Standing
with the Mind in the Heart Before God
Prayer has been called
the breath of the soul. In the same way that the body needs proper daily
nourishment and exercise to maintain a healthy state, and the mind needs
productive stimulation to learn and develop, the soul needs prayer to
grow and thrive. Prayer keeps the soul properly oriented towards God
in the same way that a compass keeps a ship at sea oriented toward its
destination. When a vessel leaves port and heads out into the open seas
it is not sufficient for the captain to set his course heading only
once. Constant course corrections are required to counteract the effect
of the waves, winds, and currents that nudge it constantly off course.
Likewise, prayer helps us maintain a constant heading when the distractions
of life, temptations, and apathy blow us off course.
Prayer also serves
to give our lives a spiritual context. A story can illustrate this
point. A young executive boards a subway train one evening to begin
his daily journey home. He is consumed with the demands of his stressful
job and the briefcase full of work he carries with him. As he settles
into his seat and opens his laptop he becomes aware of a well-dressed
man across the aisle from him and the two small children accompanying
him. The children are restless and noisy and soon begin to tax the
patience of the young executive. Exasperated after several miles of
fruitless attempts to concentrate on his work, he looks up at the
well-dressed man and, making no effort to conceal his annoyance, asks
him to keep his children quiet. The well-dressed man replies as if
from a distance and relates to the young executive that he and his
children are returning from the funeral service of his wife and their
mother and that he is somewhat out of sorts, nevertheless promising
to keep his children quieter.
Greatly chagrined,
the young executive undergoes a radical paradigm shift. The context
of his ride home that evening changes dramatically. No longer concerned
about his workload, his attention is immediately focused on how he
can assist the grieving father and his children.
As we move throughout
the events of our days, it is easy for us to get side-tracked from
the context that God intends to keep always before us, that of our
abiding in His love and allowing Him to make us instruments of His
love to those around us. Daily prayer helps us to restore that proper
context.
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Historically, Christians
have been encouraged to pray at least three times a day, morning, noonday,
and evening. Specific prayers have been developed around these times
as they relate to our own passage through time. So, for example, upon
waking in the morning we remember the prayer of St. Basil that begins:
"As I rise from sleep I thank you O Holy Trinity..."
We also remember
the savings events of our Lord's life-giving Passion in time when,
for example, we pray at mid-day" "O Lord Who at this hour stretched
forth Your hands for suffering..."
Other appropriate
times to pray during the day can be before meals, during breaks at
work, while driving in our cars — something we do so frequently
that it affords abundant daily prayer time — and whenever else
the need arises. As we work on creating a context of prayer throughout
our day, we will find more and more occasions for prayer.
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When the disciples asked
the Lord to teach them to pray, He responded by teaching them the Lord's
Prayer. This prayer has become the cornerstone and model of Christian
prayer since that time. It contains all the essential elements of a
healthy prayer life; praise and adoration, confession, supplication,
and thanksgiving. The ancient Jewish prayer practice encouraged prayer
to God seven times a day, and the early Church taught that the Lord's
Prayer should be said at least three times daily.
Praying the Lord's
Prayer morning, noon, and evening constitutes a good beginning towards
establishing a daily rule of prayer. This can be expanded to include
the Trisagion prayers (in the Eastern Orthodox tradition), the most
basic element of liturgical prayer. This set of prayers begins with
the prayer to the Holy Spirit: "O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit
of Truth, Who are in all places and filling all things, treasury of
blessings and the Giver of Life, come and abide in us, and cleanse
us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One."
The Trisagion prayer
continues: "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us"
(three times), and ends with the Lords Prayer.
Daily prayers can
be further augmented with the inclusion of the Nicene Creed, Psalm
51, David's beautiful prayer of confession, and prayers appropriate
to the time of day. There are general petitions which help us frame
our petitions to God. They include prayers for the Church, our spiritual
and temporal leaders, armed forces and civil authorities, our city,
family members, god-children, friends, the poor, homeless, aged, those
under persecution, ourselves, and our departed loved ones. This general
petition gives shape and constancy to our daily prayers by reminding
us of our connectedness to the Church, our family, and society. It
also helps keep our petitions from degenerating into a laundry-list
of rather petty concerns. It is also vital to our spiritual health
to include time to thank God for the specific blessings He has brought
about in our lives. These thanksgivings can be spontaneous when our
hearts swell with joy at some unexpected blessing. They also serve
to remind us of God's presence in our lives over the years when things
seem bleak to us.
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St. Theophan the Recluse,
a nineteenth century Russian saint, wrote that prayer is standing with
the mind in the heart before God. Ultimately, prayer is not about words,
whether formal or extemporaneous. Rather, it is the state of being
in God's presence. The Patristic tradition of the Church teaches us
that prayer can eventually become infused prayer, wherein we
learn to "pray without ceasing," as St. Paul enjoins us.
The end of spoken
prayer is silence. Silence is an unwelcome phenomenon in modern life
and we have effectively eradicated it from society. Television, radio,
media, 24-hour news channels, Muzak, cell-phones, pagers, wireless
internet; all of these modern contrivances ensure that we need never
face silence. However, Christians are encouraged to include as part
of their daily prayer life a Rule of Silence. This helps us to maintain
a disciplined mind and gives us time to hear God speak to us in the
ordinary day-to-day activities of our lives.
In summary, a daily
rule of prayer is essential for the health of our soul. A rule of
prayer helps to keep us oriented toward the Kingdom of God and creates
a Christian context to our lives. The tradition of the Church in terms
of a minimum standard is three times a day: morning, noon, and evening.
A rule of prayer can include but is not limited to; the Trisagion
prayers, prayers appropriate to the day, the Nicene Creed, Ps. 51
as a daily confession, and a general petition to which should be added
our own specific needs. Consider beginning with the Morning and Evening
prayers offered in this section, and eventually adding either First
Hour or Third Hour (the Noon Office). A rule of prayer should also
include a time of silence. And a fruitful relationship with one's
pastor and spiritual guidance is essential in the development of a
rule of prayer.
Prayer is the bedrock
of our spiritual life. Without it, the soul languishes and withers.
With it, the soul can breathe and flourish. Resources dedicated to
prayer abound, including those in the Spirituality section of our
web store which offers numerous books by gifted theological and spiritual
writers.
"Prayer is the living
water, by means of which the soul quenches its thirst." [1]
Credits
Fr. Apostolos Hill
[1] Father
John of Kronstadt, Spiritual Counsels, edited by W. Jardine Grisbrooke,
St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY, 1989, p. 28.
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LITURGIE
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