Contents
From the publisher
1. Prayer meeting
2. Prayer-dialogue
3. When should you pray? 4. Short prayers
5. Prayer and life
6. Orthodox prayer book
7. Prayer rule
8. Danger of addiction
9. Body position during prayer
10. Prayer before icons
11. Prayer for others
12. Prayer for the departed
13. Prayer for enemies
14. Family prayer
15. Church prayer
16. Why do you need to go to church? 17. Tenderness and tears
18. Fight against extraneous thoughts
19. Jesus Prayer
20. What is good about the Jesus Prayer? 21. Practice the Jesus Prayer
22. Books about the Jesus Prayer
23. “Our Father, who art in Heaven”
24. “Hallowed be thy name”
25. “Thy kingdom come”
26. “Thy will be done as it is in Heaven and on earth”
27. “Give us this day our daily bread”
28. “And forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors.”
29. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
30. Prayer to the Mother of God
31. Prayer to the saints
32. It is impossible to live without prayer

From the publisher

Эта небольшая книга содержит запись цикла телевизионных передач, выходивших в эфир весной 1999 года по благословению Святейшего Патриарха Московского и всея Руси Алексия II под общим названием «Мир вашему дому». The cycle consists of 32 programs and is dedicated to the topic of prayer.

What is prayer? Why do you need to pray? How to learn prayer? Prayer is like a conversation with God. Prayer as overcoming the distance between God and man. The Lord’s Prayer. Jesus Prayer. Prayers to the Mother of God and the saints. Prayer for the living and the dead. These are the main themes revealed by Abbot Hilarion (Alfeev).

Пользуясь простым и доступным языком, игумен Иларион обращается прежде всего к тем, кто только вступил на путь к Богу и к храму и кто на этом пути делает первые шаги.

1. Prayer meeting

Prayer is a meeting with the Living God. Christianity gives a person direct access to God, who hears a person, helps him, loves him. This is the fundamental difference between Christianity, for example, and Buddhism, where during meditation the person praying deals with a certain impersonal super-being into which he is immersed and in which he dissolves, but he does not feel God as a living Person. In Christian prayer, a person feels the presence of the Living God. In Christianity, God who became Man is revealed to us. When we stand in front of the icon of Jesus Christ, we contemplate God Incarnate. We know that God cannot be imagined, described, depicted in an icon or painting. But it is possible to depict God who became Man, the way He appeared to people. Through Jesus Christ as Man we discover God. This revelation occurs in prayer addressed to Christ. Through prayer we learn that God is involved in everything that happens in our lives. Therefore, conversation with God should not be the background of our life, but its main content. There are many barriers between man and God that can only be overcome through prayer. People often ask: why do we need to pray, ask God for something, if God already knows what we need? To this I would answer this way. We do not pray to ask God for something. Yes, in some cases we ask Him for specific help in certain everyday circumstances. But this should not be the main content of prayer. God cannot be just an “auxiliary means” in our earthly affairs. The main content of prayer should always remain the very presence of God, the very meeting with Him. You need to pray in order to be with God, to come into contact with God, to feel the Presence of God. However, meeting God in prayer does not always happen. After all, even when meeting a person, we are not always able to overcome the barriers that separate us, to descend into the depths; often our communication with people is limited to only the superficial level: So it is in prayer. Sometimes we feel that between us and God there is like a blank wall, that God does not hear us. But we must understand that this barrier was not set by God: we ourselves erect it with our sins. According to one Western medieval theologian, God is always near us, but we are far from Him, God always hears us, but we do not hear Him, God is always inside us, but we are outside, God is at home in us, but we are strangers in Him. Let us remember this when we prepare for prayer. Let us remember that every time we rise to pray, we come into contact with the Living God.

2. Prayer-dialogue

Prayer is a dialogue. It includes not only our appeal to God, but also the response of God Himself. As in any dialogue, in prayer it is important not only to speak out, to speak out, but also to hear the answer. God’s answer does not always come directly in the moments of prayer; sometimes it happens a little later. It happens, for example, that we ask God for immediate help, but it comes only after a few hours or days. But we understand that this happened precisely because we asked God for help in prayer. Through prayer we can learn a lot about God. When praying, it is very important to be prepared for the fact that God will reveal himself to us, but He may turn out to be different than we imagined Him to be. We often make the mistake of approaching God with our own ideas about Him, and these ideas obscure from us the real image of the Living God, which God Himself can reveal to us. Often people create some kind of idol in their minds and pray to this idol. This dead, artificially created idol becomes an obstacle, a barrier between the Living God and us humans. “Create a false image of God for yourself and try to pray to him. Create for yourself the image of God as an unmerciful and cruel Judge – and try to pray to him with trust, with love,” notes Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. So, we must be prepared for the fact that God will reveal himself to us differently than we imagine Him to be. Therefore, when starting to pray, we need to renounce all the images that our imagination, human fantasy creates. God’s answer may come in different ways, but prayer is never unanswered. If we do not hear an answer, it means that something is wrong in ourselves, it means that we have not yet sufficiently tuned in to the way that is necessary to meet God. There is a device called a tuning fork, which is used by piano tuners; This device produces a clear “A” sound. And the strings of the piano must be tensioned so that the sound they produce is in exact accordance with the sound of the tuning fork. As long as the A string is not properly tensioned, no matter how much you hit the keys, the tuning fork will remain silent. But at the moment when the string reaches the required degree of tension, the tuning fork, this lifeless metal object, suddenly begins to sound. Having tuned one “A” string, the master then tunes “A” in other octaves (in a piano, each key strikes several strings, this creates a special volume of sound). Then he tunes B, C, etc., one octave after another, until finally the entire instrument is tuned to the tuning fork. This should happen with us in prayer. We must tune in to God, tune in to Him throughout our lives, all the strings of our soul. When we tune our lives to God, learn to fulfill His commandments, when the Gospel becomes our moral and spiritual law, and we begin to live in accordance with the commandments of God, then we will begin to feel how our soul responds to the presence of God in prayer, like a tuning fork that responds to a precisely stretched string.

3. When should you pray?

When and for how long should you pray? The Apostle Paul says: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). Saint Gregory the Theologian writes: “You need to remember God more often than you breathe.” Ideally, the entire life of a Christian should be permeated with prayer. Many troubles, sorrows and misfortunes occur precisely because people forget about God. After all, there are believers among criminals, but at the moment of committing a crime they do not think about God. It is difficult to imagine a person who would commit murder or theft with the thought of an all-seeing God, from whom no evil can be hidden. And every sin is committed by a person precisely when he does not remember God. Most people are unable to pray throughout the day, so we need to find some time, even if it is short, to remember God.

In the morning you wake up thinking about what you have to do that day. Before you start working and plunge into the inevitable hustle and bustle, devote at least a few minutes to God. Stand before God and say: “Lord, You gave me this day, help me spend it without sin, without vice, save me from all evil and misfortune.” And call on God’s blessing for the beginning of the day. Throughout the day, try to remember God more often. If you feel bad, turn to Him with prayer: “Lord, I feel bad, help me.” If you feel good, tell God: “Lord, glory to You, I thank You for this joy.” If you are worried about someone, tell God: “Lord, I am worried about him, I hurt for him, help him.” And so throughout the day – no matter what happens to you, turn it into prayer. When the day comes to an end and you are getting ready for bed, remember the past day, thank God for all the good things that happened, and repent for all the unworthy acts and sins that you committed that day. Ask God for help and blessings for the coming night. If you learn to pray like this every day, you will soon notice how much more fulfilling your whole life will be. People often justify their reluctance to pray by saying that they are too busy and overloaded with things to do. Yes, many of us live in a rhythm that ancient people did not live in. Sometimes we have to do many things during the day. But there are always some pauses in life. For example, we stand at a stop and wait for a tram – three to five minutes. We go on the subway – twenty to thirty minutes, dial a phone number and hear busy beeps – a few more minutes. Let us at least use these pauses for prayer, let them not be wasted time.

