Prayers

In Orthodox Christian practice, prayer is an encounter with God and a fulfillment of the teaching of Christ that the Kingdom of God is within. As St John of Krondstandt has written:

In calling the Lord God in Three Persons in prayer, remember that you are calling the Father of all creatures, Who had no beginning, of Angels and men, that all the Heavenly Hosts regard you, the caller, with wonder and look upon you with love because you are calling with faith and love and proper reverence the common to us and them Creator, Pantocrator and Lord, Whom they love immeasurably, before Whom they are strongly reverent. O, what high joy and beatitude, what greatness, what honor it is to call the eternal Father! Value constantly and unfailingly this highest of joys, this beatitude, which was granted to you by your God’s infinite goodness, and do not forget yourself during your prayer. God is listening to you, Angels and God’s holy men are listening to you. I shed tears writing these lines. –

February 26, 1864

A prayer only makes sense if it is lived.

-Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

When mind and heart are united in prayer and the soul is wholly concentrated in a single desire for God, then the heart grows warm and the light of Christ begins to shine and fills the inward man with peace and joy.
We should thank the Lord for everything and give ourselves up to His will; we should also offer Him all our thoughts and words, and strive to make everything serve only His good pleasure.
-St. Seraphim of Sarov

Prayer is a great weapon, a rich treasure, a wealth that is never exhausted, an undisturbed refuge, a cause of tranquillity, the root of a multitude of blessings and their source.
-St. John Chrysostom

Prayer is a conversation directly with God, being always with God, having one’s soul united with Him and one’s mind inseparable. A person becomes one with the angels and unites with them in perpetual praise and longing for God.
-St. Symeon of Thessaloniki

The day when God is absent, when God is silent–that is the beginning of prayer.
-Metropolitian Anthony of Sourozh

The greater the love, the greater the sufferings of the soul. The fuller the love, the fuller the knowledge of God. The more ardent the love, the more fervent the prayer. The more perfect the love, the holier the life.
-St. Silouan

Nothing is equal to prayer; for what is impossible it makes possible, what is difficult, easy…. For it is impossible, utterly impossible, for the man who prays eagerly and invokes God ceaselessly ever to sin.
-St. John Chrysostom

Prayer is proof of the existence of my reasoning personality, of my God-image; it is the pledge of my future divinity and beatitude. I was created out of nothing; I am nothing before God, having nothing of my own. But I, by His grace, am a per≠sonality, possess intelligence, a heart and a free will, and in my intelligence and freedom I am able by approaching Him in my heart to gradually increase His eternal kingdom within me; to, gradually, still further increase His gifts within me; to draw from Him – as out of an ever flowing and inexhaustible Source – every spiritual and material good, especially the spiritual. Prayer suggests to me that I am the image of God; that through humble and grateful disposition of my soul before God, with my free will, I, by infinitely multiplying God’s spiritual gifts, am thus able to infinitely perfect myself and to enhance my God-image, my heavenly beatitude – for which I have been predetermined -to infinity. Oh, prayer is the sign of my great dignity, with which my Creator has honored me. At one and the same time, however, prayer reminds me of my nonentity (I came from no≠thing and have nothing of my own, for which reason I beseech God for everything), as well as of my greatest dignity (I am God’s image; I am divine; I may be called God’s friend, just as was Abraham, the father of believers – if only I would but believe unquestionably in the existence of my God, in His goodness and almighty power; and become assimilated to Him in this life through deeds of love and mercy).
St John of Kronstandt

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