'Lord teach us to pray', Luke 11.1

[Patrick Walsh]

While I was a Buddhist monk, one of the things that struck me the most about prayer in the Tibetan tradition was the dual nature of their prayers. The prayers were directed both to whom the prayer was directed, and to person praying.

One of the reasons I became Orthodox is because I found this dual nature in Orthodox prayer as well. An excellent example of this is found in the preparatory Canon for Confession there is a troparia, "O Saviour, sanctify my mind, soul, heart and body, and vouchsafe me uncondemned, O Master, to approach the fearful Mysteries."

This harkens to the first great commandment, to love God with all our heart, body, mind and soul. So the "Fearful Mysteries" will heal all four when we partake, and strengthen our ability to be obedient to this commandment.

My point is that there are subtle reminders such as this on how we are to behave as Christians and as servants of God throughout Orthodox Prayer, and the Psalter as well. I mention the Psalter because it has gained wide acceptance outside of Orthodoxy as well as within, not to separate it from Orthodox Prayer for which it is an integral part.

I am hopeful that other people may be able to share how they learn and listen to their own prayers as they pray.

I give another example:

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

How can we expect forgiveness if we do not forgive those who have given us umbrage. In fact, St. Isaac of Syria says any prayer said while in anger with someone is still-born. So we should examine ourselves each and every time we begin to pray. I think St. Isaac was listening to the Lord's prayer as we spoke it.

In Christ,
Patrick

[Antonios]

I have found at times in my life when I would be reciting prayers, for example saying "By the power of Thy blessing enable me at all times to speak and act to Thy glory with a pure spirit, with humility, patience,love, gentleness, peace, courage and wisdom:aware always of Thy presence."
I would be very self-consciounce of what I was saying and would think that somehow, if I said it enough times and drilled it in my head, I would learn to make myself humble, patient, gentle, full of love, courage, and wisdom. However, I was fooling myself. I put trust in myself, that somehow I would 'teach' myself to be those things.

In fact, the begining of the previous prayer clearly states : "By the power of your blessing enable me...". When I stopped depending on my own abilities and gave it instead to the Providence and Power of God, (which led me also to be more 'aware always of [His] prescence') I felt more empowered to resist the passions and do those virtuous things, but by God's Grace, not my own.

in humility and love,
Antonios

[Byron Jack Gaist]

When I stopped depending on my own abilities and gave it instead to the Providence and Power of God

Well put, Antonios. How does one go about doing this, though? Can an awareness of our sinful condition be helpful in opening up our attitude towards the mercy of God?


So we should examine ourselves each and every time we begin to pray.

I wonder whether anybody else, like Patrick, does this? A lot of prayers ask God for mercy for one's innumerable sins, but what about the consciousness of those sins? Obviously the sins we are not conscious of are another matter, entirely for the Lord to know and to forgive or hold us to. But do we have a responsibility to become aware of as many of our sins as we can? Should we hold these in mind while asking God's forgiveness? Should we be asking God to enlighten us as to how to do better next time, sometimes perhaps even how to make reparation for our sins?

Come to think of it, this is probably where having a spiritual father comes in handy...

In Christ
Byron

[Mother Evfrosinia]

One of my earliest and most influential teachers of prayer, Mother Abbess Magdalina (Grabbe) of the Lesna Monastery, was extremely suspicious of all sorts of pretense in prayer, of false "mysticism", exalted and emotional states, that frequently lead to all sorts of moods, emotions and at times even visions, which inexperienced seekers then mistake for genuine spiritual experience. To counteract that she stressed the necessity of constantly humbly walking before God, of remembering that we are always in His presence. To this end she recommended the use of brief, constant prayers: the Jesus Prayer, either in its entirety, or abbreviated, of verses from the psalms, or of the 24 prayers of St. John Chrysostom usually found with the evening prayers in Orthodox prayer books. While she felt that few, if any of us could achieve exalted states of prayer of the heart, we can and must always stand before God. If we struggle to do this, our many faults, failings and sins become clearer and clearer, because they constantly come up as obstacles along the way. We also learn to pay attention as to how we stand with those around us, because as Patrick so aptly pointed out in quoting St. Isaac of Syria, otherwise our prayer is stillborn. And you have to constantly listen, because you're not just begging God to "get" something, you're asking and trying to "be", in a certain place, with Him. In dealing with this I find the prayer of the Optina Elders especially helpful:
"O Lord, grant me serenity of spirit with which to meet everything that coming day will bring.
O Lord, enable me to fully commit myself to Thy Holy Will.
O Lord, direct and support me throughout every hour of this day.
O Lord, whatever news I may receive during the day, teach me to accept it with peace in my heart and the firm conviction that all things happen according to Thy Holy Will.
O Lord, guide my thoughts and feelings in all that I do and say. In all unforeseen circumstances, do not let me forget that everything is ordained by Thee.
O Lord, teach me to be honest and wise with my family and friends, hurting and offending no one.
O Lord, give me the strength to endure the weariness of this day and all that it brings. Guide my will and teach me to pray, to believe, to hope, to endure, to forgive and to love."