4. Short prayers

People often ask: how should one pray, in what words, in what language? Some even say: “I don’t pray because I don’t know how, I don’t know prayers.” No special skill is needed to pray. You can simply talk to God. At divine services in the Orthodox Church we use a special language – Church Slavonic. But in personal prayer, when we are alone with God, there is no need for any special language. We can pray to God in the language in which we speak with people, in which we think. The prayer should be very simple. The Monk Isaac the Syrian said: “Let the whole fabric of your prayer be a little complicated. One word from a publican saved him, and one word from a thief on the cross made him heir to the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Let us remember the parable of the publican and the Pharisee: “two men entered the temple to pray: one was a Pharisee, and the other was a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this: God! I thank You that I am not like other people, robbers, offenders, adulterers, or like this publican: I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of everything I acquire. The publican, standing in the distance, did not even dare to raise his eyes to heaven; but, striking himself on the chest, he said: God! be merciful to me, a sinner! (Luke 18:10–13). And this short prayer saved him. Let us also remember the thief who was crucified with Jesus and who said to Him: “Remember me, Lord, when you come into Your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). This alone was enough for him to enter heaven. The prayer can be extremely short. If you are just starting out on your prayer journey, start with very short prayers—ones that you can focus on. God doesn’t need words – He needs a person’s heart. Words are secondary, but the feeling and mood with which we approach God is of primary importance. Approaching God without a sense of reverence or with absent-mindedness, when during prayer our mind wanders to the side, is much more dangerous than saying the wrong word in prayer. Scattered prayer has neither meaning nor value. A simple law applies here: if the words of prayer do not reach our hearts, they will not reach God either. As they sometimes say, such a prayer will not rise higher than the ceiling of the room in which we pray, but it must reach heaven. Therefore, it is very important that every word of prayer is deeply experienced by us. If we are not able to concentrate on the long prayers that are contained in the books of the Orthodox Church – prayer books, we will try our hand at short prayers: “Lord, have mercy,” “Lord, save,” “Lord, help me,” “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” One ascetic said that if we could, with all the strength of feeling, with all our hearts, with all our soul, say just one prayer, “Lord, have mercy,” this would be enough for salvation. But the problem is that, as a rule, we cannot say it with all our hearts, we cannot say it with our whole lives. Therefore, in order to be heard by God, we are verbose. Let us remember that God thirsts for our heart, not our words. And if we turn to Him with all our hearts, we will certainly receive an answer.

5. Prayer and life

Prayer is associated not only with the joys and gains that occur thanks to it, but also with painstaking daily work. Sometimes prayer brings great joy, refreshes a person, gives him new strength and new opportunities. But it very often happens that a person is not in the mood for prayer, he does not want to pray. So, prayer should not depend on our mood. Prayer is work. The Monk Silouan of Athos said: “Praying is shedding blood.” As in any work, it takes effort on the part of a person, sometimes enormous, so that even in those moments when you don’t feel like praying, you force yourself to do so. And such a feat will pay off a hundredfold.

But why do we sometimes not feel like praying? I think the main reason here is that our life does not correspond to prayer, is not tuned to it. As a child, when I studied at a music school, I had an excellent violin teacher: his lessons were sometimes very interesting, and sometimes very difficult, and it depended not on his mood, but on how well or poorly I prepared for the lesson. If I studied a lot, learned some kind of play and came to class fully armed, then the lesson went in one breath, and the teacher was pleased, and so was I. If I was lazy all week and came unprepared, then the teacher was upset, and I was sick of the fact that the lesson was not going as I would like. It’s the same with prayer. If our life is not a preparation for prayer, then it can be very difficult for us to pray. Prayer is an indicator of our spiritual life, a kind of litmus test. We must structure our lives in such a way that they correspond to prayer. When, saying the prayer “Our Father,” we say: “Lord, Thy will be done,” this means that we must always be ready to do the will of God, even if this will contradicts our human will. When we say to God: “And forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors,” we thereby undertake the obligation to forgive people, to forgive them their debts, because if we do not forgive our debts, then, according to the logic of this prayer, God will not forgive us our debts. So one must correspond to the other; life is to prayer and prayer is to life. Without this conformity we will have no success either in life or in prayer. Let us not be embarrassed if we find it difficult to pray. This means that God sets new tasks for us, and we must solve them both in prayer and in life. If we learn to live according to the Gospel, then we will learn to pray according to the Gospel. Then our life will become complete, spiritual, truly Christian.

6. Orthodox prayer book

You can pray in different ways, for example, in your own words. Such prayer should constantly accompany a person. Morning and evening, day and night, a person can turn to God with the simplest words coming from the depths of the heart.

But there are also prayer books that were compiled by saints in ancient times; they need to be read in order to learn prayer. These prayers are contained in the “Orthodox Prayer Book”. There you will find morning, evening, repentance, thanksgiving prayers, you will find various canons, akathists and much more. Having bought the “Orthodox Prayer Book”, do not be alarmed that there are so many prayers in it. You don’t have to read them all. If you read the morning prayers quickly, it will take about twenty minutes. But if you read them thoughtfully, carefully, responding with your heart to every word, then reading can take a whole hour. Therefore, if you do not have time, do not try to read all the morning prayers, it is better to read one or two, but so that every word of them reaches your heart. Before the section “Morning Prayers” it says: “Before you begin to pray, stand a little until your feelings subside, and then say with attention and reverence; “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen”. Wait a little longer and only then start praying.” This pause, the “minute of silence” before beginning the prayer, is very important. Prayer must grow from the silence of our heart. People who “read” their morning and evening prayers every day are constantly tempted to read the “rule” as soon as possible in order to begin their daily activities. Often, such reading eludes the main thing – the content of the prayer. The prayer book contains many petitions addressed to God, which are repeated several times. For example, you may come across a recommendation to read “Lord, have mercy” twelve or forty times. Some perceive this as some kind of formality and read this prayer at high speed. By the way, in Greek “Lord, have mercy” sounds like “Kyrie, eleison.” In the Russian language there is a verb “playing tricks”, which came precisely from the fact that the psalm-readers on the choir very quickly repeated many times: “Kyrie, eleison”, that is, they did not pray, but “played tricks”. So, in prayer there is no need to fool around. No matter how many times you read this prayer, it must be said with attention, reverence and love, with complete dedication. There is no need to try to read out all the prayers. It’s better to devote twenty minutes to one prayer, “Our Father,” repeating it several times, thinking about every word. It is not so easy for a person who is not accustomed to praying for a long time to read out a large number of prayers at once, but there is no need to strive for this. It is important to be imbued with the spirit that breathes the prayers of the Fathers of the Church. This is the main benefit that can be derived from the prayers contained in the Orthodox Prayer Book.

7. Prayer Rule

What is a prayer rule? These are prayers that a person reads regularly, daily. Everyone’s prayer rules are different. For some, the morning or evening rule takes several hours, for others – a few minutes. Everything depends on a person’s spiritual make-up, the degree to which he is rooted in prayer and the time he has at his disposal. It is very important that a person follows the prayer rule, even the shortest one, so that there is regularity and constancy in prayer. But the rule should not turn into a formality. The experience of many believers shows that when constantly reading the same prayers, their words become discolored, lose their freshness, and a person, getting used to them, stops focusing on them. This danger must be avoided at all costs. I remember when I took monastic vows (I was twenty years old at the time), I turned to an experienced confessor for advice and asked him what prayer rule I should have. He said: “You must read morning and evening prayers, three canons and one akathist every day. No matter what happens, even if you are very tired, you must read them. And even if you read them hastily and inattentively, it doesn’t matter, the main thing is that the rule is read.” I tried it. Things didn’t work out. Daily reading of the same prayers led to the fact that these texts quickly became boring. In addition, every day I spent many hours in church at services that spiritually nourished me, nourished me, and inspired me. And reading the three canons and the akathist turned into some kind of unnecessary “appendage”. I started looking for other advice that was more suitable for me. And I found it in the works of St. Theophan the Recluse, a remarkable ascetic of the 19th century. He advised the prayer rule to be calculated not by the number of prayers, but by the time that we are ready to devote to God. For example, we can make it a rule to pray in the morning and evening for half an hour, but this half hour must be completely given to God. And it is not so important whether during these minutes we read all the prayers or just one, or perhaps we devote one evening entirely to reading the Psalter, the Gospel or prayer in our own words. The main thing is that we are focused on God, so that our attention does not slip away and that every word reaches our heart. This advice worked for me. However, I do not rule out that the advice I received from my confessor would be more suitable for others. Here a lot depends on the individual person. It seems to me that for a person living in the world, not only fifteen, but even five minutes of morning and evening prayer, if, of course, it is said with attention and feeling, is enough to be a real Christian. It is only important that the thought always corresponds to the words, the heart responds to the words of prayer, and the whole life corresponds to the prayer. Try, following the advice of St. Theophan the Recluse, to set aside some time for prayer during the day and for daily fulfillment of the prayer rule. And you will see that it will bear fruit very soon.

