# The Orthodox Understanding of Prayer

> Daniel's prayer as an Orthodox prayer of repentance: a prayer that touches the heart of the loving God, the prayer of the tax collector and of the contrite spirit, which reopens for us the consolations of heaven and kindles in us the fiery work of the Spirit.

*2016-12-03T13:41:05Z*

![Quote card on a dark red-orange textured background. St. Cyril the Great, Defense of the Twelve Anathemas against Theodoret: "He did this willingly for your sake, for He wept humanly to wipe away your tears, and was troubled economically, leaving His body to be affected by what is proper to it, to fill us with courage, and was described as weak in His humanity to end your weakness."](/uploads/sites/1274e232-e31c-46f4-a48b-27b854406479/media/orthodox-understanding-of-prayer.png?w=815&h=815)

Daniel's prayer is an Orthodox prayer of repentance. How powerful this prayer is; it is a prayer that touches the heart of the loving God. It is the very prayer of the tax collector whom the words of the Gospel describe: And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" (Luke 18:13). It is also the prayer of the contrite spirit of which the psalmist speaks in Psalm 50 [51] "according to the Septuagint," and it is the prayer that opens to us the consolations of the heavens and kindles in us the fiery work of the Spirit once again, after our hearts have melted in love of the corrupt world.

How great a language it is, my brothers, for prayer together with fasting is a great power, since the Lord Jesus said: So He said to them, "This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting." (Mark 9:29). But what prayer and what fasting does the Lord ask of us?!

Does the Lord not ask of us a prayer like the one Daniel prayed for his people in repentance and humility, and that other one which Jonah prayed in the belly of the great fish, and other powerful prayers full of humility and broken hearts?!

**1- How We Acquire This Prayer:**\
This prayer, and every other virtue, is a gift from the Lord the Spirit, who conveys it to us from the Lord Jesus Himself. The prayer that all these great ones prayed flows, at its root, from the Lord Jesus Himself, and any prayer that departs from the Lord Jesus ("that is, the Lord Jesus is not its center") is a selfish, soulish prayer with no spiritual value at all. But if the Lord Jesus is its center, you will find the prayer to be the summit of balance and the summit of humility, neither loud nor muttering, but a prayer gentle on the soul and comforting to the spirit, and most acceptable to God the Father!

The Lord Jesus taught us this when He said: Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. (John 14:6). In this verse the Lord Jesus laid for us the foundation of every prayer and of all true worship in spirit and truth.

Our great Church also teaches us this in her liturgy[^1]. In the Liturgy of St. Cyril we say the hymn "Have mercy on us," which is an ascetic hymn of the first rank. In this hymn we say: "..they cry to You, and through You, with You, to the Father, saying: Have mercy on us.." How profound this phrase is, and how much truth it contains! It describes to us, in all quietness, the mystery of worship in the liturgy of the Church, and that this mystery is through You and with You!

Yes, my brothers, the Lord Jesus is our firstborn brother[^2]. He is Son of the Father by essence, and we are children of God by adoption. He is our firstborn and our head, and we are His body and His brothers. So when we pray, brothers, we do not pray from ourselves but we pray in Christ Jesus and through Christ Jesus, as we saw in the liturgy. This is the secret of powerful prayer: it is a prayer in which the self disappears and the Lord Jesus appears powerfully. Therefore there is no room for satanic soulish feelings, nor any room even for the devil to interfere in our prayers.

And perhaps the most powerful of these prayers is the prayer of the Psalms, which our Church arranged in a beautiful liturgy that we find in a book called the Agpeya, and the Church arranged these prayers so that we may pray at all times in Christ Jesus and through Christ Jesus, because, quite simply, the Lord Jesus Himself prayed these prayers, being "a Jew." And there are some Psalms that no one can pray except the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and they are not fitting for any other person, even when David the prophet and psalmist wrote them. He wrote them led by the spirit of prophecy, looking toward a new covenant, not with the blood of goats and calves nor by the hand of man, but with a lamb without blemish, for he saw Christ Himself hanging on the wood, and saw the blood cleansing the sins of the world, and saw the Lord Jesus in Hades triumphing and drawing souls to Himself, and the Lord becoming King on the wood!

But is it possible for me to pray in Christ Jesus or through Christ Jesus when I have not even received Him, and believe in Him with a marginal, superficial, Pharisaic, dead faith?