[Patrick Walsh]

Thank you, Mother Evfrosinia.

You words express what I was trying to get at very much so. It is true that we must avoid false visions, and even the Buddhist meditation masters I have studied with tell us to ignore them. They are products of our own mind seeking outwardly for inner signs of progress. Unfortunately, the time that they usually come is when we are most frustrated with our lack of perceived progress, and thus also at the time we are most vulnerable to them.

I am not looking for signs from heaven in this thread. Just gleanings or insight into a deeper theological understanding of oneself and how to relate to God.

St. John (Maximovitch) used the cycle of the liturgical calendar to teach himself, and to teach others the Orthodox way of life.

I would like to say one thing at this point which occurred to me as I read Antonios' response.

Humility is sort of a chicken and egg problem. In order to acquire it, we cannot be so prideful as to think that we can learn it by ourselves. It is something that we have to ask guidance for, and to cultivate obedience within ourselves in order to acquire. Abbot Tikhon (+1967) wrote that humility is the first step and the foundation for building genuine love within yourself. And Christ himself told us, "If you love me, obey my commandments." (John 14:15). There is a profound connection between obedience and the capacity for love.

feofil

[Antonios]

Thank you Patrick, Mother Evfroinia, and Byron for the very profound words you have all written. There are many things to think about in this threaed.

How to pray certainly is a mystery. There have been books upon books written about it, and even if you have read many of them, if not all of them, it doesn't mean that you will pray 'correctly', that is to stand as before the presence of God with your mind in your heart. And even after long toil and struggle you think you may have attained to such a gift of prayer, what is in your heart may in the end foil all your attempts if it is not a heart which is pure, and humble, and full of love. All those years of studying and learning and praying and trying to live a life of rightousness was put to naught by what was in the heart (and the words spoken by) the Pharisee. My life is a constant battle against the Pharisee in me, and because of my weakness, will undoubtably be for the remainder of my life. My only respite is to pray for mercy and to know that our God, as plainly evident from the Cross, is long-suffering and ever-merciful toward mankind. That because of His infinite Love towards each of us, He gives us what we need if we simply have faith in that Love. My only hope is by the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Byron stated: "But do we have a responsibility to become aware of as many of our sins as we can? Should we hold these in mind while asking God's forgiveness? Should we be asking God to enlighten us as to how to do better next time, sometimes perhaps even how to make reparation for our sins?"

In St. Ephraim's Great Lenten Prayer (http://www.monachos.net/patristics/ephraim/index.shtml) , he says "Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see mine own faults and not to judge my brothers and sisters."

It is imperative that we examine ourselves and pray to God that we may see our faults and errors and to ask for guidance on how to correct them. One of the Holy Fathers states that at the end of the day, as we prepare ourselves to bed, we should go over the entire day, from the moment we awoke to the time we got into bed for the night, and see where we transgressed, where we erred, where we hurt others or didn't do enough to help others when we had the chance. Its difficult and even impossible to take the plank out of our eye if we don't know its there to begin with. So, remebering our sins is crucial, and constantly praying to God for forgiveness of our transgressions and help in overcoming the passions is tantamount to the Christian life. And if done so with tears upon tears, even more so.