8. Danger of addiction

Every believer faces the danger of becoming accustomed to the words of prayers and becoming distracted during prayer. To prevent this from happening, a person must constantly struggle with himself or, as the Holy Fathers said, “stand guard over his mind,” learn to “enclose the mind in the words of prayer.” How to achieve this? First of all, you cannot allow yourself to utter words when both your mind and heart do not respond to them. If you begin to read a prayer, but in the middle of it your attention wanders, return to the place where your attention wandered and repeat the prayer. If necessary, repeat it three times, five, ten times, but ensure that your whole being responds to it. One day in church a woman turned to me: “Father, I have been reading prayers for many years, both in the morning and in the evening, but the more I read them, the less I like them, the less I feel like a believer in God. I’m so tired of the words of these prayers that I no longer respond to them.” I told her: “Don’t read morning and evening prayers.” She was surprised: “So how?” I repeated: “Come on, don’t read them. If your heart does not respond to them, you must find another way to pray. How long do your morning prayers take you?” – “Twenty minutes.” – “Are you ready to devote twenty minutes to God every morning?” – “Ready.” “Then take one morning prayer – of your choice – and read it for twenty minutes. Read one of its phrases, be silent, think about what it means, then read another phrase, be silent, think about its content, repeat it again, think whether your life corresponds to it, whether you are ready to live so that this prayer becomes the reality of your life. You say: “Lord, do not deprive me of Your heavenly blessings.” What does this mean? Or: “Lord, save me from eternal torment.” What is the danger of these eternal torments, are you really afraid of them, do you really hope to avoid them? The woman began to pray like this, and soon her prayers began to come to life. You need to learn prayer. You need to work on yourself; you cannot allow yourself to utter empty words while standing in front of an icon. The quality of prayer is also affected by what precedes it and what follows it. It is impossible to pray with concentration in a state of irritation if, for example, before starting prayer we quarreled with someone or yelled at someone. This means that in the time that precedes prayer, we must internally prepare for it, freeing ourselves from what prevents us from praying, tuning into a prayerful mood. Then it will be easier for us to pray. But, of course, even after prayer one should not immediately plunge into vanity. After finishing your prayer, give yourself some more time to hear God’s answer, so that something in you can be heard and respond to the presence of God. Prayer is only valuable when we feel that thanks to it something changes in us, that we begin to live differently. Prayer must bear fruit, and these fruits must be tangible.

9. Body position during prayer

In the practice of prayer of the Ancient Church, various postures, gestures, and body positions were used. They prayed while standing, on their knees, in the so-called pose of the prophet Elijah, that is, kneeling with their head bowed to the ground, they prayed while lying on the floor with outstretched arms, or standing with raised arms. When praying, bows were used – to the ground and from the waist, as well as the sign of the cross. Of the variety of traditional body positions during prayer, only a few remain in modern practice. This is primarily a standing prayer and a kneeling prayer, accompanied by the sign of the cross and bows. Why is it even important for the body to participate in prayer? Why can’t you just pray in the spirit – lying in bed, sitting in a chair? In principle, you can pray both lying down and sitting: in special cases, in case of illness, for example, or when traveling, we do this. But in ordinary circumstances, when praying, it is necessary to use those body positions that have been preserved in the tradition of the Orthodox Church. The fact is that the body and spirit in a person are inextricably linked, and the spirit cannot be completely autonomous from the body. It is no coincidence that the ancient Fathers said: “If the body has not labored in prayer, then prayer will remain fruitless.” Walk into an Orthodox church for a Lenten service and you will see how from time to time all the parishioners simultaneously fall to their knees, then get up, fall again and get up again. And so on throughout the service. And you will feel that there is a special intensity in this service, that people are not just praying, they are working in prayer, carrying out the feat of prayer. And go to a Protestant church. During the entire service, those praying sit: prayers are read, spiritual songs are sung, but people just sit, do not cross themselves, do not bow, and at the end of the service they get up and leave. Compare these two ways of prayer in church – Orthodox and Protestant – and you will feel the difference. This difference lies in the intensity of prayer. People pray to the same God, but they pray differently. And in many ways this difference is determined precisely by the position of the praying person’s body. Bowing greatly helps prayer. Those of you who have the opportunity to make at least a few bows and prostrations during your prayer rule in the morning and evening will undoubtedly feel how beneficial this is spiritually. The body becomes more collected, and when the body is collected, it is quite natural to concentrate the mind and attention. During prayer, we should from time to time make the sign of the cross, especially saying “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” as well as pronouncing the name of the Savior. This is necessary, since the cross is the instrument of our salvation. When we make the sign of the cross, the power of God is palpably present in us.

10. Prayer before icons

In prayer, the external should not replace the internal. The external can contribute to the internal, but it can also hinder it. Traditional body positions during prayer undoubtedly contribute to the state of prayer, but in no way can they replace the main content of prayer. We must not forget that some body positions are not accessible to everyone. For example, many older people are simply not able to prostrate. There are many people who cannot stand for long. I have heard from older people: “I don’t go to church for services because I can’t stand,” or: “I don’t pray to God because my legs hurt.” God doesn’t need legs, but a heart. If you cannot pray standing, pray sitting; if you cannot pray while sitting, pray lying down. As one ascetic said, “it is better to think about God while sitting than to think about your feet while standing.” Aids are important, but they cannot replace content. One of the important aids during prayer is icons. Orthodox Christians, as a rule, pray before the icons of the Savior, the Mother of God, saints, and before the image of the Holy Cross. And Protestants pray without icons. And you can see the difference between Protestant and Orthodox prayer. In the Orthodox tradition, prayer is more specific. Contemplating the icon of Christ, we seem to be looking through a window that reveals another world to us, and behind this icon stands the One to whom we pray. But it is very important that the icon does not replace the object of prayer, that we do not turn to the icon in prayer and do not try to imagine the one who is depicted on the icon. An icon is only a reminder, only a symbol of the reality that stands behind it. As the Fathers of the Church said, “the honor given to the image goes back to the prototype.” When we approach the icon of the Savior or the Mother of God and kiss it, that is, we kiss it, we thereby express our love for the Savior or the Mother of God. An icon should not turn into an idol. And there should be no illusion that God is exactly as He is depicted in the icon. There is, for example, an icon of the Holy Trinity, which is called the “New Testament Trinity”: it is non-canonical, that is, it does not correspond to church rules, but in some churches it can be seen. In this icon, God the Father is depicted as a gray-haired old man, Jesus Christ as a young man, and the Holy Spirit as a dove. Under no circumstances should one be tempted to imagine that the Holy Trinity looks exactly like this. The Holy Trinity is a God whom human imagination cannot imagine. And, turning to God – the Holy Trinity in prayer, we must renounce all kinds of fantasy. Our imagination must be free from images, our mind must be crystal clear, and our heart must be ready to accommodate the Living God.

11. Prayer for others

We must pray not only for ourselves, but also for our neighbors. Every morning and every evening, as well as while in church, we must remember our relatives, loved ones, friends, enemies and offer prayer to God for everyone. This is very important, because people are bound together by inextricable bonds, and often the prayer of one person for another saves the other from great danger. There was such a case in the life of Saint Gregory the Theologian. When he was still a young man, unbaptized, he crossed the Mediterranean Sea by ship. Suddenly a strong storm began, which lasted for many days, and no one had any hope of salvation; the ship was almost flooded. Gregory prayed to God and during prayer he saw his mother, who at that time was on the shore, but, as it turned out later, she sensed danger and prayed intensely for her son. The ship, contrary to all expectations, safely reached the shore. Gregory always remembered that he owed his deliverance to his mother’s prayers. Someone might say: “Well, another story from the lives of the ancient saints. Why don’t similar things happen today?” I can assure you that this is still happening today. I know many people who, through the prayers of loved ones, were saved from death or great danger. And there have been many cases in my life when I escaped danger through the prayers of my mother or other people, for example, my parishioners. Once I was in a car accident and, one might say, miraculously survived, because the car fell into a cliff, turning over several times. There was nothing left of the car, but the driver and I were safe and sound. It happened early in the morning, around five o’clock. When I returned to the church where I served in the evening of the same day, I found several parishioners there who woke up at half past four in the morning, sensing danger, and began to pray for me. Their first question was: “Father, what happened to you?” I think that through their prayers both I and the man who was driving were saved from trouble. We should pray for our neighbors, not because God does not know how to save them, but because He wants us to participate in saving each other. Of course, He Himself knows what every person needs – both us and our neighbors. When we pray for our neighbors, this does not mean that we want to be more merciful than God. But this means that we want to participate in their salvation. And in prayer we should not forget about the people with whom life has brought us together, and that they pray for us. Each of us in the evening, going to bed, can say to God: “Lord, through the prayers of all those who love me, save me.” Let us remember the living connection between us and our neighbors, and let us always remember each other in prayer.

