Orthodox Life

Being an Orthodox Christian is not simply a matter of going to Church on Sundays and the occasional feast day.  It is a way of life which must permeate every part of our life, or rather, it must be our life.  In addition to our attendance of the services of the Church when they are celebrated, there are the personal elements of the Christian life which must form part of our daily walk.

From ancient times, the Christian life has been compared to the training of atheletes.  Our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving form our training regimen.  This training prepares us for the spiritual warfare that we wage as part of our life.  Just as the athelete, however, does not engage in training without consulting a physician, all of our struggles must be done in consultation with our spiritual physician - our spiritual father, the parish priest.

The links to the right represent the standards which the Church gives us to aim for.  The prayers are taken from Daily Prayers for Orthodox Christians, published by Holy Cross Press, with some edits (such as using the new official translations of the Lord's Prayer and Creed). They are given to us as a school of prayer through which to learn to pray on our own and can never be a replacement for our personal words to God, but rather supplement those.  Rather than force ourselves unfailingly to these though, it is better that we form our rule of prayer in close consultation with our spiritual father.