However, that being said, there is a time and place to remember the specifics of the many sins we have done before God, and there is a time and a place to just remember God Himself. As Mother Evfroinia explained, from the struggle of the Christian life and in our daily walk in the presence of God, 'our many faults, failings and sins become clearer and clearer, because they constantly come up as obstacles along the way'. These are the moments when, with the help of God, we 'fix' our lives. When we are reciting those brief, constant prayers as Mother Evfroinia stated, such as the Jesus Prayer, however, it is well enough to know that we are sinners, and instead of recounting those sins, we should concentrate on being before God and to 'listen' to Him in our hearts through the silence. God knows the sins we have done. He knows our weaknesses. At those times, we don't aks for instructions, but rather mercy.

in humility and love,
Antonios

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Thank you Antonios, for clarifying the issue of a time for remembering sins and a separate time for seeking mercy in prayer. Both as a therapist and as a client in therapy, I find that often when in sincere, searching dialogue with another I become aware of aspects of myself that do not suit the self-image I would like to have. It is tempting to try to annul these insights in some way: to say we are being misunderstood, misrepresented, or to ignore the painful moment altogether and move swiftly on to something more pleasant. Yet those insights, painful as they are, are often very important in helping us to change. Humility is definitely a key virtue here.

Mother Evfrosinia stated


our many faults, failings and sins become clearer and clearer, because they constantly come up as obstacles along the way.

To a beginner in the spiritual life, this sounds intuitively correct - I wonder if you could expand on this, giving some examples?

In Christ
Byron

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Byron, Antonios and others in this thread,

There is a rather famous story of a modern-day Athonite who was approached for instruction on prayer, and specifically with regard to the matter of raising detailed or specific concerns in prayer. Ought we amend the words of the Jesus Prayer to 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on my aunt who is suffering of disease', etc? The response was rather simply, 'And you think you know more than God the needs of those dear to you? Let your heart grow close to God, and the needs of those you love will be united to him as well'.

INXC, Matthew

[nurse-aid]

the best that was said...thanks...that exactly what i try to do...

[Father David Moser]

As a counterpoint to Matthew's posting about raising specific issues in prayer, let me also point to the example of the Divine Liturgy and other services of the Church. The ectenias can be very specific and personal, especially those that are added for specific purposes (for example the litanies for those who are ill or those who are traveling). It is not inappropriate to pray in such a specific manner and we are given examples of how to do so in our services. The most important part of these prayers, however is the last line, which is always "Lord have mercy". Once we mention or raise up a specific, or general issue, we commit it to God, releasing our own control, anxiety, worry, care and place it in God's hands simply by saying "Lord have mercy". In this short, but powerful prayer, we relinquish all our control, all our own ideas of what should happen, all our "solutions" to the problem, all our preferences about how things "should" turn out, etc and place the issue directly in God's hands trusting Him to work it out according to His mercy, His compassion, His wisdom, His love.

Remember that prayer is also a "conversation" a time of communicating as well as communing with God. In our conversation we can express our cares, our fears, our thoughts, our ideas, our hopes and our dreams and who better to share these things with than our Lord Jesus Christ. In the end, of course, having expressed this to Him, we also entrust it all to Him choosing to trust His providence and wisdom rather than ourselves.

It is not inappropriate to express our specific concerns in prayer, however, we must not try to "tell God" what to do, but must always end with "Lord have mercy" and leave it all in God's hands.

Apr. David Moser

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Fr David,

I would hope, indeed, that the two points would not be counterpoints! The quotation from one of the Athonite fathers is of a specific kind of prayer, and of a specific reality of prayer -- but as you state, prayer is diverse; and the same Athonite who stated God knows the desires of the heart in prayer, also prayed the petitions of the Divine Liturgy.

We need, especially today, reminders of both realities: that prayer is dialogue, and that prayer is above and beyond dialogue.

INXC, Matthew

[Leandros Papadopoulos]

Dear Friends,

The prayer is the fruit of honest, loving, personal relation with God. As long as we are putting ourselves in front of God we are no longer talking to Him, but we relate with Him.

In His kindness and in His humbleness He accepts our words even when our words are meaningless or occasional.

When we ask for His mercy, we are actually asking for an already given gift. But we do not stop asking for more, not in being in a consuming attitude but in being introduced in a timeless relation.

We are constrained to express ourselves in a human way and therefore we are being presented as poor creatures that are being enriched by the wealth of the Uncreated God. In our relation He provides all that He has and therefore we actually ask for Him as HE IS EVERYTHING.

We ask for health, for freedom, for welfare, for long living, but all these are being considered as requirements for our relation with Him. They are not valued by themselves and they are rejected when at a given circumstance it is required to abandon all these in order to preserve our relation with God.

