Liturgical Prayer, the Rule of All Prayer
The prayer of the Church bears the vibrations of biblical revelation;
it comes from the totality of truth and has its culmination there.
That is why every rule of prayer begins with an invocation of the Trinity
and includes the confession of the Credo.
If the needs of the time naturally inspire individual prayer,
on the other hand, liturgical prayer loses this note of the particular
and introduces us at once into a colloquial consciousness--
according to the word, liturgy, which means work in common.
It teaches the true relationship between myself and others,
and makes us understand the words: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
It helps us to be detached from ourselves and to make ours the prayer of humanity.
The litanies lead the individual beyond himself, toward the assembly,
toward those who are absent, those who suffer, and finally those
who are in their agony.
Prayer embraces the city, nations, humanity, and asks for peace and union for all. All isolation, all individualistic separation, sounds a false note in this perfect harmony.
Formed liturgically, every soul knows by experience that he cannot stand alone before God and that, liturgically, he saves himself with others.
The pronoun in the liturgy is never in the singular.
The liturgy filters out every subjective, emotional and fleeting tendency.
Full of a healthy and powerful affective life, it offers us its finished form,
made perfect by long centuries and by all the generations that have prayed
in the same way.
As the walls of the church bear the imprint of all the prayers, offerings and intercessions, the liturgical prayers across hundreds of years are the breath of innumerable human lives.
I hear the voice of St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Simeon, and so many others who have prayed the same prayers and have left in them their adoring spirit;
they help me to find their ardor and to associate myself with their prayers.
However, if the liturgy gives the measure and the rule of all prayer, it also calls for spontaneous and personal prayer in which the soul sings and speaks freely to the Lord.
The liturgy teaches it, in calling each one by name as if he were the only one,
and each one is called upon to profess the Credo, I believe.
Even in the framework of the liturgy, this profession puts stress on the most personal act possible; no one can do it in my place.
The liturgical texts are attuned to the soul and impel it to a direct and intimate conversation that keeps all its own value.
by Paul Evdokimov