The truth, brothers, is that I cannot pray in Christ Jesus or through Christ Jesus unless I believe in Him with a true faith working through love, a faith seen in my deeds and not in my words only, a living faith that draws the lost souls to the Lord Jesus and leads my life and my soul to perfection, a great faith like the faith of Athanasius the Apostolic and the great martyr Mar Girgis (St. George). These are our cloud of witnesses, and they will testify against us at the time when we seek an excuse for our flight from works of righteousness because of their heaviness!

Therefore there is no way of reaching this prayer unless we first come forward with repentance of the heart, and put off from us every weight of the world and its vain glory, so that our faith may be not a faith of the mouth only but a faith in deed, so that all the words of the Holy Bible become words engraved on our hearts. Then the opportunity opens for us to enter the Holies at the cost of the blood of the Lord Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for us, so that we may no longer live for our desires nor for the world nor for money, but live at all times for the glory of His holy name. Then the Holy Spirit conveys to us the gift of true prayer of repentance, which we will offer daily in Christ Jesus and through Christ Jesus, and then our life sets out toward the love of God the Father in Christ Jesus, and our life becomes a light to the world and salt to the earth!

**2- True Faith as the Foundation of the Orthodox Prayer of Repentance in the Ascetic Thought of the Fathers of the Church:**\
They are those whose hearts are hard, addicted to contriving sins, so the merciful God brings upon them hardships and afflictions until their inner selves and their intentions are awakened by the multitude of what comes upon them, and they repent and return and prepare themselves and enter into this calling and repent with all the heart and receive the promises[^3]

These great words, spoken by St. Abba Anthony while he was under the guidance of the Spirit of God, teach us that true faith, which bears the fruit of works, is the foundation of the prayer of repentance. He put regret, return, preparation and entering the calling before repentance, for if we enter repentance before all these things, our repentance will be a marginal repentance, that is, not true at all, because its foundation is not firm. Many times we have attempted repentance in various ways, but we fail and fail, because quite simply, in the expression of St. Abba Anthony, we are "addicted to contriving sins."

This step is not taken by a person by himself, but he does it side by side with the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit convicts of sin and of guilt, and draws us to the Son Jesus as He bears witness of Him, and makes us ready for our calling, and brings us into it as well.

The Fathers of the Church understood the work of the Holy Spirit with the soul as a relationship of synergy[^4], that is, a relationship of joint work between the soul and the Holy Spirit; if the soul does not work, the Holy Spirit will not work with it, and the reverse is true. Therefore, my brothers, we must pay attention to our faith: is it a true, holy faith built on a true rock, which is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, or is it a contrived, inherited faith that we inherited from our grandfathers because we were born Christians!!!

But among God's mercies is that He does not leave us; rather, He lifts His hands off us a little, so that afflictions and problems and the distress of the world appear, until He draws us to regret and return, and to the restoration of fellowship with the Holy Spirit, so that this fiery Spirit may return and sanctify us once again, and return us to the bosom of the Father in the Son Jesus Christ, and make us once again in the first image of the Son Jesus, that is, the image of the new man.

And this is what appeared in Daniel's prayer and what happened in the captivity of the people of God, and likewise many stories in the Holy Bible that show us God's dealings with His people in this way, which developed in the New Testament after the Cross and became more merciful, because mercy and truth met together on the Cross, and He bore all our pains in the body of His humanity.

**3- Returning to Recover Our Original Nature in the Thought of the Defender Fathers:**\
When the matters of His emptying seem hard to accept to you, marvel rather at the greatness of the Son's love for us, for what you consider unbefitting of Him, He has done by His own will for your sake!!!

For He wept humanly to wipe away your tears, and was troubled economically, leaving His body to be affected by what is proper to it in order to fill us with courage, and was described as weak in His humanity in order to end your weakness, and offered with many petitions and supplications to the Father in order to make the ear of the Father attentive to your prayers[^5]

How these words of the great saint, Pope Cyril the Great, amaze me! They are words that come from a very strong spiritual life, to which Christ Himself bears witness. How wonderful our Lord Jesus Christ truly is! He gave Himself for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him!

Repentance, my sisters and brothers, is a state of restoration that happens within the mind first, in which a person leaves the thoughts of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and receives again the thoughts of the tree of life. In this restoration the soul enters the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, moving thereby from the heaviness of the world and its chains to the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The word the Holy Bible used to express it was (μετα-μορφουσθε), pronounced Meta-morphousios, that is, change from one stage to another, and it means a change in the mind (νοῦς), and from this came the well-known word metanoia, which is a corruption of the word metanous, that is, the change that takes place within the mind, and it is the original word that describes the true meaning of repentance.

