Message from Fr. Peter Andronache

The topic of prayer is often on our minds as Orthodox Christians. Whether it be our morning and evening prayers, personal prayers, liturgical prayers, or other types of prayer, we are never far from an opportunity to pray. Yet prayer itself can be a slippery, seemingly escaping our grasp, as we often struggle with finding the time, desire, or concentration to pray. So the question arises: how are we to approach prayer? 

An early Christian writer, Evagrius of Pontus, wrote a brief treatise on prayer that summarized the experience of, in particular, Egyptian monastics in the matter of prayer, and continues to offer guidance to those who read it. I will try in what follows to introduce a few ideas and useful practices from this treaty.

One of the first things we are told is that prayer is part of a battle. “When the demons see you truly eager to pray, they suggest an imaginary need for various things, and then stir up your remembrance of these things, inciting the intellect to go after them” (Philokalia v.1, p. 58). As we prepare for prayer, therefore, we must be ready for these distractions which are sure to come. But what does this mean? How do we get ready. 

Evagrios answers: “Try to make your intellect deaf and dumb during prayer; then you will be able to pray.” In life, we often need to filter out noise – perhaps the noise of a television, or a leaf or snow blower as you are trying to carry out a conversation, perhaps the noise of a nearby conversation as you are trying to focus on your thoughts. Filtering out the noise in order to focus on what is important is often a challenge. 

It is just so with thoughts, too. Evagrios writes: “while you are praying, the memory brings before you fantasies either of past things, or of recent concerns , or of the face of someone who has irritated you.” Thus, a filter also needs to be placed on them at certain times; a decision needs to be taken that it is time for “the one thing needful” and we are not going to listen to thoughts related to other things, important though they might seem. As with all things in life, developing this discipline takes time, practice, and patience. At times it may mean focusing on prayers short enough for our attention not to wander. The Church provides that, as with the Jesus prayer, knowing that sometimes that is all one can offer without being distracted. At other times, it may mean restarting a prayer from the beginning in order to pray “with conscious attention to prayer,” that is, with “concentration accompanied by reverence, compunction, and distress of soul as it confesses its sins with inward sorrow.”

Evagrios also mentions a couple of things that we should be mindful of when approaching prayer:

1. Avoidance of anger. He writes: “Whoever loves true prayer and yet becomes angry or resentful is his own enemy. He is like a man who wants to see clearly and yet inflicts damage on his own eyes.”

2. Do not repay evil for evil. “Whatever you do to avenge yourself against a brother who has done you a wrong will prove a stumbling block to you during prayer.”

Both of these admonitions tell us that prayer is not something that exists in its own universe. The rest of our lives affect our prayer. We cannot be subject to the passions, live without mindfulness of God, then come to prayer and expect to be able to pray. Ultimately, as St. Paul tells us, everything should be prayer (“pray unceasingly”), but until that time, we need to strive to live in a way that makes prayer possible at the times of prayer. 

Finally, one more thought from Evagrios that is worth keeping in mind as we develop our prayer lives: “If you patiently accept what comes, you will always pray with joy.” In other words, if we do not let our desires be the ultimate factor that decides our lives, then we can avoid those actions which hinder prayer and reach it with joy. In the same vein, “If you long to pray, do nothing that is opposed to prayer, so that God may draw near and be with you.” 

Let us live in this way so that Evagrios’s words will come true for us:

“Prayer is the flower of gentleness and of freedom from anger.

Prayer is the fruit of joy and thankfulness.

Prayer is the remedy for gloom and despondency.”

With love in Christ
+Fr. Peter