“HOW DO I KNOW IF GOD HEARS MY PRAYERS?” (Part 2)
Observation 2: The ability to hear an answer from God is a life-long process. In Church Slavonic the term used is “podvyh”, which avoids a timeline. The term is always present and active. There is no such thing as a period of time in which we are privileged or deprived to search for an answer from God. It is a process which requires our whole life with all its complexity and difficulties. We are asked to remember that for God there is no time as we know it. In theological terms, for God there is a continuous presence where everything is taking place at a certain moment. God answers His creation within a specific moment of time in our lives. In our life, this continuum of God’s presence is the experience in our search for His response. The process requires our daily transformation, which should never end.
This is one of the reasons why for the mystic, it is a process of repentance until the very last breath of their life. The mystics are never in a position to say that they are worthy to hear the voice of God or that they are in a state of holiness. They are continually in search for the presence of God and His response to their pleas for mercy. This is one of the reasons why every Orthodox service is inundated with a continual plea for His Divine mercy: “Lord have mercy”.
In the perspective of the above, how difficult is it to compromise this approach with contemporary modern-day spirituality, when people believe that taking courses in academic spirituality will advance them in their journey towards God. If an academic course is a modern guarantee for a mystical experience with God; the Orthodox mystical experience of God will always focus on forgiveness and mercy. The Orthodox mystical experience is not an accumulation of university courses and finished degrees, but a testimony of a continual call to God for His answer. There is a requirement of patience and sincerity of the human heart, where we ask, and God answers in His own way.
This could be one of the reasons why our contemporary society, where everything is defined by time and results, is so dissatisfied and disillusioned with the mystical experience of the Orthodox Church. Because the mystical experience of man with God is different from the expectations of today’s society, there is a wide gap and misunderstanding between the two. Our God doesn’t operate in the frame of our understanding and logic. We have to learn how to humble ourselves and cloak ourselves with patience in the presence of our awesome God, where time and results are not the main focus.
Observation 3: In search for God’s response, we have to learn how to acquire the ability to understand the silence of God. God acts in a manner that is known only to His will. The response of God comes in a manner where patience and silence are permeated by the presence of His energies. This is one of the reasons why in a prayer: “O Heavenly King…”, we ask the Holy Spirit to come to us and bless us with His very being. The patience of an individual is transformed into a dwelling place of the Heavenly King, where not we, but God expresses His message. The response from God is not our capacity, but a Divine movement, where we listen in silence and God answers.
The other component, very rarely discussed in our contemporary society, is the aspect of silence. The term is often understood by us in a negative way. Our society has a tendency to ignore the term “silence” as this is understood as weakness. The entire media industry of the
Western World is exactly the opposite of what is emphasized by the Orthodox Church. For the Orthodox Church, the language of God and the world to come is the language of silence. We have to learn how to be comfortable with silence and to “listen to silence”. The ability to silence our thoughts and direct our attention towards silence is especially emphasized during the Holy and Great Lent, where I silence my thoughts in order to hear God. God is silence and as such, silence becomes His language of our experience.
As we can observe, the foundations for the responses are overwhelming and complex. As we hope to continue the discussion on the subject in the future, we are asked not to rush with an answer. What is even more poignant, we have to focus our attention to the personal experience of God in the life of every human being. As God is silence and we are confronted with this Divine reality in our daily life, it might be wise for us to search for an answer from God in the realms of our life not yet discovered. We may ask ourselves if the created language of this world is the language of God or if the answer for which we are searching from God is present at the right time, right place, and within the right conditions. The answer belongs to all of us as long as we open ourselves to be in His presence.