Preparing to Pray

"Although prayer is a habitual action for us, it needs preparation...If we sit down to read and write we do not do so suddenly, we first get ourselves into the mood for what we are going to do. This kind of preparation is all the more necessary before we start to pray, particularly if our occupation immediately beforehand was very different from prayer.

So, morning or evening, immediately before you begin to repeat your prayers, stand awhile, sit for awhile, or walk a little and try to steady your mind and turn it away from all worldly activities and objects. After this, think who He is to whom you turn in prayer, then recollect who you are; who it is who is about to start this invocation to Him in prayer. Do this in such a way as to awake in your heart a feeling of humility and reverent awe that you are standing in the presence of God. It is the beginning of prayer, and a good beginning is half the complete task."

-- St. Theophan the Recluse

Kierkegaard's View on Worship

I was a philosopy major in college and one of my areas of interest was existentialism. Interestingly, my favorite existentialist philosophers were Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre. What I loved about Kierkegaard was that he was a Christian and spoke to the issues of existentialism as a Christian. Here's one of my favorite quotes from Kierkegaard:


"Worship is a drama in which each week is re-enacted the story of redemption."
- Soren Kierkegaard

Contemplating the Trinity

"No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three, I think of Him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided Light."
-- St. Gregory Nazianzen