“Pray without ceasing.”
What is prayer:
Prayer, for us, is the state through which man passes over to God, and through which God looks down upon us. In its act, as Metropolitan Paul Yazigi says, it is a sense of God’s presence at every moment, in every sphere of our lives. Prayer brings us into an experience with God, and it brings into us many changes — the most important of which is our view of things, so that we no longer see the affairs of life and their problems according to our thought and our ability, but with the eyes of God, and His perspective and His outlook. Prayer is the moment of entering into change.
Its work:
First, it clarifies and reveals our error: for we imagine that God is far from us and that we summon Him by repeating words. So it reveals to us that God is present with us, neither far nor absent, but He waits for us to share with Him what has happened, that He may share with us how He sees. Prayer helps us to perceive the blind angle, for God sees that angle which we cannot see, since our vision of everything is inevitably tainted by an incompleteness of vision, and the scene cannot be completed and perceived by us alone in a complete way. God makes us see with His eye and with a larger angle.
The role of God and our role:
This change in vision never means renouncing our role in daily life and our responsibilities, for God is not a genie who does our work and fulfills our requests, but a partner. Therefore He created man that the two might work together: “My Father works, and I work.” So resorting to prayer for the purpose that God alone might direct our lives makes us dependent, sinning against ourselves and against Him); and on the other hand, what merit is there for us in the struggle if God is going to solve all the problems and make the change Himself?
Then through dependence we make God like a genie, and prayer like sorcery or like rubbing the magic lamp, and God comes out to fulfill our wishes and solve our problems. This is the state of one who wants to write with ink but no paper, and we make the Gospel of Jesus a gospel of pleasure (we want compensation, we want money, we want success…etc.
The following example speaks to us:
In the story of the monastery of Mother Bridget in 1953 in Bologna, during the days of communism that fought the Church, her monastery was exposed to many problems and great accusations, as is the habit of communism toward monasteries and nuns, such as espionage, abduction, treason, and many others. So the Mother stood in fear and terror, seeking solutions for all these great problems. She announced a conventual assembly to resolve the difficulties, and stood before the Virgin in fear, praying to her and asking her help to resolve what had become impossible for them, for she had no solution that would end the difficulties. So she took an icon of the Virgin called (Our Lady of Częstochowa), an icon black in color because of its great age, and said to the Virgin: ‘You are the superior general, so preside over our meeting,’ and she placed the icon on the president’s chair in the meeting. And after a little speech, silence prevailed, and amid astonishment the (black) icon began to light up and to shine, and suddenly a dark blue protrusion burst forth from its midst, and the icon began to be renewed, and its colors and splendor were manifested. After an hour, the renewal of the icon stopped, and a part of it remained unrenewed, and everyone was waiting for the completion of the renewal. But the Mother laughed and said ” The matter is settled, my daughters,” and she added: ‘The people of heaven are exceedingly astute and possess an abundant measure of cheer.’
After the miracle ended, the nuns left the monastery in haste, without any discussion of the intractable problems. So the Mother was asked: What about the problems — did they vanish? And she said: ‘Matters proceeded in the gentlest way; the problems did not vanish, of course, but we acquired the ability to discern the solutions through it.’
Clarification:
Everyone was waiting precisely for that corner to be renewed completely; it was the blind angle for them, and the sphere of God’s vision. So the remaining of a part of the icon without renewal is a proof of the miracle that had occurred, and that the nuns had not replaced the icon. The second striking thing is that the problems did not end and were not solved by a heavenly power; rather, through it they were able to discern solutions and the ability to solve them and deal with them.
The conclusion:
Prayer is precisely this new state that the Mother experienced with her nuns. She was waiting for solutions from heaven by a miracle, but this did not happen. Even Jesus, before the crucifixion, experienced this state: ” Remove this cup from Me, yet not My will but Yours be done.” The meaning of ‘Your will’: not as You want, but as You see (the salvation that is coming), not as I see (the pain that is coming). If Jesus had drawn back before the cross and ascended, then what would remain to us of Jesus? So Jesus’ vision here is no longer a human vision that sees the problem — the cross and the pain — but rather the solutions through the cross: salvation, and the great result: the resurrection. Miracles will not happen; rather, changes in us, so that we change our horizon and our vision.
