Prayer occupies the central place in the life of a believer. Prayer is a person’s conscious appeal to God and His saints. Prayer is based on the confidence that God exists, He hears an appeal to Him and can respond to this appeal. Christian prayer is a communication between persons. A Christian believer communicates either with the Divine Persons or with the holy dwellers of heaven. This communication in prayer manifests and strengthens the faith in the One to whom a person prays. Prayer is an indicator of faith. Where there is no prayer to God, there can be no talk of faith in God. The same goes for love. Prayer is an attempt to actively fulfill the basic Christian commandment – “Love the Lord your God.” This implies the importance of prayer for the spiritual life of a believer.
The experience of prayer has arisen among humanity since the very moment of the creation of the world. Throughout the world history, one can talk about the formation of a tradition of prayer, examples of prayer, and its experience. In the Christian Church there are various forms of prayer: personal and public, prayer impromptu and from written texts, prayer in word and prayer in action, prayer of request and prayer of remembrance. And all these forms are part of the broad experience of prayer life.
Individual prayer is primary. It is formed as the first and most important stage of communication with God. Humble appeal with your own words or with commonly known phrases: “Lord, have mercy,” “Lord, help!” or “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me” – opens up the very possibility of communication with God for a person. Then, with experience, an understanding arises and a desire not only to say something to God, but to linger in a prayerful state. A person feels the need for some obligatory time of prayer. This is how a personal prayer rule is formed.
A prayer rule is a certain volume of prayers that every Christian must perform daily at a certain time of day. In the Orthodox Church, it is customary to perform a personal prayer rule using the generally accepted compilations of texts. This in no way prohibits praying in your own words at any time and in any place. But prayer with the established texts allows each praying person to plunge into the spiritual experience of former ascetics who communicated with the Lord while in an exalted spiritual state. And the Holy Scripture in no way prohibits prayer to God according to pre-compiled texts. The Lord, when he gave the prayer “Our Father,” indicated: “Pray like this.” The Lord’s Prayer is a composed prayer text given to us by God. Therefore, the tradition of composing prayers and forming prayer texts is based on the example shown by Jesus Christ Himself.
Prayer texts compiled by God Himself or by his holy men, in addition to conveying to us the experience of prayer, have another important meaning. Using ready-made texts for prayer, a praying person receives an important spiritual guidance. For the pre-compiled Orthodox prayers reflect not only what their authors were like, what their state of mind was, but also help us understand ourselves, our relationship to God and give us the opportunity to navigate our religious path. Just as an experienced spiritual father helps a beginning Christian to sincerely repent, so the text of the prayer helps a praying person to start a conversation with God, ask Him the right questions, and look into the depths of one’s soul.
A person’s personal prayer is always connected with his experiences and feelings. Hence the entire palette of liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church: penitential, grateful, petitionary, laudatory, calming, etc. prayers. In any state of his soul, a person can turn to God and bring Him his joys, sorrows, and requests. In other words, in prayer a person communicates with God as with a real interlocutor. And for each case in the treasury of the Church there is a special way of prayer, a special example of experiences and addresses.
A special type of personal prayer is the prayer for neighbours. In the Orthodox Church, in strict accordance with the words of the Holy Scripture, mandatory prayer for other people – both living and deceased – is established. Prayer for others is one of the brightest manifestations of Christian love.
Properly organized personal prayer always leads to the need for public, church prayer. Public prayer involves Christians coming together to communicate with God. The principle of gathering for prayer was also given to us by the Lord Himself: “Where two or three are gathered in My Name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Public prayer is important for uniting all Christians into the one Body of the Church. Church prayer is the visible manifestation of our participation in the Church. Therefore, avoiding public prayer without a reason is an indicator of excommunication from the Church and from God. As St. Cyprian of Carthage said, “to whom the Church is not the mother, God is not the father.”
In the Orthodox Church public, church prayer over the centuries of its existence took the shape of worship in strict accordance to the Typikon.
The experience of the church life led to the formation of a whole body of church rituals, traditions, and liturgical circles. In church services, communication with God occurs not only through verbal address, but also through rituals (sign of the cross, kissing icons, bows), through preaching (reading of the Holy Scripture, homilies), through remembrance (of the Gospel events, of the lives of saints, remembrance of the dead). All these parts of Orthodox worship in their synergy provide an extraordinary atmosphere facilitating close connection between man and God. In this atmosphere, communication with God occurs not only through the mind, but also through the heart of a praying person. In the Life of the venerable Mary of Egypt there is an example of public prayer. When the venerable mother invited Elder Zosima to pray together and started to pray, the Elder noticed his unusual state: he did not understand a word of what Mary was saying with his mind, but he felt that he was fervently praying with her in his spirit. This indescribable atmosphere of joint Orthodox prayer is the image of church worship.
