man had heard of John and where to find him. The old man replied: “It’s me.” The hunter laughed in his face: “You are John! It can't be! He, who wrote such wonderful messages, will begin to play with the bird!” And the elder said to him in response: “I see that you are a hunter. When you walk through the forest, do you always keep your bow drawn and arrow ready in case you suddenly see an animal? The hunter laughed again and said: “I knew you were crazy. Who walks through the forest like that? If I keep the bow drawn all the time, the string will snap the moment I need it!” “So am I,” answered John. “If I continuously strained all the strength of my soul and body, then at the moment when God approaches, I would overstrain myself from an effort that I could no longer withstand.” We must be able to soberly and wisely give ourselves the rest necessary in order to act with all the pressure, all the strength - not only our own, but also that which is given to us by grace from above. Because grace is sent to us into the fragile vessel of our body, into the fragility of our mind, our heart, our will.

Here various difficulties arise, in particular lack of faith. No matter who we are, no matter what we do, a moment of doubt often arises in us, a lack of deep faith. We often say: “Intercessory prayer, supplicatory prayer is a lower type of prayer. The prayer of a monk, the prayer of a Christian who has reached some maturity, is a prayer of thanksgiving and praise.” Of course, this is the final goal and outcome. After a long life of spiritual and physical struggle, when we have so renounced everything that we are ready to accept everything from the hand of God as a precious gift, all that remains is to thank Him and sing His praise. But have we reached this level? Isn't it easier to thank the Lord or sing praises to Him, especially in moments when our heart lights up from the touch of grace? Isn’t it easier to thank Him or sing afterward than to ask in faith for the fulfillment of some petition? Very often, people who are fully capable of chanting and thanking the Lord are unable to perform an act of complete faith with an undivided heart, an unwavering mind, a will completely directed towards Him, because doubt creeps in: “What if He doesn’t respond?” Isn’t it easier to say: “Thy will be done!” And then everything is in order, because the will of God will be fulfilled in any case, and I will remain within the limits of this Divine will. And yet, so often, so constantly, something else is required of us, namely in relation to active life in the sense that this word is understood in the West, life addressed to situations that are outside of us. Disease struck someone dear to us, famine struck the whole country. We would like to turn to God for help, and very often we cowardly ask for this help so that, in case of any outcome, our prayer can be attributed to the given situation. We find a way to express ourselves, we find a way out: in the end, God's will will be done and we will be satisfied, but have we shown faith? Here is a problem for all those who are immersed in activity and believe in the effectiveness of prayer and the effectiveness of “inaction.”

If we want to act at one with God, it is not enough to allow Him to act freely, saying: “Lord, in any case, You will do it your way, do so, I will not interfere with You.” We must learn to discern the will of God, we must enter into the destinies of God, but also remember that sometimes God’s destinies are hidden. Remember the Canaanite woman (Mark 7:24-30). The obviousness was striking, striking the ear: she was given a refusal, and, however, the strength of her faith and spiritual sensitivity caught something else, and she was able to show persistence as if contrary to the will of God, but in fact in accordance with the real will of the Savior. We must be able to look, we must look for the invisible trace of God. The Lord acts as if weaving a carpet, only, as has been pointed out many times, we see the reverse side, the front side is facing God. And the problem of life, the problem of that vision that will bring our prayer not into conflict with the will of God, but into harmony with it, is to be able to peer long enough at this seamy side in order to see its front side, the way in which God builds history, directs life, deepens the situation, creates connections, and act not against Him, not independently of Him, but with Him and let Him act, let Him act with us and in us. But in this case, activity and contemplation are inextricably linked, unless we recognize only desacralized activity, action in which there is no God, action limited by the human horizon and relying on our purely human efforts. But this is not Christian activity and not Christian prayer. At the core of the position is a man of action, who strives for his activity to be a continuation of the work of God, so that the activity of the Church and his own, as a living member of the whole Christ, which is the Church (Col. 1:24), is the action of Christ, the action of the Living God, the word of God Living, there must be such a kind of contemplation, such an image of contemplation that would reveal to us the true will of God. Outside of this, every action we take will be a random act.

But what does this contemplation consist of? This is the constant, unchanging state of a Christian, wherever he is, whether he belongs to a monastic contemplative order or he is a simple layman who bears a double responsibility: he is responsible before God and, because of this, is entirely responsible in relation to the created world, the world of people and objects. This contemplation is, first of all, a firm, attentive look, a clear consciousness that relates to objects, to people, to events, to their static reality, as well as to their dynamics. This gaze is completely immersed in what it sees, it is an ear, intensely ready to hear everything that may sound from the outside. To achieve this, a whole path of achievement is necessary, because in order to be able to see and hear, one must be able to break away from oneself. While we are focused only on ourselves, we see in what surrounds us either only our own reflection, or in the muddy or troubled waters of our consciousness we see a reflection of what is around us. To hear, one must be able to remain silent; you have to peer for a long time until you are convinced of what you see. We must simultaneously free ourselves from ourselves and surrender to God and the object of contemplation. Only then will we be able to see things in their objective reality. Only then will we be able to pose the main question: what is the will of God in this reality that appears to us? The unreal world in which we find ourselves all the time was created by our imagination, out of laziness of mind, out of selfishness, because we consider ourselves the center of things - while we are so secondary! In this unreal world, God cannot do anything, simply because this world does not exist. God cannot act in any world of unreality, but in the real world He is the master. And the most unsightly, the ugliest, the most disgusting, the most alien given to the Kingdom of God can turn into the Kingdom, provided that we return its reality to it. A mirage cannot be transformed, but a sinner can become a saint. I think it is very important to strive for this kind of contemplation, which has an all-encompassing meaning, which is not related to any of our roles in life. It is simply an attentive, thoughtful search through prayer, through silence, through an in-depth vision of things as God sees them. Someone said that prayer begins when God speaks. This is the goal to which we must strive. Such contemplation is not exclusively a Christian phenomenon, it belongs to everyone. There is no human mind that is not directed in this way towards external reality. The difference between us and an atheist - one who believes only in what surrounds him and does not see in things any depth of eternity, immensity, their relationship with God - the only difference is that he observes phenomena, and we listen to the voice of God , which gives us the key to understanding them. It's not much, but that's all. Because if we thus gain the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16), if we are under the same timeless leadership as the apostles, if we are led by the Holy Spirit, who tells us where to go, what to do, what to say, or when keep silent, we are simply taking our position as Christians, that’s all.

