The Labour of Prayer

I recently heard an Orthodox priest tell the following story:

One of my parishioners, a businessman, husband and father of 4, came to me and said, "Father, I need your counsel about my prayer life. I keep all the Divine Offices - Lauds before I leave for work, Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours during the day, I pray Vespers with my wife and children in the evening and I get up at 2am to pray the Night Office - what should I do?" I said to him, Pray...for...me.

A cute story of how we priests and monastics who are supposed to be dedicated to prayer can be trumped by exceptionally devout Christian laypeople. Praise God for them!

What this reveals, however, is the stark reality that many of us who fancy to call ourselves monastics, who stroll around in our Habits and secretly can't help but like those subtle nods of the head and smiles from others whom we think are acknowledging our 'holiness'; who are supposed to be not only devoted to prayer but actively disciplined in it as the preeminent labour of our lives, fall very short of the Apostle's injunction to Pray without ceasing.

As Monastics we are not just expected to be people who pray a lot but are supposed to be people who actually know how to pray without ceasing.

But do we?

St. Augustine gives us great insight into this un-ceasing prayer:

The Apostle Paul had a purpose in saying, ‘Pray without ceasing’. Are we then ceaselessly to bend out knees, to lie prostrate, or to lift up our hands? Is this what is meant in saying, ‘Pray without ceasing’? Even if we admit that we pray in this fashion, I do not believe that we can do so all the time.

Yet there is another, interior kind of prayer without ceasing, namely, the desire of the heart. Whatever else you may be doing, if you but fix your desire on God’s Sabbath rest, your prayer will be ceaseless. Therefore, if you wish to pray without ceasing, do not cease to desire. The constancy of your desire will itself be the ceaseless voice of your prayer. And that voice of your prayer will be silent only when your love ceases.

For the desire of your heart is itself your prayer. And if the desire is constant, so is your prayer.

What then does it mean to fix our desire on God’s Sabbath rest?

The Blessed Augustine gives us a further insight:

You have made us for Yourself, O God, and our souls will never rest until they rest in You.

God Himself is our rest. He Himself is the One upon Whom we must fix our desire.

The world we live in is such that it tempts us to desire many things – some good, some bad. And it is always a relatively easy thing to justify our desires by classifying them as ‘needs’. We often say we ‘need’ this or that or the other. But how often, I wonder, do we openly acknowledge to ourselves and to others our need for God? There is an old hymn that goes:

I need Thee, O I need Thee;

Every hour I need Thee.

O Bless me now, my Saviour,

I come to Thee.

This should be the un-ceasing hymn sung from our heart’s desire.

But if our desires are identified as needs and our attention fixed solely on earning a living to pay for our housing, our food, our clothing and all the other things that go along with that, we risk making God the source of our prosperity rather than our Rest. I do not mean to diminish the importance of food, housing, clothing and honest work nor our responsibility in relation to that. We cannot sit in front of our icons, chanting psalms to the exclusion of all else. But we must realize – fully realize – that everything we use, possess and consume is given to us freely by God without our having earned it. Once we come to the fullness of this realization our response should be to offer to God that which is most valuable and pleasing to Him, namely, a sacrifice of thanksgiving of our selves and our time.

The character of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy at one point says to Frodo, “It is for us to decide what to do with the time that has been given to us.” Indeed, the usage of time is often one of the most difficult aspects of the spiritual life, especially for those who are by necessity engaged in worldly obligations. Demands on our time can lead to frustration and anxiety when we want to dedicate time to prayer but know we cannot neglect our husband/wife, family, job, etc. But if we make an honest assessment of how we use our time, God will show us where we can find some for Him. And even in the midst of our occupations and obligations, if our hearts and minds are unified in their constant awareness of and desire for His Presence, we will be in a state of prayer.

The end of the Christian life in general and the monastic life in particular is to be transformed, or deified; to become a person of communion, as we were created to be. But transformation cannot take place without a willingness to change. We did not get to the messed up and spiritually dysfunctional state we are in today overnight and we will not be transformed overnight. God works in our lives only in so much as we submit to Him and allow Him to. As C.S. Lewis put it, “He can never ravish, but only woo.” Sometimes, especially when we are at prayer, we are seeking after the ravishment (or in theological terms, the consolation of the Spirit) but we have been oblivious to the Lord’s wooing all day long.

The complete awareness that God is everywhere Present and filling all things must become the constant of our thinking before we can develop the ceaseless voice of prayer, which is a Grace given in proportion to how much we are willing to change our habits and devote time spent in solitary at the foot of the Cross. Devotion without neglect of our duties is the delicate but essential balance of the spiritual life. But those who seek diligently will find their hiding place in the Lord (Ps. 32).

Toward such an end, St. Theofan the Recluse offers some helpful advice on entering the praying state of mind.

