The Mother of God is assigned a mysterious role in the matter of our salvation. Back in Cana of Galilee, when there was not enough wine, She turned to Jesus and said: "They have no wine." And the Lord, although He grieved that He would now have to perform the first miracle – and this would be the first step to Golgotha – nevertheless turned water into wine in order to make people happy. Although you think, there was not enough wine, it's okay, you can buy more, or you can just drink tea. But the Lord did it, and since then it has been known that the prayers of the Mother of God have such a miraculous and helping power. The Church knows this from spiritual experience.

In fact, all spiritual experience is based on prayer. Take away prayer – and there will be no spiritual life, because we are sinful people and do not see God directly, as Adam saw Him. We do not hear God, because our senses have become coarse. We can communicate with Him only through faith and through prayer. But many, going to church for forty or fifty years in a row, do not even know what prayer is. Therefore, very often you can hear how a person asks to be allowed to copy some powerful prayer. Some even carry a written prayer on themselves, in their pocket or on their belt, thinking that their very words will protect and preserve them from something. This suggests that a person does not understand the essence of prayer, does not understand that its power does not depend on words.

Prayer is the living conversion of a living person to the living God, for it faith is necessary. A non-believer cannot pray, he can only read the text. A necessary condition for prayer is to place oneself before God or the saint to whom one is turning. But this can only be done by someone who unquestionably believes in the presence of God in the world. And this does not require any external conditions: riding a train or riding a horse, sitting at home, washing dishes, working with children, doing work in the garden, a person can always mentally put himself before God in one second, that is, remember Him. To remember that wherever he is, whatever he does, whatever he thinks, the Lord knows where he is, knows who he is and what he is thinking at that moment, and wants to save him. When such a thought comes to a person's mind, he feels a trembling of the soul. And by placing himself before God, a person can turn to Him. Knowing that God is omnipresent, knowing that God is omnipotent, knowing that God, even before we say or think something, already knows what we will say or think, we can address Him in any language: Greek, Latin, English, Japanese, Chinese, any of the dozens of African languages. And everyone who runs to God always knows from his own experience that God hears him.

By virtue of our sinfulness, we turn to God first of all with a request, with a supplication, which is why this appeal is called prayer. A person has turmoil in his soul, he is hard, scared, and he cries out to God. Half a day passes, and he sees that this horror has disappeared, it is no longer in his soul. This is the result of prayer – a person asked for help, and the Lord, by His mercy, very imperceptibly, very slowly, helped and healed the person at his request. Usually people turn to God in some kind of trouble (often this is how religious life begins). The man prayed – everything was settled, thank God, and he again forgot about God until the next trouble. But this experience remained in his memory, so in case of trouble he usually knows where to run, and always ends up in church. And even if he has no words, he can light a candle – this is also an expression of his prayer; or simply to fall on one's knees – to prostrate oneself in the dust before God, to imitate prayer with one's body; or make the sign of the cross. For example, someone who is even very far from God comes to church and suddenly begins to be baptized. He himself is not aware of what kind of action he is performing, but he has a desire – by this he expresses his agreement with God, expresses his reverence to Him, expresses his commitment to God, so far only by gesture.

And so he will turn to God once – the Lord helps; the second, third, hundredth time, the two hundredth, the thousandth – the Lord helps and helps. Then he becomes ashamed: what is it, God gives me everything at the first request, and what am I? And his conscience begins to stir somehow, he begins to feel that something is wrong in his life. This moment of moral revolution is the beginning of repentance: a person realizes that God is good, God is merciful, God is ready to forgive him, to accept him, but he is not worthy of this, he lives dirty, disgusting and vile. And he becomes ashamed that God saves him, pulls him out of all sorts of garbage pits, and he continues to bathe in this swamp.

This is the beginning of rebirth – a person enters the path of repentance, the path of correction; the work of freeing his soul from sin begins. And this is where difficulties arise in prayer. Many people are surprised: how is that? when I was still almost a non-believer and did not go to church, the Lord immediately helped me, but now, when I go to church and ask, the Lord often does not seem to hear me, and I have a kind of dryness in prayer and absent-mindedness, and I do not feel anything. The fact is that in the past a person prayed in all sorts of desperate situations – a desperate situation penetrated him to the marrow of his bones and he cried out to God from the depths of his being. His prayer was always sincere and came from the heart. And the Lord cannot but hear such a prayer and cannot help but pity a person, because it is said: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." And now the powder on which he worked disappears and the work begins – a Christian prayerful feat, in which the Mother of God Hodegetria, the Guide of our salvation, helps.

Unfortunately, we pray absent-mindedly. When we open the prayer book and begin to read the prayers, then, having finished reading, we understand that out of hundreds of words that we have pronounced mentally or aloud, at most two or a dozen and a half have reached our minds. This, of course, is not prayer. Any prayer without exception is always fulfilled, and if it is not fulfilled, then it is not a prayer. If we ask God, and the Lord does not give it to us, it means that we did not actually pray, it was only an attempt at prayer.