Of course, in the Christian experience, embodied in life, there is a contemplative aspect in the technical sense of the word, the so-called contemplative monasticism. There's a big problem here. Contemplative monasticism comes under great attack, but are these attacks as unfair as the contemplative orders themselves believe? We are talking about the credibility, convincingness (or implausibility, unconvincing) of what Christian life, structures and historical position of the Church convey to us. There was a time when the sense of contemplation, the sense of the sacred, the sense of the Living God, not only present but transcendent, was very strong and Christian society could see how some of its members lived only by contemplation, contemplative prayer, silence, the Divine presence, and all this - part of the work of the whole Church. Not so now. Believers in general do not always agree with this desire for radical contemplation, and we need to face this problem and seek a solution to it, not only by raising Christians. We ourselves must realize what a problem we are creating for them, a problem all the more difficult since contemplative orders can only exist because there are active people. One way or another, those who have dedicated their lives to contemplation live by the mercy of those who do not engage in contemplation. And when the vast majority, working hard, do not perceive at all that this group is an expression of their common life, and not of their own limited and private life, they are denied sympathy and support. I think this is very important because our world seems to very easily accept, for example, the contemplative life of Indian ascetics. He willingly agrees with the socially useless life of an artist, he easily recognizes people who leave society, move away from the general mass - all this on the condition that these people are willing to pay for their isolation. For example, Hindu ascetics are convincing because they lead a very harsh life in the conditions that they themselves created for themselves. Christian contemplative orders303 are often unconvincing because they want to do contemplation but also have food and warmth, a roof over their heads and a garden, and many other things. And all this must be provided by people who are deprived of the convenience of a contemplative life. This is the real problem for the conscience of Christians, and not the outside world. Think about the vows, often illusory ones, that we take. We leave our family, father, mother, relatives and create another family for ourselves, much more reliable, since it does not die out. Fathers, mothers, brothers, even children may die before you. Your order will die only after you, unless you destroy it. We take a vow of non-covetousness; Of course, we have no personal income, but we lack one thing: we are never faced with insecurity, the uncertainty of a hired worker. Because his main problem is not the lack of money, the lack of clothes, the main thing is the radical lack of security in which you may find yourself, because you do not know what will happen to you tomorrow. I could mention many more features of the contemplative life, from which it will become clear that more people strive for such a life than we imagine. They understand contemplation, often live by it, pray deeply, hear the voice of the Living God, follow His commandments, they live not only on bread, but on every word of God (Matthew 4:4), and they do not understand why entire human groups are, as it were, “specialists” contemplations,” are not responsible for their vows—others pay for them.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to another aspect of contemplation. When we talk about contemplation, we tend to think only of monks or those who practice contemplation from non-Christian religions. We are not sufficiently aware of the extent to which contemplation is present and developed in the world, among people who, faced with modernity, quite naturally pose fundamental questions to themselves, not content with simply observing the course of events in order to be able to cope with problems. Look at today's youth, and even at older people, even those who are not members of the Church: with what attention, with what depth, with what acute insight they sometimes search for thoughts. They ask themselves questions about God, about man, about the surrounding material world. Sometimes they turn to us in the hope of receiving an answer, not just a cliche, a slogan, but a life-filled answer to the problem they face. They know how to look, listen, know how to highlight the very essence of the situation, but what they don’t know how to do is tie them together, what they don’t possess is the key that would allow them to decipher, read the madness of the economy of Salvation, the will of God, the active, deep, complete will of God Alive, responsibly participating in the history of the world to the end. We should be able to give this answer, but is this the kind of contemplation we are immersed in? God constantly reveals Himself in the Old and New Testaments, but we might be struck again and again by new aspects of this revelation. Are we paying enough attention to this? In this regard, the Russian experience is instructive. Before the revolution, the Russian people for the most part knew the God of the majestic cathedrals and the “dominant” Church. When they found themselves deprived of everything, when in complete poverty they had only God left, many discovered for themselves the God of the scum, so to speak, a God who took upon Himself - and not temporarily, but forever - complete, boundless solidarity not only with those who have lost everything, but also with those who, according to human judgment, would be thrown out of the Kingdom of God.

This God, vulnerable, defenseless, as if defeated and therefore despised, this God who is not ashamed of us because He Himself became one of us, and of whom we can not be ashamed because in an act of incredible solidarity He became like us - are we really do we know Him? Yes, we talk about Him, we preach Him, and yet we are constantly trying to evade this God and again limit Him to the framework of a humanly majestic, organized faith, religion, which is combined with the concepts of earthly greatness, splendor, beauty. Yes, all of this has its place. But what a disaster it is that, through our fault, this God, so close and understandable, remains inaccessible to thousands of people, for whom our cathedrals and worship remain impenetrable. How many people could find their God if we did not hide Him! And not only the poor, the hungry, the humiliated in this world, but even those to whom, as it seems to us, God does not even address. Don’t we see this incredible solidarity with those who lost even God, with those who lost God, when Christ said on the cross: My God, My God! why did you leave me? (Mark 15:34). Is there even one atheist, are there such atheists on earth who have ever measured the loss of God, the absence of God from which you die, the way the Son of Man and the Son of God measured it on the cross? Do we realize when we pronounce the words of the Apostle’s Creed: “He who descended into hell” that this hell is not the place of torment of Christian folklore, that the hell of the Old Testament is a place where there is no God; and there He came down to His brothers in an act of solidarity, following the abandonment on the cross. How could one not think that if we look, on the one hand, at Christ and, on the other, at the world around us, we could bring awe-inspiring news, a radiant message about God and about man, but also about the entire created world on the basis of what is available to us? level of science and technical knowledge. Do we have a theology of matter that we could contrast with materialism? But we have no right not to have a theology of matter if we not only say that the Son of God became the Son of Man, that is, that He entered into the core of history, but also say that the Word became flesh (John 1:14), that God Himself connected with the materiality of this world! We must see in the Incarnation the first indication of this, and in the Transfiguration a vision of what matter can become when it is permeated with the Divine presence. After all, the Gospel tells us that the body of Christ, His clothes, everything that surrounded Him, shone with the radiance of eternity (Matthew 17:2). And in the Ascension, Christ, clothed in human flesh, that is, taking with Him the matter of this world into the core of Divinity, carried this created world into the depths of Divinity. These are just cursory indications, but isn't it enough to create a theology of matter that would pose these questions, try to resolve them, be able to put forward its demands on industry and technology, change our approach and aspirations in what we do with this world. After all, we are called to simultaneously possess this world and serve it. We must possess it, but in order to lead it to the fullness of life in God, and in this sense contemplation never ceases. This is the problem of a person, a narrow specialist, the problem of people who demand an answer from us - and hear only hackneyed commonplaces. Here we could combine activity and contemplation, that is, an in-depth vision, enlightened by the light of faith, filled with a sense of the sacred. We could unite activity and contemplation in all areas, not only in private, personal activity, but in the movement that has now embraced humanity as a whole. Today, people are at the core of the problem. Man is the meeting point between the believer and the unbeliever, because if Marx was right when he said that the proletariat does not need God, because its God is a man, we also say that our God is a Man, the Man Jesus Christ (Rom 5: 15) with everything that follows from the fact that He became incarnate, being God Himself.

Preface

Prayer means personal relationships to me.
I was not a believer, then I suddenly discovered God, and immediately He appeared before me as the highest value and the whole meaning of life, but at the same time as a person. I think that prayer means nothing to someone for whom there is no object of prayer. You cannot teach prayer to a person who has no sense of the Living God; you can teach him to behave exactly as if he believed, but it will not be a living movement, which is true prayer. Therefore, as an introduction to these conversations on prayer, I would specifically like to convey my conviction in the personal reality of such a God with whom a relationship can be established. Then I will ask the reader to regard God as a living person, as a neighbor, and to express this knowledge in the same categories in which he expresses his relationship with a brother or friend. I think this is the most important thing. One of the reasons why prayer, public or private, seems so dead or so formal is that the act of worship in the heart that communes with God is too often missing. Every expression, verbal or in action, can be a help, but all this is only an expression of the main thing, namely, the deep silence of communication.

From the experience of human relationships, we all know that love and friendship are deep when we can remain silent with each other. If we need to talk to maintain contact, we must admit with confidence and sadness that the relationship is still superficial; therefore, if we want to prayerfully worship God, we must first of all learn to experience the joy of silent abiding with Him. It's easier than it might seem at first; it takes a little time, a little trust and determination to start.

