Thanks, Awareness.
Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
In other words, make me a supernatural being.
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In other words, make me like Christ.
The words become prayer when, speaking to the Lord, our words come from our heart and we understand every word we say, i.e. our mind and heart receive the content of the prayers that we read.
I like what St Theophan the Recluse said about prayer:
"The work of prayer is the first work in Christian life.
Let me recall a wise custom of the ancient Holy Fathers: when greeting each other, they did not ask about health or anything else, but rather about prayer, saying "How is your prayer?" The activity of prayer was considered by them to a be a sign of the spiritual life, and they called it the breath of the spirit. If the body has breath, it lives; if breathing stops, life comes to an end. So it is with the spirit.
If there is prayer, the soul lives; without prayer, there is no spiritual life.
However, not every act of prayer is prayer. Standing at home before your icons, or here in church, and venerating them is not yet prayer, but the "equipment" of prayer. Reading prayers either by heart or from a book, or hearing someone else read them is not yet prayer, but only a tool or method for obtaining and awakening prayer.
Prayer itself is the piercing of our hearts by pious feelings towards God, one after another – feelings of humility, submission, gratitude, doxology, forgiveness, heart-felt prostration, brokenness, conformity to the will of God, etc. All of our effort should be directed so that during our prayers, these feelings and feelings like them should fill our souls, so that the heart would not be empty when the lips are reading the prayers, or when the ears hear and the body bows in prostrations, but that there would be some qualitative feeling, some striving toward God.
When these feelings are present, our praying is prayer, and when they are absent, it is not yet prayer."