Reflection on Mt 6:6
Jesus gives specific instructions for prayer. The first thing He advises is: “go into”; He does not say: “remain outside”. He also says where to go: “into your room”. There can be a physical and a spiritual room. A spiritual room is our heart. We close the door of our senses which are affected by everyday happenings, and then we are able to focus on the presence of God. God is here, I open the door to Him, and there in my inner room, in secret, as Jesus says, the Father hears. That is why it is here that I need to pray and come into contact with God. The first step in prayer is an act of contrition. Admit before God your faults and sins, self-will, idle words, evil thoughts etc.
Apart from personal prayer there is also communal prayer, but this is not the prayer Jesus speaks about here. You need to go into your room, not someone else’s. You should have a place in your home, too, where you can pray! When there was a revival in South Korea, Christians had a mountain of prayer where each dug a cave for himself and came to pray there regularly. However, this is not an ideal solution in European conditions, and it could even be harmful. To find a place for prayer is a problem to a certain extent. If the whole family is Christian, they can make a separate room for prayer. Today the television is the central point of the house. But it is necessary to carry out a reform and to have a prayer corner at least. It can be covered with a curtain behind which you can have an icon of Christ crucified or risen or an icon of the Virgin Mary with Christ Child. Each member of the family who seeks his own room can set aside a specific time for his private prayer here.
Example: When I was fifteen, I began working as a labourer in the construction of forest roads and paths. I was looking for a place to pray. I had a one-hour break in the afternoon. I found a place where I would pray for half an hour. When I was in my first year of seminary, it was hard to find a place for personal prayer. The only place for personal prayer was our dormitory where there were 14 of us. I could only devote time to personal prayer after all lay down to sleep. Then I got up quietly and prayed for more than an hour. I had to be completely silent because the other students were falling asleep, and if I had quietly uttered a single word or sighed loudly, they would have complained to the superior and I would have been punished for disturbance at night. There was no other possibility then. When I was in higher classes, I made the most of the time but it was possible only three times a week, in the time of so-called leisure time after lunch, before compulsory study time. I spent this hour, or two hours, in the chapel. If I had been sitting, there would have been a danger of spiritual sleep and I could hardly pray. So I was kneeling the whole time. I had a clear programme – what steps of repentance to make, how to reach inner silence and enter into contact with God. In my fourth and fifth year of study, I got the key to the library room where there was silence at a certain time of the day and thus an opportunity for private prayer. When I was appointed as assistant priest to a parish, first I looked around the room where I lived, searching for an appropriate place for a prayer corner where I could pray. And then I tried to find the appropriate time. The optimum time was from 3 to 5am. When I was appointed as a parish priest, I used to pray evenings before the tabernacle in the church instead of watching TV. When I was transferred to another place, practically a dead parish, I could set aside more time for prayer. During student holidays, which lasted three months, I prayed with students practically non-stop for three months, about 5 hours a day. We also devoted time to discussion on the Word of God and on how to put it into practice in the life of the following of Christ. During the academic year, students arrived on Friday evening and left on Sunday afternoon. During the week, I had a lot of time to pray, to study and to write down my spiritual experience. Of course, I had certain duties in the parish apart from that, but there were not many of them.
The students said they had a problem finding a room to pray in the hostel. The other students had completely different interests and they could not demand that they should create conditions for them to pray at least for one hour in common. It was only possible in one room where two girls lived – one of them was our believer and the other was an African girl. She understood that they needed to pray, so she always allowed them willingly and with a smile to stay in the room and in the meanwhile she found another place to study. When finally three believing girls lived together in one room, they set aside time for prayer and other students could come and pray there too.
After the change of regime in early 1990s, students in Prešov, Slovakia, for example, began to pray so-called holy hours from 8 to 9pm in the hostel corridor. Sometimes there were about 50 students there who prayed together for the whole hour, playing the guitar and singing.
As monks, we did not have an opportunity to devote much time to prayer at first. When God granted to us, a group of like-minded monks, that we managed to rebuild an old barn into a monastery, we also built an underground chapel where we could cry aloud to God. Those who do not know the essence of prayer could easily be outraged and defame us. Unfortunately, the enemy of God spared no efforts and the monastery was stolen from us in no time.
Older women pensioners, especially widows, often have a place in their flat, or some even live in a private house, where they could pray. However, there was no one to encourage them to pray or to show them how to pray, and so they spend their old age watching television and concerning themselves with worldly matters only. What a pity. Today it is necessary first to carry out a mission of prayer, that God may save the young generation from total destruction which threatens them.
Would to God that a mission of prayer could start when people would pray the holy hour from 8 to 9pm and at least once a week, in private or together with others, the prophetic prayer according to Ezekiel, that God may raise the nation to life!
Download: Reflection on Mt 6:6
