On Prayer By Bishop Irenei

On Prayer 

By Bishop Irenei of London and Western Europe (ROCOR)

(Four excerpts from The Beginnings of a Life of Prayer)

…

It is Time to Make a Beginning

When the heart comes to realize that the gifts God offers for the life of the whole world He also offers uniquely to each person, whom He loves with an immeasurable love and knows with an ineffable intimacy, these beginnings of prayer start to blossom. But their blossoming is not the end of our receipt of God’s grace: it is still the beginning! Recognizing this cry of the heart, it is time to act - to make a start.

The beginnings of prayer must lead us to the attainment of prayer’s truer substance. The power of God is not one merely to bless our spiritual infirmity, but to raise us up out of our illness. While not all ailments of the body may be healed in this life (for at times God grants blessed suffering, according to His mercy), the healing of soul is promised to every man; and so our task is to foster growth in prayer, that we may enter more fully into the promises of God. And let there be no thought or excuse that our spiritual infirmity is too great, that we are condemned to live only among weak reflections of prayer and communion with the Lord. Remember the story of the Lord’s friend Lazarus, who was not only ill but in fact wholly dead, and that for four days. Is your spiritual state more dire than his? But the Lord spoke a command to the dead man: Lazarus, come forth! - and the dead man arose. Likewise, He said to the dead daughter of Jairus: Damsel, I say unto thee, arise! - and the girl arose and walked.

The Lord calls out to each of us also: “My child, arise! Get up from your slumber in sin and follow Me. Rise up from the palsy of your spiritual illness and walk in the fullness of the life I have come down from heaven to grant you. Receive from Me that which neither evil, nor sin, nor satan, nor death could prevent Me from giving you: the heavenly life of My Kingdom!” And what are we to do when the Lord thus comes to us? Are we to remain stagnant and still? Or are we to turn to Him Who has revealed Himself to us and cry out with St. Thomas, My Lord and my God! - and then rise up and follow Him?

It is time to make a beginning in prayer! There is no other time that God has given to man. How long shall we make excuses and so prevent our growth? Not for one more day, or even another moment. Today, salvation is come into this house! Today is the day when our truer prayer may begin.

…Defeating the Passions in Prayer

If we wage war against the passions by a consistent repentance and gentle obedience, the purification provided by the grace of the Holy Trinity will become our ally and aid in their defeat. Just as misguided passions prevent the heart from fully approaching union with God, repelling its every impulse to communion in the splendor of the Lord, so a mind devoutly intent on inner prayer naturally repels those passions which fail to drive the soul closer to Christ. In this way, the aim of our contest also becomes the tool of its attainment. 

When a mind is focused on true prayer, its desires for earthly passions are weakened by its longing for divine union. The truer longing displaces its weak, disfigured brother. Seen in a renewed way as obstacles to pure prayer, familiar passions such as anger, greed, and lust are driven out, that the mind might be clear and holy, made ready for spiritual contemplation.

Look, how visible is God’s mercy! In His infinite love, He makes prayer the very tool by which we may learn to pray! He gives us prayer, which weakens the passions that keep us from prayer, so that by what is at first a weak and surface-level contemplation we might mature in due course to the heights of divine communion. How little ought we to fear the obstacles that lie in our way, in the face of such love and divine favor from the Lord!

There are times when, in His infinite loving-kindness, the tender Lord banishes the passionate impulses wholly from our hearts for a brief time in prayer. This wonderful solace serves to show us what can be obtained through genuine repentance, giving us a foretaste of blessed dispassion. If ever this miracle is wrought in us, let us embrace it, not as a sign of our maturity or accomplishment; rather, let us recognize it as a condescension to our great sin: that the Lord provides us, even in our unworthiness, with a glimpse of Paradise. And so let us rise up with new vigor to its right and full attainment.

Gentleness of heart is a tool of infinite value in the struggle against the passions.Just as the king declared to the Lord, Thy gentleness has made me great, so too the gentleness of the Lord’s presence may distill the the troubles of the heart and raise us to the great heights of prayer. But we will not find gentleness where our will reigns, for an unchecked will is the father of arrogance and pomposity. The Lord’s gentleness, however, comes to us through humility and obedience.

The Lord Himself is our example in this: in all things was He obedient to His Father, even saying to His disciples, I have come down from heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me, and in the garden, Not My will, but Thine be done. So was He gentle and lowly in heart, One Who humbled Himself, Who opened not His mouth, Who was kind to the sinner even as He pronounced the just and mysterious judgment of the Kingdom. In this, the Saviour was ever in perfect communion with His Father and the Holy Spirit, for the gentleness of His obediently humble will maintained at all times that divine union, untouched by the passions that might thwart it. 

