Слово о церковной молитве

Without any doubt, the most superior in dignity of all earthly buildings is the church, or the house of God, the church, these words have the same meaning 115. Although God is present everywhere, in the church His presence is manifested in a special way, the most tangible and most useful for a person. Then only the appearance of God is even more useful and even more tangible for man, when man himself becomes the church of God, having become the abode of the Holy Spirit, like the Apostles and other greatest saints. But very few Christians achieve such a state. And therefore, leaving until another time the conversation about the not-made, God-created, verbal church of God - man - and about the worship that should be performed in it, let us now talk about the material church of God, created by human hands, about the prayers celebrated in it, about the duty of a Christian to carefully visit the church of God, about the benefits of such a visit. God’s church is the earthly heaven: “O Lord, standing in the church of Your glory, standing in heaven,” sings the Holy Church 116. The church is a place of communication between God and people: all Christian sacraments are performed in it. The Divine Liturgy and consecration cannot be performed anywhere but in church. And other sacraments should also be performed in church: if absolutely necessary, they are allowed to be performed, especially confession and the Blessing of Anointing, in homes. Day and night the church of God resounds with the praise of God; there is no place in it for the words of this world. Everything in the church of God is holy: the very walls, the platform, and the air. The Angel of God constantly guards him; The angels of God and the saints of the triumphant Church descend into it. Presence in such a sacred building constitutes the greatest happiness for an earthly wanderer. The holy prophet David, although he was a king, although he had vast and magnificent chambers, although he possessed all the means of earthly pleasure and amusement, but, as if having examined everything and assessed everything properly, he said: “I have asked one thing of the Lord, this I will require: that I may live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, behold the beauty of the Lord, and visit His holy church” (Ps. 26:4). This was spoken by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David. Whoever, during his earthly life, visits the church of God as often as possible, as if living in it, will, having been separated from his body, very conveniently move for eternal celebration to the heavenly church, not made by hands, whose creator is God. In the church we pray, and are edified, and are cleansed of sins, and communicate with God. The Savior showed us the example of visiting the church of God (John 7:14), and the holy Apostles also showed us (Acts 3:1). Christians of all times have recognized careful attendance at the church of God as their urgent duty. Saint Demetrius of Rostov likens a visit to the church, during all the prayers celebrated in it, to a royal tribute, which everyone must pay daily 117. If presence at every Divine service performed in the church is recognized by the holy shepherd as an indispensable duty of every pious Christian, all the more such presence is the sacred duty of a monk. The poor are excused from tribute because of their poverty; and the sick, kept in their cells by illness, are excused from constantly going to church. The king's dignitaries are free from tribute, and successful monks who practice mental feats and reap from them abundant fruit, which should be hidden from people, are free from constant going to church. Soldiers and all those in royal and state service are free from tribute; monks who are engaged in obediences during Divine services are free from constant going to church. Be careful that, under the pretext of obedience or private practice of mental feats, or even imaginary weakness, the machinations of the devil, who hates prayer as the mother of virtues and as a sword that crushes evil spirits, does not work secretly and with justification, who uses all efforts and all means, giving these means all kinds of plausibility, in order to distract a person from prayer, to disarm, to destroy the disarmed person or hurt 118. There are seven church prayers, but they are combined into three sections: 1) Vespers; 2) Compline; 3) Midnight Office; 4) Matins with the first hour; 5) third hour; 6) sixth hour and 7) ninth hour. Vespers, with which the service of each day begins, is served together with Compline and the ninth hour, the ninth hour is read before Vespers. Matins departs with the first hour and midnight office; The Midnight Office is read before Matins, the first hour after Matins. The third and sixth hours are read along with the figurative ones, which are read after the hours. When Matins is combined with Vespers or Great Compline, then the prayer is called an all-night vigil. It is sent before the great holidays, in honor of the holidays. The effect of the all-night vigil on the ascetic is that whoever spends a significant part of the night in prayer with due reverence and attention feels the next day with special lightness, freshness, purity of mind, and the ability to think about God. That is why Saint Isaac the Syrian said: “The sweetness bestowed on ascetics during the day flows from the light of night prayers (night activities) onto a clean mind” 119. The Divine Liturgy is not counted among the seven prayers; it is outside their number, as a special, most sacred prayer, which surrounds the bloodless Divine sacrifice 120. We see a saving image of visiting the church of God in the visit to the church by a tax collector presented to us in the Gospel (Luke 18:10). The