One day the "Cure of Ars", a French saint of the early nineteenth century, asked an old peasant what he was doing, sitting for hours in church, apparently not even praying; the peasant replied: “I look at Him, He looks at me, and we feel good together.” This man learned to talk to God without disturbing the silence of intimacy with words. If we know how to do this, then we can use any form of prayer. If we want the prayer itself to consist in the words that we use, then we will become hopelessly tired of them, because without the depth of silence these words will be superficial and boring.

But how inspiring words can be when there is silence behind them, when they are filled with a right spirit:

Lord, open my mouth, and my mouth will declare your praise (Ps. 50:17).

Scripture every day

When there is no God

When starting conversations for beginners on the path of prayer, I want to make it very clear that I do not set out to academically explain or justify why we need to learn prayer; in these conversations I want to point out what anyone who wants to pray should know and what he can do. Since I am a beginner myself, I will assume that you are also beginners and we will try to start together. I am not addressing those who strive for mystical prayer or the highest levels of perfection - “prayer itself will pave the way” to them (St. Theophan the Recluse).

When God breaks through to us or we break through to God under some exceptional circumstances, when everyday life suddenly opens up before us with a depth that we have never noticed before, when in ourselves we discover the depth where prayer lives and from where it can fill the key - then there are no problems. When we experience God, we stand face to face with Him, we worship Him, we talk to Him. Therefore, one of the very important initial problems is the situation of a person when it seems to him that God is absent, and this is where I want to dwell now. This is not about some objective absence of God - God is never really absent - but about the feeling of absence that we have; we stand before God and shout into the empty sky, from where there is no answer; we turn in all directions - and there is no God. How to deal with this?

First of all, it is very important to remember that prayer is a meeting, it is a relationship, and a deep relationship into which neither we nor God can be forced. And the fact that God can make His presence obvious to us or leave us with a sense of His absence is already part of this living, real relationship. If it were possible to call God to a meeting mechanically, so to speak, to force Him to a meeting only because we have appointed this very moment for a meeting with Him, then there would be neither a meeting nor a relationship. So you can encounter fiction, a far-fetched image, various idols that you can put in front of you instead of God; but this cannot be done in relation to or in a relationship with the Living God, just as it is impossible in a relationship with a living person. Relationships should begin and develop in mutual freedom. If we are fair and look at these relationships as mutual, then it is clear that God has much more reason to be sad with us than we have reason to complain about Him. We complain that He does not make His presence evident in the few minutes we give Him throughout the day; but what can we say about the remaining twenty-three and a half hours, when God can knock on our door as much as He wants, and we answer: “Sorry, I’m busy,” or we don’t answer at all, because we don’t even hear Him knocking on our door? heart, our mind, our consciousness or conscience, our life. So: we have no right to complain about the absence of God, because we ourselves are absent much more.

The second important circumstance is that meeting face to face with God is always a judgment for us. Having met God, whether in prayer, in contemplation or in contemplation, we can only be either justified or condemned in this meeting. I do not want to say that at this moment a sentence of final condemnation or eternal salvation is pronounced over us, but a meeting with God is always a critical moment, a crisis. “Crisis” is a Greek word and it means “judgment.” Meeting God face to face in prayer is a critical moment, and thank God that He does not always reveal Himself to us when we irresponsibly, carelessly seek a meeting with Him, because such a meeting may be beyond our strength. Remember how many times the Holy Scripture says that it is dangerous to come face to face with God, because God is power, God is truth, God is purity. And so, when we do not feel or experience God’s presence tangibly, our first movement should be gratitude. God is merciful; He does not come before the time; He gives us the opportunity to look back at ourselves, understand, and not seek His presence when it would be our judgment and condemnation.

I'll give you an example. Many years ago a man came to me and began to ask: “Show me God!” I said that I could not do this, and added that even if I could, he would not have seen God. Because I thought then and now I think: in order to meet, to see God, we need to have something in common with Him, something that will give us eyes to see, and receptivity to catch, smell. This man then asked me why I thought so about him, and I invited him to think and say what place in the Gospel especially touches him, so that I could try to grasp what its conformity with God is. He said, “Yes, there is such a place: in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John there is a story about a woman taken in adultery.” I replied: “Okay, this is one of the most beautiful and touching stories; now sit down and think: who are you in this scene? Are you on the Lord's side and full of mercy, understanding and faith in this woman who is able to repent and become a new person? Or are you a woman who has been convicted of adultery? Or one of the elders who all walked out one by one because they knew their sins? Or one of the young ones who hesitate and hesitate?” He thought and said: “No, I am the only one of the Jews who did not go out and begin to stone this woman.” Then I said: “Thank God that He does not allow you to meet face to face with Him now!”

This may be an extreme example, but doesn't it often apply to us? It is not that we outright reject God’s words or His example; but we, albeit not so rudely, act like soldiers during the passion of Christ: we would like to close Christ’s eyes so that we could strike Him without hindrance, but He would not see us. Isn’t this what we do when we hide from God’s presence and act according to our own will, according to our moods and whims, contrary to what is the will of God? We try to put a veil over His eyes, but we only blind ourselves. How can we come into His presence at such moments? We can, of course - in repentance, with a contrite heart; but we cannot go expecting that we will immediately be received with love as His friends.

Remember various places in the Gospel: people of much greater spirit than we did not dare to accept Christ. Remember the centurion who asked Christ to heal his servant. Christ said: “I will come,” but the centurion replied: “No need - just say the word, and my servant will be healed.” Is this what we do? Do we turn to God, saying: “Do not make Your presence obvious, tangible to me; It is enough for You to speak the word, and what must be done will be done; until I need more...” Or remember Peter in the boat after a big catch of fish: he fell to his knees and said: “Leave me, Lord, I am a sinful man!” He asked the Lord to leave his boat because, perhaps for the first time, he experienced humility; and he experienced a feeling of humility, because he suddenly saw the greatness of Christ. Does this ever happen to us? When we read the Gospel and the irresistible beauty and glory of the image of Christ rises before us, when we pray and we are overcome by a feeling of the greatness and holiness of God, do we ever say: “I am not worthy for You to come to me”?.. But what can we say? about those cases when we must understand that He cannot come to us, because we are not there to receive Him; we want to receive something from Him, and not from Himself. Can this be called a relationship? Is this how we treat our friends? Do we seek what friendship gives, or do we love the friend himself? And to what extent is this true of the Lord?

Now let's think about prayers, yours and mine; Let us remember how strong, ardent, and deep prayer can be when you pray for someone you love, or for something important to you. The heart is open, our whole being is collected and concentrated in prayer. Does this mean that the whole meaning of this prayer, all its power is in meeting with God? No; it only means that the subject of your prayer is important to you. Because when, after such fervent, deep, intense prayer for a loved one or about troubling circumstances, we move on to the next topic that does not affect us so deeply, and we cool down - what has changed? Has God grown cold or stepped aside? No, it simply means that the inspiration and intensity of our prayer was born not from God’s presence, not from my faith in Him, my longing for God, sensitivity to Him, but only from the fact that my heart aches for someone about whom something – but not about God. How then can we be surprised that we do not feel God’s presence? It is not He who is absent, but we who are absent at such a “meeting”. It is not He, but our heart that grows cold because He does not mean that much to us.