12. Prayer for the departed

We must pray not only for those of our neighbors who are alive, but also for those who have already passed on to another world. Prayer for the deceased is necessary first of all for us, because when a loved one passes away, we have a natural feeling of loss, and from this we suffer deeply. But that person continues to live, only he lives in another dimension, because he has moved to another world. So that the connection between us and the person who left us does not break, we must pray for him. Then we will feel his presence, feel that he has not left us, that our living connection with him remains. But prayer for the deceased, of course, is also necessary for him, because when a person dies, he passes into another life in order to meet God there and answer for everything he has done in earthly life, good and bad. It is very important that a person on this path be accompanied by the prayers of loved ones – those who remain here on earth, who keep the memory of him. A person who leaves this world is deprived of everything that this world gave him, only his soul remains. All the wealth he owned in life, all that he acquired, remains here. Only the soul goes to another world. And the soul is judged by God according to the law of mercy and justice. If a person has done something evil in life, he has to bear punishment for it. But we, the survivors, can ask God to ease the fate of this person. And the Church believes that the posthumous fate of the deceased is made easier through the prayers of those who pray for him here on earth. The hero of Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov,” Elder Zosima (whose prototype was St. Tikhon of Zadonsk) says this about prayer for the departed: “Every day and whenever you can, repeat to yourself: “Lord, have mercy on all who stand before You today.” For at every hour and every moment thousands of people leave their life on this earth, and their souls stand before the Lord – and how many of them parted with the earth in isolation, unknown to anyone, in sadness and anguish, and no one will regret them… And now, perhaps, from the other end of the earth your prayer will ascend to the Lord for his repose, even if you did not know him at all, and he – you. How touching it was for his soul, standing in fear of the Lord, to feel at that moment that there was a prayer book for him, that there was a human being left on earth and one who loved him. And God will look more mercifully on both of you, for if you have already pitied him so much, then how much more will He, who is infinitely more merciful… And forgive him for your sake.”

13. Prayer for enemies

The need to pray for enemies follows from the very essence of the moral teaching of Jesus Christ. In the pre-Christian era, there was a rule: “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy” (Matthew 5:43). It is in accordance with this rule that most people still live. It is natural for us to love our neighbors – those who do good to us, and to treat with hostility, or even hatred, towards those from whom evil comes. But Christ says that the attitude should be completely different: “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully… and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). During His earthly life, Christ Himself repeatedly set an example of both love for enemies and prayer for enemies. When the Lord was on the cross and the soldiers were nailing Him, He experienced terrible torment, incredible pain, but He prayed: “Father! forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). He was thinking at that moment not about Himself, not about the fact that these soldiers were causing Him pain, but about their salvation, for by committing evil, they first of all harmed themselves. We must remember that people who do us harm or treat us with hostility are not bad in themselves. The sin with which they are infected is bad. One must hate sin, and not its carrier – man. As St. John Chrysostom said, “When you see someone doing you harm, hate not him, but the devil who stands behind him.” We must learn to separate a person from the sin he commits. The priest very often observes during confession how sin is actually separated from a person when he repents of it. We must be able to renounce the sinful image of man and remember that all people, including our enemies and those who hate us, are created in the image of God, and it is in this image of God, in those rudiments of good that exist in every person, that we must peer. Why is it necessary to pray for enemies? This is necessary not only for them, but also for us. We must find the strength to make peace with people. Archimandrite Sophrony in his book about the Monk Silouan of Athos says: “Those who hate and reject their brother are flawed in their being, they cannot find the way to God, who loves everyone.” That’s fair. When hatred for a person settles in our hearts, we are unable to approach God. And as long as this feeling remains in us, the path to God is blocked for us. This is why it is necessary to pray for enemies. Every time we approach the Living God, we must be absolutely reconciled with everyone whom we perceive as our enemies. Let us remember what the Lord says: “if you bring your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you… go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23, 24), and another word of the Lord: “Make peace with your adversary quickly, while you are still on the way with him” (Matthew 5:25). “On the way with him” means “in this earthly life.” For if we do not have time to reconcile here with those who hate and offend us, with our enemies, then we will go into the future life unreconciled. And there it will be impossible to make up for what was lost here.

14. Family Prayer

So far we have talked mainly about the personal, individual prayer of a person. Now I would like to say a few words about prayer within the family. Most of our contemporaries live in such a way that family members get together quite rarely, at best twice a day – in the morning for breakfast and in the evening for dinner. During the day, parents are at work, children are at school, and only preschoolers and pensioners remain at home. It is very important that there be some moments in the daily routine when everyone can gather together for prayer. If the family is going to dinner, why not pray together a few minutes before? You can also read prayers and a passage from the Gospel after dinner. Joint prayer strengthens a family, because its life is truly fulfilling and happy only when its members are united not only by family ties, but also by spiritual kinship, a common understanding and worldview. Joint prayer, in addition, has a beneficial effect on each family member, in particular, it greatly helps children. In Soviet times, it was forbidden to raise children in a religious spirit. This was motivated by the fact that children must first grow up, and only then independently choose whether to follow a religious or non-religious path. There is a profound lie in this argument. Because before a person has the opportunity to choose, he must be taught something. And the best age for learning is, of course, childhood. It can be very difficult for someone who has been accustomed to living without prayer since childhood to accustom himself to pray. And a person, raised from childhood in a prayerful, grace-filled spirit, from the first years of his life, who knew about the existence of God and that one can always turn to God, even if he later left the Church, from God, still retained in some depths, in the spiritual recesses, the prayer skills acquired in childhood, a charge of religiosity. And it often happens that people who have left the Church return to God at some stage in their lives precisely because in childhood they were accustomed to prayer. One more thing. Today, many families have older relatives, grandparents, who were raised in a non-religious environment. Even twenty or thirty years ago one could say that church is a place for “grandmothers.” Now it is grandmothers who represent the most irreligious generation, brought up in the 30s and 40s, in the era of “militant atheism.” It is very important that older people find their way to the temple. It is not too late for anyone to turn to God, but those young people who have already found this path must tactfully, gradually, but with great constancy involve their older relatives into the orbit of spiritual life. And through daily family prayer this can be done especially successfully.

15. Church prayer

As the famous theologian of the 20th century, Archpriest Georgy Florovsky, said, a Christian never prays alone: ​​even if he turns to God in his room, closing the door behind him, he still prays as a member of the church community. We are not isolated individuals, we are members of the Church, members of one body. And we are not saved alone, but together with others – with our brothers and sisters. And therefore it is very important that every person has the experience of not only individual prayer, but also church prayer, together with other people.

Church prayer has a very special significance and special meaning. Many of us know from our own experience how difficult it can sometimes be for a person to immerse himself in the element of prayer alone. But when you come to church, you are immersed in the common prayer of many people, and this prayer takes you to some depths, and your prayer merges with the prayer of others.

Human life is like sailing across the sea or ocean. There are, of course, daredevils who, alone, overcoming storms and storms, cross the sea on a yacht. But, as a rule, people, in order to cross the ocean, get together and move on a ship from one shore to the other. The church is a ship in which Christians move together along the path to salvation. And joint prayer is one of the most powerful means for progress on this path.

In the temple, many things contribute to prayer, and above all, worship. The liturgical texts used in the Orthodox Church are unusually rich in content and contain great wisdom. But there is an obstacle that many who come to the Church face—the Church Slavonic language. Now there is a lot of debate about whether to preserve the Slavic language in worship or switch to Russian. It seems to me that if our worship were entirely translated into Russian, much of it would be lost. The Church Slavonic language has great spiritual power, and experience shows that it is not so difficult, not so different from Russian. You just need to make some effort, just as we, if necessary, make an effort to master the language of a particular science, for example, mathematics or physics.

So, in order to learn to pray in church, you need to make some effort, go to church more often, maybe buy basic liturgical books and study them in your free time. And then all the wealth of liturgical language and liturgical texts will be revealed to you, and you will see that worship is a whole school that teaches you not only prayer, but also spiritual life.