Prayer
“Pray without ceasing.”
What is prayer:
Prayer, for us, is the state through which man passes over to God, and through which God looks down upon us. In its act, as Metropolitan Paul Yazigi says, it is a sense of God’s presence at every moment, in every sphere of our lives. Prayer brings us into an experience with God, and it brings into us many changes — the most important of which is our view of things, so that we no longer see the affairs of life and their problems according to our thought and our ability, but with the eyes of God, and His perspective and His outlook. Prayer is the moment of entering into change.
Its work:
First, it clarifies and reveals our error: for we imagine that God is far from us and that we summon Him by repeating words. So it reveals to us that God is present with us, neither far nor absent, but He waits for us to share with Him what has happened, that He may share with us how He sees. Prayer helps us to perceive the blind angle, for God sees that angle which we cannot see, since our vision of everything is inevitably tainted by an incompleteness of vision, and the scene cannot be completed and perceived by us alone in a complete way. God makes us see with His eye and with a larger angle.
The role of God and our role:
This change in vision never means renouncing our role in daily life and our responsibilities, for God is not a genie who does our work and fulfills our requests, but a partner. Therefore He created man that the two might work together: “My Father works, and I work.” So resorting to prayer for the purpose that God alone might direct our lives makes us dependent, sinning against ourselves and against Him); and on the other hand, what merit is there for us in the struggle if God is going to solve all the problems and make the change Himself?
Then through dependence we make God like a genie, and prayer like sorcery or like rubbing the magic lamp, and God comes out to fulfill our wishes and solve our problems. This is the state of one who wants to write with ink but no paper, and we make the Gospel of Jesus a gospel of pleasure (we want compensation, we want money, we want success…etc.
The following example speaks to us:
In the story of the monastery of Mother Bridget in 1953 in Bologna, during the days of communism that fought the Church, her monastery was exposed to many problems and great accusations, as is the habit of communism toward monasteries and nuns, such as espionage, abduction, treason, and many others. So the Mother stood in fear and terror, seeking solutions for all these great problems. She announced a conventual assembly to resolve the difficulties, and stood before the Virgin in fear, praying to her and asking her help to resolve what had become impossible for them, for she had no solution that would end the difficulties. So she took an icon of the Virgin called (Our Lady of Częstochowa), an icon black in color because of its great age, and said to the Virgin: ‘You are the superior general, so preside over our meeting,’ and she placed the icon on the president’s chair in the meeting. And after a little speech, silence prevailed, and amid astonishment the (black) icon began to light up and to shine, and suddenly a dark blue protrusion burst forth from its midst, and the icon began to be renewed, and its colors and splendor were manifested. After an hour, the renewal of the icon stopped, and a part of it remained unrenewed, and everyone was waiting for the completion of the renewal. But the Mother laughed and said ” The matter is settled, my daughters,” and she added: ‘The people of heaven are exceedingly astute and possess an abundant measure of cheer.’
After the miracle ended, the nuns left the monastery in haste, without any discussion of the intractable problems. So the Mother was asked: What about the problems — did they vanish? And she said: ‘Matters proceeded in the gentlest way; the problems did not vanish, of course, but we acquired the ability to discern the solutions through it.’
Clarification:
Everyone was waiting precisely for that corner to be renewed completely; it was the blind angle for them, and the sphere of God’s vision. So the remaining of a part of the icon without renewal is a proof of the miracle that had occurred, and that the nuns had not replaced the icon. The second striking thing is that the problems did not end and were not solved by a heavenly power; rather, through it they were able to discern solutions and the ability to solve them and deal with them.
The conclusion:
Prayer is precisely this new state that the Mother experienced with her nuns. She was waiting for solutions from heaven by a miracle, but this did not happen. Even Jesus, before the crucifixion, experienced this state: ” Remove this cup from Me, yet not My will but Yours be done.” The meaning of ‘Your will’: not as You want, but as You see (the salvation that is coming), not as I see (the pain that is coming). If Jesus had drawn back before the cross and ascended, then what would remain to us of Jesus? So Jesus’ vision here is no longer a human vision that sees the problem — the cross and the pain — but rather the solutions through the cross: salvation, and the great result: the resurrection. Miracles will not happen; rather, changes in us, so that we change our horizon and our vision.