Our prayer to God is like the love between two human lovers. They are asking for health, freedom, long life because they are being introduced in their personal loving relation that requires these human necessities for continuing being in relation.

It is a wonder that we are actually talking to God ! “To talk to someone” means to be in a specific relation with him, so that to be capable to understand his language from within the relation and then to use his language to communicate with him. It is like a parent-child relation. The child is being related to its parents and within the relation is adopting their language to address to them as “mother” and “father”. The child is not using its own language, it does not express itself (the childship), but it expresses the parental reality of mothership and fathership which are being non-experienced by it. Yet, the child is capable to transcend its reality and to experience the beyond experience parental reality and to talk to its parents with their language from within the relation. Likewise as St Paul says : And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” (Galatians 4:6) (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%204:6;&version=50;)

Only in the Spirit of Christ we are capable to address the Father. While in praying we are no more us, but we are ontologically the sons of God. Like the child that as it talks to its parent is ontologically their child, and is no longer it. By addressing to God as “Father” we are no longer “us”, we are “sons”. Therefore we are not engaged in a dialogue, but we are being introduced in a relation.

The dialogue is a way of communication, but a relation is a way of being. Christ said: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ Matthew 7:21-23 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207:21-23;&version=50;). By that we understand that beyond “dialogue” is the relation. No matter how many hours we spend in praying, prophesizing, making miracles and wonders in the name of God, the important thing is to be “known by Him”. That is accomplished by adopting the sonship relation with Him and to call Him as Father instead of “Lord”.

To call God as “Lord” is a name calling within a dialogue, but to call him “Father” is a privilege of His Son within Their Uncreated Trinity Relation. And again St Paul tells us: For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15) (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%208:15;&version=50;)

Praying is living the life of Church as the body of Christ, there is no other way.

May God bless us, all.

[Father David Moser]

Matthew,

By "counterpoint" I didn't mean that it would go against what you wrote or that my comments were somehow opposed to what you wrote, but rather that they would be complimentary, having a balancing effect. It is true, we need both elements in our prayer.

Apr David

[Patrick Walsh]

The Lord said, "ask and ye shall receive." But what shall we ask for? Shall we ask for things from our own heart--which we cannot trust? Or should we ask according to God's will?

I read the prayers of the Holy Fathers in my prayer books, especially St. Macarius and St. John Chrysostom, and I feel totally inadequate to compose prayers of my own. My faith is weak, and my knowledge of God's will is very poor, but I beleive that when we ask of the Lord, we should ask from our faith, which is obedient to God.

I feel that we should not pray to persuade God to do something for us, but rather we should pray in accordance with God's will in order that we may progress in our knowledge of ourselves as the Image of God, and of God Himself.

So I do not compose my own prayers, but stick to the prayers the Church has set out for me. I feel that I have progressed remarkably well in this manner, but I have a long, long way to go yet. I have only just spotted the path leading to the narrow gate, and wish to journey on it.

I am grateful to all of you who have replied to my question. I see that this post has brought out many good things from each of you, and from the Church itself. For that I am thankful.

But I still do not know how to pray.

Patrick

[nurse-aid]

The PRAYER IS PRAISE! so when you LOVE your sing it...asking of somehting, or complaine and cry is different...and maybe come before PRAISE...

And then IF PRAISE is what you sing...it means you are no need to ask anything, it means you got it...HIS WILL AND YOURS IN ONEACCORD!

but of course when praise is STOP...it means going back a little, then needs more prayer of MERCY...so to recive back that lost TRUST....

[Leandros Papadopoulos]

The Lord said, "ask and ye shall receive." But what shall we ask for? Shall we ask for things from our own heart--which we cannot trust? Or should we ask according to God's will?

We all know the teaching of Christ, when He was teaching how to pray in Matthew 6 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206;&version=50;): “ Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matthew 6:25-34) (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206:25-34;&version=50;%20)

Dear Patrick Walsh,

There is the question of repeating the prayers of the saints. Why are we doing this? Why do we take the words of others and put them in our mouths adopting them as our own, even when their experiences that generated their prayers from their hearts have nothing to do with our experiences?

This is not a method for sharing their experience nor is it a way of authentic presentation of our self. The imitation of their prayer is not our prayer.