Sometimes God is “absent” for another reason. As long as we are authentic, as long as we are ourselves, God can be present in the encounter and can do something for us. But as soon as we strain to be something other than what we really are, then nothing can be done or said for us; we become a fictitious, fictitious being, and God cannot do anything with such an unreal personality.

In order for us to pray, we must enter into a relationship that is defined as the Kingdom of God. We must realize and understand that He is God, that He is the King, and surrender, entrust ourselves to Him. We must always at least remember His will, even if we are not yet able to fulfill it. Otherwise, if we treat God like the rich young man who could not follow Christ because he was too rich, how can we then meet Him? How often, through prayer, through deep communication with God, for whom we yearn, we are simply looking for a little joy for ourselves; we are not ready to sell everything in order to buy a precious pearl in return. How then can we obtain this pearl? Are we looking for her?.. After all, something similar happens in human relationships: when a man or woman falls in love with someone, all other people no longer have the same meaning for him, for her. This is expressed in the ancient saying: “When a young man has a bride, he is no longer surrounded by men and women, but simply by people.”

Isn’t this what can happen, isn’t this what should happen to all our wealth when we turn to God? Shouldn't it become a kind of background, pale and gray, against which the only significant Personality will stand out in all relief? We would like to have one stroke of heavenly azure to complete the picture of our life, which has so many dark sides. God is ready to be outside of our life, He is ready to take upon Himself all of it completely, like a cross, but He is not ready to be just one of the circumstances in our life.

So, when we have come to the conclusion that God is absent, should we not ask ourselves the question - who do we blame for this? We always blame God - either we blame Him directly to his face, or we complain to others that He is absent, that He is never there when He is needed, that He does not respond when you turn to Him. Sometimes we are more “godly” – in quotes! - and we say: “God is testing my patience, my faith, my humility,” and we find many ways to turn God’s judgment about us to our advantage: “I am so patient that I can even tolerate God Himself!” Isn't that so?..

I remember when I was a young priest, I once preached a sermon, one of many I preached in the parish. After the service, a girl came up to me and said: “Father Anthony, you are probably a very bad person.” I replied: “Oh yes, but how did you know about this?” She explained: “You described our sins so well that, of course, you yourself committed them all.” Of course, the bad thoughts and bad states, the unsightly description of which I offer you here, are probably my own, but, perhaps, at least to some extent, they are also yours.

If we want to pray, we must first be convinced that we are sinners in need of salvation, that we are separated from God, that we cannot live without Him, and the only thing we can bring to Him is our desperate longing for that. to become such as God would accept us, accept us in our repentance, accept us with mercy and love. And so prayer, from its very beginning, is our feasible ascent to God, the moment when we turn to God, not daring to come closer, knowing that if we meet Him too early, before His grace helps us meet Him - the meeting will be a trial. All we can do is turn to Him in the reverence, the awe and reverence that we are capable of, with all the attention and earnestness, and ask Him to do something with us that will enable us to meet His face. to your face, not to judgment or condemnation, but to eternal life.

Here I would like to remind you of the parable of the publican and the Pharisee. The publican comes to the temple and stands behind, at the entrance. He knows that he stands condemned; he knows that in terms of justice there is no hope for him, because he is not involved in the Kingdom of God; he is outside the kingdom of truth and righteousness or the kingdom of love, because he does not belong to either the kingdom of righteousness or the kingdom of love. But in that cruel, ugly life of violence that is his life, he learned something that the righteous Pharisee had no idea about. He learned that in a world of competition, in a world of predatory relationships, cruelty and heartlessness, the only thing one can hope for is an intrusion of mercy, an intrusion of compassion, unexpected and incredible, which is not rooted either in the performance of duty or in the structure of natural relationships. , and which would suspend the pattern of cruelty, violence and heartlessness in everyday life. The publican, being an extortionist, a usurer, a predator, knew from his own experience that there are moments when, without any reason - since it is not part of his worldview - he will suddenly forgive a debt because his heart trembled and became vulnerable; when, perhaps, he will not send someone to prison because a human face reminded him of something or the sound of a voice touched his heart. There is no logic in this; it is neither his way of thinking nor his usual way of acting. Here, in spite of everything and in spite of everything, something invades that he cannot resist; and he, too, probably knows how often he himself was saved from ultimate disaster by this invasion of the unexpected and incredible - mercy, compassion, forgiveness. And so he stands at the church lintel, knowing that the area inside the temple is the area of ​​​​the righteousness and love of God, which he does not belong to and where he cannot enter. But he knows from experience that the incredible comes true, and that’s when he says: “Have mercy!” Break the laws of justice, break the laws of religion, mercifully come down to us, who have no right either to forgiveness or to enter this region.” And so I think that this is the starting point from which we must begin again and again, constantly.

You probably remember the place from the Apostle Paul, where Christ tells him: My strength is made perfect in weakness... This weakness is not the weakness that we discover when we sin and forget God, but the kind of weakness that means flexibility to the end, complete transparency , complete surrender of oneself into the hands of God; Usually we try “to the best of our ability” and prevent God from demonstrating His power.

When a child is just beginning to learn to write and does not know what is expected of him, his hand is completely flexible and obediently controlled by his mother’s hand; as soon as he imagines that he understands and tries to “help,” everything goes awry: this is what I mean when I say that the power of God is made perfect in weakness. Or take a sail: the wind can fill it so that it carries the whole ship - just because the sail is flexible; if instead of a sail you put a strong board, then nothing will work... An iron glove is strong, but how little can be done with it; the surgeon’s glove is barely felt, barely noticeable, it doesn’t cost anything to tear it, but thanks to it the doctor’s “smart” hand works wonders... And one of the things that God constantly tries to teach us instead of our imaginary and insignificant, anarchic “strength” is fragility , flexibility, complete surrender of oneself into the hands of God.

I'll give you an example. Twenty-five years ago, a friend of mine, who had two children, died during the liberation of Paris. His children didn’t like me, they were jealous that their father had such a friend, but when their father died, they reached out to me - because I was their father’s friend... And then his daughter, a girl of about fifteen, came one day to my reception room (I was a doctor before becoming a priest) and saw that next to the medical supplies on my table was the Gospel. With all the self-confidence of her youth, she said: “I don’t understand how an apparently educated person can believe in such nonsense.” I then asked her: “Have you read?” She replied: “No.” - “So remember: only very stupid people judge things they don’t know.” After that, she read the Gospel, and it captivated her so much that her whole life changed, because she began to pray, God allowed her to experience His presence, and she lived by it for some time. Then she fell ill with an incurable disease, and when I was already a priest in England, she sent me a letter in which she said: “Since my body began to weaken and die out, my spirit is more alive than ever, and I feel God’s presence so easily and with such joy.” I wrote back to her: “Don’t expect this condition to last; when your strength diminishes, you will no longer be able to rush to God with your own impulse, and the time will come when it will seem to you that there is no access to God.” After some time, she wrote to me again: “Yes, you were right; I am now so weak that I cannot muster the strength to strive for God or even yearn for Him, and it is as if God does not exist.” I then told her to try to do something differently: to learn humility in the true, deep sense of the word.

