Both public and private prayer are necessary in order that we may lead a truly Christian life, and that the life of the spirit should not become extinct in us. It is indispensable that we should attend divine service in church with faith, zeal and understanding, just as it is indispensable to provide a lamp with fuel or power if it is to burn and not to go out.
Our prayer reflects our attitude towards God. He who is careless of salvation has a different attitude toward God from him who has abandoned sin and is zealous for virtue but has not yet entered within himself and works for the Lord only outwardly. Finally, he who has entered within and carries the Lord within himself, standing before Him, has yet another attitude. The first man is negligent in prayer, just as he is negligent in life, and he prays in church and at home merely according to the established custom, without attention or feeling. The second man reads many prayers and goes often to church, trying at the same time to keep his attention from wandering and to experience feelings in accordance with the prayers which are read, although he is seldom successful. The third man, wholly concentrated within, stands with his mind before God, and prays to Him in his heart without distraction, without long verbal prayers, even when standing for a long time at prayer in his home or in church.... Every prayer must come from the heart and any other prayer is no prayer at all. Prayer-book prayers, your own prayers and very short prayers, all must issue forth from the heart to God, seen before you.
Prayer is a great good if offered up from a thankful soul; if we are steadfast in it, so that whether we receive or do not receive what we pray for we at all times give thanks to God. For since He will sometimes grant what we ask and sometimes will not, in both cases it is to our gain... For oftentimes God will delay, not as denying our prayer, but in His wisdom seeking rather for our perseverance, and desiring to draw us nearer to Himself; as a loving father when asked by his son for something will often do; withholding consent, and not from the will to refuse, but rather to encourage him in steadfastness.
Prayers at home are an introduction, a preparation for prayers in Church. Thus he who is not accustomed to pray at home can seldom pray diligently in Church. Experience bears witness to this: anyone can observe it for himself.
Prayer is a refuge for those who are shaken, an anchor for those tossed by waves, a walking stick for the infirm, a treasure house for the poor, a stronghold for the rich, a destroyer of sicknesses, a preserver of health. Prayer keeps our virtues intact and quickly removes all evil. If temptation overtakes us, it easily drives it away; if we lose some property or something else, which causes our soul grief, it removes it. Prayer banishes every sorrow, causes good humor, facilitates constant well-being. It is the mother of. love of wisdom. He who can sincerely pray is richer than everyone else, even though he is the poorest of all. On the contrary, he who does not have recourse to prayer, even though he sit on a king's throne, is the poorest of all...
Let us then not lose heart, nor be slothful or timid in prayer. Even if we have been brought down to the depths of evil, prayer can speedily draw us back.
How can one avoid distractions in prayer? If one abides in the presence of God. Indeed, when in the presence of one's judge and one's master, and speaking with him, one does not let one's eyes wander elsewhere. How much more should the one who approaches the Lord never turn away the eye of his heart, but fix it on Him who searches the reins and the heart.
For while the body is bowed to the ground the mouth babbles idly, and the mind wanders here and there through the house, through the market place, how can such a person say he has prayed before the face of God? He prays before the face of the Lord who contains his soul in every direction, and withdraws it from all that is earthly, and, thrusting aside every human reflection, raises it up towards heaven.
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.
If someone should ask: how am I to pray?, the answer is very simple: fear God. Experience of the fear of God arouses attention and consciousness in the heart and forces it to stand with devotion before God.
Prayer demands that the mind should be pure of all thought and should admit nothing not belonging to prayer, even if it were good in itself. As if inspired by God the mind should withdraw from all things and hold its converse with Him alone.
To pray with self-constraint is in our power, whereas to pray with compunction depends upon God. We must pray with what prayer we can, and for our self-constraint God will give us compunction also in due time, when this is pleasing to Him.
The one who prays ought never to halt his movement of sublime ascent toward God. For just as we should understand the ascent 'from strength to strength' as the progress in the practice of the virtues, 'from glory to glory' (2 Cor. 3:18) as the advance in the spiritual knowledge of contemplation, and the transfer from the letter of sacred writing to its spirit, so in the same way the one who is settled in the place of prayer should lift his mind from human matters and the attention of the soul to more divine realities.
