“I receive communion every Sunday, and even more often!”
Here again, I had to remind him that communion is not just eating the sacrament with a spoon, but partaking in the Divine hypostatic reality, which is only possible at the Liturgy, which is only possible in a parish. Only in a parish can one partake of Christ—I argued to my opponent (details in Part II). Since he is not a parishioner—then this point—’by Christ’—does not apply to him and his deeds.
The last (the first two—’in Christ’ and ‘by Christ’—can somehow be adjusted to fit one’s egoism) point I only explained, asking nothing—it is a cross for every ‘do-gooder’, negating all ‘good’ deeds. A benefactor can at most only receive the Good Deeds of Christ, but certainly not perform them!!! (details in Part II). A good deed is to receive grace from the Lord! Then the interlocutor, unable to stand in the plane of church, shifts to arguments from mysticism, thinking there are no criteria for checking the fruits and signs of proper ASCETIC prayer, and says:
“I pray to God, how can I do harm to someone with prayer; if my request is displeasing to God, then He will not fulfill it!?”
“Which God? Whose? Who is he?” I cunningly asked.
“To the Heavenly Father!” confidently replied the ‘prayerful one.’
“How do you know!? Was there a revelation, a response from heaven!? Or did you just monologue, and there was no dialogue, no communication between you!? Just emotions and strains?!”
“No, there was no revelation! But I pray with church prayers, statutory ones and the Lord’s Prayer ‘Our Father’, and sometimes with my own.”
“Let’s adjust the words a bit—not I pray, but I pray-praise! (prayer in its proper understanding—mutual penetration of hypostases of the created and Uncreated—’I am in the Father, and the Father in Me’, ‘I am in Christ, and Christ in me’, ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, the Holy Trinity’, ‘the Holy Spirit intercedes in us for us’—see above and details in Part II). Whom did the Jews pray to when they crucified Christ!? To the heavenly Father, as they believed, ‘believed’; but Jesus Christ says that their father is the devil and they fulfill the desires (i.e., the will) of their father and pray to him—’Let your will be done’… Thus, to know whom we are praying to (ascetically) can only be known by the fruits, and the fruits are evident—egoism, pride, self-praise, haughtiness, calculation, blindness, madness, and others ‘their number is endless’… (details in Part II. Prayer. Our Father). Therefore, to whom did they pray with the Lord’s Prayer: to the Father, or to themselves (we say: ‘Let Your will be done, Father’ and immediately suggest to God what His will should be, i.e., it must realize all our selfish, sinful desires—God’s will must coincide with mine—honestly looking at ourselves, we often say: ‘let my will be done…’), or to Satan! We said above that it’s not in the words, but in the spirit that we put into them and through which we transmit them to another!!!
“Think about what you’re asserting,” I continued. “God, to help someone, waits for someone to ask Him, or He forgets that someone needs help —so He needs to be reminded?! Or, is He so cruel and calmly watches people suffer, and does not intervene until He is asked!? Does God not know without your cries, cries with strains, that someone needs help (and whether such help and such a course of events, which you propose and impose on God, is needed)? And what are you doing then?! These rhetorical questions are meant to show us that we think about God as pagans and according to it (thinking) build our life! God is Love, and only Love! Having set myself the task of causing the opponent to doubt his rightness, I posed these questions as ‘homework’, for reflection. But, no matter how I explained, he would not have heard anyway…
Prayer (ascetic: canons, akathists, liturgical services, prayers from prayer books, short prayers —e.g. the Jesus Prayer, etc.) is the same virtue as other ascetic exercises: fasting, almsgiving, visiting the sick, silence, etc. You can give almsgiving and kill a person with your mercy (and God will not hold you back because your gift is deadly and not beneficial for the one asking you; or, he strongly asks and you ‘have mercy’ and satisfy the plea—and destroy with your senseless ‘sympathetic’ heart your brother—that’s when something is untimely and without judgment; and what, when you only have poison at hand [lack repentance, tears with which the holy fathers neutralized the effect of poison in their ‘good’ deeds] and rush to help everyone, even then when you are not personally asked, only urged by your ‘merciful, sympathetic’ senseless heart); you can pray and go mad; you can fast and harm your health, upset your nerves and those of your loved ones with your anger, irritability, which can be caused by a deadly, senseless fast!.. And so, senselessly, without judgment, every virtue, ascetic deed can be evil (examples—enough to fill the Dnipro!). Hence the complete absurdity of advice in itself: ‘Pray, fast and all will be well’, or ‘by fasting and prayer…’. What kind of fast?! What is fasting?! What kind of prayer?! What is prayer?! Medicines that need to be taken in inpatient treatment and under close medical supervision are even dispensed without a prescription, not to mention contraindications and precautions!