Chapter 23

How to Conduct Yourself at Church Services

On drowsiness at services. You must make an effort to overcome it through concentration of attention and prayer to the Lord precisely for this affliction, and the Lord will help.

How to conduct yourself at the Liturgy. Quicken your faith in the Mystery, awaken the fear of God, kindle hope for salvation, looking upon the Lord, who desires all to be saved (Compare: 1 Tim. 2:4) and calls all to this, and is both strict and most merciful. You must accustom yourself to these feelings and pray for their gift.

The liturgical prayers for Holy Communion, I think, are not sinful to complete, and not just once, but it seems better in a single sitting. But to read them in church is a bad habit: the church service demands its own attention.

The enemy stirs you to flee from church so that you might pray more earnestly in your cell. And so you both lose the church service and do not pray in your cell. You must stand through the church services and your rule with attention and feeling. Separately at home pray with noetic prayer. And you must stand through the church service with noetic prayer. All the content of the service is noetic. Pay attention, understand, and feel what is being sung and read, and behold—that is noetic prayer.

(Letter 242. Vol. 2, p. 59)