Prayer: An Orthodox Perspective

Although many of the featured writers here at C201 are Evangelical, we try to include a variety of voices. Today’s post is somewhat lengthy, but it allows us to listen in on an Orthodox discussion about prayer, and particularly the invoking of the names of saints, either generally or by name in their prayer patterns.This is from the blog Glory to God for All Things by Fr. Stephen Freeman, an Orthodox Priest under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in America. He serves as the Rector of St. Anne Orthodox Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. You may click the title to read at source and/or leave a comment or question there.

Prayers and the One God of All

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us!

So runs a common exclamation in Orthodox services of prayer. And so begins another offense for those who wonder why the Orthodox “don’t pray directly to God”…or “why do you pray to the saints”…or, worst of all, how do we dare to say, “Most Holy Theotokos (Birth-giver of God), save us!” For “there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1Timothy 2:5)… and “surely only God can save us!”

These are common questions in the modern world – both from Protestants as well as from the general public. Many members of the Orthodox Church ask the same questions – they, too, are products of a culture that has great difficulty with such things. What is the great difficulty? I believe the problem can be found in a misunderstanding of who God is as well as what it means for us to be in union with Him.

To a degree, questions about prayer and saints reminds me of a common question I’ve heard from children (and some concerned adults): “Which member of the Trinity should we pray to?” When I have responded by trying to ascertain what the nature of the problem was, I have discovered that some are concerned that if they talk to Jesus, exclusively, they will offend the Father and the Holy Spirit. But if they talk exclusively to the Father, it feels less intimate than it does when they speak to Jesus. And they have no idea what to say to the Holy Spirit. So, the question becomes, “Should we just talk to all of them, or if I just say, ‘God’ can they figure it out?” And so the conversation goes.

It is perhaps the case that most of my readers will have wondered the same thing at some point in their Christian lives. For many, the Trinity is not so much a theological problem as a matter of spiritual etiquette. But the problem reveals a great deal – Christians may say they believe in the Trinity – but are largely clueless or simply confused about what it means. Is there an etiquette of prayer?

Of course, an etiquette of prayer presumes that we actually know what prayer is. I have always had difficulty in small groups of people. I can speak to thousands without difficulty (with a good sound system). Speaking to thousands is quite similar to speaking to one. But in a group of say, six, I am at a loss. To whom do you speak? Whose face doyou look at when you’re speaking? And on and on the questions go. For a man who was nurtured in the old Southern culture of the US, being “polite” is ranked among the commandments.

Speaking to God is not speaking to a group – for though God is Triune or Trinity, He is One. To speak to God is to speak to God. There is a typical manner in which most formal prayers are written in Orthodoxy – addressed to the Father, closing with a glorification of the three persons of the Trinity. But this only describes the most common form. Prayers are also written that are addressed to Christ and a few are addressed to the Holy Spirit (“O Heavenly King,” comes to mind). I should add that when Orthodox prayers begin with the general address, “O God,” it is speaking to the Father – something that generally becomes clear during the body of the prayer.

But this is etiquette and not the meaning of prayer. Prayer is active communion with God. Plain and simple – it is nothing else. When we pray we are uniting ourselves to God in thought, word and deed. We yield ourselves to Him and unite our will to His will, our life to His life. Because it is communion, and not just a conversation, it is reciprocal: God unites Himself to us. He yields Himself to us. He unites our will to His. He unites His life to our life.

Thus St. Paul says:

And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’ (Gal 4:6).

And,

For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’  The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs– heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together (Rom 8:15-17).

St. Paul’s references to the cry of “Abba, Father,” most likely have in mind the “Lord’s Prayer,” the “Our Father,” as it is known in most languages. The prayer in many languages (both Hebrew and Greek) begins with the word “Father” (rather than “Our”). Thus it would be the prayer known as the “Abba.”

But St. Paul’s discursus makes clear the nature of our prayers and their essence. Prayer is active communion with God – it indeed is such active communion that he describes it as the Spirit speaking with the voice of the Son to the Father. Prayer is the life of the Triune God on our lips. This is true whether we are saying, “Abba, Father,” or whether we are saying, “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.” It is also true if we are saying, “O God, heal my daughter!” It is still true if we are saying, “O God, why did my child die?” Many such expressions of the heart can be found throughout the Psalms. They are the voice of God in the heart of the Psalmist written to teach us to pray. If the Psalms can say it, so can we!

Prayer is active communion with God regardless of the words we use. Very often people worry themselves about the content of a prayer. They think, “I cannot possibly say that!” Some become superstitious and think that if they say the wrong thing in the wrong way, bad things will happen. These are understandable thoughts, but they are simply the reflection of our own neuroses (some of them taught us by our own religious culture). Prayer is active communion with God and whatever you think, say or don’t say, it is you, yourself that is being united to God. If you think it, believe it, fear it, wish it, whatever, it is you, and you are God’s. God is not offended with us and our prayers.

