Prayer in Seclusion

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,

and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret;

and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly (Mt.6, 6)

The base of every holy life must be a live, constant communication of soul with God  - in the secret of a human soul, far from people, face to face ,so to say, with the Lord Himself. The whole meaning of prayer is in this close personal communication of man with God, in which he finds an access to the Throne of the Almighty. We, of course, always and everywhere, are at the presence of God, but Christ Himself pointed out for us the necessity of seclusion for a prayer, which benefits, by our experience, are demonstrated when it gets into habit.

There, far from everything earthly, we will find the source of water of life to quench our spiritual thirst, there the flame of our faith with rise up again; there we will obtain the wings for safe flight over the abyss of doubt and sin. Let us search for seclusion, where we will find our Heavenly Father and in the light of His Face, in live realization of His fatherly love, we will learn to pray. Even though Lord does not require lengthy prayers from us and does not see a benefit in multitude of words, we should, when starting our day, strengthen ourselves in a seclusion of our prayer in order to be ready for anything that might be awaiting us during the upcoming day. We will bring to His feet everything what intimidates us in the upcoming labor and, having asked His blessing, enlightened by Him, filled with His Spirit, armed with a prayer, we will fearlessly move forward towards the upcoming trials.

Let us be sure that every time when we stand before God, even for a short time, we will receive a blessing from above and our “Father which seeth in secret shall reward us openly”.

(Translated by Tatiana Rozzell from “Every Day is a Gift from God. Diaries of an Orthodox Priest” (1905), author unknown)