To someone who does not pray with attention, but is distracted in prayer, the psalm seems to him to be in a foreign language, and to the psalm he himself becomes like a foreign language. The demons make a mockery of this.
Elijah the Elder (Philokalia, vol. 3)
The prayers that the Church offers to her children for constant use contain the fullness of Orthodox theology; their language is far from our everyday language, and to many this seems an insurmountable obstacle. Prayers must be perceived with the whole being, with the whole life - and with the whole mind... how many of us are ready for this?
The main thing, of course, is the prayerful aspiration of the heart to God, Who Himself can guide us into all truth (John 16:13). When asking God in prayer for our urgent physical and spiritual needs, shouldn’t we also ask for the main treasure of a Christian, for the main and most grace-filled spiritual activity - prayer, repeating after the Savior’s disciples: Lord! Teach us to pray (Luke 11:1)?
The main and most powerful means for entering the world of prayer is participation in worship and the experience of praying together in church. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, clearly operates in the Church, introducing words of prayer into our minds and hearts and making us feel all their power.
“We must attend church services with attention and feeling,” writes St. Theophan the Recluse. “Listen, understand and feel what is sung and read, and this is mental prayer.” “There is no better way to discover heartfelt prayer than to be in church, at church services,” he writes in another letter. — There is a prayerful spirit in church services. Anyone who sits through the service with attention to everything read and sung cannot help but warm up in a prayerful mood. If this is the case today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and so on, then the prayer fire will finally light up in the heart. But when God gives it, then you will run to church, as if to a royal feast, and nothing will stop you, just try to listen to church singing and readings, and nothing will happen without attention.”
Listening in the church and reading the Holy Scriptures at home is very important. The Word of God has enormous spiritual power, it is capable of penetrating the whole person and changing his entire being, it has great teaching power. In addition, all divine services, all our Orthodox prayers were born from the Holy Scriptures, without which they cannot be understood and assimilated. The God-inspired Fathers of the Church bequeathed to us the rule of daily reading of the Holy Scriptures, and we must try with all our might to follow this rule. It is best if you manage to read a chapter from the Gospel and from the Apostle (the Acts of the Holy Apostles and the Epistles of the Apostles) every day, but even a few verses of the Gospel, even one verse a day gives a lot to the soul. Reading the Gospel and the Apostle helps us enter the world of prayers composed by people who lived and breathed the Holy Scriptures.
“So, everyone, teach yourself and instill in the truths of the word of Christ, and it will dwell in you,” writes St. Theophan the Recluse. - For this, read, reflect, memorize, love and then put it into practice. This last is the limit of self-education. While this is not the case, it cannot be said of anyone that he has taught himself, although he knows the word of Christ by heart and reasons well.”
The next most important role belongs to the reading of books: patristic works, including interpretations of the Holy Scriptures and prayers, as well as books that specifically explain the words and expressions of prayers. Here we have tried to give the most complete set of explanations of the prayers of the cell rule, and at the end of the book we provide a list of some patristic works on prayer.
The Holy Fathers give us advice on how to combine active prayer with studying from a book.
“When you see that you are beginning to weaken in prayer, take a book and, listening to what you read, assimilate the meaning of it; do not skim over the words as if in passing, but, examining them with reasoning (searching for the meaning), put what you know into your mind, as if into a treasury. Then begin to reason about what you read, so that your heart is pleased with its understanding and what you read remains unforgettable. From this, warmth will kindle within you when you think about divine things, as St. David says: a fire will flare up in my teaching (Ps. 39:4). Just as food delights the taste when it is chewed well with the teeth, so Divine words nourish the mind and cheer the heart when they are circulated in the soul by reasoning. “How sweet,” says the same prophet, “is Your word to my throat” (Ps. 119:103). Also memorize the words of the Gospel and the sayings of the holy blessed fathers, and study their lives, so that you can have all this as an object of reflection throughout the nights.”
Blessed Theoliptus, Metropolitan of Philadelphia (Philokalia, vol. 5.)
Following this patristic teaching, it is good to establish the custom after the morning or before the evening prayer rule (or, if it is more convenient, at a special time of the day allotted for this) to read the explanations for one (and better - no more) prayer from the prayer book.
Although this book contains the complete texts of all the prayers explained, you should not pray according to it, but according to the “real” prayer book. It would be nice to have bookmarks both in the prayer book and in this book for regular study (the most convenient, perhaps, is one in the likeness of those that are widely used in church for liturgical books: a durable and beautiful ribbon that serves as a bookmark in two places of the book at once).