Being a soul’s breath, a prayer is most important in the life of a Christian. The presence of prayer in someone’s life means that the person is spiritually alive, without a prayer a person is dead. Standing in front of icons and bowing is not yet a prayer itself, those are just attributes of prayer. The same can be said about reading a prayer, whether recited by memory or read from a book, it would not be a prayer itself, but merely a means to start it. The main thing in praying is invocation of feelings of reverence to God: devotedness to the Father, gratitude, submission to the Will of God, an aspiration to glorify Him and similar feelings. That is why while praying we should make those feelings permeate ourselves so that our hearts would not be dry. It is only when our hearts appeal to God that our reading prayers (evening or morning praying) becomes a true prayer, otherwise it is not yet a prayer. A prayer, which is an appeal of our heart to God, should be invoked and strengthened; a spirit of intercession should be brought up within us.

The first way to do it is to pray through reading or listening to prayers written in prayer books [this means a book containing prayers composed by the saints, not the proper services of worship]. Read the prayer book or listen to it very attentively and you will certainly incite and strengthen your heart in its ascension to God, which means you would enter the prayerful spirit. In the prayers of holy fathers (printed in prayer books and other church books), a great prayer power is in motion. Who is diligently attending them will through the force of interaction enjoy that power, as the state of mind of a praying person comes closer to the essence of those prayers. In order to turn your intercessions into an effective way of nourishing a prayer, one must do it so that both your mind and heart would perceive the content of the prayers being read.

Here are the three simplest ways to achieve it:

·        Do not start a prayer without preparing yourself to it properly.

·        Say prayers with feeling and attention but not casually.

·        After completing your prayer do not hasten to go back to your everyday cares.

Preparation to Praying:

Before you start a prayer, no matter where it is taking place, stand or sit for a short time and try to sober your mind, relieving it of all irrelevant work and cares. Then give thought to Who is the One you are turning to in prayer and who you are in praying to Him; invoke the appropriate attitude of humility and reverential awe to God. That is the beginning of a prayer and a good beginning is half the success.

The Praying Itself:

Having prepared yourself, stand in front of the icons, make the Sign of the Cross, bow and begin the usual praying. Say the prayer without haste, discerning every word and taking it close to your heart. In other words, you should understand what you are reading and feel what you understood. Make signs of the Cross and bows while praying. This is the essence of reading prayers that are fruitful and God-pleasing. “Thy Will be done” commends your destiny to the Lord completely and wholeheartedly, with readiness to accept gladly whatever He sends you. While reading “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” your soul should forgive everyone of has offended you.

First, set a certain praying rule for yourself; it should not be too lengthy, so you can fulfill it without haste amongst all your daily routine.

Second, in your spare time read through the prayers of your set of prayer (prayer rule) attentively, understanding and perceiving every word so that you can prepare yourself beforehand and learn what feelings and thoughts you need to evoke in your soul to understand and perceive everything easily during your prayers.

Third, if your volatile thoughts would get distracted by other things during your prayer, exert yourself to focus your attention, keeping your mind concentrated on the subject of your prayer. Bring your mind back to it every time it wanders away. Read the prayer again and again until every word of the prayer is said with awareness and feeling. That will rule out your absent-mindedness during prayers.

Fourth, if some word in the prayer touches your soul in a special way, do not proceed with the prayer, but focus on that word or phrase, nourishing your soul with the attention, feeling and thoughts evoked by the word; stick to that state of mind until it fades away. This is a sign of the prayerful spirit beginning to enter you. That state of mind and soul is the most reliable way to cherish and strengthen the prayerful spirit in a person.

What to Do After the Prayer

After finishing your prayer do not hasten to take up your usual chores, but slow down and think at least for a little while about what you felt and to what it obliges you. Try to keep in your mind what impressed you most of all. The nature of the prayer itself is such that after a really good prayer one would not want to switch over to one’s usual things, as those who relished in something sweet do not want anything bitter. Enjoying the sweetness of the praying is in fact the goal of saying prayers, which brings up the prayerful spirit.

Following those simple rules will soon bring results. Any prayerful invocation makes a good impact on the soul, if you stick to those rules, and it deepens the impact, and patience in praying will generate the prayerful mood.

Those are the first steps in bringing up a prayerful spirit in oneself. It is for this purpose that the praying practice is set. Yet, it is not the aim in itself, but just the beginning of gaining mastery in prayer. We have to go on.

Yes, indeed we have to go on. To the point where the Jesus Prayer is as natural to us as breathing. To the point where we perceive that praying is the most natural labour we do and all else is un-natural.

Only a very few pray perfectly, and those who do will, in their humility, ascribe nothing to themselves and everything to God because they have gone past believing to knowing – knowing their need of God.

Someone has suggested that the Beatitude “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” can be understood as “Blessed are those who know their need of God.”

Blessed are we indeed who pray knowing our need of God, ceaselessly desiring His Presence and delighting to be His labourer.

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