In no particular order:

1. I believe he’s fundamentally correct that many, and perhaps most, church leaders, including Orthodox clergy and laity, struggle with prayer. I know this has been true for me at several points, and I hear of it often from others.
2. Point 8, “Some leaders have simply lost hope,” is prophetic. However, I think his point that “Unanswered prayer leads to faithlessness, which leads to prayerlessness” is better off reversed: “Unanswered prayer leads to prayerlessness, which leads to faithlessness.” In other words, I think it is prayer that is perceived inwardly as pointless that becomes the basis for not praying and that, ultimately, leads to a loss of belief. Really, this is the problem of estrangement, where short-term separation leads to long-term isolation, making return harder by the day.
3. Point 4, “Prayerlessness can be hidden.” Indeed. This is an area where father-confessors of clergy (yes, we have them, too) and parish leaders need to hold their spiritual children accountable. Of course, this means father-confessors need to be praying regularly themselves.
4. Point 6, “We have never been broken under God’s hand.” That’s a bit of coded language there, but Rainer is referring to the fact that the person who sees himself as self-sufficient has no need for God. If there’s no real need for God, why pray? Pride is at the root of things here. Truly we must come to see ourselves as chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15), and learn to pray as the publican, “God be merciful unto me a sinner” (Luke 18:13).
5. Point 2, “We never learned how to pray.” Superficially, this should be less of a problem for the Orthodox, considering the ready availability of proper prayer books, akathists, and lectionary. We know not to fall into the “I just” prayer trap that plagues the extemporaneous prayers of many Protestants. (“Lord, I just want to thank you.” “Jesus, I just want you to come into my life.” “Lord, I just want to offer up this prayer to you.”) What we do lack is real instruction on how to begin prayer. Ideally, this would be done at home, as children. Do we clergy teach our own children and our adult faithful as diligently as we ought?
6. Point 3, “Prayer has become more about ritual than relationship.” This is related to point 2, but I’ll say that I disagree with Rainer here. Prayer is something that has to be cultivated as a habit, as a regular discipline. No one claims that training for a marathon by running every day, according to a schedule, regimen, and diet is about “ritual.” Rather, it is the discipline that brings the desired end to fruition.Thus, when it comes to the life of prayer, there’s a certain amount of “fake it to make it” going on. It is the daily discipline of prayer that ultimately leads to the freedom of prayer.It is in the regular “motions” of prayer that our minds and bodies learn to be still, while making the prayer of our lips the prayer of our hearts, and opening our spiritual ears to hear the voice of our Creator. In establishing the ritual of prayer, we find ourselves liberated from the difficulty of wondering what to pray, or how, and instead can give ourselves over to the spiritual presence. And, when we are weak, it is that cultivated discipline that carries us into prayer, where our Maker bears us up.

   When I was a new priest, I was called upon to serve as the main celebrant at a Divine Liturgy in the seminary chapel. (I hadn’t served more than half a dozen times at that point.) At the conclusion, the rector of the chapel approached me. He peered down and said, “Father Basil, you are coming along. Pretty soon, you will be able to stand there [in front of the Holy Table] and actually pray.” What he meant, of course, is that, soon, I would have mastered the basic mechanics of serving as a priest (what to say, where to be, what to do) and could focus my deliberate efforts (that which requires thought) solely on being an intercessor before God. What he said was true of public prayer, and it’s emphatically true of private prayer. The ritual becomes an aid, not a hindrance.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them. (And, no, I’ve not forgotten about the articles on the challenges of preaching. More on that soon.)

I start today’s brief post with a couple of Scripture passages that pertain to our current situation in the OCA. Please read them now, rather than skipping over them to get to my comments below. If you’re not reading the Scriptures regularly, you’ve got no business even thinking about this situation.

And the Lord passed by before [Moses], and proclaimed, “he Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” -Exodus 34:6-7

I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  –Ephesians 4:1-3

Most of the readers here already know of the situation that has developed between Metropolitan Jonah, the Holy Synod, and the Metropolitan Council. Like me, most readers know little beyond what has been produced by two web sites and a couple of less-than-edifying mailing lists.

The basic trajectory was an internal dispute within the Holy Synod, followed by a leak by a former bishop with less than honorable intentions, a lot of other chatter and documents, and, in the end, the Metropolitan himself postponing the spring meetings of both the Holy Synod and the Metropolitan Council. Since that time, the Holy Synod has been quiet, as has the Metropolitan Council. Perhaps they’re all talking privately, but that’s generally no problem (absent a legal gag order).

Nonetheless, the continuing spitefulness from the retired bishop in a public forum, the ongoing conjectures and accusations from a site claiming to be committed to the truth, resolutions from a diocesan council, more negative gossip in the various mailing lists and discussion fora, has served only to sow discord and distrust in many corners of the Orthodox Church in America.

This discord is already having tragic consequences. The distrust is daily making it more difficult for our leaders – the bishops of the Holy Synod, the esteemed members of the Metropolitan Council, the officers and administrators in Syosset – to be reconciled. His Beatitude talked pointedly about the role of discord prior to his selection as Metropolitan: “If we can build that community of love and respect, seeing how our passions have distracted us from that living communion with God, have turned us against one another, and have created all sorts of hostility between–well, we just saw it, between the body of the All-American Council and the Synod of the Bishops. … Between the Synod of the Bishops and the Metropolitan Council–talk about a sick dysfunctional situation!”

Indeed. We are quickly moving to a position where each of us will be at each other’s throats, every part of it built on suspicion, accusation, and, saddest of all, falsehood. Such would be a position that makes reconciliation and resolution nearly impossible. (Of course, all is possible with the Holy Spirit, but human freedom can and does interfere.)

In spite of the difficulties within the Holy Synod, our bishops appear more united, and more cohesive, than they have been in decades. But, if this continues, we can expect a return to the old order of parochialism, meanness, and dysfunction. We can expect a return of the manipulators and thieves who stand ready to gorge themselves on money and sin amid the chaos. They will not be easily pushed out, if the last go-round was any indication. Once again, our own children will grow up distrustful of Christ’s own Church, and even more individuals – men, women, boys, girls, those enslaved to their passions, those who’ve never known a god willing to take on human flesh – will not hear the Gospel. Our sins will be visited upon our children, and our children’s children.

Lent is half over. We have spent these preceding weeks listening to all of this, distracting ourselves from holy things in favor of the trashy fare of the checkout lane.  It’s time for us to let our leaders pray (and even repent) rather than respond to the darts being hurled at them. It’s time for us to pray ourselves. I encourage each of us to add twelve metanias (prostrations) and accompanying prayers to our prayer rule for each time we think on this affair in the course of the day, simply to ensure that prayer is part of our deliberations.

I have written this in haste, and I ask your forgiveness for editorial sins and for any offense it causes. Kyrie eleison.