In Latin humilitas, humility comes from the word humus - “fertile earth”; and so, humility does not consist in, as we constantly do, “being poor,” and thinking and saying bad things about ourselves, and convincing others that our stilted manners are humility. Humility is the state of fertile soil; the earth is always under our feet, it is self-evident, it is forgotten; we walk along it and never remember it; it is open to everything, we throw garbage into it, everything that we don’t need. She is silent and accepts everything - she accepts both manure and waste creatively and turns them into living and life-giving wealth. She transforms decay itself into a new force of life; open to the rain, open to every seed, it bears fruit thirty, fifty, and a hundredfold.

And I advised this woman: “Learn to be the same before God: giving, not resisting, ready to accept from both people and God, no matter what they give.” And in fact, she had to endure a lot from people. After six months of her illness, her husband got tired of having a dying wife and left her: she had experienced rejection in abundance, but God also shone His light on her and sent refreshing rain. A little later she wrote: “I am completely exhausted. I don’t have the strength to rush to God, but now God Himself comes to me.”

This story is not only an illustration, it emphasizes the main idea: this is the weakness in which God can show His power, and this is the situation when the absence of God turns into His presence. We cannot take possession of God by force; but if we stand like the publican or like this woman - beyond what is “right”, but within the limits where mercy reigns, we can meet God.

Now try to think through the “absence” of God, and understand with your whole being that before knocking on the door (and this is not only the door of the Kingdom in the general sense, Christ actually says: I am the door), we must realize that we are outside, outside. If we madly imagine that we are already in the Kingdom of God, then, of course, there is nowhere to knock, all that remains is to look around - where are the angels and saints and the abode intended for us? And when we see nothing but darkness or walls, we can quite rightly wonder how unattractive paradise is... We must realize that we are not yet in paradise, that we are still outside the Kingdom of God, and then ask ourselves: where is the door and how to knock on it?

We present to your attention a chapter from the book of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, “Prayer and Life.” For the first time, three books about prayer by Metropolitan Anthony were combined in the collection “School of Prayer” and published by the Christian Life publishing house in 2010.

The Master’s word is addressed to modern man, who rarely has his own experience of prayer, but who experiences spiritual hunger and the need for prayerful communication with God.

Photo: www.mitras.ru

We are all beginners, and I don't intend to give a lecture, but I just want to share some of what I have learned, some from my own experience, and perhaps even more from the experience of others.

Prayer in its essence is a meeting, a meeting of the soul and God; but in order for the meeting to become real, both persons who participate in it must really be themselves. Meanwhile, we are to a huge extent unreal, and God, in our relationships, is so often unreal for us: we think that we are turning to God, but in fact we are turning to the image of God created by our imagination; and we think that we stand before Him with all truthfulness, when in fact we put in our place someone who is not our true self - an actor, a figurehead, a theatrical character. Each of us is several different personalities at the same time; it can be a very rich and harmonious combination, but it can also be a very unfortunate combination of contradictory personalities. We are different depending on the circumstances and environment: different people who meet us know us as completely different people, according to the Russian proverb: “A good man against the sheep, and against a good man the sheep himself.” How often does this happen: each of us can remember among our acquaintances a lady who is very polite to strangers and a real fury at home, or a formidable boss who in the family circle is the embodiment of meekness.

In the matter of prayer, our first difficulty is to find which of our personalities should come forward to meet God. This is not easy, because we are so unaccustomed to being ourselves that we sincerely do not know which of all personalities is this true “I”. And we don't know how to find him. But if we took a few minutes a day to think about our actions and relationships with people, we might get very close to discovering this; we would notice what kind of person we were when we met such and such, and who - already completely different - when we did this or that. And we might ask ourselves: When have I really been myself? Maybe never, maybe only for a split second or to a certain extent in special circumstances, with certain people. And so, in these five or ten minutes that you can allocate - and I am sure that everyone can do this throughout the day - you will find that there is nothing more boring for you than being alone with yourself. Usually we live a kind of reflected life. The point is not only that we are, depending on the circumstances, a whole series of different personalities, but the very life that is in us is very often not ours at all - it is the life of other people. If you look within yourself and dare to ask yourself how often you act from the depths of your personality, how often you express your true self, you will see that this is very rarely the case. Too often we are immersed in various trifles that surround us; So, during this time, these short minutes of concentration, you must leave behind everything that is not vital.

You risk, of course, in this case, that you will be bored alone with yourself; well, let it be boring. But this does not mean that nothing remains in us, because in the depths of our being we are created in the image of God and this stripping away of everything unnecessary is very similar to clearing away a beautiful ancient wall painting or a painting by a great master, which over the centuries, on top of true beauty, created by a master, was painted over by people lacking taste. At first, the more we clear, the more emptiness appears, and it seems to us that we have only spoiled where there was at least some beauty; maybe a little, but at least some. And then we begin to discover the true beauty that the great master put into his work; we see squalor, then confusion in between, but at the same time we can predict true beauty. And then we discover what we are: a wretched creature who needs God, but needs Him not in order to fill the void, but in order to meet Him.

So, let's get down to it and, in addition, every night for a week let's pray these very simple words: “Help me, God, to free myself from all that is counterfeit and find my true self.”

Sorrow and joy, these two great gifts of God, are often the moment of meeting ourselves, when we leave all our monkey tricks and become invulnerable, inaccessible to all the lies of life.

Our next task is to explore the problem of a real God, for it is quite obvious that if we decide to turn to God, this God must be real. We all know what a great teacher is for a schoolchild; when a schoolchild has to come to him, he goes to him only as a class teacher, and until he grows up and leaves his power, it never occurs to him that the class teacher is a person. The student thinks about him in terms of his functions, but this deprives the mentor’s personality of all human traits, and therefore no human contact with him is possible.

Another example: when a boy is in love with a girl, he endows her with all kinds of perfections; but it may have none of them, and very often this being, fabricated from nothing, is in fact “nothing”, clothed with non-existent virtues. Here again there can be no contact, because the young man is addressing someone who does not exist. This is true of God as well. We have a certain stock of mental or visual images of God, collected from books, purchased in the temple, from what we heard from adults when we were children, and perhaps from clergy when we got older. And very often these images prevent us from meeting the real God. They are not completely false, because there is some truth in them, and at the same time they do not correspond at all to the real God. If we want to meet God, we must, on the one hand, use the knowledge that we have acquired, be it personally, be it through reading, hearing, hearing, but also go further.

Our knowledge of God today is the result of yesterday's experience, and if we turn our face to God as we know Him, we will always turn our backs on the present and the future, looking only at our own past. In doing this, we are not trying to meet God, but what we already know about Him. This illustrates the function of theology, since theology is all our human knowledge of God, and not the little that we personally have already comprehended and learned about Him. If you want to meet God as He really is, you must come to Him with a certain experience so that it will bring you closer to God, but then leave this experience and stand not before the God Whom you know, but before the God together the already known and the still unknown.

What will be next? Something very simple: God, Who is free to come to you, respond, answer your prayers, can come and make you feel, experience His presence; but He may not do this; He can make you feel His real absence, and this experience is just as important as the first, because in both cases you touch the reality of God's right to respond or not to respond.

So, try to find your true self and bring it face to face with God as He is, giving up all false images or idols of God. And to help you in this, to give you support in this effort, I invite you to pray for one week with the following words: “Help me, O God, to free myself from every false image of You, no matter what the cost.”

