The Elevation of the Soul to God / 28.05.2006
The soul cannot elevate by itself to God unless the Holy Spirit dwelled in it. He is in you and talks to himself with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Praying is a movement of Divine descending to you and then another ascending movement. This is what the Son did when he descended and then ascended.
God descends to you directly through the Holy Spirit but He descended to the whole humanity through the Gospel. The Gospel is Christ’s thought and contains everything that you could know about God’s secrets that were revealed to us. The Gospel reaches you if you read, studied and sifted it. In addition to hearing it in Church, the Gospel comes to you through different prayers and chants that express the Gospel. You are always with this Book whether you prayed with a community or alone because if you stood up in your home, street or car you would be reading prayers from the Church that were printed in the Horologion (book of hours). Even If you prayed alone, you would be spiritually present with the community.
However, you might say a simple prayer and not a complete one. You could say for example: “Lord have mercy” or “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner”. Even if you said such small prayers you will still be standing, through the Spirit, with the community.
However, the important thing is to be standing in Christ’s presence whether you were participating in a divine service or praying individually. Sometimes, you might be taken by the performance of our rituals which are essential for us. But sometimes tunes dominate words and words stop being understandable. The believer needs a lot of attention to stay focused on the meanings because those meanings put us in Christ’s presence. Ritual worships are meant to be manifestations of the Lord. Beware not to make them obscure his presence.
Excessive beautifying of the voice and competition between chanters distract people from Christ. If we really were calling Him, He could reach us with a tuneful voice and with an ugly one. We must become independent from the dominance of expression in order to stick to the essence. There is no encounter in temples or in individual prayer except with Christ.
In Church, you do not stare at the faithful that are in front of you or next to you. Every one of us is connected to his Lord. Yes, we are in communion with the brothers through one prayer and one Holy Communion, but this communion doesn’t mean that we are a cluster in which we are all molten. You are attached only to the Lord and He is the place where you encounter the brothers.
You must understand that prayer- whether it was collective or individual- requires great anchorage, and a lot of time to understand every Sunday what you missed in the past ones. In every Liturgy, you discover the Master and you find his visage more glorious. A lot of phrases pass without any influence on you. Then, this phrase suddenly glows after being turned off. Therefore, you cannot take full benefit if you didn’t persevere. Individual prayer falls under the same pattern. If you didn’t persevere daily you won’t be able to pray it with the same warmth. Yearning for Jesus cannot be strong if your prayer is cut. You cannot find Christ when your system is based on negligence.
If you sinned, don’t leave your prayer for being disgusted from yourself. On the contrary, the situation of a sin is a situation to come back to God. And you cannot come back to him except by talking to him through the words that you know or the words that you compose. Prayer is a relation between the believer and his lord. He always loves you and wants you to talk to him because you benefit from this conversation. Prayer is the only way not to forget the Lord.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “ارتفاع النفس إلى الله” –Raiati 22 – 28.05.2006
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