Evagrius on the True Theologian

🙏 Evagrius was born around 345 in the Iberian fortress of Pontus, being the son of the local bishop.
⛪ He was ordained a reader by Saint Basil the Great and a deacon by Saint Gregory the Theologian.
✝ He died in 399, at the age of 54, after more than 15 years of hardship. pic.twitter.com/ZhG7fiAKC2

— Basilica.ro (EN) (@BasilicaNews) August 31, 2021

"Blessed Are You O Lord, Teach Me Your Commandments"

"There is nothing automatic or magical about the Jesus Prayer. If we do not strive to obey God's commandments, calling upon God's name will be in vain." -St. Sophrony (On Prayer, 137) pic.twitter.com/XjWn6ppOzL

— Perry Hamalis (@pthamalis) July 23, 2021

The Forms of Prayer?

Saint Paisios: “Glory be to God” is superior to “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” #orthodox_times https://t.co/sZB7qzKzbC

— Orthodox Times (@orthodox_times) July 12, 2021

Fr. David Anderson on the Traditional Cycles of Prayer

Sharing this program from @InstituteCC https://t.co/06aDScVksu The traditional cycles of prayer that sanctify time from Fr David Anderson from Wyoming Catholic College

— David Clayton (@pontifexbeauty) April 15, 2021

Hesychasm?

How do you pray from the heart? Father Cleopas told us to hold our breath a little, when we say the prayer of the heart, to help the mind gather and return to the heart. #WednesdayWisdom pic.twitter.com/k2MxFrHlU0

— Basilica.ro (EN) (@BasilicaNews) April 7, 2021

Hesychia, stillness, is not a passive divesting of the mind after the pattern of eastern asceticism. https://t.co/eBmv10dP3s

— OCN (@MyOCN) April 7, 2021

Tertullian: The Source of a Grand Mistake?

“We must escort it to the altar of God in a procession of good works to the sound of psalms and hymns. Then it will gain for us all that we ask of God.” -Tertullian

— Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP (@FrAquinasOP) March 12, 2021

Thread Reader

Dominic Legge, "Prayer, Study, and the Mind's Ascent to God"

"A human mind is joined to the Word in Christ and, therefore, our mind is elevated and healed by the incarnation of Christ."

Fr. Legge’s lecture “Prayer, Study, And The Mind's Ascent to God” given at Texas A&M is now available on our podcast. Listen now: https://t.co/fBS8upnkzI

— Thomistic Institute (@ThomisticInst) January 29, 2021

Controversy Over the Jesus Prayer

Related Posts: Metropolitan Kallistos Ware on Prayer and The Jesus Prayer.

Is the Jesus Prayer Not a Complete Prayer? A Brief Response to Metropolitan Sotirios of Torontohttps://t.co/pxDJ4TSvaY pic.twitter.com/rJiMGz4L5M

— Mystagogy (@mystagogy1) February 3, 2021

Metropolitan Sotirios represents that overducated but unthinking hyper-rationalism that seeks to take away from tradition, rather than serving tradition. His three purposes of prayer relate to the order of intention, and do not need to be explicitly verbalized for the intentions to be present.

Regarding the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, both names together call to the mind the whole Trinity but the name of Jesus by itselfshould remind us of Trinity, as the Son is the Father's accomplishing of salvation for us, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Iconography as Prayer

“For me, iconography is just like prayer”https://t.co/mef0zNDSLH

Olga Spiridonova on her life’s journey to iconography
Olga Spiridonova

An icon painter’s goal is to create the means, or the language, of communication with the prototype, and beauty should be that language. pic.twitter.com/irgG4jSmag

— Orthodox Christianity (@Orthodoxy2019) January 27, 2021

Eucharistia and Prayer

Is receiving God through Holy Communion greater than receiving God through prayer? https://t.co/TwA1jepeoX

— OCN (@MyOCN) December 17, 2020

Question: Is receiving God through Holy Communion greater than receiving God through prayer?

Answer: We receive God through grace and grace comes to us in many ways. It comes when we invoke His Name with reverence and humility; when we pray and live by the word of God; when we receive Holy Communion with the testimony of a good conscience. We accumulate grace in every instant of our life, if we meet our fellows with a good heart, respect and honour. There are many means of acquiring the grace of God in order to preserve our heart alive with the sensation of God, and this is essential: for as long as our heart is warmed up by the grace of God, no alien thought can approach us and we are unassailable by the enemy.