The content of our hearts is simply an illustration of the content of our lives at any given time. If I am filled with fear, it’s no good pretending that I am not. God isn’t impressed with my ability to pretend things that are not true. Over the decades of my life as a believer, I have said some very terrible things to God. But there have been some very terrible things in my life. Christ God became man and united Himself even to our sins –  (“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” 2Co 5:21). Thus Christ has taken on Himself my anger and my cursing, my doubts and my questions, my rebellion and the secret sins of my life that fill me with self-loathing. All of this He has made His own and nailed it to the Cross that I might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Prayer is active communion with God and this is our salvation. We are saved through union with Christ. Every sacrament, or mystery of the Church, has as its purpose our union with God. In Baptism we are united to Christ’s death and resurrection. In marriage a man and a woman are united and become one flesh in Christ for their salvation. In the Holy Eucharist, whosoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood has Christ’s eternal life in them. And so it goes. Everything is about communion with God and communion with God is the content of our salvation:

God has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the economy of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth– in Him (Eph 1:9-10).

This communion (gathered together in one) is salvation – again, pure and simple. This is our paradise, our peace, our resurrection, our hope, our triumph over death and hell, the forgiveness of our sins and our eternal life.

So, why do we pray, “Through the prayers of our holy fathers…”?

The most straightforward answer is that “this is what communion sounds like on the lips of the Church.” We can also say that “through the prayers of our holy fathers…” is the content of the word “our,” in the “Our Father.” For those who wonder why we invoke the saints when we pray, we do so because we were not taught to pray as individuals (except in the admonition to pray in secret). But the content of our prayer, in the words of Christ, always include others. Our Father…our daily bread…our debts. I have known of some who objected to the Lord’s prayer because we ask God to forgive our debts, arguing that they have no idea what others might have done or whether they are sorry, etc.  Such thoughts betray a misunderstanding of God and of the nature of our salvation.

“No one is saved alone…” the fathers have said…”but if we fall, we fall alone.” Whoever would ask God to forgive his own private sins, but not intercede for others’ forgiveness, will find that he remains unforgiven – not from his own sins – but unforgiven for the sins of others. Because the nature of communion as salvation – is that we cannot be saved alone. Salvation is communion, and communion requires the other. God is Other, but so is everyone and everything. To seek to unite myself to God apart from all of creation is to wish the destruction of everyone and everything.

Part of the language of communion that the Church has developed over the centuries (and quite early I might add), is the language that is described as “prayer to the saints.” There are many ways to do this wrongly (just as there are many ways to pray to God wrongly). Just as God is not rightly conceived as a “supreme personal being” (this is a caricature of the One God), so it is not right to conceive of our prayers to the saints as getting powerful friends to intercede on our behalf because God likes them more than he does me. I was the younger of two sons for most of my childhood. My older brother would urge me, “You go ask Dad! He’ll listen to you.” My father was indeed a tender-hearted man and was very generous to my young intercessions. But God is nothing like this, nor do such examples have anything to do with prayer.

In a culture that has become deeply individualistic, the view of what it is to be human is profoundly flawed. Our relationships to others have been reduced to moral obligations (etiquette) and contracts. St. Paul’s teaching that in the Church  “if one member suffers, all the members suffer…or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice…” (1Co 12:26), is absurd in a world of individuals. There is no communion of individuals and can be none (it is contrary to the notion of the individual). This same culture thinks of God as individual (a Supremely powerful being). If it is incorrect to say this of human beings, it is heresy to say it of God. God is a communion of Persons – One God – Three Persons.

“Prayer to the saints” is, of course, misunderstood by some. Prayer to God is misunderstood by most. Learning that prayer is active communion with God is a great step forward for everyone. To say, “Through the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us,” is to embrace the communion that is our life. It is the voice of creation being united in the One God who draws all to Himself.

What is Man?

Today’s thoughts are from Glory To God For All Things, the blog of Father Stephen where it appeared on May 30th.  We have much to learn to from our Orthodox brothers and sisters.  I encourage you to read this at source — where there are also over 120 responses — and then explore his blog further.  I’ve added a video related to his theme verse here..

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? (Psalm 8:4).

The question, “What is man?” written perhaps a thousand years before the coming of Christ, is the bedrock of true humanism, the only form of dignity that can sustain human life. Our modern world continually re-imagines our nature, but God alone sustains it. I can think of nothing more assuring that the speculation, “What is man?” in a heart of wonder. I can think of nothing more terrifying than the same speculation in the cold calculus of the modern state.

Human dignity is among the youngest thoughts on earth and far from universally subscribed. We are daily exploited, murdered and used for unworthy ends. Individuals fail to see their own worth and give themselves over to evil ends. “What is man?” indeed, and why should we consider ourselves to be of any particular value?

To declare that I am valuable because I am myself – is simply a statement of  self-interest – an instinct shared by most living things. To acknowledge the value of another because it helps preserve my own value is the same instinct extended through a community. This instinct, surely a part of human life from its beginning, has never demonstrated the ability to lift man above his basest desires.

