Prayer Advise

From the book~ Father Arseny: A Cloud of Witnesses

“I will say a few words on the subject of how we must pray. To separate yourself from the world around you and enter into the words and spirit of prayer is difficult for those who lack long prayer experience. You pray, trying to concentrate on your prayer, but the prayer comes absentmindedly. In tandem with the prayer you have earthly thoughts and you are unable to let go of them. To overcome this, you must pray more and more often; it is important in the beginning to pray aloud, if this is possible.

“Often do priests say and write that absentminded and distracted prayer is unacceptable to God and is even sinful because the one who prays does not give his soul fully to God and in that way he sins. Of course, such prayer is not of full value. The one praying tries to gather his will and put the soul in a prayerful mode, but due to his weakness is unable to do it, but at least he did try to do it. Only God can decide on the sincerity and the spiritual value of such prayer. But, as far as I am concerned, I believe that, if the prayer was sincere but, due to reasons unknown to us, the person was unable to achieve a warm and sincere prayer, he did still pray. He did not forget to pray his rule of prayer at his regular time – that is already an offering, an effort held up to God – and God will accept this prayer having weighed the spiritual state and the sincerity of the one praying. Many people, and even many priests will not agree with me, but this is what I think, and I have found some indirect confirmation of my words in spiritual literature and even in old ‘Lives of the Fathers of the Church.’”


Thanks to Christ in Our Midst