Day by day. Diary of an Orthodox Priest! 170

 

What to Pray for?

June 23.

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26).

Never do we feel our infirmities so keenly as in prayer. How often are our thoughts scattered in all directions, and we become feeble in our efforts to lift them up to the Lord! Who among us has not suffered from this weakness to pray, who has not experienced this coldness, this dryness which overtaketh us, against which we are powerless to fight? Sometimes we do not know what to pray for, we do not ask for what is needed - we do not know how to understand the very spirit of prayer, we do not have that faith that would teach us to bring our heavy burden to the feet of Christ and leave it there with full hope.

We ourselves are powerless and weak, but the Spirit of God can strengthen us - “He strengthens us in our weaknesses”. One with God the Father, He knows what is pleasing to the Lord to give us, and when we ourselves do not know what to pray for, He intercedes for us with “groans that cannot be expressed”.

The life-giving Spirit of God can make us feel, almost involuntarily, a powerful wave of higher desires and aspirations that overwhelms us, separating us from earthly vanity. Let us surrender to this wave with our whole being, leaving behind all our petty everyday quarrels that often chain us to this earth - let us rise higher, even with wordless prayer, knowing that “unutterable groans” intercede for us before the Throne of the Most High!

Let the uncontrollable power of desire sometimes reach pain, let our heart languish and weep. The Lord does great things in our soul at such moments, pouring down showers of blessing upon us and quenching our thirst! This is true prayer: the desire of the soul to pour out before the Lord all that is deep, inexpressible, incomprehensible to us, that finds no words and fills the thirsty heart with vague longing. And the Spirit of God, who lives within us, takes this desire from us and prays within us!