On Orthodox Prayer

Orthodox Christian prayer is a little different than the prayer I practiced as an evangelical Christian.

I suppose I should start by saying that, like the early Church, the Orthodox have an ideal that God ought to be praised unceasingly, day and night. So part of the point of having a “rule” (or schedule) of prayer, with written prayers to recite, is to make sure this happens. And not just anything that calls itself prayer will suffice: it’s a sacrifice of sorts so it must be complete. It includes worship, repentance, and continual waiting on God for mercies of every kind. Every hour, on the hour, thousands of Orthodox Christians are praising God somewhere in the world.

Now it’s true that our monasteries bear the great load of this duty for us. They observe so strict a rule of prayer that we need never fear that an hour passes without prayer. However, in Orthodox Christianity when our leaders shoulder responsibility, it is not to let the laypeople off. Rather, they take us with them. We are invited to join them in the prayer that is always, already going on, morning, noon and night.

This is a large view of prayer, but an even larger one is that in which the church strives to share the literally unceasing worship of heaven, where angels cry “Holy, Holy Holy” again and again down the ages without any fear that they are induling in vain repetitions.

My personal developement in prayer has not remained unchanged. The fact that I have a schedule of prayer toward which to aspire is very helpful. The fact that my prayers are written out for me is even more helpful. Contrary to what I’d have expected at one time, my prayer has deepened and become more balanced and sincere since I began the discipline of Orthodox prayer. I’ve gotten better at finding the right words (or realizing when silence is best.) Previously I struggled to find the words to pray for even for two minutes, and I often left my room after prayer feeling discouraged and beaten down. Now an hour is not too hard on some days, as I discipline my mind to become quiet and internalize the words on the page in front of me. I usually leave both refreshed and chastened.

In Sunday School as a child and teenager, I was reminded again and again of the acrosstic Praise Repent Ask Yeild. Other teachers dissected the Lord’s Prayer for us but carefully reminded us not to pray the actualy words of the Lord’s Prayer as that would be vain repitition. As a result we overthought our prayers or came up with inferior imitation of our Lord’s simple address to the Father.

It’s another thing entirely when you are given a model – actual words to say.

You are instructed to internalize the words as you say them. Not only does it help you to find “the right words to say” but it teaches you the right feelings and sentiments to feel. It gives your heart a direction in which to reach. 

I want to mention, not because I’ve attained to this, but just to give a rounded-out picture, that Orthodox Christians are actually seeking a far more real experience of prayer than what I’ve just spoken of. Such praying as I’ve described is not viewed as the goal or particularly righteous. It’s a student’s discipline. What we seek is the “prayer of the heart.”

Moreover, we don’t believe that the prayers which we offer to God are what evangelicals would have called “meritorious.” Rather, we believe that God accepts them because of the faith in them. We hope he counts such faith as righteousness, completing the work we have so poorly begun and bestowing true prayer upon us when we have been made ready.

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Perhaps the most condensed version of such prayer discipline is the Jesus Prayer. At its simplest it is simply the use of Jesus’ name as a prayer. My Mom, though not Orthodox, did this for my grandfather on his deathbed, supporting him through his final temptation.

At its fullest it is expressed thus:

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner.”

There are times when you say nothing more than that. You say it, and then you are quiet.

***

Of icons and saints I suppose I should speak. To saints we offer praise of a sort and prayer of a sort but we distinguish such honor and such requests from the worship and reliance we render to God.

We honor God’s glory which they have benn made to display. We request them to pray for us and even to act for us in God’s power, because we believe them to be alive and glorified and still part of the Church. We believe that we are connected to them in that we are all held in God’s hand, and through the power of his Spirit they hear us. James tells us that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. But where will we find such to pray for us?

If you don’t personally know anyone whose prayers are invariably powerful, you are only left with two options that I know of. You can assume that you are “declared” righteous, and therefore your prayers “count” if you can only make them fervent and effectual enough. This doesn’t work and it leads only to spiritual delusion. I’ve both experienced and witnessed the effect.

The other option is to ask a righteous person that has gone before you into glory to pray for you. It’s a proven way.

Icons are a sort of ancient experiment. I believe the portraits of saints, angels, and Christ (never of God without his flesh) were originally made to honor their subjects, beautify places of worship (like the catacombs or house churches) and instruct the simple. Their effectiveness in helping people to pray was discovered over the years. An icon offers an object of contemplation, because it is a symbolic, not a physical portrait. It brings you near to the person you are contemplating and helps you to speak with them. Again this is something the church has experienced and which was, in the 700’s A.D,. confirmed by a church council.

There are of course cautions which must be observed. As with any spiritual path or discipline, delusion is the most dangerous enemy. These cautions are important but once they are out of the way the real point is to reach out through your icon to people who dwell in dimmensions of our world which modern thought denies us.

Note: After posting this, I toddled on over to Father Stephen’s blog and found he’d just put up a post about prayer as well. He is dealing more with the true prayer toward which we must aspire, so I’m posting the link here as I did not have much to say about that.

http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/the-habit-of-prayer/

Note II: Since I’m getting so many hits on this post, I thought readers might be intersted in which “written prayers” or “training prayers” I’m talking about. They are very similar across ethnic traditions of the Orthodox Church, but here is the version of daily prayers used in the Antiochian jurisdiction, which is mine.

http://www.antiochian.org/orthodox-prayers