Fr. Yanni’s Reflection: December 2019

REGARDING PRAYER

During the Holiday Season, with Christmas, the New Year (St. Basil’s feast day), and Theophany our awareness levels regarding family, joy, friendship, as well as their flipside of pain, loneliness and sadness increase. We become acutely aware of calm as well as frustration and the discomfort they can bring to those around us.

I often receive the offhand request of “pray for me father” sometimes it comes off as “could you say a prayer for us father”, and while most of the time I say, “of course I will” every so often I half-jokingly want to say “pray for yourself.”

A life of prayer, one that begins to create and establish a personal relationship with God, must be pursued. Christ’s disciples even asked Him how we should pray, and He very willingly showed them how, He gave them the Lord’s Prayer. He also lived the example of praying at different times and various occasions, and so specific prayers were set for certain times, ultimately bringing about the prayers of the hours, and so we have our prayer structure.

Now prayer isn’t magic, and it is not about getting God to do what we want. It is about changing our- selves in and through repentance so that we can heal and make things right. Prayers of repentance and thanksgiving enable us to better come to terms with reality and our needs. We often lose track of the purpose of prayer, God doesn’t need our thanks and worship, and we need it. We assume the purpose of prayer is to get God to do what we want. This more than anything else is magic and not prayer, that idea and understanding at its core is paganism and not Christianity.

Prayer for us is to draw closer to God, and to become more like Him. And in response Christ gives us the Lord’s Prayer, not to locate God, who is not confined by space or time, as He is not a created thing, but to say that God is our Heavenly Father as is proclaimed in the Liturgy. God is our Father through adoption in Christ. When we pray, we are developing a relationship with Him. God’s name is Holy. Since He is our Father and cares for us, and His name is Holy, our reverence for Him should not be too familiar or too informal.

“Your kingdom come, Your will be done” are not unrelated and separate. This does not mean a worldly Kingdom, rather a heavenly one coming into existence in our seen world. The Kingdom already exists in Heaven; the way to bring it to earth is by virtue of God’s will being done, which brings everything back to the beginning.

God created the heavens and the earth, light and darkness, the water above and below. All that God did in the beginning He did in pairs. Then the first eschatological (dealing with the destiny of the soul, of mankind, and the entire creation) event is two becoming one (Marriage). In the end, after Judgment, heaven and earth that were separate become one; the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven, as the image of the Incarnation. We pray for Christ to return, for the fulfillment of God’s creation to come about.

Daily bread, is asking God to take care of our daily needs. He knows what we need, already before we ask. He is the True God, He is not ignorant. Our prayers, as we said before is for us. So that we do not take credit for the things we have and acquire, because all things come from God. What we have and need is gifted to us by God.

So the long and short of it is: of course I’ll pray for you, and you must pray for yourself also.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Christ is Born, Glorify Him!

 + Fr. Yanni Michaelidis, Assistant Priest