Always pray silently with your heart wherever you are as often as you can. Pray at home, pray while traveling, pray at work, pray while you eat, pray when alone, pray when in the midst of a crowd.
During focused times of prayer, find a silent place fee from distraction. Begin your time of prayer by calming your body and your mind. Disconnect from the distractions around you. Still the thoughts swirling in your mind. If a thought arises, calm it down. Take advantage of the external silence to seek internal calmness through prayer.
By your prayer, seek to acquire the fulness of inner stillness (hesychia), which is only possible through the work of Grace. One who has acquired this inner stillness possesses the gift of unceasing prayer. The interior silence we seek is not passive emptiness, but the fulness of the Holy Spirit at work within us.
When you find a place of silence, pray. Speak to God with your heart and listen carefully.
Read: 1 Kings 19:11-13; Psalm 46.8-10; Psalm 131; Matthew 14.13, 22-24; Mark 1:35; Luke 5.15-16; Acts 10.9; Romans 8.22-27
Text copyright © 2018 by Fr. Symeon D. S. Kees