In the search for our true self, we can experience not only the boredom I spoke of, but also horror and even despair. This nakedness of the soul brings us to our senses; then we can begin to pray. The first thing to avoid is lying to God; it seems so obvious, and yet we don't always do it this way. Let us speak frankly with God, let us tell Him who we are; not because He doesn't know it; but it is one thing to accept the fact that someone who loves us knows everything about us, and quite another to have the courage and genuine love for this person to speak truthfully to him and tell him everything about himself. Let us tell God frankly that we feel uneasy when we stand before Him like this, that we have no real desire to meet Him, that we are tired and would prefer to go to bed. But at the same time we must beware of license or simply impudence: He is our God. After this, it would be best to remain joyfully in His presence, as we do with dearly loved people with whom we have genuine intimacy. We don't experience such joy and such closeness with Him that we can just sit and look at Him and be happy. And if we have to talk, then let it be a genuine conversation. Let us shift all our worries to God, and, having told Him everything, so that He learns it from ourselves, we will leave the care of our worries, transferring them to God. Now that He is privy to our concerns, we have nothing more to worry about: we can freely think about Him.

This week's exercise should obviously be added to the exercises of previous weeks; it will consist in learning, placing ourselves before God, transferring to Him every single one of our worries, and then leaving the care of them; and in order to get help in this, let us repeat from day to day a very simple and specific prayer that will determine our behavior in our relationship with God: “Help me, God, leave all my worries and focus my thoughts on You Alone.”

If we had not cast our cares over to God, they would have stood between Him and us during our meeting; but we also saw that the next move - and this is very important - we must leave the care of them. We must do this in an act of trust, believing God enough to hand over to Him the worries we want to lift from our shoulders. But what then? We seem to have emptied ourselves, there is hardly anything left in us - what should we do next? We cannot remain empty, because then we will be filled with the wrong things - feelings, thoughts, worries, memories, etc. We need, I think, to remember that meeting does not mean one-sided speech on our part. When talking, we not only speak out, but also listen to what the interlocutor has to say. And for this you need to learn to be silent; although it seems like a trifle, this point is very important.

I remember when I accepted the priesthood, one of the first to come to me for advice was an old woman and said: “Father, I have been praying almost continuously for fourteen years, and I have never had a feeling of God’s presence.” Then I asked: “Did you let Him get a word in?” “Oh, that’s it,” she said. “No, I myself told Him all the time, isn’t that what prayer is about?” “No,” I answered, “I think that’s not the point; and so, I suggest that you take fifteen minutes a day and just sit and knit before the face of God.” So she did. What happened? Very soon she came again and said: “It’s amazing that when I pray to God, that is, when I talk to Him, I don’t feel anything, but when I sit quietly, face to face with Him, I feel as if enveloped in His presence.” You will never be able to truly and wholeheartedly pray to God unless you learn to remain silent and rejoice in the wonder of His presence, or, if you will, of being face to face with Him, even if you cannot see Him.

Very often, having said everything we had to say and having sat for a while, we are perplexed as to what to do next. Next, I think, you need to read some of the existing prayers. Some find it too easy and at the same time see the danger of mistaking for real prayer a simple repetition of what someone else once said. Indeed, if it is simply a mechanical exercise, it is not worth the effort, but at the same time we forget that it depends on ourselves that it should not be mechanical - if we pronounce the words carefully. Others complain that ready-made prayers are alien to them, because it is not exactly what they themselves would express, it is not their expression. In a sense, these prayers are truly alien, but only in the same way that a painting by a great master is alien and incomprehensible to a student, or the music of a great composer to a beginning musician. But that’s the point: we go to concerts, to art galleries in order to find out what real music, real painting is, in order to shape our taste. And this is why, in part, we must use ready-made prayers - in order to learn what feelings, what thoughts, what ways of expression we should develop if we belong to the Church. It also helps during dry periods when we have little to say.

Each of us is not only the wretched, bare-to-the-bones creature we discover when left alone with ourselves; we are also the image of God; and the child of God who lives in each of us is capable of praying the most sublime, holiest prayers of the Church. We must remember this and use them. I suggest that to the previous exercise we add a little silence, three or four minutes, and end with the prayer: “Help me, God, to see my own sins, never condemn my neighbor, and all the glory be to You!”

Before I start talking about unanswered prayers, I want to ask God to enlighten both me and you, because this is a difficult and yet so vitally important topic. This is one of the great temptations that everyone can encounter on their way and because of which it can be very difficult for beginners and even people with prayer experience to pray to God. So often people pray and it seems to them that they are addressing an empty sky.

This often happens because their prayer is meaningless childishness. I remember an old man telling me that as a child he asked God for many months to give him the amazing ability that his uncle had - to take his teeth out of his mouth every evening and put them in a glass of water, and how happy he was later that God did not fulfill his desire. Often our prayers are as childish as this one, and, of course, they remain unfulfilled. We are very often sure that we are praying correctly, but we are praying about something that concerns other people, about whom we do not think at all. When we pray for a fair wind for ourselves, we do not think about the fact that it may turn out to be a storm on the sea for others, and God will not grant a request that will bring harm to others.

In addition to these two obvious points, there is another side to the question, much more significant and deep: it happens that we pray to God with all our hearts for something that from all points of view seems worthy of being heard, and we are met with only silence - and silence is much more difficult to bear than refusal. If God says “no,” then on God’s part it will still be a positive reaction, and silence is, as it were, the absence of God, and it leads us to two temptations: when our prayer does not receive an answer, we doubt either God or to ourselves. In relation to God, we doubt not His power, not His power to do what we want, but His love, His participation. We ask for something very important, but He doesn’t seem to pay attention; where is His love, His compassion? This is the first temptation.

And there is another temptation. We know that, having faith the size of a mustard seed, we could move mountains, and when we see that nothing is moving, we think: “Maybe this means that my faith is somehow flawed, untrue?” This again is not true, and there is another answer to this: if you read the Gospel carefully, you will see that there is only one prayer in it that has not received an answer. This is the prayer of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. But at the same time we know that if ever in history God took part in someone who prayed, it was certainly in His Son before His death; and we know also that if ever there was an example of perfect faith, it was then. But God found that the faith of the Divine Sufferer was great enough to endure the silence.

God does not answer our prayers not only when they are unworthy, but also when He finds in us such greatness, such depth - the depth and strength of faith that He can rely on us to remain faithful even in the face of His silence.

I remember one woman who was terminally ill; for many years she had lived in the sense of God's presence, and then suddenly she felt His absence—a really real absence; she wrote to me then: “Please pray to God that I will never be tempted to create the illusion of His presence instead of accepting His absence.” Her faith was great. She was able to withstand this temptation, and God allowed her to experience His silence, His absence.

Remember these examples, think them through, because someday you will probably have to find yourself in the same position.

I can't give you any exercise; I only want you to remember that we must always keep unchanged our faith both in the love of God and in our own honest, truthful faith; and when such a temptation comes to us, let us pray a prayer consisting of two phrases spoken by Jesus Christ Himself: “Into Your hands I commend My spirit; not my will be done, but yours.”

I have tried to give you an idea of ​​the main ways in which we can approach prayer; but does this mean that, having completed everything I suggested, you will learn to pray? No, of course not, because prayer is not just an effort that we can make the moment we decide to pray; prayer must be rooted in our life, and if our life contradicts our prayers or our prayers have nothing to do with our life, they will never be alive or real. Of course, we can find a loophole and get around this difficulty by excluding from our prayers everything that is incompatible with prayer in our lives - everything that we are ashamed of or that makes us feel embarrassed about ourselves. But this won’t solve anything.