The question, “What is man,” is an echo or a corollary of the question, “Is there a God?” For if there is no God, then the question, “What is man?” has only the emptiness of an echo for an answer. Human dignity is not self-evident. With reference only to our biology we can say that we are carbon-based life-forms that have self-awareness. We cannot assume that other life-forms do not have self-awareness. The question, “What is man?” is thus no more interesting than the question, “What is a bacterium?”

But the question is itself an inherent part of our self-awareness. We want to know if there is anything of transcendent worth in our existence or is it as simply one thing among the many that exists. The question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is similar. Does that which exists have any transcendent meaning – anything beyond the ephemera of its ill-fated billions of years (“ill-fated,” for regardless of how you run the numbers, it will cease to exist).

There are many ways to answer the question, “What is man?” All religions do this in one way or another, and the answers are not at all the same. In Buddhism, self-awareness is simply one of many ephemera – having no bearing on the meaning of existence itself.

But the Christian answer is the primary claimant of the modern world’s attention, whether the modern world acknowledges the source of the answer or not. That we are created in the image and likeness of God, and that God Himself has become man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is the basis of all thought of human rights – the language of consensus in the human community. The assertion of human rights is commonly made today without reference to God. It is thus nothing more than assertion. Human beings have rights because we say they do. Such unsupported assertions only have force when they are asserted by the strong to the weak. This is very much the state of human existence in a secularized world. Rights exist only because a controlling authority enforces such rights. Rights which are denied by a controlling authority have no existence.

Assertions by the West of various human rights, when heard by some non-Western cultures, do not sound like truth claims, only like cultural imperialism. Should women be allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia? The answer depends solely on who is speaking.

World culture at present is not grounded in a civilization. There is no consensus of transcendent values, no true common agreement. The secular triumph of a common Europe, the post-War’s version of the tower of Babel, presently stands ready to collapse as the Eurovision confronts the reality of the Euro. “We share a common currency and a bureaucracy in Brussels,” is an insufficient answer to the question, “What is man?”

Modern, secular culture is derivative. Its values are largely drawn from the treasure of earlier Christian values, regardless of their present distortion. Human rights are contingent upon human dignity, itself contingent upon the creation of man in the image of God. Remove the source and the contingencies collapse (in time). Human rights have already begun their collapse. The concept of rights remain, but they exist only as those in power define them. Thus the rights of women (as defined by the state) or the rights of those with minority sexual orientations (as defined by the state) or other state-defined groups have rights that frequently supersede those of other groups. These rights are arbitrary and represent nothing more than the present state of political reality. As such, they do not represent rights, but assertions of power.

The language of rights continues to have the cachet of the earlier imago dei, but one in which the deity is no more than a function of government bureaucracy (of which the courts are but an arm). The great weakness of our present cultural existence is its lack of foundation outside the bald assertion of power. The two most distorted examples of such power-based cultures were Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. These two cultures continue to strike most moderns as distorted when they are compared to our cultural memory of the imago dei.  But their distortions were justified in the same manner as today’s secularist assertions. Only the present direction of the winds of power stands between modern culture and state terror. The slightest change in that wind can revisit the world with a renewed holocaust. The regime is the same: only the victims change.

The belief that man is created in the image of God yields its own corollaries. As the image of God, human beings are endowed with infinite worth. A human life has value derived from its very Divinely given existence. Our value is not a gift of the state or the result of our own assertions. No one life has greater value than another. Neither usefulness nor talent add value to that given by God.

States (as well as the quasi-states of ecclesial institutions) have sought to reduce these corollaries over the course of the Christian centuries. Thus some have been given greater rights by reason of birth, wealth, race, gender, creed, etc. Each of these assertions of greater rights represent departures from the givenness of the imago dei and a distortion of the Christian faith.

If one human being exists in the image of God, then all human beings exist in the image of God. None of us is more fully the image than another. In Christian teaching, Christ Himself is the definition of the image of God. To the question, ” What does it mean to be human?” Christ is the answer. In Christian understanding, Christ as incarnate image of God is celebrated from conception (the feast of the Annunciation) to His ascension to the right hand of God. No quality of Christ (sentience, wisdom, volition, race, age, gender, etc.) defines or establishes His place as imago dei. He is the image of God. In the same manner, our own unqualified existence establishes us as the image of God.

Only in this fully Christian understanding of man are the value, and thus rights of each human being guaranteed. Only in a culture in which this understanding is agreed and accepted is such value safe and secure. It is perhaps the greatest treasure given to us by God.

There are many modern Christians who have been lulled to sleep by the language of the larger culture, accepting that those who speak of “rights,” actually accept the imago dei. Many Christians have abandoned the public defense of man as God’s image in exchange for a place at the bargaining table of the state’s assertions of power. The state’s ability to assert various perceived rights is not a defense of our humanity – it is its destruction. Our acceptance of the state’s assertion is a capitulation of the gospel. Nothing less than the Divine value of every human life is worthy of the Christian gospel. Those Christians who do not accept such a value have departed from the faith and made common cause with those who would destroy us.

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the moth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightiest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou maddest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8)

~Father Stephen