`Geronda when I am full of antipathy can my heart still pray?`
`How can your heart pray when you have inside yourself passions? See, take a rusty cable and tie it to the phone. Can you understand a thing? It is fizzing and ringing. It is the same with the man when he has inside himself rust, passions, he has fizzing in his spiritual life; he fizzes himself. He must beware at pride, selfishness, self will and insolence
If he is possessed by these it is impossible to be searched by the Grace of God to be able to pray. He must clean his rusty cables to become a good conductor and be able to communicate with God. The more he will clean himself of passions the more he will progress in prayer.
The passions are parasites which impede the divine conversation. If the parasites are not removed how can the man communicate with God? At transmissions when someone had parasites we told him: `Your zero signal, your number one signal [1]. Check and repeat; misunderstood signal. The other one was not heard because of the parasites. The signals had to be above three. At signal five it was heard very well and the communication went perfectly. Otherwise he shouted and shouted but was not heard because he was not well connected. It was necessary first to connect the transmitter with the receiver of his station and afterwards to connect at the same frequency with the center.
It is the same for connecting with God, we must adjust our transmitter to love and the receiver to humbleness in order to be heard by God and hear Him.
This is the frequency where God works : Love and Humbleness. The man must work with all his might so that he may catch this frequency. Then he will have the connection with God and his mind will always be with Him.
May you gain this divine connection. Amen.
[1] the numbers mean the degree of acoustics.
Excerpt from About prayer – Pious Paisios the Athonite, Evanghelismos.