publican stood in the depths of the church, did not consider it permissible to raise his eyes to heaven, but struck his chest, saying: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” The publican left the church, attracting the goodness of God to himself. And when you come to church, if you do not have any obedience in it, stand behind, in a modest corner or behind a pillar, so that you yourself do not have fun and so that your reverence is not put to shame by others; direct the eye of your mind to your heart, and your bodily eye to the ground, and pray to God in contrition of spirit, not recognizing any dignity, no virtue, admitting yourself guilty of countless sins, known and unknown to you. We sin a lot both in ignorance, and because of our limitations, and because of the damage to our nature by sin. Divine Scripture says: “God will not despise a broken and humble heart” (Ps. 50:19). And you, if you pray with the consciousness of your sinfulness and poverty, then God will hear “your voice from His holy church,” and your prayerful cry before Him will enter His ears” (Ps. 17:7). He will shower His rich mercy on you. If you have any duty at the church, then perform it with the greatest reverence and caution, as one serving God and not men. Together with the mentioned tax collector, the Gospel narrates, a Pharisee went into the church to pray. As a person of significance, the Pharisee stood in a prominent place. He probably had an idea - it is common to all Pharisees - to bring edification to the people present by his decent standing and prayer. He considered vanity not dangerous to himself, as someone who has succeeded in virtue, but some hypocrisy as excusable in the form of general benefit. What was the Pharisee's prayer? First, he glorified God. It's a good start. But after that he began to count not God’s blessings, but his own merits and virtues, so that according to such a calculation it should have started to be different. The Pharisee would have begun more correctly if he had begun directly by glorifying himself, and not God. God is glorified only pro forma, for some cover of pride. This pride manifested itself in the condemnation and humiliation of his neighbor, whose conscience was unknown to the Pharisee, whose consciousness of sin attracted the mercy of God. The Pharisee, hypocritically glorifying God, said: “I am not like other men, predators, unrighteous, adulterers, or like this tax collector. I fast twice on Saturday, I give tithes as much as I can get” (Luke 18:11–12). What is obvious here is: unawareness of one’s sinfulness, awareness of one’s dignity, pride flowing from them, expressed by condemnation and humiliation of one’s neighbor. The Pharisee’s prayer was not accepted by the Lord, who at the conclusion of this parable story said: “Everyone who exalts himself will humble himself; the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14). From this it is clear that everyone who wants his prayer to be accepted by God must bring it from the consciousness of his sinfulness and extreme insufficiency in relation to virtue, must bring it, rejecting the consciousness of his merits, as if insignificant before the incomprehensible dignity of God; must bring it from a heart that has humbled itself before all its neighbors, from a heart that has loved all its neighbors, from a heart that has forgiven its neighbors all insults and insults. “But,” the Prophet says prayerfully to God, “through the abundance of Your mercy, I will go into Your house, I will worship Your holy church in Your passion” (Ps. 5:8). The great mercy of God towards man is the establishment of public prayer services in God’s holy churches. These prayers were established by the Apostles, their holy disciples and the Holy Fathers of the first centuries of Christianity according to revelation from Above 121. Every Christian can take part in these prayers, and the illiterate assimilates the knowledge, eloquence, poetry of the spiritual, holy vitas and scribes of Christianity. With these prayers, anyone who wishes can very conveniently learn mental prayer: quantity of prayer leads to quality, the Fathers said, and therefore long monastic prayers greatly help the ascetic move from verbal prayer to mental and heartfelt prayer. Church prayers contain extensive Christian dogmatic and moral theology: one who regularly attends church and carefully listens to its reading and singing can clearly learn everything necessary for an Orthodox Christian in the field of faith. Blessed is the monk who always lives near the church of God! He lives near heaven, near paradise, near salvation. Let us not reject salvation, which by the mercy of God has been placed in our hands, so to speak. Especially a new monk should attend church without fail. In the years of old age and exhaustion, when both years and illness imprison the monk almost forever in his cell, he will feed on the spiritual supply that he collected during his youth and strength, hovering in the house of God. I call mental and heartfelt prayer a spiritual supply. May the merciful Lord grant us to use our monasticism as we should, and before leaving earthly life to move, mind and heart, to heaven. Prayer can lift us there when Divine grace overshadows it, and prayer in man becomes no longer the prayer of man, but the prayer of the Holy Spirit, interceding for man with “groanings that cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26). Amen. Follow-up of Matins, troparion of the Doxology. Works of the Saint. Part 1. The inner man. St. Macarius the Great. Word 1, ch. 3; Word 3, ch. 2 and 3. For the seven services, see New Tablet, part 1, chapter. 13. See the life of St. Ignatius the God-Bearer. December 20th, St. Isaac the Syrian, word 71. You might be interested in: