Before beginning his discussion of the Lord’s Prayer, Gregory of Nyssa warns us about babbling in prayer. He challenges us to consider that we my have the habit of praying like a child, praying for things that are not practical, mere fantasies - great success, wealth, fame and so forth. He warns that these kind of prayers are the the result of our vanity and all we are doing is asking God to join us in our foolish passions. He says, “These and similar soap bubbles and vain inventions rise up in the hearts of the most foolish.” He points out that many of us fail to attend to the benefit of our soul, but instead seek to feed the self-centered passionate movements of our minds. He says, “That person is truly a sort of fool and babbler because he prays to make God the coworker and servant of his own vanities.”
Gregory uses the image of a poor person who regards common clay pots as precious and who approaches the all powerful king of his place who can grant many benefits, asking the king to shape a clay pot that he fancies for himself instead of the kind of benefits a king could provide. This is the same as one who comes to prayer without fully understanding the power of God and the benefits he can bestow and presents him with his own desires based on his passions. One may even ask God to defeat an enemy or even something as foolish as to win a sports contest. Do we not often fail to ask to be forgiven of our sinfulness, for help to overcome our slavery to this condition, but instead to ask Him to support our sinful tendencies. Praying for benefits of this world that go beyond our basic survival needs, that our fantasies come true, while neglecting the health of our soul and our critical need to be healed, to seek union with God so He can help us become capable to do His will is what Gregory calls babbling in prayer.
Jesus says, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases...” (Mat 6:7). Let us not engage in our vanities when we pray to God and not try and make God a coworker and servant of our vanities.
http://agapienxristou.blogspot.ca/2013/04/babbling-in-prayer.html
Repentance is the renewal of baptism and is a contract with God for a fresh start in life.
St. John Climacus
Who is a Christian ?
A Christian is a man who lives by Christ and in Christ.
St. Justin Popovich
Whoever blasphemes God or Christ, the Precious Cross, the most holy Theotokos or the Saints, he should not be called a man nor a beast, he should be called a monster.
Elder Philotheos Zervakos
Our lack of wholeness also affects our concept of the family. In our culture each member of the family is primarily concerned with his own private interests. Parents nurture a spirit of individualism which, in our day, has spawned such ideas as "Women's Liberation" (a term which Kireyevsky knew and analyzed) and "Gay Liberation". This lack of cohesiveness in the family has produced the most lifeless and sterile of environments for our children to grow up in: most homes are dominated by a television, which is often used to baby-sit children even when parents are at home. At the time of writing, 40% of American mothers work full or part-time outside of the home. As a result, children are encouraged to develop more and more outside interests which take them away from the home and the rest of the family as they "do their own thing." In the 20th century, the home has really become only a "house"-a place in which people take their meals and sleep.
Kireyevsky contrasted this with the Orthodox home in which parents are actively involved with the rest of the family and where children are taught to live and work for the good of the whole family; where parents put selfish or private interests after the goal of creating a warm, living environment in which children actually learn more from the parents than from school or their peers.
In a western family, the members rise in the morning and quickly scatter to their separate pursuits, returning home at different times in order to eat a quick dinner before again leaving to spend the evening elsewhere, in worldly pursuits. In the Orthodox family, the members awaken and gather before the household ikons while the father reads all or some of the Morning Prayers. Meals are taken together, with the parents presiding over and directing conversation. If there is a television at all, it is used with the greatest caution and parental control. Most evenings are spent quietly, either preparing for a feast or a fast, or in some other productive and family oriented activity. Parents read aloud the lives of the saints to their children.
Some have the pious custom of encouraging a child to read a saint's life aloud at a meal (often at Sunday dinner).
As Saint John Chrysostom writes:
"For just as with a general when his soldiery also is well organized the enemy has no quarter to attack; so, I say, is it also here: when husband and wife and children and servants are all interested in the same things, great is the harmony of the house. Since where this is not the case, the whole is oftentimes overthrown and broken up by one ... and that single one will often mar and utterly destroy the whole."
Above all, the Orthodox home "is the abode where the members of the family will spend the majority of their lives. It is here, not in society, nor at the market place, where individuals will learn of the important things of the Christian life. It is in the Christian home that individuals will be able to work out their eternal salvation. It is in the Christian home that children will be raised and taught by word and action what it means to be a Christian. It is in the Christian home that all of the teachings of Christ and of the Church can be practiced."
Source:
A Man Is His Faith, p 40
by Rev. Fr. Alexy (Hieromonk Ambrose) Young About the writings of Ivan Kireyevsky 1806-1856