Another difficulty that we constantly face is daydreaming: then our prayer expresses a sentimental mood, and not what our life is in its essence. For these two difficulties there is one common solution, namely: to connect life with prayer so that it is a single whole, to make your prayer your life. The ready-made prayers that I have already spoken about will be of great help in this regard, because they represent an objective, rigid example of how one should pray. You can say. that they are unnatural for us, and this is true, in the sense that they express the life of people immeasurably greater than ourselves, the life of genuine Christians; but that is why you can use them, trying to become the kind of people for whom these prayers are natural.

Remember the words of Christ: Into Your hands I commend My spirit. They are, of course, beyond our own experience; but if day by day we learn to be the kind of people who are able to pronounce these words sincerely, with all truthfulness, we will not only make our prayer real, we ourselves will become real - in the new, genuine reality of becoming sons of God.

If you take, for example, the five prayers that I have proposed to you, if you take each of these petitions one by one, if you try to make each of them in turn a motto, a slogan of the whole day, you will see that prayer will become the criterion of your life, it will give you the basis of your life, but your life will also be your judge - against you or for you - accusing you of lying when you utter these words, or, conversely, confirming that you are true to them. Take every phrase of every prayer, use it as a rule, day after day, week after week, until you become the kind of person for whom these words are life itself.

Now we have to part. I was infinitely glad to talk mentally with you, for we are united by prayer and our common interest in spiritual life. May the Lord God be with each of you and among us forever.

And before we part, I invite the reader to say with me one short prayer that will unite us before the throne of God:

Lord, I don’t know what to ask of You. You alone know what I need. You love me more than I can love myself. Let me see my needs that are hidden from me. I do not dare to ask for either a cross or consolation, I only stand before You. My heart is open to You. I place all my hope in You. You see the needs that I do not know, see and do with me according to Your mercy. Crush and lift me. Smite and heal me. I am in awe and silent before Your holy will, Your destinies incomprehensible to me. I sacrifice myself to You. I have no desire except the desire to fulfill Your will. Teach me to pray, pray in me yourself. Amen.

From the book “School of Prayer”, publishing house “Christian Life”, Klin, 2010, p.102-114

The book “School of Prayer” by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh can be purchased in the shop of the Sorrow Church

Prayer and life

THE ESSENCE OF PRAYER

Almost from the very beginning, the Gospel of Matthew brings us face to face with the very essence of prayer. The Magi saw the long-awaited star; they immediately set off to find the King; they came to the manger, fell on their knees, bowed and brought gifts; they expressed prayer in its perfection, that is, in contemplation and reverent worship.

More or less popular literature on prayer often says that prayer is an exciting journey. You can often hear: “Learn to pray! Praying is so interesting, so exciting, it is the discovery of a new world, you will meet God, you will find the path to spiritual life.” In a sense this is, of course, true; but this forgets something much more serious: that prayer is a dangerous journey, and we cannot embark on it without risk. The Apostle Paul says that it is scary to fall into the hands of the Living God

(Heb. 10:31). Therefore, to consciously go out to meet the Living God means to go on a terrible journey: in a sense, every meeting with God is the Last Judgment. Whenever we appear in the presence of God, whether in the sacraments or in prayer, we do/commit something very dangerous, because, according to the word of Scripture, God is fire. And unless we are ready to completely surrender ourselves to the divine flame and become a bush burning in the desert that burned without being consumed, this flame will scorch us, because the experience of prayer can only be known from the inside and cannot be trifled with.

Approaching God is always a discovery of both the beauty of God and the distance that lies between Him and us. “Distance” is an imprecise word, for it is not defined by the fact that God is holy and we are sinners. The distance is determined by the sinner's relationship to God. We can approach God only if we do so with the consciousness that we are coming to judgment. If we come condemning ourselves; if we come because we love Him in spite of our own unfaithfulness; if we come to Him, loving Him more than the well-being in which He is not, then we are open to Him and He is open to us, and there is no distance; The Lord comes very close, in love and compassion. But if we stand before God in the armor of our pride, our self-confidence, if we stand before Him as if we have the right to it, if we stand and demand an answer from Him, then the distance separating the creation from the Creator becomes infinite. The English writer C.S. Lewis[2] expresses the idea that in this sense distance is relative: when Dennitsa appeared before God, asking Him, at that very moment when he asked his question not in order to humbly understand, but in order to force God to answer, he found himself at an infinite distance from God. God did not move, neither did Satan, but even without any movement they found themselves infinitely distant from each other.

Whenever we approach God, the contrast between what He is and what we are becomes terrifyingly clear. We may not be aware of this all the time that we live, as it were, away from God, all the time when His presence and His image remain dim in our thoughts and in our perception; but the closer we get to God, the sharper the contrast becomes. It is not the constant thought of one’s sins, but the vision of God’s holiness that allows the saints to recognize their sinfulness. When we look at ourselves without the fragrant background of God's presence, sins and virtues seem to be something small and, in some sense, insignificant; Only against the background of the Divine presence do they appear in all relief and acquire all their depth and tragedy.

Whenever we approach God, we are faced with either life or death. This meeting is life, if we come to Him in the proper spirit and are renewed by Him; it is destruction if we approach Him without a reverent spirit and a contrite heart; destruction if we bring pride or presumption. Therefore, before setting off on the so-called “exciting journey of prayer,” we must not forget for a moment that nothing more significant, more awe-inspiring, can happen than the meeting with God that we have entered into. We must realize that in this process we will lose life: the old Adam in us must die. We hold tightly to the old man, we fear for him, and it is so difficult not only at the beginning of the journey, but also years later, to feel that we are completely on the side of Christ, against the old Adam!

Prayer is a journey that brings not exciting experiences, but new responsibility. While we are in ignorance, nothing is asked of us, but as soon as we know something, we are responsible for how we use our knowledge. It may be given to us as a gift, but we are responsible for every particle of truth that we have learned, and once it becomes our own, we cannot leave it inactive, but must manifest it in our behavior. And in this sense, we are required to answer for every truth that we understand.

Only with a feeling of fear, reverence for God, and the deepest reverence can we begin to take the risk of prayer, and we must grow to it in our outer life as fully and definitely as possible. It is not enough to sit comfortably in a chair and say: “Here, I begin to worship God, in the face of God.” We must understand that if Christ were standing before us, we would behave differently, and we must learn to behave in the presence of the invisible Lord, as we would behave in the presence of the Lord who has become visible to us.

First of all, this presupposes a certain state of mind, which is reflected in the state of the body. If Christ were here, before us, and we stood completely transparent, mind and body, to His gaze, then we would experience reverence, fear of God, love, maybe even horror, but we would not behave as freely as we do this is usual. The modern world has lost the spirit of prayer to a large extent, and the discipline of the body has become something secondary in the minds of people, whereas it is far from secondary. We forget that we are not a soul living in a body, but a person consisting of body and soul, and that, according to the Apostle Paul, we are called to glorify God both in our bodies and in our souls; our bodies, like our souls, are called to the glory of the Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:20).

Too often prayer does not have such meaning in our lives that everything else falls aside to give way to it. With us prayer is an addition to many other things; we want God to be here not because there is no life without Him, not because He is the highest value, but because it would be so pleasant, in addition to all the great benefits of God, to also have His presence. He is an addition to our comfort. And when we look for Him in such a mood, we do not meet Him.