We have to understand that talking to God will not bring us in front of God. In Orthodox tradition almost everything is an imitation. We paint the same icons, we say the same prayers, and we do the same rituals without any changes for centuries. There have been changes but they were introduced for practical reasons. Nobody has ever produced an improved or a renewed way.

This is because the Orthodox tradition is seeking to cease “production”. The mystic meeting with God happens inside the heart and it is actualized beyond communication and presentation. Church fathers knowing that the mind is in need for movement out from itself and that it is continuously looking beyond itself for otherness in order to be discriminated from it and to be separated from it so that it would define itself as a non-otherness, they introduced the “work” of the mind which is a spiral movement starting from the outside towards inside itself. This “work” of the mind is the repetition of the prayer of Christ: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner and on your world” and for the rest of the mind the Church Fathers proposed the imitation of Saints by saying their prayers, chanting hymns and psalms and doing practical handwork because the mind can not stand non-active. It needs to “consume” otherness. The “rest” of the mind is not actually a stop of spiritual act, but it is a “rest” from intensive spiritual movement towards itself. We must be aware that this is not a methodology that is providing the meeting with God, but it is a methodology that prepares Christians to unite their mind and their will in their hearts where the meeting is going to take place when it is God’s pleasure to visit their hearts.

It is a logical argument, coming from the agnostics, to ask from God to come “here and now” to meet us. It is a request coming from the ignorance that ontological “here and now” is in the heart and that the external “here and now” does not has any ontological substance.

When we try to speak with God our mind is demanding to see the other person. We can not address the unseen, nor can we speak with the indefinable. But the mind is not a useless instrument; it is part of our nature.

At the same time we are able to have an internal “dialogue” with our selves, which is also unseen and indefinable. The internal dialogue is considered as genuine and authentic but because it is addressing the unseen and indefinable self of ours it becomes an illusion of dialogue with a non existed self. It becomes an illusionary conversation with the non-existed. The Church fathers point out that Adam and Eve actually had this kind of conversation with themselves when they were deceived by devil: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate”. (genesis 3:6) (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis%203:6;&version=50;). Eve had tasted in her heart the fruit before she actually tasted it. This place of the heart that the mind was homed before the fall has been left empty afterwards.

The effort of the Church is to restore the mind of Her members in its natural place, that is their heart. When the mind is restored in the heart it rests there because it finds the ontology of existence in the image of God that a human being is. This rest produces the thirst for God’s personal presence just like the vision of the image of a beautiful person produces the heartily desire to meet with the depicted person.

So, the first thing that is being restored in the Church is the image of God within ourselves so that our mind and our willingness should meet with God’s image within us and realize the experiential and existential beauty of His image (that is being pictured within our hearts) and then stay in there waiting and asking for the depicted Person to come in meeting with them, when He pleases to do so. This is how the mind and the will are united with the heart according to the order of God: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30) (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=48&chapter=12&verse=30&version=31&context=verse)

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner and on your world.

[Patrick Walsh]

Luke 10:28 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

I think we are all overanalyzing my question. This is due to the imprecise nature of my question. So I ask for forgiveness.

The Occidental Churches say the same things you say, to a greater or lesser extent. In fact, much of what you say can also be found in Buddhism. When I left Buddhism, I was preparing to go on a solitary retreat for at least five years--perhaps 10, or even 20 years. I met someone who showed me that compassion does indeed exist in Christianity just in the nick of time to make me step back and look again--someone with compassion that is free from hypocrisy.

I am not asking how to transcend the rational mind, or to simply sing Praises to God. I find praises empty of heartfelt sincerity sometimes, so I tend to shy away from those. I am thinking of the nonsense praises such as "Kum ba yah, my Lord," and "Gimme that ol' time religion." I stick to the Psalms and the Kathismas.

I am asking how to turn all the heart, all the soul, all the strength, all the mind to prayer.

Acts 1:14 These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, ...

I feel this "one accord" when I am in Liturgy. It is in fact, a very powerful and overwhelming feeling that nourishes my spirit. Yet, when I am alone (I have no real family) nothing nourishing comes from the prayers. My Spiritual Father tells me that this is natural since Christ tells us "where there are gathered two or more in my name, there I am." But I know the hermits pray and fast alone, so I am not completely satisfied with his answer.

