The payer is a smart doing. We must operate with our mind to have a result. How people were praying in the ancient church is explained in the Holy Scripture. For example,in the First Epistleof St. Peter: "Rid yourselves, then, of all spite, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and carping criticism. Like new-born babies all your longing should be for milk -- the unadulterated spiritual milk - which will help you to grow up to salvation, at any rate if you have tasted that the Lord is good".
As you can see, we must first purify our consciousness, and then begin to love pure spiritual milk; it means that we must join an extraordinary celestial bliss, which settles in man when he puts his heart under the verbal water of the Heavenly Jerusalem.
When Christ came, He restored the connexion of our fallen world with the highest world, with the height of the Heavenly Kingdom, so the bridge is established, the way is open. And, in ancient times, Christians were able to receive abundant grace, so that they could grow from glory to glory. The expression: "Taste that the Lord is good" means to join to the world of the Heavenly Kingdom. 2000 years ago, the humanity, as it is now, stayed in the darkness of being, and suddenly lighted up by rays of uncreated light: the Christ came, risen, ascended, and the Holy Spirit descended on the Church so the mysticism entered the life of mankind, and such a mysticism, that no one could imagine it.
The Lord opened the door of Eternity, and the chosen people of God, while on earth, has already entered the borders of the Kingdom of Heaven. However, the door of Eternity is closed again for the vast majority of people, nowadays. This is mainly due to a sin of regicide, and many distortions that have entered our church during the synodal period. But there are limits for everything, and now we are entering an epoch when the door of Eternity begins to open again, so to speak, and it will be possible to glimpse inside.
How is doing? The uncreated light shining doesn’t open automatically but through some efforts from the part of man. As we know, "The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence." First, we need to know that the uncreated light is within the Gospel words, literally, like a filling which can be compared with a filled sweet: outside is a word, and inside – an uncreated light; this is why the apostle compares the grace with spiritual milk. The Divine Heavenly Light is drunk by the mind of the heart. Secondly, it is necessary to understand the spiritual laws of initiation to the heavenly light. The Lord gives us a pitcher of His grace, but it is for us to swallow its content. The Angels will not pour the grace on us against our will.
If man, during the Divine Office, stays and waits the dispensation of grace, nothing will happen to him. For the spiritual milk flows in our heart, we must literally open the mind of our heart, and as a child, turn with our whole being towards the Chalice, so to speak, turn towards our loving Father, ready to accept each of His words. And when we will hear the words, and they will come into us during the divine office, it will be the turn of the most important thing that makes us the partakers of the uncreated light. The main factor here is our Faith. We must, with a children's naive faith, trust absolutely all the words of the Divine Office and that trust does not consist in its passive approval, as it happens nowadays, allegedly we believe in the truth of the Gospel words. That is not enough; there is no use for the acquiring of the uncreated light, in fact. We must not only believe passively in the truth of the Gospel words, but actively use these words as a building material for the construction of our inner realm.
It is essential to believe the sacred words and vivify by them our inner world. What does that mean? It means that when we hear the prayer: "Lord, have mercy", the Angels are projecting, with prayer, a ray of God's mercy in our heart, forgiving our sins and restoring connection of our soul with the soul of the Saviour. It means that we are forgiven and we are now part of God's holy people. However, for the power of God's mercy could have a real impact, we must truly believe in what we pray, believe absolutely, totally and completely. If we say, "Lord, have mercy" and think in mind: "There's nothing to forgive us, we are all sinners," then God says, "Be it done according to your faith! ", and that's all. What sense is to pray, if we doubt in advance of what we ask?
The door to the uncreated light is opened by faith, intelligence and simplicity. We get what we think. Nowadays it is just the opposite. Nowadays, we have a mess in our heads and the awareness of our unworthiness and sin is placed on the first place; supposedly, we just pray in repentance and humility, the Lord will do the rest, He knows better, He will manage. However, it is absurd, it is a real madness. No one but ourselves will take care of our inner realm. Man is created in the image of God, and the Lord directly, does nothing inside of us by His own hands. He even manages the entire world through the prophets, through man, rather than directly. He was not breaking into our economy, to restore order without our will.
