Prayer is a branch (of a tree) of meekness, and freedom from anger. Prayer is an expression of joy and thankfulness. Prayer is a remedy against sorrow and depression.
A mind from which the thought of God has been carried away and which has thus become far removed from remembering Him, is also indifferent to sin with the outer senses. For such a mind can guide neither the hearing nor the tongue, since zest to work on itself has gone out of it.
Put aside bodily considerations when you stand in prayer, lest the bite of a flea, a gnat or a fly deprive you of the greatest gain afforded by prayer.
If the soul is vigilant and withdraws from all distraction and abandons its own will, then the spirit of God invades it and it can conceive because it is free to do so.
Do not be always wanting everything to turn out as you think it should, but rather as God pleases; then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer.
The Antichrist must be understood as spiritual phenomenon..., why will everyone in the world want to bow down to him, obviously it is because there is something in him that responds to something in us, that something being lack of Christ in us, if we will bow down to him (God forbid that we do so) it will be because we feel an attraction to some kind of external thing which might even look like Christianity since Antichrist means the one that is in place of Christ or looks like Christ.
Pray firstly to be purified of passions, secondly to be freed from ignorance and forgetfulness, and thirdly to be delivered from all temptation and forsaking.
One of the Fathers said: just as it is impossible for a man to see his face in troubled water, so too the soul, unless it be cleansed of alien thoughts, cannot pray to God in contemplation.
