“O Lord our God, who bowed the heavens and came for the salvation of the human race, look upon Your servants and Your inheritance…protect them at all times, especially in this present evening and the approaching night, from every enemy, from every adverse work of the devil, from vain thoughts and from evil memories….” (Parting prayer of Great Vespers)
The almighty God can do wonders, but His wonderful gifts of peace and union with the Holy Trinity can be thwarted by the remembrance of things past. The energy that flows from divinity to the soul’s receptor can be stymied like thick clouds that shut out the sun. And the blockage can have several causes.
It can be moral—plainly stated, sin. When Adam and Eve hid from the Lord, He asked them: “Who told you that you were naked?” (i.e., that you had sinned). The serpent said they would be like God, knowing good and evil, not that they had sinned. Yet they knew instinctively, because they were made to be one with God, and they lost or actually surrendered that bond of unity by obeying Satan instead. So it is with us. Despite the sinful conditions of our society, regardless of being told that sin is passe, a jumble of rules and laws that are antiquated, we know the voice of our souls.
I think of a young woman who told me that she doesn’t come to church Sundays because she no longer believes in God. I know her quite well, so I told her that it’s precisely because she realizes that God exists, that He knows what she is doing with her life, that His love for her won’t leave her alone, even if she tries to forsake Him, and because of how she spends Saturday nights, that she cannot in good conscience come to greet Him with head up and eyes open on Sunday mornings.
Vain thoughts are different from evil memories. Some common vain illusions are the quest for financial independence, or even wealth that the “rich and famous” enjoy. Or do they enjoy their riches? Power, fame, and in our modern Sodom, virility are other vanities that block access to the grace and energy of the Lord.
Evil memories are the weapons with which our demons afflict us. They include recollections of being hurt by angry words, cruelty, mockery or abuse—emotional wounds that are conjured up in our minds every time we bow our heads in silent prayer. We don’t call them attacks by the demons, because our society would add even more insults to our tender egos, but they surely are obsessions, and they take control of our minds despite what we do to shake them out. What can we do to break out of this inner prison that engulfs us and won’t let us be?
Prayer among fellow believers offers intimations of deliverance. Breaks in the barrier clouds come about when we are with others in prayer, even if they are not praying specifically for us at the time. The Holy Spirit has a way of reaching out to us all at once, because we realize at least subliminally that we are one in Christ, and that while we are individuals at worship, our common human nature is being charged with spiritual energy that manifests itself in the form of peace. That emotion need not be articulated; it’s enough to sense the good feeling of warm love from the God in us and surrounding us.
You can take it along with you in the darkness. The candles are snuffed out, but the light in your heart can and ought to illumine your way home. You’ll know it when you lose the fear of darkness. You’ll realize God’s presence within as you pray without losing attention to the words or the focus on your oneness with your heavenly Father. Do whatever you can to remain in that zone of awareness of divine love.