Someone will ask: how is that? for the Lord is omnipresent, and He sees what we read. Yes, the Lord sees what we read, but He does not see that we are praying, because every word of prayer must pass through our hearts, every word must be our word, it must come from the depths of our souls and be combined with our desire. When we ask God for something, we should not ask for it in words, but truly desire it. If a person has been praying for thirty or forty years: "Give me humility, meekness, obedience, patience, prudence," and in the morning the Lord sends some situation where his humility should be manifested, but instead of humility, the person shows, on the contrary, pride, it means that what he says in the evening at prayer is self-deception, hypocrisy, an empty shaking of the air. Because each prayer must be completely sincere, sincere in its fullness.

Any sinner, no matter how deeply he falls, no matter what depths of sin he has climbed into, at any time, if he wants, can begin to pray to God, begin to work on his soul and embark on this path, along which the Mother of God will lead him to salvation. Salvation from sin, salvation from the pangs of conscience, if it still remains, because some people burn their conscience as one can burn out an eye. If a person has cataracts or nearsightedness, this can be corrected with glasses or surgery. But if you take and burn out the eye with a red-hot iron, then nothing can be done with it. This is how conscience is: it can be driven into a corner, it can not be used, it can sleep – but in this case it is still able to awaken. And if a person has burned his conscience completely, then he becomes a living embodiment of demonic forces, he does evil and seeks justification and the purpose of his life in evil. This shows that it is impossible to sin with impunity, every sinful word, every sinful thought, not to mention the deed, defiles and defiles our immortal soul. That is why the path of ascent is so long and difficult, when we nevertheless turn to God and we will become ashamed of the deeds that we do secretly from everyone.

No one knows about our sinful deeds and thoughts, not even the closest people, and we ourselves often do not realize the dirt that is swarming in our hearts and in our souls. But God sees this, and how sick He must be to look at us for all our vile deeds. And when we truly put ourselves before God, we will see all these deeds, because nothing is hidden before the eyes of God. And if we are horrified by our life, then from that moment our renewal can begin, because no matter how deeply a person falls, he can always come out on the bright road. And many saints at the beginning of their lives were the greatest sinners, but then, having been purified, they ascended to the heavenly heights.

The Lord only wants to purify us. Therefore, He leads us to church in different ways, connects us with the Church in different ways, but here too all kinds of temptations await us. Satan arranges so that we do not receive salvation, so that someone tears us away from the Church, someone says something wrong, someone pushes us to some sin, that is, there is a constant struggle for our soul, until death. And our salvation from all enemies is prayer. Every Christian, if he wishes, can always refrain from any sin. No matter how great the temptation, no matter how great the desire for sin, it is enough for a baptized person, even if he has not been to church for ten years, to put himself before God and say: "Lord, you see, my mind, my heart, my whole being is drawn to sin, but I believe in you, I know that this sin brings pain to you, he is an abomination to Thee, and I do not agree with this sin. If it is Thy holy will, help me to get rid of it." And he will see how all the demonic militia will disappear, and by the mercy of God he will protect himself from sin.

We must know that a person sins not because his mother did not teach him good, or because he grew up without a father, or because he fell into bad company, or because of the temptation is very great, or for some other reason – no, this is just an environment in which sin grows. Naturally, the home environment of pious parents is more favorable for the upbringing of a good child than that of parents who live, for example, in fornication or drunkenness. But the will to sin is always done in the heart of a person on its own, and it never happens that someone commits a sin and does not know that it is sinful. And therefore, when even a little person of five or six years old, imitating adults, wants to smoke, and he has never been scolded for this and his father and mother smoke, he always smokes secretly for the first time. Because he knows through his conscience that this is not good – the Lord, as it is said in the Holy Scriptures, desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

However, often not only a child, but also an adult cannot realize the entire abyss of sin. For example, many women do not realize that abortion is the gravest crime against God, against their own family, husband, child – and before the entire universe – but each understands that it is a sin. Only a person who has completely lost his human face can calmly kill babies. And there have been such cases, a person can reach such a state. But in order not to feel that it is sinful – just like to fornicate, and to lie drunk under the fence – a person cannot do it. Why does the husband, drunk, not want to go home, even if his wife will not scold him? He feels that he has done wrong, he has trampled the image of God in the mud, he has turned, if not completely into a pig, then at least halfway.

And so it is with any sin. We always know whether we have thought well or badly; Whether we have done well or badly, we always feel it through our conscience. But conscience has one property: it torments, and we do not like our soul to suffer, just as we do not like our body to suffer; We want to live without suffering. Therefore, every person, wherever he lives, no matter what color his skin is, does not like to be tormented by his conscience. And all people are trying to get rid of the pangs of conscience. Christians do this: they fight against sin and conquer it in themselves, so as not to experience the pangs of conscience. If a person does not sin, then his conscience will be clear and he will be able to calmly look into the eyes of his children, his wife, friends, his co-workers and everyone in general. I have not stolen from anyone, I have not offended anyone, I have not condemned anyone, I have never said anything bad about anything else, and I have not even thought about it, my conscience is clear.