16. Why do you need to go to church?

Many people who occasionally visit the temple develop some kind of consumerist attitude towards the church. They come to the temple, for example, before a long journey – to light a candle just in case, so that nothing happens on the road. They come in for two or three minutes, hastily cross themselves several times and, after lighting a candle, leave. Some, entering the temple, say: “I want to pay money so that the priest will pray for such and such,” they pay the money and leave. The priest must pray, but these people themselves do not participate in prayer. This is the wrong attitude. Church is not a Snickers machine: you put a coin in and out comes a piece of candy. Church is the place where you need to come to live and study. If you are experiencing any difficulties or one of your loved ones is sick, do not limit yourself to stopping by and lighting a candle. Come to church for a service, immerse yourself in the element of prayer and, together with the priest and the community, offer your prayer for what worries you. It is very important to attend church regularly. It is good to go to church every Sunday. The Sunday Divine Liturgy, as well as the Liturgy of the Great Feasts, is a time when we can, renouncing our earthly affairs for two hours, immerse ourselves in the element of prayer. It is good to come to church with the whole family to confess and receive communion. If a person learns to live from resurrection to resurrection, in the rhythm of church services, in the rhythm of the Divine Liturgy, then his whole life will change dramatically. First of all, it disciplines. The believer knows that next Sunday he will have to give an answer to God, and he lives differently, does not commit many sins that he could have committed if he had not attended church. In addition, the Divine Liturgy itself is an opportunity to receive Holy Communion, that is, to unite with God not only spiritually, but also physically. And finally, the Divine Liturgy is a comprehensive service, when the entire church community and each of its members can pray about everything that worries, worries or pleases. During the Liturgy, a believer can pray for himself, and for his neighbors, and for his future, repent for sins and ask for God’s blessing for further service. It is very important to learn to fully participate in the Liturgy. There are other services in the Church, for example, the all-night vigil – a preparatory service for communion. You can order a prayer service for a saint or a prayer service for the health of this or that person. But no so-called “private” services, that is, ordered by a person for prayer about some of his specific needs, can replace participation in the Divine Liturgy, because it is the Liturgy that is the center of church prayer, and it is it that should become the center of the spiritual life of every Christian and every Christian family.

17. Tenderness and tears

I would like to say a few words about the spiritual and emotional state that people experience in prayer. Let’s remember Lermontov’s famous poem: In a difficult moment of life. Is there sadness in your heart: One wonderful prayer. I repeat it by heart. There is a power of grace. In the consonance of living words, And an incomprehensible, Holy charm breathes in them. Like a burden, the soul will roll away from the soul, Doubt is far away – And one believes and cries, And so easily, easily… In these beautiful simple words, the great poet described what very often happens to people during prayer. A person repeats the words of prayers, perhaps familiar from childhood, and suddenly he feels some kind of enlightenment, relief, and tears appear. In church language this state is called tenderness. This is the state that is sometimes bestowed upon a person during prayer, when he feels the presence of God more acutely and stronger than usual. This is a spiritual state when the grace of God directly touches our heart. Let us recall an excerpt from Ivan Bunin’s autobiographical book “The Life of Arsenyev,” where Bunin describes his youth and how, while still a high school student, he attended services in the parish Church of the Exaltation of the Lord. He describes the beginning of the all-night vigil, in the twilight of the church, when there are still very few people: “How all this worries me. I’m still a boy, a teenager, but I was born with a feeling of all this. So many times I listened to these exclamations and certainly the following “Amen”, that all this became, as it were, a part of my soul, and now, already guessing every word of the service in advance, it responds to everything with a purely related readiness. “Come, let us worship… Bless the Lord, my soul,” I hear, and my eyes fill with tears, for I now firmly know that there is and cannot be anything on earth more beautiful and higher than all this. And the holy mystery flows, flows, the Royal Doors close and open, the vaults of the church are illuminated brighter and warmer by many candles.” And further Bunin writes that he had to visit many Western churches, where the organ sounded, to visit Gothic cathedrals, beautiful in their architecture, “but nowhere and never,” he says, “did I cry as much as in the Church of the Exaltation on these dark and deaf evenings.” Not only great poets and writers respond to the beneficial influence with which visiting church is inevitably associated. Every person can experience this. It is very important that our soul is open to these feelings, so that when we come to church, we are ready to accept the grace of God to the extent that it will be given to us. If the state of grace is not given to us and tenderness does not come, we do not need to be embarrassed by this. This means that our soul has not matured to tenderness. But moments of such enlightenment are a sign that our prayer is not fruitless. They testify that God responds to our prayer and the grace of God touches our heart.

18. Fight against extraneous thoughts

One of the main obstacles to attentive prayer is the appearance of extraneous thoughts. Saint John of Kronstadt, the great ascetic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, describes in his diaries how, during the Divine Liturgy, at the most crucial and sacred moments, an apple pie or some kind of order that might be awarded to him suddenly appeared before his mind’s eye. And he speaks with bitterness and regret about how such extraneous images and thoughts can destroy the state of prayer. If this happened to the saints, then it is not surprising that it happens to us. In order to protect ourselves from these thoughts and extraneous images, we must learn, as the ancient Fathers of the Church said, to “stand guard over our mind.” The ascetic writers of the Ancient Church had a detailed teaching about how extraneous thoughts gradually penetrate into a person. The first stage of this process is called “preposition,” that is, the sudden appearance of a thought. This thought is still completely alien to man, it appeared somewhere on the horizon, but its penetration inside begins when a person focuses his attention on it, enters into a conversation with it, examines and analyzes it. Then comes what the Church Fathers called “combination” – when a person’s mind already, as it were, becomes accustomed, merges with thoughts. Finally, the thought turns into passion and embraces the whole person, and then both prayer and spiritual life are forgotten. To prevent this from happening, it is very important to cut off extraneous thoughts at their first appearance, not to allow them to penetrate into the depths of the soul, heart and mind. And to learn this, you need to work hard on yourself. A person cannot help but experience absent-mindedness during prayer unless he learns to fight extraneous thoughts. One of the diseases of modern man is that he does not know how to control the functioning of his brain. His brain is autonomous, and thoughts come and go involuntarily. Modern man, as a rule, does not follow what is happening in his mind at all. But in order to learn real prayer, you need to be able to monitor your thoughts and mercilessly cut off those that do not correspond to the prayerful mood. Short prayers help overcome absent-mindedness and cut off extraneous thoughts – “Lord, have mercy”, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” and others – which do not require special concentration on words, but encourage the birth of feelings and movement of the heart. With the help of such prayers you can learn to pay attention and concentrate on prayer.

19. Jesus Prayer

The Apostle Paul says: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). People often ask: how can we pray unceasingly if we work, read, talk, eat, sleep, etc., that is, we do things that seem to be incompatible with prayer? The answer to this question in the Orthodox tradition is the Jesus Prayer. Believers who practice the Jesus Prayer achieve unceasing prayer, that is, unceasing standing before God. How does this happen? The Jesus Prayer sounds like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” There is also a shorter form: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” But prayer can be reduced to two words: “Lord, have mercy.” A person who prays the Jesus Prayer repeats it not only during worship or at home prayer, but also on the road, while eating and going to bed. Even if a person speaks to someone or listens to another, then, without losing the intensity of perception, he nevertheless continues to repeat this prayer somewhere in the depths of his heart. The meaning of the Jesus Prayer lies, of course, not in its mechanical repetition, but in always feeling the living presence of Christ. This presence is felt by us primarily because, when saying the Jesus Prayer, we pronounce the name of the Savior. A name is a symbol of its bearer; the one to whom it belongs is, as it were, present in the name. When a young man is in love with a girl and thinks about her, he constantly repeats her name, because she seems to be present in his name. And because love fills his entire being, he feels the need to repeat this name again and again. In the same way, a Christian who loves the Lord repeats the name of Jesus Christ because his whole heart and being is turned to Christ. When performing the Jesus Prayer, it is very important not to try to imagine Christ, imagining Him as a person in some life situation or, for example, hanging on a cross. The Jesus Prayer should not be associated with images that may arise in our imagination, because then the real is replaced by the imaginary: The Jesus Prayer should be accompanied only by an internal feeling of the presence of Christ and a feeling of standing before the Living God. No external images are appropriate here.

20. What is good about the Jesus Prayer?

The Jesus Prayer has several special properties. First of all, it is the presence of the name of God in it. We very often remember the name of God as if out of habit, thoughtlessly. We say: “Lord, how tired I am,” “God be with him, let him come another time,” without thinking at all about the power that the name of God has. Meanwhile, already in the Old Testament there was a commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” (Ex. 20:7). And the ancient Jews treated the name of God with extreme reverence. In the era after liberation from Babylonian captivity, pronouncing the name of God was generally prohibited. Only the high priest had this right, once a year, when he entered the Holy of Holies, the main sanctuary of the temple. When we turn to Christ with the Jesus Prayer, pronouncing the name of Christ and confessing Him as the Son of God has a very special meaning. This name should be pronounced with the greatest reverence. Another property of the Jesus Prayer is its simplicity and accessibility. To perform the Jesus Prayer, you do not need any special books or a specially designated place or time. This is its huge advantage over many other prayers. Finally, there is one more property that distinguishes this prayer – in it we confess our sinfulness: “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” This point is very important, because many modern people do not feel their sinfulness at all. Even in confession, you can often hear: “I don’t know what I should repent of, I live like everyone else, I don’t kill, I don’t steal,” etc. Meanwhile, it is our sins that, as a rule, are the causes of our main troubles and sorrows. A person does not notice his sins because he is far from God, just as in a dark room we see neither dust nor dirt, but as soon as we open the window, we discover that the room has long needed cleaning. The soul of a person far from God is like a dark room. But the closer a person is to God, the more light there is in his soul, the more acutely he feels his own sinfulness. And this happens not due to the fact that he compares himself with other people, but due to the fact that he stands before God. When we say: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner,” we seem to put ourselves in the face of Christ, comparing our life with His life. And then we really feel like sinners and can bring repentance from the depths of our hearts.

21. Practice of the Jesus Prayer

Let’s talk about the practical aspects of the Jesus Prayer. Some people set themselves the task of saying the Jesus Prayer during the day, say, a hundred, five hundred or a thousand times. To count how many times a prayer is read, a rosary is used, which can have fifty, a hundred or more balls. Saying a prayer in his mind, a person touches his rosary. But if you are just beginning the feat of the Jesus Prayer, then you need to pay attention first of all to quality, not quantity. It seems to me that you need to start by very slowly saying the words of the Jesus Prayer out loud, ensuring that your heart participates in the prayer. You say: “Lord… Jesus… Christ…,” and your heart should, like a tuning fork, respond to every word. And do not try to immediately read the Jesus Prayer many times. Even if you say it only ten times, but if your heart responds to the words of the prayer, that will be enough. A person has two spiritual centers – the mind and the heart. Intellectual activity, imagination, thoughts are associated with the mind, and emotions, feelings, and experiences are associated with the heart. When saying the Jesus Prayer, the center should be the heart. That is why, when praying, do not try to imagine something in your mind, for example, Jesus Christ, but try to keep your attention in your heart. The ancient church ascetic writers developed a technique of “bringing the mind into the heart,” in which the Jesus Prayer was combined with breathing, and while inhaling, the words were said: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” and on the exhalation, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” A person’s attention seemed to naturally switch from the head to the heart. I don’t think that everyone should practice the Jesus Prayer in exactly this way; it is enough to pronounce the words of the prayer with great attention and reverence. Start your morning with the Jesus Prayer. If you have a free minute during the day, read the prayer a few more times; in the evening, before going to bed, repeat it until you fall asleep. If you learn to wake up and fall asleep with the Jesus Prayer, this will give you great spiritual support. Gradually, as your heart becomes more and more responsive to the words of this prayer, you can come to the point that it will become incessant, and the main content of the prayer will not be the utterance of words, but the constant feeling of the presence of God in the heart. And if you started by saying the prayer out loud, then you will gradually come to the point that it will be pronounced only by the heart, without the participation of the tongue or lips. You will see how prayer will transform your entire human nature, your entire life. This is the special power of the Jesus Prayer.

22. Books about the Jesus Prayer

“Whatever you do, whatever you do at all times – day and night, pronounce with your lips these Divine verbs: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s not difficult: both while traveling, on the road, and while working – whether you’re chopping wood or carrying water, or digging the ground, or cooking food. After all, in all this, one body works, and the mind remains idle, so give it an activity that is characteristic and befitting of its immaterial nature – to pronounce the name of God.” This is an excerpt from the book “On the Caucasus Mountains,” which was published for the first time at the beginning of the 20th century and is dedicated to the Jesus Prayer. I would like to especially emphasize that this prayer needs to be learned, preferably with the help of a spiritual leader. In the Orthodox Church there are teachers of prayer – among monastics, pastors and even lay people: these are people who themselves, through experience, have learned the power of prayer. But if you do not find such a mentor – and many complain that it is now difficult to find a mentor in prayer – then you can turn to books such as “On the Caucasus Mountains” or “Frank Tales of a Wanderer to His Spiritual Father.” The last one, published in the 19th century and reprinted many times, talks about a man who decided to learn unceasing prayer. He was a wanderer, walked from city to city with a bag on his shoulders and a staff, and learned to pray. He repeated the Jesus Prayer several thousand times a day. There is also a classic five-volume collection of works of the Holy Fathers from the 4th to the 14th centuries – “Philokalia”. This is a rich treasury of spiritual experience; it contains many instructions about the Jesus Prayer and sobriety – attention of the mind. Anyone who wants to learn to pray for real should be familiar with these books. I cited an excerpt from the book “On the Caucasus Mountains” also because many years ago, when I was a teenager, I had the opportunity to travel to Georgia, to the Caucasus Mountains, not far from Sukhumi. There I met hermits. They lived there even in Soviet times, far from the bustle of the world, in caves, gorges and abysses, and no one knew about their existence. They lived by prayer and passed on from generation to generation the treasure of prayer experience. These were people as if from another world, who had reached great spiritual heights and deep inner peace. And all this thanks to the Jesus Prayer. May God grant us to learn through experienced mentors and through the books of the Holy Fathers this treasure – the unceasing performance of the Jesus Prayer.

23. “Our Father, who art in Heaven”

The Lord’s Prayer has special significance because it was given to us by Jesus Christ Himself. It begins with the words: “Our Father, who art in heaven,” or in Russian: “Our Father, who art in heaven.” This prayer is comprehensive in nature: it seems to concentrate everything that a person needs both for earthly life and for the salvation of the soul. The Lord gave it to us so that we would know what to pray for, what to ask God for. The first words of this prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven” – reveal to us that God is not some distant abstract being, not some abstract good principle, but our Father. Today, many people, when asked whether they believe in God, answer in the affirmative, but if you ask them how they imagine God, what they think about Him, they answer something like this: “Well, God is good, it’s something bright, it’s some kind of positive energy.” That is, God is treated as some kind of abstraction, as something impersonal. When we begin our prayer with the words “Our Father,” we immediately turn to the personal, living God, to God as the Father – the Father about whom Christ spoke in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Many people remember the plot of this parable from the Gospel of Luke. The son decided to leave his father without waiting for his death. He received the inheritance due to him, went to a distant country, squandered this inheritance there, and when he had already reached the last limit of poverty and exhaustion, he decided to return to his father. He said to himself: “I will go to my father and say to him: Father! I have sinned against heaven and before you and am no longer worthy to be called your son; but accept me as one of your hired servants” (Luke 15:18, 19). And when he was still far away, his father ran out to meet him and threw himself on his neck. The son did not even have time to say the prepared words, because the father immediately gave him a ring, a sign of filial dignity, dressed him in his former clothes, that is, he completely restored him to the dignity of a son. This is exactly how God treats us. We are not mercenaries, but sons of God, and the Lord treats us as His children. Therefore, our attitude towards God should be characterized by devotion and noble filial love. When we say: “Our Father,” it means that we pray not in isolation, as individuals, each of whom has his own Father, but as members of a single human family, a single Church, a single Body of Christ. In other words, by calling God Father, we thereby mean that all other people are our brothers. Moreover, when Christ teaches us to turn to God “Our Father” in prayer, He puts Himself, as it were, on the same level with us. The Monk Simeon the New Theologian said that through faith in Christ we become brothers of Christ, because we have a common Father with Him – our Heavenly Father. As for the words “Who art in heaven,” they do not point to the physical heaven, but to the fact that God lives in a completely different dimension than we do, that He is absolutely transcendent to us. But through prayer, through the Church, we have the opportunity to join this heaven, that is, another world.

24. “Hallowed be thy name”

What does the words “Hallowed be Thy name” mean? The name of God is holy in itself; it carries within itself a charge of holiness, spiritual power and the presence of God. Why is it necessary to pray with these exact words? Will not the name of God remain holy even if we do not say “Hallowed be thy name”?

When we say: “Hallowed be Thy name,” we first of all mean that the name of God must be hallowed, that is, be revealed as holy through us, Christians, through our spiritual life. The Apostle Paul, addressing the unworthy Christians of his time, said: “For your sake the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles” (Rom. 2:24). These are very important words. They talk about our inconsistency with the spiritual and moral norm that is contained in the Gospel and by which we, Christians, are obliged to live. And this discrepancy, perhaps, is one of the main tragedies both for us as Christians and for the entire Christian Church.

The Church has holiness because it is built on the name of God, which is holy in itself. Members of the Church are far from meeting the standards that the Church puts forward. We often hear reproaches, and quite fair ones, against Christians: “How can you prove the existence of God if you yourself live no better, and sometimes worse, than pagans and atheists? How can faith in God be combined with unworthy actions? So, each of us must ask ourselves daily: “Am I, as a Christian, living up to the gospel ideal? Is the name of God sanctified through me or blasphemed? Am I an example of true Christianity, which consists of love, humility, meekness and mercy, or am I an example of the opposite of these virtues?

