Therefore, there is no need to tell God about yourself or about God, but only to listen to God: what God says (reveals) about me, what God says (reveals, opens) about Himself!). Thus, for communication to occur, the interlocutors must hear (accept) each other! God knows everything about you, has heard you and constantly hears you, has accepted all of you (in Christ Jesus) – He shares everything with you, except sin (God will never accept sin, will never fulfill sinful desires, God opposes the proud, and drives them away from Himself! There can be no communication with the proud, God communicates (gives His Grace, Himself) only with the humble!). It remains for you to hear, comprehend, know, accept God (through an act of absolute, total self-giving to God). Therefore, the essence of prayer is to hear, listen (with all your being, with all your strength, to accept) God, not to speak (to Him Who is Truth, Love, and Omniscience), to ask (from Him Who has already given, gifted, and provides everything, and can add nothing more!), to prove, tell, suggest… to God. (Therefore, all the words of prayers that I read, speak, pray with – I must hear them, they are addressed to me, they are for me, not for God! I must change, not the Holy Absolute True God-Love! I must hear (God and about God, myself and about myself), not God (Who knows everything – both about Himself and about me)!). Therefore, the task of the one who prays is to be silent and listen, to be obedient! True prayer is hesychia – obedient silence before God, in God, in knowledge of God! Every prayer should end with silence, lead to silence (total self-denial, renunciation of one’s will and giving oneself and everything, and everyone to Christ God: “Thy will be done, not mine! Not as I want, but as Thou will, as Thou please!”). To pray unceasingly is to listen (see) God in everything, for through everything outside my self (me, my freedom-consciousness) God speaks (through words-logoi-meanings of all things and all events) to me, calls me (declares His Love to me), my Beloved, Beloved Lord God! The essence of prayer is to hear God, to make common for me and God – God’s: God’s will, God’s thoughts-plans, God’s desires, God’s feelings – God’s Grace. Perfect prayer is hesychia-silence, when it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and I live by Christ in the Holy Spirit! To hear God (the Saints, neighbors, Others), one must stop listening to oneself, to accommodate the Other, one must renounce oneself, empty oneself of oneself!
Incidentally, let’s say a few words about “dens of thieves” (where priests-clergy engage in trade). But before talking about the current catastrophic state of the “Orthodox” churches (Jewish synagogues) and their temples (dens, caves of thieves), let’s say a few words about an event that happened 2000 years ago – the cleansing of the temple by the Son of God Jesus Christ. All four evangelists iconically tell us about this event:
“Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and bought in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And He taught them, saying, ‘Is it not written: My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of thieves.’ And He was teaching daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and the leaders of the people sought to destroy Him, but they could not find anything they could do, for all the people were very attentive to hear Him” (see Mark 11:15-18, Luke 19:45-48, Matthew 21:12-13, John 2:13-16).
After the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (to reign on Golgotha and shine with the Cross Divine Love to all ends of the earth, to be glorified by the glory of the Resurrection and pour out His Glory – the Holy Spirit – on all flesh, throughout the earth!), the Lord immediately goes to the temple, which is His goal, goes to the temple to teach there constantly. But first, the Lord drives out of the temple (from the Sanctuary, from the court of the Gentiles) “those who sold and bought in it.” At the same time, the Lord justifies His actions with quotations from Scripture. First, the Lord freely quotes the prophet Isaiah: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:7), then the prophet Jeremiah: “Has this house, which bears My Name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jeremiah 7:11).
It is clear that the Lord Jesus condemned the trade in sacrificial animals in the temple, the exchange of money for paying the temple tax and for almsgiving (not only because it was a blatant robbery of pilgrims-prayers: for example, doves in the temple were sold twenty times more expensive than at the market in the city, but pilgrims were forced to buy them in the temple because the doves bought in the city were quickly found defective by the temple “religious experts” and only “unblemished” animals could be sacrificed… The same crime, theft, deception was with the exchange of money… It is not about morality – the Lord condemned trade in the temple in principle, generally!), He was against commercial trade in cult objects and pious souvenirs, although all this was encouraged by priests and temple authorities, and perceived by all present as something absolutely normal and necessary for the proper conduct of worship. Therefore, it is clear that “the chief priests, scribes, and elders of the people sought to destroy Him.”