Lent with Anthony Bloom: Reading #7

On the Start of Prayer, the Condition for a Life of Prayer, and Conversion

This year’s daily Lent postings for my subscribers will taken from a short anthology of writings on prayer taken from the corpus of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. Without a paid subscription, only the first portion of the post will be available.

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THE START OF PRAYER

What we must start with, if we wish to pray, is the certainly that we are sinners in need of salvation, that we are cut off from God and that we cannot live without Him and that all we can offer God is our desparate longing to be made such that God will receive us, receive us in repentance, receive us with mercy and with love.

And so from the outset prayer is really our humble ascent towards God, a moment when we turn Godwards, shy of coming near, knowing that if we meet Him too soon, before His grace has had time to help us to be capable of meeting Him, it will be judgment.

And all we can do is turn to Him with all the reverence, all the veneration, the worshipful adoration, the fear of God of which we are capable, with all the attention and earnestness which we may possess, and ask Him to do something with us that will make us capable of meeting Him face to face, not for judgment, nor for condemnation, but for eternal life.