Often people turn to the priest with the question: “What should I do to bring my son (daughter, husband, mother, father) to church? I tell them about God, but they don’t even want to listen.” The problem is that it is not enough to just talkabout God. When a person, having become a believer, tries to convert others, especially his loved ones, to his faith, with the help of words, persuasion, and sometimes through coercion, insisting that they pray or go to church, this often gives the opposite result – his loved ones experience a rejection of everything churchly and spiritual. We will be able to bring people closer to the Church only when we ourselves become real Christians, when they, looking at us, say: “Yes, now I understand what the Christian faith can do to a person, how it can transform him, change him; I’m starting to believe in God because I see how Christians are different from non-Christians.”

25. “Thy kingdom come”

What do these words mean? After all, the Kingdom of God will inevitably come, there will be an end of the world, and humanity will move into another dimension. It is obvious that we are not praying for the end of the world to come, but for the Kingdom of God to come to us, that is, for it to become the reality of our lives, so that our current – everyday, gray, and sometimes dark, tragic – earthly life is permeated by the presence of the Kingdom of God.

What is the Kingdom of God? To answer this question, you need to turn to the Gospel and remember that the sermon of Jesus Christ began with the words: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Then Christ repeatedly told people about His Kingdom; He did not object when He was called the King – for example, when He entered Jerusalem and He was greeted as the King of the Jews. Even standing at the trial, mocked, slandered, slandered, to Pilate’s question, asked, apparently with irony: “Are you the King of the Jews?”, the Lord answered: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:33-36). These words of the Savior contain the answer to the question of what the Kingdom of God is. And when we turn to God “Thy Kingdom come,” we ask that this unearthly, spiritual, Kingdom of Christ become the reality of our lives, so that that spiritual dimension appears in our lives, which is talked about a lot, but which so few know from experience.

When the Lord Jesus Christ spoke to the disciples about what awaited Him in Jerusalem – torment, suffering and death on the cross – the mother of two of them said to Him: “Tell that these two sons of mine should sit with You, one on your right side, and the other on your left, in Your Kingdom” (Matthew 20:21). He talked about how He had to suffer and die, and she imagined a Man on the royal throne and wanted her sons to be next to Him. But, as we remember, the Kingdom of God was first revealed on the cross – Christ was crucified, bleeding, and above Him hung a sign: “King of the Jews.” And only then was the Kingdom of God revealed in the glorious and saving Resurrection of Christ. It is this Kingdom that is promised to us – a Kingdom that is given through great effort and sorrow. The path to the Kingdom of God lies through Gethsemane and Golgotha ​​- through those trials, temptations, sorrows and suffering that befall each of us. We must remember this when we say in prayer: “Thy kingdom come.”

26. “Thy will be done as it is in Heaven and on earth”

We say these words with such ease! And very rarely do we realize that our will may not coincide with the will of God. After all, sometimes God sends us suffering, but we find ourselves unable to accept it as sent by God, we grumble, we are indignant. How often do people, when they come to a priest, say: “I cannot agree with this and that, I understand that this is the will of God, but I cannot reconcile myself.” What can you say to such a person? Don’t tell him that, apparently, in the Lord’s Prayer he needs to replace the words “Thy will be done” with “My will be done”!

Each of us needs to fight to ensure that our will coincides with the good will of God. We say: “Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth.” That is, the will of God, which is already being accomplished in heaven, in the spiritual world, must be accomplished here on earth, and above all in our lives. And we must be ready to follow the voice of God in everything. We must find the strength to renounce our own will for the sake of fulfilling the will of God. Often, when we pray, we ask God for something, but we do not receive it. And then it seems to us that the prayer was not heard. You need to find the strength to accept this “refusal” from God as His will.

Let us remember Christ, Who on the eve of His death prayed to His Father and said: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.” But this cup did not pass from Him, which means that the answer to prayer was different: the cup of suffering, sorrow and death Jesus Christ had to drink. Knowing this, He said to the Father: “But not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39–42).

This should be our attitude towards God’s will. If we feel that some kind of sorrow is approaching us, that we have to drink a cup for which we may not have enough strength, we can say: “Lord, if it is possible, let this cup of sorrow pass from me, carry it past me.” But, like Christ, we must end the prayer with the words: “But not my will, but Thine be done.”

You need to trust God. Often children ask their parents for something, but they do not give it because they consider it harmful. Years will pass, and the person will understand how right the parents were. This happens to us too. Some time passes, and we suddenly realize how much more beneficial what the Lord sent us turned out to be than what we would like to receive of our own free will.

27. “Give us this day our daily bread”

We can turn to God with a variety of requests. We can ask Him not only for something sublime and spiritual, but also for what we need on a material level. “Daily bread” is what we live on, our daily food. Moreover, in prayer we say: “Give us our daily bread today,”that is, today. In other words, we do not ask God to provide us with everything we need for all the next days of our life. We ask Him for daily food, knowing that if He feeds us today, He will feed us tomorrow. By saying these words, we express our trust in God: we trust Him with our lives today, just as we trust Him with ours today. tomorrow.

The words “daily bread” indicate what is necessary for life, and not some kind of excess. A person can take the path of acquisitiveness and, having the necessary things – a roof over his head, a piece of bread, minimal material goods – begin to accumulate and live in luxury. This path leads to a dead end, because the more a person accumulates, the more money he has, the more he feels the emptiness of life, feeling that there are some other needs that cannot be satisfied with material goods. So, “daily bread” is what is needed. These are not limousines, not luxurious palaces, not millions of sums of money, but this is something that neither we, nor our children, nor our relatives can live without.

Some understand the words “daily bread” in a more sublime sense – as “supra-essential bread” or “super-essential.” In particular, the Greek Fathers of the Church wrote that the “super-essential bread” is the bread that comes down from heaven, in other words, it is Christ Himself, whom Christians receive in the sacrament of Holy Communion. This understanding is also justified, because, in addition to material bread, a person also needs spiritual bread.

Everyone puts their own meaning into the concept of “daily bread”. During the war, one boy, praying, said this: “Give us our dried bread this day,” because the main food was crackers. What the boy and his family needed to sustain life was dried bread. This may seem funny or sad, but it shows that every person – both old and young – asks God for exactly what he needs most, without which he cannot live a single day.

28. “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”

Prayer is inextricably linked with a person’s lifestyle. The reason for the difficulties experienced by a person in prayer lies in an incorrect, unspiritual, non-evangelical life. We especially feel this when we say the Lord’s Prayer. Each request of this prayer confronts us with a certain reality; it is as if we find ourselves in court – in the court of our own conscience. And this prayer, if we pray from the soul and from the heart, if we really think as it is written in it, should force us to constantly change our lives.

We say: “And forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors,” that is, we ask God to forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are in debt to us. And so, having uttered these words, we ask ourselves: do we forgive our neighbors? Are we ready to make God’s forgiveness of ourselves dependent on whether we forgive others? Isn’t this too scary, isn’t it too much responsibility?

Experience shows that it is not so difficult to forgive everyone, just as it is not difficult to everyonelove – everyone, in the abstract sense. Many people say this: I love people, I just can’t reconcile with two or three people – my neighbor, my co-worker, my mother-in-law – but I love everyone else. So, the words “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” remind us of those few people whom we cannot forgive, to whom we cannot “forgive our debts.” And this prayer teaches us that until we forgive them, we cannot hope that the Lord will forgive us.

Earthly life is given to us in order to make peace with everyone. Many knots are tied in life, and our task is to have time to untie them before this opportunity is taken away from us. Nothing is impossible for a person. It can be very difficult to reconcile with someone, to forgive someone, but if we do not find the strength to do this, we cannot count on God to forgive us. If we call God our Father, and ourselves Christians, if we say: “Hallowed be thy name,” that is, that the name of God must be holy, and the holiness of the name of God must be revealed through our deeds, then how can we not forgive our debtors – those who have offended, offended or humiliated us?

Christian life is a feat, and we must approach it with all responsibility, we must earn the right to say the Lord’s Prayer. And this right is given to us by our good deeds. Not a single word, and especially a word of prayer, should be vain, empty, or unjustified. Behind every word there must be reality, and behind the words of the Lord’s Prayer there must be our actions. If we say to God: “Thy will be done,” then we must subordinate our will to Him, to God’s will. And if we ask God: “And forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors,” this means that we must learn to forgive everyone whom we consider guilty of ourselves, whom we consider our debtors.

29. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”

What is temptation and who is the evil one?