We are able to invoke His Name with reverence and humility thanks to God's grace. The following answer has a more exact elucidation of our total dependence on God.

Question: I have a philosophical proud mind. How can we acquire stillness if we are proud?

Answer: Pride seems to accompany every our attempt to present ourselves before God in prayer and come close to Him. The most practical way to acquire humility is continual thanksgiving. The Spirit of God always inspires gratitude (1 Cor. 2:12). Father Sophrony makes a distinction between spiritual humility and ascetical humility. Ascetical humility consists of always reproaching and considering ourselves as worse than all, as we are commanded in the Gospel: ‘When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do’ (Luke 17:10). As for spiritual humility, it is indescribable. It is granted to those who have already contemplated the beauty of the Risen Lord, the Light of His Face, which wounds them with the deep conviction that they are unworthy of such a loving God as Christ is.

I do note that he doesn't really answer the first question.

Yes, That is the Primary Purpose of Prayer

But there is a place for petitionary prayer as well.

"When we pray, it is certainly not a question of persuading God, of moving Him to change His providential dispositions; it is only a question of lifting our will to His heights, to will with Him in time what He has decided to give us from eternity." -Fr. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

— Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP (@FrAquinasOP) November 7, 2020

Saint Gregory Palamas on Pure Prayer and Its Benefits

The Shield of Psalmic Prayer

From the Altar to the Icon Corner: Bringing Liturgical Prayer Home

The Jesus Prayer

I just wanted to take the long version and show how it embodies most of the aspects of prayer outlined here.

"Lord Jesus Christ": adoration/doxology/praise/benediction

"Son of the Living God": adoration/doxology/praise/benediction

"have mercy on me": petition

"a sinner": contrition

The only aspect that seems to be missing would be thanksgiving, but it may be implicit in the first two, an acknowledgement of what God has done for us that is joined with thanksgiving in the spirit.

I would argue that all 4 aspects can be implicit in the Most Holy Name of our Savior, the simplest form of the Jesus Prayer which is His name itself. A cry to our Lord should be a cry for His Mercy, an expression of our humility and recognition of our sinfulness.

Divine Liturgy and Prayer, True Light Podcast Episode 4

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware on Prayer

Public Orthodoxy: What Is Prayer? by Kallistos Ware, Metropolitan of Diokleia

On the contrary, before bringing before Christ the suffering and pain of the world, and before looking downward at our own ugliness and failings, we should look upwards at the beauty and glory of God. All too often our prayer can take the form of grumbling before God, of complaining and expressing regret. But that, so Climacus assures us, is not true prayer.
 
It is significant that in the Divine Liturgy we do not commence with an act of penitence but with a proclamation of the kingly rule of the Holy Trinity: “Blessed is the Kingdom of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Only after receiving a glimpse of this heavenly Kingdom can we then begin to repent as we should. In prayer we should start not with our own neediness but with the divine plenitude. The same priority is to be found in the daily prayers that we say at home each morning and evening. After the opening invocation “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” it is customary to continue: “Glory to You, O God, glory to You.” Thanksgiving, doxology, are where we start. As St John of Kronsdtadt used to say, “Prayer is a state of continual gratitude.”

This pattern of prayer, with thanksgiving and doxology in the first place, is to be found also in the cycle of liturgical prayer throughout the twenty-four hours of the day. According to the ancient Hebrew understanding of time, which is still followed by the Church, the new day commences not at midnight and not at dawn but in the evening. That is why in the Genesis account of creation it is said, “There was evening and there was morning, the first day” (Gen. 1:5): the evening comes before the morning. In this way Vespers is not the concluding but the opening service of the day, not an epilogue but a prologue. How, then, does the daily cycle of liturgical prayer commence?

