Daily prayes
- Preparetion for the Holy Communion
- The canon of the Akathist of the Most Holy Theotokos
- Salutations of the Most Holy Theotokos
- Small Paraklisis to Theotokos
However, how are we supposed to be praying, because we do not know by ourselves how to do it. St. Paul says, that we feel the need to pray the same way we feel the need to breath. Prayer is the breath of the spiritual life. We want to glorify, we feel the desire to give thanks, we are driven to beseech, but we do not know how to utter the shout of our hearts.
The Holy Scriptures teach us that prayer has to be a sincere disposition of our soul and not some hypocritical stance of our body. It has to be done with faith, to be continuous and persevering; to be done with humility and love and not as the prayer of the Pharisee but as the prayer of the Publican.
There is the private and the public prayer. In the private one, we pray in our home, away from the human eyes. The public one occurs mainly in Church.
The true, honest prayer, the uplifting of the soul, the conversation with God diverts the mind from the worldly care
Prayer is doxology, thanksgiving and a petition towards God.
We, the Orthodox, believe in a personal God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This Triune God reveals Himself to us through His second person, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is incarnated, preaches the Gospel, performs miracles, He is crucified. He is resurrected, ascended into the heavens and sends the Comforter to unite us with God the Father, in order to restore the disturbed relationship with Him; in order to bring us into a personal encounter, communion and union with God.
Since God is personal, we cannot know Him apart from His loving relationship that prayer creates. If He was an idea, we could have known Him with logical attestation.
‘Pray and love God in order to know Him’, we could say to someone that is searching for God. With prayer the unapproachable God, becomes approachable. The unknown God becomes known. The alien God becomes kin and friend. This is the way that the God-man, our Lord, himself showed us. Lord Jesus Christ prayed often.