St. John of Kronstadt, on prayer

  • stjohnofkronstadt.jpgToday the Church com­mem­o­rates St. John of Kro­n­stadt, and so I was curi­ous to see what the day’s read­ings in “My Life in Christ” would offer up. It seemed very fit­ting that sev­eral reflec­tions cen­tered on prayer, as indeed it was fit­ting that my gospel read­ing included the verse, “Now in the morn­ing, hav­ing risen a long while before day­light, [the Lord] went out and departed to a soli­tary place; and there He prayed. (Mark 1:35)” Because St. John talks of prayer and the need for a life of prayer prob­a­bly more than any other sin­gle sub­ject. It was obvi­ously some­thing near and dear to his heart. And so, because St. John him­self is near and dear to our hearts, we think of him today.

    First of all, here’s a word on the value we place on worldly things as opposed to the value we place on holy prayers:

    God’s saints had ‘the eyes of their under­stand­ing enlight­ened,’ and with these eyes they clearly saw the wants of our sin; we should ask, for what we should give thanks, how we should praise the Lord, and they left us the most per­fect exam­ples of prayers of var­i­ous kinds. O, how beau­ti­ful these prayers are! Some­times we do not feel and do not know their value, while we well know the value of food and drink, of fash­ion­able attire, of well-furnished rooms, of the­aters, of music, of worldly lit­er­a­ture, espe­cially of nov­els — that flu­ent, empty mass of words — and alas! we tram­ple under­foot the pre­cious pearls of prayer; and while every­thing worldly finds a wel­come, wide shel­ter in the hearts of most peo­ple, prayer, alas, does not find even a nar­row cor­ner in them, can­not get into them. And when it begs us to let it in, it is thrust out like a beg­gar, like the man who had not a wed­ding garment.

    If St. John had such things to say about a fond­ness for nov­els, I couldn’t help but won­der what he would’ve made of the movies, tele­vi­sion and video games we’ve got now. I don’t know of any par­ent who would be con­cerned about a young­ster who liked to read, even if it was only ‘worldly lit­er­a­ture.’ How times have changed.

    Here St. John speaks again of the value we should place on the oppor­tu­nity to pray for someone:

    Do not let pass any oppor­tu­nity to pray for any­one, either at his request or at the request of his rel­a­tives, friends, of those who esteem him, or of his acquain­tances. The Lord looks favor­ably upon the prayer of our love, and upon our bold­ness before him. Besides this, prayer for oth­ers is very ben­e­fi­cial to the one him­self who prays for oth­ers; it puri­fies the heart, strength­ens faith and hope in God, and enkin­dles our love for God and our neigh­bor. When pray­ing, say thus: “Lord, it is pos­si­ble for Thee to do this or that to this ser­vant of Thine; do this for him, for Thy name is the Mer­ci­ful Love of Men and the Almighty.’

    In another place, St. John wrote some­thing that touched my heart: that we must remem­ber when­ever some­one asks us to pray for them to com­mend their trust and faith to God in your prayer:

    When you are asked to pray that some­one may be saved from bod­ily death, for instance, from drown­ing, from death through any sick­ness, from fire, or from any other dis­as­ter, com­mend the faith of those who ask you to do so, and say in your­self: Blessed be your faith. Accord­ing to your faith may the Lord ful­fill my unwor­thy, fee­ble prayer, and may He increase my faith.

    Refer­ring back to the con­vic­tion in prayer, St. John con­stantly advises that we must believe that God will hear our prayer:

    If you wish to ask of God in prayer any bless­ing for your­self, then before pray­ing pre­pare your­self for undoubt­ing and firm faith, and take in good time means against doubt and unbe­lief. For it will go ill with you if dur­ing the prayer itself your heart wavers in its faith and does not stand firm in it; then do not even expect to obtain of the Lord what you have prayed for doubt­ingly, for in doing so you have offended the Lord, and God does not bestow His gifts upon a reviler.

    And I must note that this advice of St. John is some­thing that I just have to grow into over time. I found that I had trou­ble not open­ing up the flood­gates of merely tem­po­ral prayers — the equiv­a­lent to pray­ing that you’ll win the lot­tery, or see mir­a­cles of heal­ing for your­self or oth­ers. I don’t think that’s the kind of thing that St. John meant, but then in the same way that he couldn’t have fore­seen the day when literature-reading would pale by com­par­i­son to other leisure activ­i­ties, he couldn’t have known how over­whelm­ing our mate­ri­al­ism and self-interest would become.

    All the more rea­son to say on this, his name-day: St. John of Kro­n­stadt, blessed saint and won­der­worker, pray for us.


    Related posts:

    1. “My Life in Christ” by St. John of Kronstadt
    2. Prayer request
    3. Spir­i­tual Coun­sels by Fr. John of Kronstadt
    5. The scary Mary prayer

    October 19th, 2007 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 10.19.2007

    Holy St. John, pray to God for us.
    I have to admit, I have the book but have not read it.

  • Grace

    Well, give me a cou­ple more years. At the rate that I quote him here, I think I’ll have repro­duced the whole book by 2010. :-)

    But seri­ously, I think I might’ve said this before, but if you want a slightly eas­ier read, there’s a book of excerpts of “My Life in Christ” called “The Spir­i­tual Coun­sels of St. John of Kro­n­stadt” (Ama­zon link HERE). There are a cou­ple advan­tages:
    * The trans­la­tion is a lit­tle more mod­ern and easy to read
    * The short reflec­tions are orga­nized into cat­e­gories. In “My Life” a para­graph about prayer might be fol­lowed by one about a priest’s duty and fol­lowed by one about nature.
    * It’s a shorter read over­all, prob­a­bly less than half the length of “My Life.”

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