Articles

Day 3 2018 (1st Wednesday of the Holy Great Fast )

How? Unite with God through prayer

“Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jer 29:12-13)

. . .

“We pray as a response to love, and we pray in order to love….

For Christians, love is action, not feeling. Christian love is not the warm rush of desire and joy that can be experienced in a love affair, political rally, or charismatic power meeting. That is romanticism, not Christianity. So responding to God with warm feelings is not what prayer should be about…

Love experienced on the deep level of reality results in a conscious decision to act toward someone in a caring way and to communicate with that person. So God acts by sending His Son, the Eternal Word, to us. This is the ultimate declaration of love. We respond to the sending of His word with our words. We pray.

Prayer is more than just our response to the way God loves us. It is part of how we love Him. Love breaks down separation because we want to be with the person we love. If we love God we want to become one with Him. St Dimitri of Rostov wrote: ‘No unity with God is possible except by an exceedingly great love.’ Loving and joining go together.”

St Dimitri of Rostov continues: “To kindle in your heart such divine love, to unite with God in an inseparable union of love, it is necessary for you to pray often, raising the mind to Him. For as a flame increases when it is constantly fed, so prayer, made often, with the mind dwelling ever more deeply in God, arouses divine love in the heart. And the heart, set on fire, will warm all the inner person, will enlighten and teach you, revealing to you all its unknown and hidden wisdom, and making you like a flaming seraph, always standing before God within your spirit, always looking at Him within your mind, and drawing from this vision the sweetness of spiritual joy.’”

Very Rev Michael Keiser

St Dimitri of Rostov