However, despite everything that has been said, prayer, no matter how dangerous it may be, is still the best way to move forward towards the fulfillment of our calling and to become fully human, that is, to enter into complete unity with God and ultimately become that what the Apostle Peter calls partakers of the divine nature

(2 Pet. 1:4).

Love and friendship do not grow unless we are willing to sacrifice a lot for them; and in the same way, we must be ready to give up a lot in order to give first place to God.

Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.

(Luke 10:27). This seems to be a very simple commandment, and, however, there is much more content in these words than it seems at first glance. We all know what it means to love someone with all our hearts. We know how joyful it is not only to meet a loved one, but even just to think about him, what joy this gives. This is how we should try to love God, and every time His name is mentioned, it should fill our heart and soul with endless warmth. God should always be in our minds, when in fact we think of Him only occasionally.

As for loving God with all our strength, this is possible for us only if with conscious intention we reject from ourselves everything that is not God’s in us; by an effort of will we must constantly turn ourselves to God - both when we pray (then it is easier, because in prayer we are already focused on God), and when we do something (which requires training, because in this case we are focused on some that material achievement which must be dedicated to God with special effort).

The Magi have come a long way, and no one knows what difficulties they had to overcome. Each of us travels just like them. They carried gifts: gold for the King, incense for God and myrrh for the man who was about to suffer death. Where can we get gold, frankincense and myrrh - we who owe God for everything? We know that everything we have is given to us by God and is not even ours forever or securely. Everything can be taken from us except love, and this makes love the only thing we can give. Everything else - members of our body, mind, property - can be taken from us by force; but love - there is no way to get it from us unless we give it ourselves. In relation to our love, we are as free as we are not free in any of the other manifestations of our soul or body. And although at the core even love is a gift from God, because we ourselves cannot cause it in ourselves, however, when we have it, it is the only thing we can refuse or give. In “The Diary of a Country Priest,” J. Bernanos says that we can give God our pride: “Give your pride along with everything else, give it all.” Pride given in this way turns into a gift of love, and every gift of love is pleasing to God.

Love your enemies, bless those who hate you

(Matthew 5:44) is a commandment, the fulfillment of which may be more or less easy for us; but forgiving people who cause suffering to someone we love is a completely different matter. Here it may seem that you are committing betrayal. And yet, the greater our love for someone who suffers, the more we are able to share the suffering and forgive, and in this sense, the greatest love is achieved when we, together with Rabbi Egel Michael, can say: “I am my beloved,” “I and my beloved is one.” As long as we say “I” and “he,” we do not share suffering and cannot accept it. At the foot of the Cross, the Mother of God did not stand in tears, as is often depicted in Western painting; She achieved such complete unity with Her Son that She had nothing to resist. She went through the crucifixion with Christ; She experienced her own death. The Mother completed what she began on the day of the bringing of Christ to the temple, when She gave Her Son. Alone among all the sons of Israel, He was accepted as a blood sacrifice. And She, who brought Him then, accepted the consequences of the rite performed by Her, which became reality. And just as He was then one with Her, so now She was completely one with Him, and She had nothing to resist.

Through love we become one with the one we love, and love allows us to share without a trace not only suffering, but also our attitude towards suffering and those who cause it. It is impossible to imagine the Mother of God or the disciple John protesting against what was the clear will of the crucified Son of God. No one takes My life from Me, but I myself give it

(John 10:18). He died voluntarily, by His consent, for the salvation of the world; His death was this salvation, and therefore those who believed in Him and wanted to be one with Him could share the suffering of His death, could go through the passions with Him, but could not reject them, could not turn against the crowd that crucified Christ, because this crucifixion was the will of Christ Himself.

We can resist someone's suffering, we can rebel against someone's death, either when the person himself, whether rightly or wrongly, opposes them, or when we do not share his intentions and his attitude towards suffering; but in this case, our love for this person is insufficient love and creates division. This is the kind of love that Peter showed when Christ, on the road to Jerusalem, told His disciples that he was going to die. Peter called Him away and began to rebuke Him,

but Christ answered:
Get away from Me, Satan, because you think not about the things of God, but about the things of men
(Mark 8:32). We can imagine that the wife of the thief crucified to the left of Christ was full of the same protest against the death of her husband as he was; in this sense they were completely united, but both were wrong.

To share with Christ His suffering, crucifixion, death means to accept unconditionally all these events in the same mood as He, that is, to accept them voluntarily, to suffer together with the Man of Sorrows, to remain here in silence - the silence of Christ Himself, broken only with a few decisive words, in the silence of true communication; not in a pitying silence, but in a silence of compassion that makes us capable of growing into complete unity with the other, so that there is no longer one and the other, but one life and one death.

Throughout history, people have repeatedly witnessed persecution and were not afraid, but shared suffering without protest: for example, Sophia, the mother who stood next to each of her daughters, Faith, Hope and Love, inspiring them to death, or many other martyrs who they helped each other, but never turned against their tormentors. The spirit of martyrdom can be illustrated by a number of examples. The first example expresses the very spirit of martyrdom, its attitude: the spirit of love, which cannot be broken by suffering or injustice. The priest, who was imprisoned very young and was released as a broken man, was asked what was left of him, and he answered: “There is nothing left of me, they literally erased everything, only love remained.” Such words indicate the correct attitude of the speaker, and anyone who shares his tragedy with him must share his unshakable love.

Here is an example of a man who returned from Buchenwald, and when asked about himself, said that his suffering was nothing compared to his sorrow for the unfortunate German youths who could be so cruel, and that he did not find peace thinking about their condition shower. His concern was not for himself (and he spent four years there) and not for the countless people suffering and dying around him, but for his tormentors. Those who suffered were with Christ; those who were cruel did not.

The third example is a prayer written by a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp:

Peace to all people of evil will! Let all revenge, all call for punishment and retribution cease... Crimes have overflowed the cup, the human mind is no longer able to contain them. Countless hosts of martyrs...

Therefore, do not place their suffering on the scales of Your justice. Lord, do not turn them against their tormentors with a terrible accusation in order to exact terrible retribution from them. Give them something different! Put on the scales, in defense of executioners, informers, traitors and all people of evil will - the courage, spiritual strength of the tortured, their humility, their high nobility, their constant internal struggle and invincible hope that dried up tears, their love, their tormented, broken hearts, remaining steadfast and faithful in the face of death itself, even in moments of extreme weakness... Put all this, Lord, before Your eyes for the forgiveness of sins, as a ransom, for the sake of the triumph of righteousness, take into account good, not evil!

And may we remain in the memory of our enemies not as their victims, not as a terrible nightmare, not as ghosts relentlessly pursuing them, but as assistants in their struggle to eradicate the rampantness of their criminal passions. We don't want anything more from them. And when all this is over, grant us to live as people among people, and may peace return to our tormented land - peace to people of good will and everyone else...

One Russian bishop said that for a Christian to die as a martyr is a special advantage, because no one except a martyr will be able to stand in front of God’s Judgment Throne at the Last Judgment and say: “According to Your word and example, I have forgiven; You have nothing more to collect from them.” This means that the one who has suffered martyrdom in Christ, whose love did not waver in suffering, acquires the unconditional power of forgiveness over those who caused suffering. This also applies on a much more mundane level, on the level of everyday life; anyone who suffers the slightest injustice on the part of another can forgive or refuse forgiveness. But this is a double-edged sword; if we do not forgive, then we ourselves will not receive forgiveness.

End of introductory fragment.