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The most frequent difficulty, one that everybody knows, is to harmonize our psychic world--its changing content, agitated and burdened with the cares of the present--with the content of liturgical prayer or with our personal obligation. Behind the very real tension of seeking harmony, there is often hidden a secret resistance, a very refined form of temptation. It generally advances the argument of sincerity: We do not find ourselves just now in the state of prayer; in forcing ourselves we risk profaning what is sacred, for in every way we would remain distracted, exterior, and in the end, boredom, and lassitude would triumph. Should we really in this case wait for the moment of inspiration, with the risk that we shall never find it?
To suppress this form of temptation at the very outset, and to avoid all misunderstanding, it is important to grasp the fact that prayer requires a preliminary state, an ascetic effort.
Here is the experience of a hermit: “I believe there is nothing so painful as prayer. When a man begins to pray, then his enemies, the demons, try to hinder him from it... Prayer requires that we fight to the last sigh.”22.74
There is also the natural resistance that comes from laziness and heaviness of soul. This darkened side of human nature makes us understand the words of Origen: “A single saint by his prayer is stronger in his struggle than a crowd of sinners.”22.75 Elsewhere this author notes the fact that climbing up a high mountain is fatiguing.22.76
Prayer thus possesses its own struggle. It is no stranger to that “violence” that bears away the kingdom, violence to man whom it casts to the ground in adoration, violence to God in making him incline toward earth and the man in prayer.22.77
“By his death, he has conquered death.” Likewise every prayer entails its own cross, and by its effort it conquers effort so that finally it springs forth freely and joyfully. The body conditions the effort; fasting, genuflections, prostrations help the spirit to concentrate, attuning it as a musical instrument.
The masters tell us that we must go beyond the first difficult moment by attentively reading the psalms; to act “as if” inspiration were not lacking, and then the miracle of grace will operate. Ambrose of Optina, a staretz, has said: “Read a chapter of the Gospel every day; and when anxiety seizes you, read again until it passes away; if it returns, read the Gospel once more.”22.78
The Fathers teach that the Holy Spirit is the only gift which, once requested, never remains without an immediate answer. It is the epiklesis of prayer, the invocation that reaches the very nature of the one who is giving himself and impels him to manifest himself.
Why pray? Does not God know what we need? This objection is aimed at the prayer of request and intercession. The Gospel makes no distinction between the forms of prayer and states clearly: “If two of you shall agree on earth about anything at all for which they ask, it shall be done for them by my Father.”22.79
One cannot unite except in a third, in the will of God who desires unity, and then, according to the Gospel, such unity moves the will of the Father. God listens to our prayer, he rectifies it and makes it an element added to his decision. The violent insistence of the widow of the Gospel wrung a response that makes the power of prayer stand out clearly. St. Paul begged the Lord three times to remove the sting from his flesh. The life of St. Seraphim gives an account of the prayer of a saint for the soul of a condemned sinner. Day and night the saint was in prayer; he struggled with divine justice, and though struck by lightning, his ardent prayer in its very boldness caused the mercy of God to triumph, and the sinner was pardoned. Perhaps hell depends also on the violence of the charity of saints, and God may expect that our prayers may bring about the apocatastasis (final [restoration of all things]).
Have we enough time to pray? Certainly, and much more than we think. “How many moments of torpor, of inattention, could become instants of prayer, so that we might become vigilant, attentive to persons and things--even worry, if it is expressed in dialogue with God, in contestation, in abandonment. We can even offer the exhaustion that hinders prayer and even our powerlessness to pray.”22.80
In these frequent states of loneliness and weariness, the name of Jesus can become an interior appeal during a conversation, a light that illumines a monotonous work, a sound of reality that dispels reverie, in short, a simple blessing on persons and things.22.81 “The remembrance of God, without formulating a single word, is already a prayer and a help,”22.82 says St. Barsanuphius.
However, “in the hours when the mind wanders, it is better to attach oneself by preference to reading rather than to prayer”, until the moment when “the Spirit himself will teach the heart”.22.83 That is why, St. Isaac explains: “Prayer is the key that opens the understanding to the Scriptures.”22.84