A prayer that is said simultaneously by several people is called a prayer by agreement; Christians can read it from different parts of the country and even the world. It is not necessary to be in one place. The agreement on the time and on the prayer itself is decisive here.
The number of people praying at the same time is also not limited - from two people to thousands or millions.
Truly I also tell you that if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven, for where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them (Matt. 18, 19-20).
From this letter of Matthew it becomes clear that the purpose of joint prayer by agreement is a request addressed to God and strengthened many times over by the heart of each person asking. Saint John of Kronstadt noted:
The Church, praying together, is the great power of God, defeating the demonic armies and being able to ask God for every perfect gift, every help, every intercession, deliverance, salvation.
What is asked for in prayer by agreement?
Prayer by agreement is required in difficult cases, when a person needs a special prayer of a petitionary nature, when he is not able to cope with trouble on his own one on one.
The request should not be abstract (for example, world peace), but specific and precise. There are no small things for God. But the essence of the petition should not be in the request itself and the benefits received, but in how these benefits will be used in the future. A person striving for God, with a spiritually meaningful life, opens his heart and thoughts to the Lord, trusts his situation to His will.
Help Heal Babies
Among the humble appeals to the Lord, a special place is occupied by the prayer for the consent of a sick child. There are no words stronger than the words of a mother turning to God with a prayer for the health of her children. The prayers of parents protect children not only from physical suffering, but, first of all, from birth they protect the soul of the child, helping him to follow the path prepared by God.
The Lord protects a person from an unbearable burden and gives only what a person can bear. In prayer, Orthodox Christians strengthen their faith and gain strength to survive current events.
The order of reading the prayer by agreement
Prayer by agreement has great power and can help even in the most hopeless and sorrowful situation. There is no strict rule on how to pray correctly. The procedure for reading the prayer is determined by agreement and is usually as follows:
- receive a blessing from your confessor, who is familiar with the situation and can suggest how best to conduct the prayer (he will also select the appropriate text and suggest the correct pronunciation with emphasis);
- find like-minded people who want to share a specific request to God (your priest can advise specific parishioners with a similar situation);
- agree on the time of reading the prayer and its duration;
- select a text from the prayer book for prayer by agreement and agree on the order of its reading.
The reading order is determined in advance. This can be reading one kathisma a day, then the prayer itself by agreement and ending with a pre-agreed request. Believers, by agreement, can jointly and simultaneously read the Holy Gospel, canons, kathismas or akathists. Reading a prayer by agreement in Russian or Church Slavonic is also agreed upon in advance. It is important to agree and for everyone to follow the same prayer rule, saying the request for the same thing.
Hard prayer work and voluntary duty, which cannot be neglected, is what Orthodox prayer by agreement means. If a Christian, for some good reason, was unable to read the promised prayer by agreement or fulfill the full agreed order of reading, it is worth repenting and confessing about it.
How to read a prayer?
The prayer of consent, like any Orthodox prayer, is pronounced with humility, with trust in the will of the Lord. The choice of the text of the agreed prayer is quite wide, but what is more important is the strength of the emotional impulse and the depth of the experience experienced by the heart with which the believer turns to the Lord our God.
God has his own plan for each person, which is sometimes difficult to discern behind the changing difficulties of life. It is not enough to just believe in God, you must trust him with your life. God listens to every request of the Orthodox and knows better than anyone how to help them achieve what they want. Even when it seems like your prayers are being ignored, they are not.
In every conversation with the Lord and His Son Jesus, two unchanging truths apply:
- "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you" (Matthew 7:7)
- “According to your faith, be it done to you” (Matthew 9:29)
It is not given to people to know how God will lead them to what they want, because this is the Will of God. Our Lord knows best whether our request is worthy of an answer and whether it is really necessary to give what we ask for, and exactly how it is said in prayer. Often God answers a humble request a little differently, but with abundance and with all his inherent generosity.
Text of prayer by agreement
In Russian
With deep faith in the immutability of Your words and with hope for Your immeasurable mercy towards us, we humbly ask You to hear Your servants (names) who have agreed to jointly ask You: Lord, let Your Holy will be done. Enlighten us, strengthen us and help us in everything for the benefit of people and for Your glory, Lord. Grant us, Lord God our Savior, to follow You, helping our neighbors to follow the path of salvation, doing works of faith, so that with Your help and by Your mercy our efforts serve to increase good and decrease evil in deeds, words and thoughts. Amen.
