If you learn to pray attentively, you will not need the teachings of the servants of God: God Himself, without intermediaries, will illumine the thought. If prayer has such power, then how much more so is the prayer of a multitude of people: it is both more daring and engenders zeal. So, if you hit a stone with a stone, a lot of sparks fly out. What can be colder than a stone? But frequency has defeated nature.

If this happens to a stone, how much more so to souls that are inflamed by one another and warmed by spiritual fire. Thus, in the time of our forefathers, twelve were united, but one of them perished, Judas; from eleven came one hundred and twenty, from one hundred and twenty three thousand, then five thousand, then they filled the whole universe with the knowledge of God. The reason for this is that they never left the church, but were always together, being in the sanctuary and listening to prayers and reading, and not whispering and not talking about perishable and earthly things.

That is why they kindled a great fire, and that is why they did not fall away, but attracted the whole universe. But if someone says that he can pray at home, you are deceived, O man. It is possible to pray at home, but it is impossible to pray as in church, where there are many fathers, where singing is unanimously addressed to God, where there is unanimity, and agreement, and the union of love.

At this time, O beloved, not only people cry out with a trembling voice, but also the angels fall down to the Lord, and the archangels pray. As people come to kings having cut off olive branches, and the branches remind kings of mercy and love for mankind, so the angels, instead of olive branches, offering the very Body of the Lord as the Lord, pray for human nature: "We pray for those whom Thou Thyself, having foreceded, so loved that Thou didst give Thy life for them.

For those for whom Thou hast poured out Thy Blood, for whom Thou hast sacrificed Thy Body." Therefore, when you pray to the Lord alone, He does not hear you so well. After all, priestly prayers are also invoked here. For this reason the priests also stand here, so that the prayers of the people, being weak, united with their prayers, which are stronger, may ascend with them to Heaven.

And Paul testifies, saying thus: "God, who also delivered us from death so near, and delivers, and in Whom we hope that He will deliver us again, with the help of your prayer for us" (2 Corinthians 1:10-11). And Peter was delivered from prison by prayer: "In the meantime the church diligently prayed to God for him" (Acts 12:5). If church prayer helped Peter, how can you not believe in its power and what answer do you hope to receive?

The Church is stronger than the heavens, and the sun will be extinguished sooner than the Church will disappear without a trace. The hosts of angels glorify the mountain, and people sing about the valley in the church. The Seraphim cry out the thrice-holy hymn, and the valley sends the same hymn to a multitude of people. A common triumph for the heavenly and the earthly, one thanksgiving, one joy, one joy! And this ineffable descent made the Lord! The Holy Spirit arranged it!

By the Father's grace, such a prayerful union was arranged, the voices stared decently from above, from the Holy Trinity, as if directed by some instrument! For nothing in life rejoices us so much as the splendor of the Church. In church there is joy for the sorrowful, in the church there is repose for those who labor, in the church there is rest for the oppressed. The Church has destroyed the battles, stopped the battles, calmed the storms, drove away demons, healed illnesses, repelled misfortunes, strengthened the shaken cities, opened the doors of heaven, broke the bonds of death, and the wounds inflicted from above, and the slanders of men — all things have been taken away and given rest.

"Come," she says, "to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). What is more amiable than this voice? What is sweeter than this invocation? After all, it compels to rest from labors, gives weakening from illnesses, calls to joy from sorrows. Therefore, O beloved, let us hasten early to come to the beautiful church abode, as Peter and John did to the Holy Sepulchre.

Let us not wait for the end of the ringing and the beginning of the singing, but as soon as the bells begin to sing, let us immediately put aside all our affairs and with great diligence and with due diligence let us come, in order to receive the forgiveness of sins, and not to increase them. What is needed, what is required of us? To come to God with great fear, with deep reverence and contrition, with lofty thoughts, with decorum, with a contrite heart, manifesting in a visible way a heartfelt disposition in standing, in a deanous folding of hands, in a meek and muffled voice.

It is simple and possible for everyone. The Lord loves and accepts silence and meekness: "But on whom," He says, "I will look: on him who is humble and contrite in spirit, and on him who trembles at My word" (Isaiah 66:2). For when we leave conversation with Him, He considers it an annoyance, a transgression of the law, and a great sin, and does not want to draw us to conversation from earthly and perishable things, to mix filth with beads.

If someone converses with an earthly king, he tries in every way to show his greatest reverence for him, in order to be vouchsafed greater mercy from him, and he shows this by the expression of his face, and voice, and the folding of his hands, and the disposition of his legs and his whole body, and speaks only about what the king wants to talk about and about which he asks a question. If he dares to ask anything else, against the will of the king, he will receive the most terrible punishment.

You, standing before the Heavenly King, to Whom the angels stand with trembling, leave the conversation with Him and converse about feces, dust, and cobwebs! Will you endure the judgment that will follow for such an offense? And who will save you from torment? And how you are not afraid, how you do not tremble, accursed! Or do you not understand that the King of Heaven and Earth Himself stands here invisibly, and examines everyone's mind, and tortures the conscience, and the angels stand before Him with fear?

You don't think about it, but you stand like this, with negligence and negligence, and you don't even remember yourself — what you're talking about, what you're talking about... O mad and passionate one! You don't hear your own prayer, but you want God to hear you. "I have knelt," you say, but your thoughts are soaring. Your body is collected, but your will is relaxed. Your lips pronounce a prayer, but your thought counts your possessions and acquisitions, goes through tricks, filthy and impure thoughts, deceit, envy and hatred, bribery and betrayal.