The Lord gives us His creative force only if we ask Him. The direct effect of this force is produced, in our soul, on the order of man; this is why we make a sign of the cross. The holiness, the grace, the uncreated light, all this comes to us, in reality, not as a finished product, but as a creative force, intended to transform our soul. God also gives us only an opportunity, his holy power of compassion; the transformation of the soul is made by Angels, only after we make, for example, a sign of the cross. So we made a sign of the cross and said "Amen," and that's all, the action came into effect. The transformation occurs only when we believe that the Lord really had mercy on us, and that the prayer has produced an action, that we are now in a new state, we were not forgiven, but we have just obtained mercy.
We must pray and make a sign of the cross with faith in the outcome, then there will be a result; if we do not believe or we do not expect a concrete result, if we think that everything happens as if by magic, without our involvement, then we can expect our entire lives without getting anything. If we do not believe in what we say and hear in the Liturgy, if we doubt God's mercy, or if we put our consideration, that we are unworthy of salvation, above the will of God, then the uncreated light will go elsewhere, that is all. Thus, the method of enriching the uncreated light is very simple: listen with our ears, believe in every word, like a child, put them in our heart, seal by the sign of the cross, say "Amen," and give Glory to God; that's all, a piece of the uncreated light is now placed in our heart.
It happens so the dispensation of grace. We must just have a clear conscience and believe in every word of the Good News. It is necessary to operate creatively with Heavenly light, and, for the Glory of God, build our inner realm with the sacred verbal energies. In this consists the essence of our God likeness. The Creator gives us the same creative power by which He created His sacred Heavenly world. And we must do exactly the same thing; that's why we go to church, to build the temple of God in ourselves. That's how a prayer wasinancienttimes.
In fact, nothing has changed today: the same prayer of Jesus will bring results only if we believe, quite simply, that the Lord has mercy on us and forgive us, not just mumble endlessly, like a mantra, the same words. The joy and happiness of prayer consist in love and incredible mercy of God. The Savior always forgives us and loves us infinitely.
When we call the Lord, with all our heart, He fully rushes towards us. And in response, we also need to rush fully towards God, and then it happens what is called the breath of life. There is the whole Saviour in the name of God, and the power of prayer begins to manifest if we understand by our mind that God enters the altar of our soul. In the same way we rise while praying in spirit, whether we like it or not, whether we consider ourselves worthy or not, to the sanctuary of the Heavenly Jerusalem, to the highest Heavens, at the same height where the seraphim and cherubs turn around the Throne.
We must always keep these things in mind and believe firmly. Then comes the understanding of the great mystery of prayer, and after this understanding, the uncreated light settles in our hearts. During the prayer, the most important is to breathe through your heart; it means that we must continuously monitor, by our mind, the movement of the spiritual energies. Prayer is an eternal movement of Love.
From God we receive His strength, then keep the light of grace for us and give the glory to God; and all these spiritual flows, must be constantly monitored by our inner self. We must have a constant communication, a constant movement from God to our heart and from heart to God. This is called a prayer by spirit. That's when the uncreated light inflames. If we understand the essence of these things, even the physical body begins to breathe differently. Moreover, a sign of the cross has a particular importance in the dispensation of grace.
In the right hand of man is concentrated a power over the creative forces of God, this force lives and acts according to certain laws, and is reflected in the right position of the fingers. Many variations of blessing gestures on the icons show various aspects of the action of the supreme force of God. They are based on the Dogma of the Holy Trinity, the correct dogma, not synodal stump.
That dogma, according to which, in reality, are unfolding the life and action of the forces of Creation, where there are outgoing and incoming energies, gathering into a single unit, in the right hand of the Lord Almighty; and it is this integral understanding of the essence of the supreme power, expressed in specific combination of fingers, that produces an invigorating action, similar to the action of God while creating the world. We'll discuss it in the next issue.
