Praying and Doing

About Bishop St. Theophane the Recluse

About "old" and "new" calendar

June 20 (July 3)

Rom. 4:13-25; Mt. 7:21-23

“Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven" [Mt. 7:21]. Prayer alone is not enough for salvation; prayer has to be joined with doing God’s will — that is, doing our duty according to our place in the society and circumstances of life.

In fact, in our prayers we should primarily ask the Lord to keep us from violating His holy will in anything. And, conversely, if you constantly strive to do God’s will, your prayer is bolder before God and quicker to reach Him. If doing God’s will is divorced from prayer, it might even happen that the prayer itself is divorced from sobriety and attention of the heart. Then your prayer turns into an external utterance which covers up all your moral defects and wanderings of your thought with useless verbiage, as if with a mist.

If both your prayer and your way of life are rooted in piety, only then they can bear good fruit.

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