A Lenten Reflection on Prayer

By: Fr. Lawrence Russell | April 5th, 2021

 

In all three of the Sundays of Great Lent commemorating individual saints—St. Gregory Palamas, St. John Climacus and St. Mary of Egypt—the theme of prayer is front and center. Prayer and praying more is among the most important of our Lenten aspirations. Right? It is the steady counterpoint to the other noticeable themes of fasting and alms giving! Prayer figures prominently in the Lenten services and in what we learn from our Orthodox spiritual literature. Whether in learning how we will defeat our unseen adversaries, or in how our eyes will be opened to our neighbor in love, or in how we will be able to better see our own sins and repent, prayer is God’s Living Light on the subject of our spiritual growth.

A contemporary elder of Mt. Athos, Abbot Amilianos (+2019) writes some rather shocking words concerning our need for true prayer:
“You know that people who do not know how to pray are, in reality, good for nothing. There’s no chance that they will succeed in life…even if they are monks, they will remain earthly people and never become heavenly. The harm that befalls us if we do not know how to pray is incalculable. Incalculable! It is the only harm from which we suffer. There is no catastrophe that can compare with it. If all the stars and all the planets were to collide with one another, and the universe to shatter into smithereens, the damage would be far less than that which befalls us if we do not know how to pray.”

Shocking, yes, but let us weigh facts. Even if it is widely agreed that we should aspire to pray more, or pray more deeply, few of us will cast the consequences of our growing or not growing in prayer in such uncompromising and impacting terms: “no chance of success,” “the only thing from which we suffer,” “incalculable harm”? But should we?

Consider this: most of us are prepared to apply such words to needed disciplines in our earthly doings. It would not be shocking to speak of the absence of success and dire consequences if, for example, a person has a poor work ethic, or if a parent fails to hold their children to a standard of discipline in the classroom, or if we are undisciplined and slothful in taking care of our physical health. Yes, incalculable harm, lack of success, personal loss, they all fit well with these areas of earthly disciplines. Then why not into the framework of our life of prayer?

What a question! I think that it is one that we must answer, but also one that you must answer. Prayer is a corporate act of the church, but it is also a life-giving discipline for each Orthodox Christian. A brother once asked St. Anthony to pray for him. The saint answered, “I will have no mercy upon you, nor will God have any, if you, yourself, do not make an effort and if you do not pray to God.”

But let us close with this fact, that another saint offers: “[T]o the one who prays, God gives prayer.”