See if you can empathize with the following scenario. You are at a public, faith-related gathering, and someone is asked to say a prayer. Perhaps they are praying for someone who is present, or someone who is absent. Perhaps they are praying for a situation. Perhaps they are simply blessing a meal. It doesn’t matter: they start to pray. Ten minutes later, the ‘prayer’ winds its way... 

How can we understand prayer, and how can we pray for a contemporary person (according to the ascetic tradition of the Church) It is difficult to talk about prayer, it is anything but a simple topic, sometimes one even does not know what to begin with although there is much literature on prayer. Unwittingly one feels how right was an unknown elder who once said a joke: “No one can talk about prayer... 

“Without me, ye can do nothing” – John 15:5 It is not a rare thing for zealous Christians to experience what the Church father call “dryness” in prayer. A daily rule of prayer requires effort and will, and these can be weakened by tiredness, and distracted by activity. Yet familiarity with prayers can often make them a mere set of words or – even worse – sounds. Much like students singing... 

This past summer, I was working out at the YMCA for an hour a day, five days a week. Thanks to free child-care, I was able to aerobicise, weight lift, and torture my core muscles via Pilates on a very regular basis, and I felt strong, lean, alert. When fall rolled around, however, my schedule got a whole lot tighter and more intense. Devoting 60 minutes or more to the gym (when I had kids to shuttle... 

“Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.” Ecclesiastes 8:5 If you are old enough to remember using a manual typewriter, you are also old enough to appreciate the convenience of not having to use one today. For those who never had the pleasure of using one, or who have forgotten the experience, one must call... 

Time is a very precious asset. As a priest, in Confession one of the most common sins I hear is the lack of time for prayer. The majority of the people realize that their prayer life lacks the breadth and the depth it should have and yet over and over they repeat the same mistake. I know very well out of personal experience what a busy schedule looks like, so I generally have a lot of compassion in... 

Father Aidan has said it more than once: “If you’re bored at Divine Liturgy, you’re going to be bored in Heaven.” That’s definitely something to consider, since we’re talking about a time frame a lot longer than an hour and a half. Not to make light of something nearly incomprehensible, I wonder how many of us, when conjecturing on whether we’ll be placed with the goats or the sheep... 

An elderly woman recently broke down during Confession and began sobbing. She had attempted to offer to God what she felt was her sinful neglect in raising her son. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, she had taken him to church services on Sundays and feast days, and each day she had prayed with him and for him. Apparently, she had done all she could, gently and supportively, to lead him into... 

Basing himself on the legacy of St Ignatius of the Caucasus, Alexey Ilyich Osipov, the well-known Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy, reflects on the issues of spiritual practices in Eastern and Western Christian traditions, as well as the place of the book The Way of a Pilgrim in Christian spiritual life. Hieromonk Adrian (Pashin): Alexey Ilyich, your booklet on the Jesus Prayer was published... 

Fr. Paul M Jannakos Anyone the least bit familiar with the Orthodox Church knows that repetition is a key feature of its worship. We do things over and over again, and then, we do it yet again – one more time. As we find in the Little Litany, “Again and again in peace, let us pray to the Lord.” For many Americans, this seems excessively pedantic, if not outright silly. As one protestant visitor...