Prayer is not necessarily asking for things, though it may
\nsometimes be that. It does not necessarily mean using words. Fundamentally, prayer means \u201cGod
\nawareness.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Gregory of Nyssa speaks of prayer as a sense of presence. God awareness. The realization that I am in
\nGod and God is in me. And this can be something all embracing. That\u2019s why St. Paul says, \u201cPray without
\nceasing.\u201d It can be something that\u2019s present in everything else we do\u2013a sense that God is with us. So
\nthat prayer is not necessarily just an activity set apart. It\u2019s something that can be intertwined with the
\nwhole of our life.<\/p>\n
Now, if we look at prayer that way, why is it so difficult? To me, the answer is we humans are scattered.
\nWe\u2019re fragmented. We find it very difficult to be gathered. To be concentrated, single-pointed. We
\nsuffer from wandering thoughts. I remember reading once in the Reader\u2019s Digest the following
\napothegma: the people who get things done are the people who do one thing at a time. And I thought,
\nhow true! But then I also thought, that\u2019s quite difficult\u2013to do one thing at a time. And certainly it\u2019s
\ndifficult in the case of prayer. This fragmentation that I speak of is not something that we\u2019ve
\ndeliberatively desired for ourselves. I suppose it is a consequence of the Fall. But this means that, in
\nprayer, what is asked of us is regularity, persistence, faithfulness.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a strange paradox. When something isn\u2019t very important, it\u2019s not so difficult to concentrate. When
\nwe\u2019re watching television we don\u2019t suffer particularly from an inability to concentrate and attend to
\nwhat\u2019s happening. If we\u2019re reading a serious book, a biography, or a piece of historical writing, then the
\nconcentration is more difficult, but it\u2019s not so hard. Prayer, which is the most important thing of all, then
\nthe concentration is hardest of all.<\/p>\n
He does know what\u2019s going on. He does see into our hearts But He wants us to tell Him. He wants us to
\nbring it into the open, to be honest with Him
\nAnd this would bring us to another point about prayer. The aim of prayer is not to change God\u2019s mind. It
\nis to change our mind. Some people say, why pray to God? He knows what is best for us. Why don\u2019t we
\njust leave it to Him? That\u2019s true, He does know what is best for us and we don\u2019t know. But, by praying,
\nwe are not so much making God agree with us, but, through prayer, we are helped to make ourselves
\nagree with God.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Questions about prayer<\/p>\n
**We are pleased to include writings from modern American Monasteries from time to time as well as our traditional Elders**<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prayer is not necessarily asking for things, though it may sometimes be that. It does not necessarily mean using words. Fundamentally, prayer means \u201cGod awareness.\u201d St. Gregory of Nyssa speaks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_no_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9130,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129\/revisions\/9130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}