Waiting for the echo when you pray

  • Is it pos­si­ble to pray rapidly with­out injur­ing the effect of the prayer? It is pos­si­ble to those who have learned to pray inwardly with a pure heart. Dur­ing prayer, it is nec­es­sary that your heart should sin­cerely desire that which you ask for, should feel the truth of what you are say­ing, and this comes nat­u­rally to a pure heart. That is why it is capa­ble of pray­ing even rapidly, and at the same time agree­ably, to God, as the rapid­ity in this case does not injure the truth (sin­cer­ity) of the prayer.

    But for those who have not attained the capa­bil­ity of pray­ing sin­cerely, it is nec­es­sary to pray slowly, wait­ing for a cor­re­spond­ing echo in the heart to each word of the prayer. And this is not always soon given to men unac­cus­tomed to prayer­ful contemplation.

    There­fore, for such men, it must be laid down as an absolute rule to pro­nounce the words of the prayer slowly, and with pauses. Wait until every word gives back its cor­re­spond­ing echo in your heart.

    ST. JOHN OF KRONSTADT
    “My Life in Christ”

    I have been at ser­vices where the priest says the prayers as if they were the legal dis­claimer at the end of a 30-second radio spot. What can you say? It’s not nice to fuss at your clergy, (though I gather a lot of peo­ple do it any­way). But I don’t know how I’m sup­posed to hear any­thing when a priest says, “oheav­en­lykingo­com­forter­spir­itof­god­whoarti­nallplace­sand­fillestallth­ings [breath!] …” etc. And I under­stand that I’m not always sup­posed to be really hear­ing and attend­ing to them — part of the rea­son, I sup­pose, that cer­tain parts of the ser­vices are set off by the priest say­ing “Let us attend!”

    But at the times that I am sup­posed to be hear­ing … what’s our rush? I’m not say­ing a per­son couldn’t err in the oppo­site direc­tion — the ser­vice is long enough already with­out a priest whose idea of “pro­nounc­ing the words” (as St. John puts it above) is as if we are learn­ing Eng­lish phrases pho­net­i­cally and each phoneme needs to be lov­ingly crafted.

    In both cases, I think it might be a case such as St. John describes above. I’m going to assume that our priests are so very famil­iar with every word of these prayers that they are already writ­ten on their heart and say­ing them rabbit-fast or tortoise-slow is just inci­den­tal to them. But I love what St. John is say­ing here, and it seems con­sis­tent with St. Paul’s advice to those who fast. A per­son who is more advanced in the faith might just need to stoop to the level of some­one who is more of a begin­ner. Since I’m a begin­ner, I want to hear the words. I want that cor­re­spond­ing echo in my heart.

    Lest I sound like I’m pick­ing on the clergy, I can think of two other peo­ple who need to hear this. The first is the chanter. Those who do Russian-style monot­one chant­ing some­times whip through these things as if they’re read­ing the ingre­di­ents of a highly processed food. And those who do Byzan­tine chant, unfor­tu­nately, are some­times in such heaven with their own vocal embroi­dery that I haven’t a clue what they’re say­ing. I don’t mind if it’s some­thing like “Lord, I Have Cried,” because then I know what the words are. But there are Byzan­tine purists that seem to think the intent of chant­ing is to chant ambi­tiously rather than to impart mean­ing to the une­d­u­cated. Again, since *I* am une­d­u­cated, I am always sorry when they do. I would give up seven or eight min­utes of per­fect Tone 7 sticher­aric acro­bat­ics for one minute of hear­ing the clear teach­ing of the Church.

    The sec­ond per­son who needs to con­sider St. John’s advice is me. I occa­sion­ally read prayers in church and occa­sion­ally chant, so I can con­sider those occa­sions in the light of what St. John says. But I say my own prayers every day, and again … what’s my rush? After so many years, I know the words to my daily prayers so well I can do them when I’m barely awake, but I don’t know how many times I’ve got­ten halfway through and won­dered if I left one out or not, because I wasn’t really lis­ten­ing. Can I stand to “pro­nounce the words” each day? Can I wait until the echo of each one comes back to my heart?

    I think about a piece of advice I heard from a vocal coach. I was in a large choral group, and we had been going over and over the same song — even the same por­tion of the song — time after time until there was no mean­ing in it. He upbraided us for that. He said, “Never sing a note you don’t mean.”

    Never sing a note you don’t mean.

    That’s actu­ally part of the rea­son I got out of sec­u­lar choral groups like that. It’s lovely advice, but I don’t want to put that much of my heart’s blood into songs about the moon in June and what­not. On the other hand, I need to put that heart’s blood where it belongs. We all do. And when I do, it’s true, I think every word could echo in my soul.


    Related posts:

    1. St. John of Kro­n­stadt, on prayer
    2. Grat­i­tude and Fr. John
    3. Feel the truth
    4. About med­i­ta­tion
    5. Rain, rain, go away. Because we need a place to pray.

    August 7th, 2011 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • kay 08.07.2011

    Amen

  • Anam Cara

    So it’s not just me.….

    I have yet to fig­ure out how to get the prayer out of my mouth/head and into my heart. I read about the nous, but I can’t seem to find it.

    If I pray slowly — think­ing every word — I won­der if I am think­ing to hard to allow it to descend to my nous. If I pray quickly, I won­der if I am not giv­ing proper care — am I in a hurry to be fin­ished. When I say the Jesus prayer I won­der if it is just get­ting to be rote — that mind­less vain rep­e­ti­tion that the Protes­tants are always warn­ing about. And when I resort to my spon­ta­neous “talk to God like He is right here” Protes­tant method of prayer, I feel like I’m not doing it “right” by not fol­low­ing the “rule” of the prayer book.

    I think that prayer life has been my biggest prob­lem since becom­ing Ortho­dox. I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing any­more. And no book seems to be able to help!

  • kay

    Amen.

  • Nicode­mus

    Good med­i­ta­tion. I remem­ber my first impres­sion of the Ortho­dox Ves­pers ser­vice and was a bit scan­dal­ized by the seem­ingly insin­cere rapid prayers of the priest. I thought, “Did he really mean it?”. And now, I find myself some­times rush­ing through prayers, and some­times it is mind­less, but other times I sense that I am in a spirit of prayer — the whole thing is sort of a “being present to God” kind of atti­tude. I love it when that hap­pens, but then, like Grace, I some­times won­der if I have already prayed the Lord’s prayer, and if I find myself think­ing that, I go ahead and pray it any­way since I obvi­ously wasn’t really pray­ing it any­way the first time.

    When I am in the chanter’s stand, though, I feel a respon­si­bil­ity to be clear so that I am lead­ing oth­ers in prayer and wor­ship, so I try not to rush it, but I also try to keep it mov­ing with­out com­pro­mis­ing clarity.

  • Grace

    I ended up think­ing about this for a while. I so hear you on the instruc­tive tech­nique dis­cus­sions of how to pray. I think they end up very involved and complex-sounding, partly because it’s the kind of stuff that ide­ally would go with­out say­ing. I have never felt like I really got the whole thing with the nous … but that’s a topic for another blogpost.

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