If we are to discover true prayer, let the passions be banished through our intent and our unbending love of the Lord. We cannot pray if we do not conform our will to His; and we cannot emulate the Lord’s will if ours is held captive by the passions. Let us cast off this heavy yoke of sin, and take upon us instead the yoke of the Saviour, which is light and easy to bear.

Prayer in the Holy Spirit

The beginnings of prayer lie in a simple phrase: “Lord, have mercy,” but the heights of prayer go beyond all words. The holy Apostle Paul reveals this when he affirms that the Holy Spirit Himself makes intercession for us. For, as the saint says, the Spirit dwells in you; and so he manifests prayer in our innermost being, where our own words are incapable of expressing the true groanings of the heart.

When we are weak in prayer, when we are ailing in spirit and broken in body, then let us fall upon the Lord’s promise with deeper conviction. It is then that the Spirit shall bind our wounds, touch our hearts, and lift up our prayer to the Father. 

We must endeavor not to do battle with the Spirit Who is our helper and Comforter in prayer. We do battle with Him when we defile His dwelling-place, our body, with lustful passions; and we do battle with Him when we muffle His divine voice with our paltry words. Let us offer instead a pure body and a quiet heart, for these present the Spirit with a peaceful country in which to reign.

Fall upon prayer as your only aid and help in this life. When you are weary, pray. When you are joyful, let your joy feed deeper prayer. When in hunger or thirst, open your heart to the Lord. When in exultation, bind your life more firmly to God. When prayer itself is hard, pray all the more. For prayer is “the ascent of the heart to God,” Who is its true and proper Master in every condition of this life.

This Spirit knows your heart better than you do. When through weariness or inattentiveness you fall dumb in prayerful openness before the Lord, do not fancifully invent conditions to present to the Master. Quiet your mind, and let the Spirit reveal the true condition of your heart.

To pray without the Spirit is to breathe without air, or eat without food, or drink without water. It is impossible, yet how often we make the vain attempt!

When the Spirit prays in a man, his heart is transformed from a cold rock to a living fire. The unsatisfying water of his soul becomes the true wine of spiritual life. The raging sea of his life is parted, that he might come directly into the presence of his Lord. The meager rations of his Christian life are multiplied a hundredfold into the nourishment  of the eternal Kingdom. In short, all the miracles of God’s love are manifested in the heart where the Spirit has kindled the flame of true prayer.

…The Divine Mysteries: The Nourishment of Prayer

Remaining in this way to his Maker and Fashioner, man finds himself anew in the temple of true prayer. A man cannot pray apart from the presence of God, even as a son cannot receive the embrace of his father if he does not run to his father’s house. So must we run to our Father’s dwelling-place, the Church, and receive our precious Christ fully, wholly, in Body and Blood. In this way, we embrace the presence of God - or rather, God embraces us - and prayer has a foundation on which to grow.

True prayer is this banquet of the heart in Christ. Its plate is the holy diskos, its cup the divine chalice. Its table is the altar of bloodless sacrifice, and its banqueting hall the sanctuary of the living Lord.

The divine Mystery of our true thanksgiving is both the icon and the food of prayer. As the Lamb upon the altar is broken yet never divided, the heart at prayer is broken by ascesis, yet never divided against itself. True prayer crushes the heart, yet does not break it. It crucifies the will, but offers this sacrifice in order that the will may be raised. And so we hear it proclaimed: “Let your hearts be on high,” and we reply: “We lift them up unto the Lord.” Exultantly debased and debasingly exalted, we receive our Saviour in body and in spirit.

In this manner, the divine services nourish us in communion with Life and train the heart, mind, and body in genuine prayer. Run to the temple, if you wish to convert and make stalwart the heart! 

Each of the Church’s Mysteries nourishes and feeds the life of prayer, and thus we must have recourse to all as best suits the needs of soul and body. Among these we must particularly remember regular Confession, by which the heart is lightened of the burdens that weigh it down with worldly cares. Without the practice of such Confession of thoughts and sins, we fetter to the earth that which might otherwise ascend to the heights of heaven.

Prayer is the sacrament of the heart. Our bodies are washed in Baptism, anointed by chrism and oil; our souls, having been cleansed and sealed by the Spirit through Baptism and Chrismation, are liberated through Confession. The Eucharist joins us, body and soul, to the incarnate Lord. And prayer transforms the receptive heart into the vessel and throne of God.

The training ground of prayer is the cell, for the cell is the icon of the heart. But the cell is made more spacious than all the cosmos because, through participation in the sacred Mysteries, the heart that struggles within it is united to the infinite and uncontainable God. It is only the fully sacramental life that the cell is a fruitful plot; but by this life, it can bear more fruit than any other.