Throughout the year, except in the week after Pascha, it begins in precisely the same way, with the reading or singing of Psalm 103 [104]. This is a hymn of praise for the variety and wonder of the created order: “Blessed the Lord, O my soul! Blessed are You, O God …. O Lord, how marvellous are Your works! In wisdom have You made them all.” In the words of Fr Alexander Schmemann, Vespers “begins at the beginning, and this means in the ‘rediscovery,’ in adoration and thanksgiving, of the world as God’s creation. The Church takes us, as it were, to that first evening on which man, called to life by God, opened his eyes and saw what God in His love was giving to him, saw all the beauty, all the glory of the temple in which he was standing, and rendered thanks to God. And in this thanksgiving he became himself … And if the Church is in Christ, its initial act is always this act of thanksgiving, of returning the world to God.”

Latins who have been well-catechized may know these 4 types of prayer: Adoration, Contrition, Petition, Thanksgiving.

This list is repeated in the following essays:
What are the four types of prayer in Christian tradition? Sr. Maria Veritas Marks, OP
Adoration by Paul Grutsch, Ph.D.
Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication by R.C. Sproul (not Catholic, but a Western Christian)


The last part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, written by Fr. Jean Corbon, O.P., lists five purposes of prayer: Blessing and Adoration, Petition, Intercession, Thanksgiving, and Praise. (Scott Richert gives a summary of the CCC.)

So with regards to these different lists, I'd ask some questions.

1. Is adoration an act of the intellect or of the will? If of the will, how is it distinct from agape?

Aquinas holds that adoration is an act of the virtue of religion, and it is twofold: the devotion of the mind (moved by the will)  and a devotion shown through bodily gestures. Aquinas notes that the bodily gestures are signs of humility which can prepare us for internal devotion. The link between adoration and the virtue of humility, which is of the will, should seem obvious, and a point with which the author of the part of the CCC on prayer agrees (2628). But whether "infused" humility is really distinct from the virtue of charity or only notionally so, I'll have to consider some other time.

I also note that for Aquinas adoration is a distinct act of religion from prayer. Is it possible under Aquinas' schema for adoration to motivate prayer? Or is it only possible for it to be simultaneous with prayer?

2. Praise and blessing don't really seem to me to be distinct. For that matter, it is not clear to me that thanksgiving is really that distinct from praise and blessing in traditional prayer formulae, whether of the pre-Christian Jews or of the early Christians. How do we know God? Through His wonderous deeds, which we acknowledge both to praise and bless Him but also for which we must render thanks for the good things He has done for us. In mental prayer it might be easy to miss one of these elements; I wouldn't assume that they are implicitly present. But in traditional vocal prayers meant for use by the individual and the community ?

Similarly, can one remember and acknowledge the deeds of God without humility, or being humbled as a result? It may be possible to pray mechanically but if one is striving for authentic prayer?

3. One could ask whether the element of thanksgiving is missing from the Lord's Prayer, or if it is implicit as it is in other blessings. (Is there a bountiful record of pre-Christian Jewish prayer formulae? I can only think of the blessings that Fr. Bouyer examined in his book Eucharist, and iirc, those prayers were not pre-Christian.)

The Jesus Prayer, whether in its simple form or one of the longer forms, doesn't seem to have the element of thanksgiving, but maybe thanksgiving can be an implicit part of the prayer.

4. I am not sure if I would say that these should be 4 types of prayer; rather I might make the claim that they are 4 elements of prayer, especially if the prayer is to be complete, and even if they are not verbally explicit, they should be manifest in how we order ourselves to God in prayer. Do we train ourselves first through spoken words, which shape our minds and souls? Isn't that one of the purposes of reciting the Psalter, so that we can assimilate the mind of Christ?

While it might seem that humility may be more linked to our being servants of God than sons of God, as we are both, I think that it is possible for humility to encompass both aspects of our relationship to God, just as our participation in the Divine Agape has both aspects as well.

Edit. 5 I was reminded later today that another way the 4 types of prayer are differentiated is according to motive, which is another way of saying that they differ according to the purpose or term of the act. So it's not really a different way of differentiating the 4 (or 5 types) of prayer as it is usually done, but a more "technical" way, that is, a more theologically developed way.

Praying in the Name of the Lord

A Time to Strengthen One's Personal Prayer Life

“Make Thine House a Church” by Reader Andreas Moran

How Do We Live “The Church at Home”? by Fr Bassam Nassif

Matt Fradd and Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. on Prayer and Devotions

Full episode

A previous episode with the same guest.