Patrick

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Patrick,

I think there is an important point to consider in what your spiritual father has said, following the words of Christ, "where there are gathered two or more in my name, there I am."

It is much more difficult to pray alone due to our passions and especially selfishness. Somehow the grace of the Liturgy which can take us outside of our self-absorbtion covers this. But alone it re-surfaces again until after many years of struggling against ourselves we grow in humility.

Prayer- true prayer- can only grow as we grow in love & humility. So we learn to pray by enduring in prayer.

In Christ-- Fr Raphael

[Father David Moser]

I second Fr Raphael's words - "we learn to pray by enduring in prayer." As I reread the original question, my answer was simply "practice, practice, practice" but Fr Raphael's words are much more substantial. Pray, and in praying consistently you will yourself learn to pray. The fathers tell us that true prayer, that is "to turn all the heart, all the soul, all the strength, all the mind to prayer." is a gift from God - all that you can do is to offer what little you have consistently and He will give you that prayer for which you seek.

Apr David

[Leandros Papadopoulos]

But I know the hermits pray and fast alone, so I am not completely satisfied with his answer

Dear Patrick Walsh,

May be we have no idea what a hermit is going through in his total abandonment in God's providence. This is not a "happy" time for him, it is a loving time.

Leandros

[Leandros Papadopoulos]

The Occidental Churches say the same things you say, to a greater or lesser extent. In fact, much of what you say can also be found in Buddhism.

Dear Patrick Walsh,

As I read the treatise of St Athanasius of Alexandria “Against the Heathen” (http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-04/Npnf2-04-13.htm#P1726_622704), I remembered your words.

“Against the Heathen”, chapter 34:

“We repeat then what we said before, that just as men denied God, and worship things without soul, so also in thinking they have not a rational soul, they receive at once the punishment of their folly, namely, to be reckoned among irrational creatures: and so, since as though from lack of a soul of their own they superstitiously worship soulless gods, they are worthy of pity and guidance. But if they claim to have a soul, and pride themselves on the rational principle, and that rightly, why do they, as though they had no soul, venture to go against reason, and think not as they ought, but make themselves out higher even than the Deity? For having a soul that is immortal and invisible to them, they make a likeness of God in things visible and mortal. Or why, in like manner as they have departed from God, do they not betake themselves to Him again? For they are able, as they turned away their understanding from God, and feigned as gods things that were not, in like manner to ascend with the intelligence of their soul, and turn back to God again. But turn back they can, if they lay aside the filth of all lust which they have put on, and wash it away persistently, until they have got rid of all the foreign matter that has affected their soul, and can shew it in its simplicity as it was made, that so they may be able by it to behold the Word of the Father after Whose likeness they were originally made. For the soul is made after the image and likeness of God, as divine Scripture also shews, when it says in the person of Gods: "Let us make man after our Image and likeness." Whence also when it gets rid of all the filth of sin which covers it and retains only the likeness of the Image in its purity, then surely this latter being thoroughly brightened, the soul beholds as in a mirror the Image of the Father, even the Word, and by His means reaches the idea of the Father, Whose Image the Saviour is.

Or, if the soul's own teaching is insufficient, by reason of the external things which cloud its intelligence, and prevent its seeing what is higher, yet it is further possible to attain to the knowledge of God from the things which are seen, since Creation, as though in written characters, declares in a loud voice, by its order and harmony, its own Lord and Creator.”

May God bless us, all.

[Patrick Walsh]

"Lord, teach us to pray."

feofil

[katya the nurse-aid]

What is the prayer? I don’t know, I’m fool…
I guess, to breathe and see connections in the things, that tool…
The heart which open free as unlocked door….
To wind to come and made whole house something more..
The blast of fresh and fragrant wind,
come into my home and to make me feel,
the stillness of the things in place,
after that blast of hurricane, its face…
And clean and new, I’m singing song to You,
about, what the prayers is,
I guess its simply endless Feast!


The feast of knowing and the feast of joy…
Sometimes with pain of my own old destroy…
Myself who cannot fully grasp that feast..
Because I’m still in body, and I’m still sophist…
And not who’s fully breath and smell that Wind…
I’m only watching from inside on this, I use my will…
I hiding still in old and scary me,
instead meeting blast which will transform me…
But day by day, I open more and more…
My windows and all my doors…
Without hiding and with will to be the One…
With whom I meant to be forever and beyond!