And for this deep change to take place in the mind, a person must deepen his thoughts, motives and intentions, because \[the Holy Spirit does not work on the surface or in the outward appearance; He works within and in the very hidden\][^6]. So in order to perceive this fiery Spirit we must go deep into ourselves until we reach Him and hear His groanings that He sends out to us!

And when you enter into fellowship with the Holy Spirit, you immediately begin to change gradually and in a hidden and very deep way, and during this change the Holy Spirit begins to reveal the Lord Jesus to the soul, bringing us into fellowship with the Son as well, and in the Son and through the Son our prayers begin, the first of which is the prayer of repentance, which the Son Jesus Himself prays in us as intercessor and High Priest for us before the Father. Thus the Son transfers us and we enter into fellowship with the Father as well, and from here we set out into fellowship with the Holy Trinity, which urges us to change and to recover our lost nature, which is originally the icon of God!

**4- The Liturgy as an Example of Prayers of Repentance in Christ Jesus and through Christ Jesus:**\
The Psali of the Second Sunday - Aykūtī Ansūk\
Its words:

I called on You from the depth of my heart, O my Lord Jesus, help me\
Loose from me the bonds of sin, O my Lord Jesus Christ, help me\
Be a helper to me that I may be saved. O Lord, let Your goodness quickly overtake me, O my Lord\
Shadow me under the shadow of Your wings, O my Lord\
In six days You made all creation, O my Lord\
Seven times a day I bless Your name, O my Lord\
Behold, all the wilderness glorifies Your name, O my Lord. To You belong lordship and authority, O my Lord\
Hasten, O my God, to save me. O my Lord\
Every knee bows before You, O my Lord.\
Every tongue together blesses Your name, O my Lord. Turn Your face away from my sins, O my Lord\
Blot out all my iniquities, O God, O my Lord\
You know my thoughts and search my kidneys, O my Lord; create in me a clean heart, O my Lord\
Do not take Your Holy Spirit from me, O my Lord\
Incline Your ear to me and answer me quickly, O my Lord\
Establish for me a law for the way of Your righteousness, O my Lord; Your kingdom, O my God, is an everlasting kingdom, O my Lord\
You are the Son of God; I believe in You, O my Lord\
O Bearer of the sin of the world, have mercy on me, O my Lord\
Forgive me the multitude of my iniquities, O my Lord\
All souls together bless Your name, O my Lord\
Have pity on me and do not destroy us quickly, O my Lord\
I rise at the time of dawn to bless Your name, O Lord. Sweet is Your yoke and Your burden is light, O my Lord\
In an acceptable time answer me, O my Lord. Beloved is Your holy name, O my Lord\
Scatter from me all the devils, O my Lord. Plant in me the fruit of Your righteousness, O my Lord\
Give us Your true peace and forgive us our sins, O my Lord Jesus Christ, help me

[^1]: The word liturgy is a Greek word composed of two parts, laos - ergon, and it means the work of the people, and the Apostolic Fathers used it in the early Church to denote the service of communal worship such as the breaking of bread, that is, the Mystery of the Eucharist ("Communion"). For more, see this article: The [Orthodox Concept of Worship According to the Thought of the Fathers of the Church](https://torasorthodox.blogspot.com/2016/01/blog-post_97.html)
[^2]: For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. (Romans 8: 29)
[^3]: Kitāb Nusūkiyyāt al-Anbā Anṭūniyūs [The Ascetic Writings of Abba Anthony] - Anba Metaos, Abbot of the Syrian Monastery - p. 121 - First Letter of Abba Anthony
[^4]: Synergy (synergy) means that the perfect whole is greater than its parts, that is, that the result of joint work and cooperation between two or more agents to achieve a certain goal is stronger and better than the sum of the results of each agent working alone to achieve the same goal
[^5]: Defense of the Twelve Anathemas against Theodoret - St. Cyril the Great
[^6]: Ma‘a al-Rūḥ al-Qudus fī Jihādinā al-Yawmī [With the Holy Spirit in Our Daily Struggle] - Fr. Matta El-Meskeen - p. 4

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Source: https://abba.fadymondy.com/en/blog/orthodox-understanding-of-prayer