Although prayer is a relationship of love with God, it must be accompanied by reverence. For the love of God does not make us forget His majesty and dignity. We speak to God in love, and also in respect, in awe, and in veneration.
It is not the fear of slaves, but rather the reverence of a son for his father.

Therefore, Mar Isaac says: “When you stand to pray, be as one standing before a blazing fire.” Abraham, the father of fathers, who was called the friend of God, when he spoke to the Lord said: “I have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.”

So stand before God in contrition, and trust that through contrition you will obtain your request.
For the Lord is near to the brokenhearted.

When you stand before God, say to Him: Who am I, O Lord, that I should stand before You?! Who am I to thrust myself among the ranks of the angels standing before You, and among the cherubim and seraphim, the dominions, the principalities, and the innumerable assembly of the heavenly hosts?!

I, O Lord, do not forget my trivial nature as dust and ashes… nor do I forget my sins and my impurities, as one who has broken Your commandments…
From the standpoint of my nature I am unworthy, and from the standpoint of my sin I am unworthy. Yet it is humility from You to listen to my voice, and humility from You to look upon my lowliness. Your love is what encourages me to draw near to You and to speak—I, the sinner who has done this and that…

I, O Lord, do not forget Your benefactions, I the ungrateful sinner…
You have done much with me, yet I have not met this love with its like, but rather I have angered Your tender heart. And here you may mention God’s benefactions to you one by one, just as you mention your ingratitude, fall after fall, with a kind of shameful comparison for yourself. Then you say:

But with the multitude of my sins, Your longsuffering encourages me, and Your wide heart comforts me:
You are the good and compassionate God, who does not will the death of the sinner as much as that he should return and live. In me, the sinner, Your longsuffering is manifested, and in me, the impure, the greatness of Your mercies is shown. And here speak to God with complete frankness about your fallen self that needs to be sprinkled with His hyssop so that it may be purified.

Let your prayer not be words of composition, with ornate and carefully selected phrases, but let it be sincere words from your heart, without affectation or pretense, but with the openness of a heart laid bare before God…

Your reverence in prayer is the reverence of the spirit, and also the reverence of the body:
The body is reverent—it does not stand in a lax posture, nor in a lazy stance, nor does it recall fatigue, illness, or exhaustion during prayer.

There are people who, when they stand to pray, feel bodily fatigue! while they stand for hours speaking with their friends without any feeling of tiredness!

Therefore beware of imagined fatigue, and fatigue that is from the wars of the demons.

Saint Basil the Great said: “Do not excuse yourself from prayer because of illness, for prayer is a means of your healing from illness.”

How easy it is for the devil to bring upon you fatigue and sickness, in order to prevent you from prayer or from reverence in it.

Mar Isaac said:
“When you begin pure prayer, be prepared for all that comes upon you…”

Prayer tires the devil; he senses that you have begun to escape from his hand, and that you will take strength by which you will defeat him. He also envies you for your prayer, which reminds him that he has lost this fellowship that you have with God. For all this he wars against you at the time of prayer, either to prevent you from it, or to scatter your thoughts, or to make you lose your reverence and humility.

Therefore stand firm against the devil in your prayer, and beware of his wars, and remember the saying of the Apostle: “We are not ignorant of his devices…”

Perhaps the devil wars against you with bodily fatigue, or he wars against you with wandering thoughts, or he wars against you with spiritual matters—so what is this third warfare?

It is possible that during prayer a beautiful or deep spiritual meditation may come to you, and you fear forgetting it. So you try to record it, in order to be comforted by it, or to use it in service and say it to others. Thus you leave prayer to write, and you become occupied with knowledge about prayer, and so you sever the connection that you had a moment ago with God… It is warfare.

An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Year Eight (Issue Forty-Two), 21-10-1977

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