Met. Serafim: How Do we Find Peace and Satisfaction?
If we are attentive and vigilant, the atmosphere in church, loaded with the grace of prayer and chanting, enters the heart and gives us an indescribable joy and peace.
Prayer and Holy Communion
Met. Serafim Joantă
Nothing is more important in a person’s life than prayer of the mind united with the heart. There is oral prayer and prayer of the mind separated from the heart, but they are only steps towards the full prayer of the mind united with the heart. It follows that we must strive for this all our life, because only it unites us with God and gives balance of soul and peace of heart. The Holy Apostle Paul’s command, “Pray unceasingly” (1 Thess 5:17), is the measure of prayer.
From hesychast tradition, renewed [in Romania] by Saint Paisius of Neamț (d. 1794) and learned by our great spiritual fathers to this day, we know that “prayer for all times” or “unceasing prayer” of the monk and Christian is the “Jesus Prayer”: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This short prayer, or others that are even shorter, like: “Lord, have mercy on me!”, “Lord, help me!”, “Lord, forgive me!”, “Lord, have mercy on Your servants!”, without forgetting the prayer addressed to the Mother of God: “Most Holy Theotokos, save me!” must always be repeated throughout the course of the day, in any circumstance we find ourselves, so that the mind may always be occupied with prayer. In this way, slowly but surely, the mind, which is an energy of the heart, descends into the heart and rests in it, giving us peace of heart and satisfaction for our soul, which everyone seeks.
Always saying such short prayers, we will see that when we pray in Church, on Sundays and Feast days, as well as at home, morning and night, the mind concentrates on what we read or hear more easily, it penetrates the meaning of the prayers better and feels the action of grace in the depths of the heart. Especially in the Divine Liturgy we must have our attention entirely concentrated on the ritual of the Holy Oblation, which consists of the prayers said by the priest and the responses given by the faithful. If we are attentive and vigilant, the atmosphere in church, loaded with the grace of prayer and chanting, enters the heart and gives us an indescribable joy and peace. And we partake of the Holy Mysteries with this joy and peace. If we are not used to “prayer at all times,” if we only pray sporadically, because we don’t have love for prayer, and implicitly love for God, from which love of prayer is born, Church services will not give us rest, we will experience them as a burden added to the burdens of daily life. In this way, we will easily give up on them and number ourselves with the faithful only in name.
Prayer is sustained by fasting and other ascetic practices. Orthodoxy is, par excellence, an ascetic Church. Without holistic asceticism, of soul and body, it is impossible to feel grace and participate in its action within our heart. Fasting thins the body and strengthens the spirit, calms the impulses of the senses and helps the mind descend into the heart. It is impossible to pray with a full stomach, because food and drink draw the mind into the senses and impede it from descending into the heart. So too a lack of restraint in bodily pleasures and exaggerated care for material things disperse the mind in external things. The grace of the Holy Mysteries, interwoven with personal prayer and asceticism, make the believer balanced and moderate in everything, as well as sensitive to the pain and needs of others. Such a person lives the joys and sufferings of others, humanity, and all creation in the most real way because the grace of the Holy Mysteries has healed his heart of the illness of sin. His heart, transfigured by the work of grace, has rediscovered its ontological unity with all creation, which is recapitulated in it like a furnace.
Thinking with pain about the state of decline in spiritual life today, even within the ranks of practicing Christians, caused by neglecting Confession and Communion, and having, as a hierarch, the duty of preaching not only correct teachings, but also correct living and practice of the faith, I do not stop exhorting the faithful to approach Holy Confession as well as Holy Communion more often, even regularly. We should not be ashamed to confess our sins; we must not fear communing with the Holy Mysteries, which give us life, but we must fear spiritual death, which we experience when we stay far from them. Confession is not judgment, nor condemnation, but lifting of the burden of sin, and Communion is the exclusive gift of God’s mercy, so that we may have life in us and not a reward for a certain ascetic practice or virtue.
From a conference held in Bucharest on October 5-8, 2014 by Met. Serafim Joantă.
Source: De Te Voi Uita Ierusalime…sau Ortodoxia trăită în Occident [If I Forget You, Jerusalem…or Orthodoxy lived in the West] (Doxologia: Iași, 2018), p. 96-98.
Wonderful and necessary words, in the tradition of Fr. Sofian.
I love how he addresses the "state of decline in spiritual life today, even within the ranks of practicing Christians". It is both disheartening and encouraging at the same time: disheartening when I look at this state of the world as outside myself, and encouraging when I bring this "state of decline" into my heart, I own it, knowing that I am a part of this world and I can always do something- ask the Holy Spirit to come into the decline of this tiny part, my heart and salt it with His cleansing fire.