Temptation is a test that is either sent to us from God or comes from the devil, but is allowed by God. Every temptation is a kind of test of strength for us. And sometimes we pass this test, and sometimes we don’t. By asking God: “Do not lead us into temptation,” we seem to be saying to God: “Do not send us trials beyond our strength, send us ones that we can cope with, so that the trials and sorrows that You send do not crush us and kill our faith.”

The evil one is the devil, the enemy of the human race. In relation to the devil, two extremes must be avoided. Some are inclined to deny the existence of the devil and demons altogether. These people – believers or non-believers – do not realize the reality of the presence of evil forces in this world, and not abstract forces, but living beings, because the devil and demons, like angels, are real living beings. There is another extreme, especially common among believers and church people – when the importance of the devil is exaggerated, when a person is so afraid of the influence of the devil and evil forces that he lives in some kind of semi-paralyzed state. Hence the widespread fear among believers of the evil eye, damage, etc. Hence – such a timid attitude towards life, in which a person is afraid of everything, sees a threat in everything, and cannot live creatively, freely, fully.

We must understand that the evil one, of course, has power and can have a negative, even destructive impact on our lives, but only if we ourselves allow him to come to us. The devil is powerless where he is not invited, where his presence is not wanted. If a person goes to church, prays, wears a cross, makes the sign of the cross; if he fulfills the commandments of God and abstains from sins, then the devil is powerless, he has no place in such a person. When does the devil gain power? When a person opens some kind of floodgates or windows in his house, when, for example, he falls into some kind of passion – say, drug addiction or alcoholism. And the danger of alcoholism is not that a person drinks more wine than he should, but that it weakens him and opens the door for the devil to enter his soul.

Therefore, when we ask God: “Deliver us from the evil one,” we ask that He will always help us to find the strength to abstain from things that could enable the evil one to influence our lives. And if we learn this, then neither the devil, nor other evil forces, nor the evil eye, nor damage, nor anything like that will be able to have any influence on us.

30. Prayer to the Mother of God

Orthodox Christians pray not only to God, but also to the Mother of God and the saints. This is how the practice of prayer in the Orthodox Church differs, for example, from the practice of Protestant communities. Protestants do not recognize the prayer of the Mother of God and saints. They say: to come to God, we do not need intermediaries. This remark is fair – we really don’t need “intermediaries” – but the conclusion drawn from it is incorrect. After all, we pray to the Mother of God not as some kind of middle link between us and God, but we pray to Her because She is the Mother of God, because She cannot be separated from Her Divine Son.

When I was studying in England, my professor, an elderly Orthodox bishop, often invited me to his home for classes. I came to his house, and his elderly mother opened the door for me. Imagine if I didn’t greet her, didn’t notice her, but walked straight into the house, saying: “I don’t need intermediaries, I only communicate with the bishop.” It seems to me that it is quite natural, when communicating with my son, to communicate with my mother. Of course, this is an argument on a purely everyday level.

There are more serious arguments. And the main one is the experience of millions of people, which shows that the Mother of God hears prayers and answers them, that She helps people and, moreover, that She really intercedes for people before Her Son and God.

The Mother of God is inseparable from the Savior, Her feat is inseparable from His feat. Let us think about the fact that when the Angel of the Lord descended from heaven to tell Her: “You will conceive in your womb and give birth to a Son” (Luke 1:31), the Incarnation depended on Her consent or disagreement. She could have said no, but She said yes. She raised the Baby, brought Him to the temple as a sacrifice to God, She walked with Her Son through His entire earthly life. When Christ was crucified, She stood at the cross because she could not separate Herself from Him. She was with Him even in His most terrible suffering, so She became a participant in His feat.

When the Lord was on the cross, His beloved disciple stood next to Her, and He said to Her: “Woman! Behold, Your son,” and he said to the disciple: “Behold, Your mother” (John 19:26–27). Thus, He seemed to entrust not only his beloved disciple, but also all His disciples to Her protection and care. From that moment on, She, the Mother of Her Son, also became the Mother of His followers, that is, the Mother of the Church. And we turn to Her precisely as our Mother and the Mother of the Church.

We say in prayer to the Mother of God: “Most Holy Theotokos, save us.” This does not mean that we consider Her to be the Savior. The Savior is Christ. But we confess Her participation in the mystery of salvation, Her participation in this mystery. And we understand that salvation is possible for us because the Mother of God responded with consent to the word of God that was addressed to Her. And thanks to this Her consent, we have access to both Her Son and Her God, our Heavenly Father.

31. Prayer to the Saints

The tradition of venerating saints in the Christian Church is very ancient; it has existed since the very moment the Church appeared, from the first years of its existence. Christian churches in ancient times were built on the tombs of martyrs. And it was the blood of the martyrs, according to one ancient church writer, that was the “seed of Christianity,” that is, Christianity spread thanks to the feat of the martyrs.

Martyrs are people who, by the example of their own life and death, showed that the feat of Christ can be repeated by man, that earthly man, with all his weakness and infirmity, can also sacrifice himself for the sake of people and for the sake of God, as Jesus Christ did. A person who sacrificed himself became a spiritual hero in the eyes of other people, especially in the eyes of those who knew him personally. The veneration of this saint began immediately after his death. There is still a tradition that an Orthodox church should contain at least a small particle of the relics of some saint. The Divine Liturgy is not supposed to be celebrated on a simple table: it is celebrated on a throne or on a special plate in which a particle of the relics of a saint is sewn. The reason for this is that martyrs and saints are the foundation on which the Christian Church is built. We pray to the saints because these people, although they were the same as us, thanks to the feat of their lives, achieved deification and became like Christ. We pray to them because they have walked the path that we are just trying to follow. And the experience of many Christians testifies: saints hear prayers and answer them.

I would like to speak very briefly about one negative phenomenon that is associated with the veneration of saints. The fact is that some perceive saints approximately the same way the pagans perceived their gods – according to the principle “which saint helps with what.” Such people come into church and ask: “Which saint should I light a candle to get an apartment?”, “Which saint should I pray for a toothache?” etc. We must remember that saints are not some kind of gods from whom you can get something, and from each their own. Saints are not experts in issuing apartments, stopping toothaches, or other similar things. There are, of course, saints who were doctors during their lifetime, and we turn to them with a request for healing, for example, the Holy Great Martyr Panteleimon. Indeed, through the prayers of such saints, many healings occur. But in no case should saints be perceived as some kind of fetish; We cannot replace a prayer to a saint as a person who has achieved spiritual perfection and can help us in some way with a prayer to a saint as some kind of idol who is needed only because we can get specific help from him.

Saints are, first of all, our heavenly friends who can help us in our progress on the path to salvation, on the path to God. And only secondarily, saints are those who help us with specific everyday things.

32. It is impossible to live without prayer

Let’s summarize the conversation about prayer. First of all, prayer is a conversation with God, a meeting with Him, it is a dialogue that involves not only our words addressed to God, but also God’s response. Therefore, it is very important that we know how not only to speak, but also to remain silent, so that we know how to listen to the depths of God that are revealed to us through prayer.

In prayer you need to be absolutely honest. There can be nothing ambiguous or artificial here. We must stand before God as we are and tell Him exactly what we have to say, what we think and feel. Therefore, to communicate with God there is no need to invent some special language, look for special words, there is no need to select special topics. We must pray to God exactly for what our heart asks and thirsts for.

You need to pray constantly. It is not enough to pray occasionally, only when we need something from God; We must always pray: in the morning, in the evening, throughout the day, throughout our entire life. And the center of prayer should not be something specific that we ask from God, but God Himself, because the main content of prayer is precisely the meeting with God, the opportunity to discover Him for ourselves.

We must pray not only for ourselves, but also for others, not only for our relatives and loved ones, but also for our enemies. We must pray to God not as separate individuals, but as people who represent a part of humanity, and turn to God not only on our own behalf, but also on behalf of the single human family, for for each of us God is our Heavenly Father.

We pray not only to God, but also to the Mother of God and the saints, because they are our heavenly patrons, heavenly intercessors. We pray to our Guardian Angel to protect us on all paths.

We pray not only for the living, but also for the dead, so that the Lord will grant them peace and tranquility.

Once again I would like to emphasize: prayer should become the basis of our life – something to which our whole life should be tuned. The life of a Christian should be consistent with prayer. If a person is unsuccessful in prayer, this means that he lives poorly, that his spiritual state does not correspond to prayer.

Let’s learn to pray, let’s work to ensure that prayer reaches our heart and through the heart ascends to heavenly heights and reaches God. Let us work on ourselves so that prayer becomes the core, the foundation of our life. Let us ask God, the Mother of God and the saints to teach us to pray, because it is impossible to live without prayer, just as it is impossible to live and be saved without God and without His Church.