From people who are not church-goers or are far from Christianity one complaint against the Orthodox Church is an outsider’s lack of understanding of the service in general and some prayers in particular. We often hear such questions as: “Why can’t I pray in my own words, but have to God through other people’s texts?” It seems to be a simple question that the clergy answer simply and clearly, but behind this bewilderment from “outsiders” lies a complex problem: Worldly members of modern society are very far from the traditional ritual and liturgical life of the Christian Church.
The fact is that prayer in particular and Church services in general are a result of the millennial development of the ceremonial life of the Christian Church. When we turn to God with prayer, we mean a specific God, a Person, our Lord Jesus Christ from the Divinely inspired Gospel narrative. Our prayer or public worship reflect various aspects of the New Testament narrative or Christian history. It is not an abstract God of philosophy, Who is far from historical existence and human concerns, but a concrete Gospel Personality.
Moreover, prayer presupposes many functions and purposes: it is unity with God (the ancient meaning of the term “religion”), communication with our departed relatives, thanksgiving to the Lord or giving Him praise, making requests or even lamenting to Him (Job from the Old Testament), and so on. Thus, a simple private prayer, not to mention a common service, has both a complex formal structure and a multifaceted content.
The prayers, songs, ritual actions, and pious traditions, known to us from the services, were created over many centuries and were the fruit of the pious souls of Christian Fathers and teachers of the Church. And when a displeased man in the street shuns the Christian tradition—that is, the Holy Tradition—ignoring the sacred hymns and texts permeated with prayer, he does not just flirt with the vulgar reading of Protestantism (true, Protestant denominations, too, have their own traditions, prayers and spiritual authorities—they are just very different from the Orthodox, from the Holy Tradition), but isolates himself from religious life altogether.
When someone asserts that he will pray exclusively in his own words, this implies that his prayer will be only supplicatory, and his image of God will be extremely blurred, amorphous, abstract and impersonal. Prayer in “one’s own” words has never been rejected by the Church and could not have been rejected, because the prayers themselves were written by individual personalities—the Fathers and teachers of the Church. “Our Father...” is the model of such a prayer, which the Lord Himself composed for His disciples. However, prayer in “your own” words requires serious spiritual experience, theological competence, and emotional sincerity. Only then will it be truly conscious, authentic, and “liturgical”.
There are, of course, various exceptions: when a Christian is overtaken by adversity and temptations, prayer appears as a penitent cry or a plea for rescue, where there are few words—only a sincere call for the mercy of God. Indeed, in moments of stress and serious losses you don’t need many words. But now we are talking about daily prayer, about a daily turning to God, and, as already noted, there are other laws here.
All Christians in the Church go through the same stages of growth. Some are more successful in this, others are less successful. However, as they say, the rules are the same everywhere. Only a Christian who has turned to the Lord with the help of various prayers, hymns, and spiritual songs that have been sanctified for centuries can have the appropriate spiritual experience to make personal prayer appeals to our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a sign of spiritual growth and of conscious faith.