Church prayer has a close connection with the life of the church community and each individual member. This is why the worship service reflects the experiences of the entire community. In church services, as well as in personal prayer, thanksgiving, praise, repentance, requests, prayers for each other, prayers for the dead are expressed. The core of church worship is the liturgy – the breaking of bread, during which bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. The word “liturgy” is translated as “common cause.” This is why it cannot be peformed alone. Liturgy is the pinnacle of the human communication with God in prayer. This is the prayer of remembrance of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, when communication with God occurs not through words or actions, but through a person’s acceptance of the Body of Christ.
The liturgy includes all types of prayer – remembrance, praise, request, consolation, repentance, and prayer for others. A special part of the liturgy is the commemoration of members of the Church – living and dead. For the liturgy, everyone participating in it can write a note with the names of their neighbours and ask the priest to mention them when performing the Sacrament. This simple act of submitting a note with the names of loved ones at the liturgy is a manifestation of love for another person.
Both personal and public prayer can receive some kind of answer from God, a certain result, which is called the fruit of prayer. The fruit of prayer is a gift of grace that a person receives as a result of addressing God. The fruits of prayer can be different: the joy in the heart, the tears of repentance, the confidence that God has heard the prayer, the calmness, the silence of the heart, inner strength, and so on. These gifts are granted depending on God’s consideration, God’s providence for each specific person. The fruits of prayer are not an automatic reaction that occurs as a result of saying certain prayers in a certain state of spirit. The fruit of prayer is the answer from God. It is felt when God wants it. The prayer rule is based on this conviction. It is always necessary to address God, pray to Him, and perform the established prayer rule, regardless of the experience of the fruit of prayer or its absence. The task of a Christian is to offer a prayer to God. And the fruit will be sent by God. The fruit of prayer is not the meaning of prayer, but it can be its result.
Waiting for or not feeling the fruits of grace sometimes makes the prayer life of a Christian difficult. Such problems may include reluctance to pray, expectation of a miracle, not understanding of the words of prayer, a feeling of being abandoned by God, the emergence of spiritual delusion, blind fanaticism, etc. When difficulties arise, two approaches to the prayer life are important – trust and effort.
Father and son after a difficult journey. Participants of the Old Believer procession of the Cross to the Velikaya River of 2018
Trust in God is more important in prayer than anywhere else. It is on trust that dialogue with the One you cannot see is built. You need to be confident that God hears any prayer; there is no prayer that God will ignore. We must remember that silence is also an answer. To console yourself in such situations, you should compare your condition with your previous experience, with the experience of the holy fathers, and the experience of other Christians.
And the second approach to overcoming the difficulties of prayer life is effort. Effort in forcing oneself to perform the prayer rule, effort in constancy in prayer. Just as physical fatigue, lack of mood, time, and desire do not allow one to ignore loved ones, so it is in prayer: external factors cannot be an explanation for ignoring prayer. Regardless of your mood, you need to encourage yourself to observe prayer work. Prayer is the act in which quantity turns into quality.
A particular difficulty in the prayer of an Orthodox Christian is the lack of understanding of liturgical texts. This problem arises not from ignorance of the Church Slavonic language (although this is often what it seems), but from the lack of the right spiritual mood. True prayer is performed not only with the mind, but also with the spirit. And with the right attitude, prayer even in an unfamiliar language bears fruit (the example of the holy apostles who spoke and prayed in historical ancient dialects (Acts 2:1, Cor. 14), the example of St. Mary of Egypt). The experience of prayer depends on diligence and experience, and not on knowing the exact meaning of each word of the prayer. “Patience produces experience, experience produces hope, and hope does not disappoint” (Rom. 5:4). By joining the grace-filled life of the Church, a person gradually tunes into understanding the language of prayer (especially since Church Slavonic is not a foreign language for Russian-speaking Christians).
Along with the Church Slavonic language, Orthodox worship contains many other ancient symbols, the understanding of which requires some preparation. But replacing them would destroy the strict order of worship, its atmosphere and spirit. It’s the same with the language of worship. The Church Slavonic language is an element of prayer (not the whole prayer), which requires a certain understanding and preparation to clarify the meaning of the texts. It is entirely acceptable to prepare in advance and have in the church in front of you the texts of liturgical chants and prayers, to do some work for this, to prepare for the service in advance. All this work, these efforts, this desire will become an integral part of Christian prayer, part of a sincere prayerful appeal to God. As a result of all this, sooner or later, according to the Providence of God, every Christian understands from experience that prayer is the breath of life. The more time prayer takes, the closer the connection with God is. And the closer the connection with God, the easier the earthly life is. This is why prayer is a way of safe life on earth and a deposit for the eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven.
