Foundation of Prayer and Belief

Athanasia and I celebrated the name day of my god daughter, Josephine on Friday. Her parents had us over for dinner. After praying a short service in honor of Righteous Joseph of Arimathea, we had a fabulous meal. (It is good to eat well before the start of a fast). One of the things we talked about was prayer, how there is no pressure to come up with really good prayers because there are thousands of really good prayers in our books, from Psalms up to the most recent prayers written by modern saints.

One of the things I love about the Orthodox prayer life is that there is never a question about the correctness of the prayers. When I was a protestant I, sometimes, though not often, because I believed in pre-destination, worried about whether or not I was praying according to the Will of God. That is, was I praying for what God wanted me to pray for, or was I praying for merely what I wanted? This is something I never have to worry about as an Orthodox. All of our prayers are, essentially, acknowledments of God's power and love, confessions of our own sin and helplessness, and supplications for God to be merciful.

For example, take this prayer of St. Basil the Great:

O God and Lord of the Powers, and Maker of all creation, Who, because of Thy clemency and incomparable mercy, didst send Thine Only-Begotten Son and our Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of mankind, and with His venerable Cross didst tear asunder the record of our sins, and thereby didst conquer the rulers and powers of darkness; receive from us sinful people, O merciful Master, these prayers of gratitude and supplication, and deliver us from every destructive and gloomy transgression, and from all visible and invisible enemies who seek to injure us. Nail down our flesh with fear of Thee, and let not our hearts be inclined to words or thoughts of evil, but pierce our souls with Thy love, that ever contemplating Thee, being enlightened by Thee, and discerning Thee, the unapproachable and everlasting Light, we may unceasingly render confession and gratitude to Thee: The eternal Father, with Thine Only-Begotten Son, and with Thine All-Holy, Gracious, and Life-Giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

I am not saying no other Christians know how to pray, and that wasn't the direction the conversation on Friday night. What I mean is that there is an ease and a confidence that comes with praying as an Orthodox. Ease in just praying some Saint's words, be they the words or Moses, or David, or Basil, or Maria. And confidence that the words are true.

Consider this interesting thing that happened to me the other day when I was going to the memorial service for my friend, Zachariah. As we were driving, my friend George asked us all to pray, since there was some concern about what we might find when we got the place where it was going to happen. He was to start, I was to go second, Brian was to go third. George, in what, I am sure, was a worthy desire to praise God and to ascribe everything that is to God's creating power, went too far and even said death was one of God's creations. How could I say "amen" to those words? I couldn't. The words were not true. In fact, I couldn't even pray the simple prayer to the Holy Spirit I was going to pray, I was just too stunned by what I had heard. I barely was able to get "God be merciful to us" out of my mouth.

Later that day, when we sat down to eat, I quickly prayed and blessed the food before anyone else could. George asked, "Do you always pray memorized prayers?" I answered "all prayers are memorized". He looked puzzled for a split second, then I saw understanding on his face and he said, "Yeah, your right." Prayer has to come from somewhere. Every word we know is memorized. The manner in which we put them together is memorized. The theology in the sentences we pray is memorized. If a prayer is true it is of God, for God is Truth.

Ephesians 5:26 is, I think, the most ignored verse in the letter to the Ephesians, following as it does on the heels of that blockbuster verse, 5:25. The verse says: "That he might sanctify and cleanse [the church] with the washing of water by the word". The washing of water is, as we know, Baptism. But what is the washing of the word? I think it is many things. It is the saving acts of Jesus, the listening to Holy Scripture, and the chanting of the Hymns. But, I think, it is also the prayers of the Orthodox Church. If three times a day a person prays these prayers, memorizes them, and adds more to them, they begin to fill one's mind. They push out, wash away dark and evil thoughts. And, over time, they become what one believes.

But Orthodox are not the only people who know this. All other Christians have read Matthew 22:37. They know they must love God with their minds. They have to keep their minds filled with God-pleasing thoughts.

About 25 years agoBill Gaither wrote these words...

I'm gonna fill up my mind
With happy songs of praise
Remind myself that He's forgiven me.
I'm gonna think about things that I know will lift me up
Like hope and peace and truth and joy
And simple honesty.

I'm gonna think on the good things
Think on what the Lord has done for me
I'm gonna think on the good things
Cause what I think is what I'm gonna be.

But how do we change what we think? It was Saint Prosper of Aquataine who said "legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi", since shortened to "lex orandi, lex credendi" by liturgical theologians. In English it means the law of prayer is the law of belief. And while I am not entirely sure what he means by "law", he is pretty close to the mark if he means the words we pray dictate our belief, if how we pray controls how we think. So, it is with great joy that I pray all of those prayers in the prayer book, even the funny one that requires me to point at my bed and ask God if this bed will be my coffin. Hmmm. On second thought, maybe that's not very funny.