Maxim Mondays

Maxim Week 5

Susan

Have a short prayer that you constantly repeat when your mind is not occupied with other things. This short prayer could simply be “Lord have mercy” or “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy.” The person just might say “Jesus.” A person might say “God,” but just some short prayer that fills the mind when the mind is not working in order to have the remembrance of God in one’s life, in one’s heart. -Fr. Thomas Hopko

Week 5 already. Each of these first 5 maxims Fr. Thomas talks about involve prayer. (There might be more, we’ll have to wait and see.) But I find it interesting that he focuses so much on prayer at the beginning. Prayer is everything.

As St. Tikhon of Zadonsk wrote:

As a bird without wings, as a soldier without arms, so is a Christian without prayer.

And…

Do not forget prayer─it is the life of the soul.

+ St. Nikon of Optina

So let us work this week on Maxim 5 which encourages us to adopt short breath prayers. Enjoy this free printable of Maxim #5.

Published by Susan

I am an Orthodox Christian, a deacon’s wife, a mother, and an aspiring Kindler of Joy. I believe I’ve begun to understand (finally), by the grace of God, where we can begin to find happiness. True happiness. My heart longs for a deeper connection to those around me and to creation. I want to feel joy not only in myself but to see it on the face of people I love and those that God brings my way. Thus, begins my journey to become a Kindler of Joy. It is a journey, a path of learning and growing. So I’ve created my blog as a reminder to myself, daily, to open my eyes and find the beauty and joy around me. I long to share this joy, to spread this joy and to inspire others to become Kindlers of Joy. When we kindle joy in others we spread a light throughout this dark world. A light that is desperately needed. Won't you join me in spreading this light, this joy?

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.