In Church Slavonic
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Thou hast declared with Thy most pure lips: “Amen, I say to you, that if two of you take counsel on earth about every thing, and if you ask for it, you will have it from My Father who is in Heaven: where are the two? or three gathered in My name, I am I in the midst of them.” Thy words are immutable, O Lord, Thy mercy is unconditional and Thy love for mankind has no end. For this reason, we pray to Thee: grant to us, Thy servants (names), who have agreed to ask Thee (request), the fulfillment of our request. But not as we want, but as You want. Thy will be done forever. Amen.
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Prayer to the Mother of God before Her icon “Healer”
Accept, O Most Holy and Almighty Lady, Mistress, Virgin, Virgin, these prayers with tears brought to you now by us, your unworthy servant, to your celibate image of the song of those who tenderly send, as if you were here and hear our prayer. Somehow the completion of your work will ease your pains, grant health to the weak, heal the weak and suffering, cast out demons from demons, save them from harm, cleanse lepers and give mercy to children; And yet, Madam Mother of God, you free yourself from bonds and secrets and from all kinds of passions: the whole essence is possible through your intercession before your Son, Christ, our God... Oh, Mother Cantatissima, Most Holy Theotokos! Do not cease to pray for us, your unworthy servants, who glorify and honor you and with tenderness venerate your purest image, and the hope of those who have is unshakable, and the faith unshakable for you, ever more glorious virgin and Immaculate, now and always and always and always. Amen.
Why is our prayer a joy for God?
A person perceives prayer as a means to achieve some goal and with this he often crosses the threshold of the temple. And then, in the overwhelming majority of cases, when all other means have already been exhausted, psychics and others like them are already behind us.
But still, if for a person prayer is a means, then for God it is a goal and joy. It is joy that a person begins to feel the need for Him.
When the Lord once passed through Jericho, two blind men turned to Him, disturbing public order with their cry. "What do you want from me? - Lord, may our eyes be opened. Jesus, being moved with compassion, touched their eyes. And immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed Him” (Matthew 20:33-34).
But the main thing is not what happened when the hand of Christ touched their eyes at the request of their lips, but what happened to the souls of the blind when grace touched their souls at the request of their hearts crushed under the burden of sorrows. The blind followed Him. And they not only received sight. They received a new vision of the world, different values, a different life - with Christ.
Is it “spiritual” to pray about little things?
But this does not mean that we should not “throw away small things”: ask for a suitable job or a new TV with DVD. If, for example, you watch TV without a DVD, then you can easily get addicted to the easily digestible synthesized sin, because it is so difficult to stop in time after watching the news. And with DVDs you have the opportunity to create your own spiritual diet for yourself and your loved ones.
Therefore, every little thing is very important, and you definitely need to pray for it, because “God is so great that there are no little things for Him” (Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh).
There will always be little things, and there will be a lot of them, and they will certainly “sink into oblivion,” but the habit of praying, always being somewhere nearby and in harmony with grace, will definitely remain. “Transfer all your everyday affairs,” says St. John Chrysostom, “with frequent prayers, like ties of logs, and thus protect your life from all sides.”
In addition, the great is manifested in the little things, a person is revealed, his inner content, the path he follows, the choice he makes.
Prayer to the Great Martyr and Healer Panteleimon
O great servant of Christ, passionate and merciful physician Panteleimon! Have mercy on me, sinful slave, listen to my groans and tears, propitiate the heavenly, supreme Physician of our souls and bodies, Christ our God, and give me healing from my serious illness. Accept the unworthy prayer of the most sinful person above all others, pay me a merciful visit, do not disdain my sinful wounds, anoint your mercy with oil and heal me; Yes, healthy in soul and body, by the grace of God I can spend the rest of my days in repentance and pleasing God, and I will be worthy to receive a good end to my life. She is a saint of God! Pray to Christ God, who through your intercession can grant me the health of my body and the salvation of my soul.
When the little things matter
There was an interesting case in the life of St. Ambrose of Optina, in which he made a choice in favor of small things.
Once he was talking with people about spiritual life. And suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, when they were talking, it would seem, about the most holy things, he interrupted the conversation, fished out some old peasant woman from the crowd and talked to her for a long time about how to feed turkeys. After the conversation, he was stunned by disappointed questions, saying how he could interrupt the conversation about God, about spiritual life, about the salvation of the soul, in order to talk with a simple old woman from a neighboring village about trifles, about trifles.
And he said a wonderful thing: “The conversation that we had with you was a luxury, you know a lot even without me, on what you know, you can live and enter the Kingdom of God. But for this old woman, her turkeys are a matter of life and death, she is hired to graze them and does not know how to do anything else in life. If the turkeys die, she will be driven out and she will be poor.”
“Elder Ambrose,” reflects Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh about this incident, “with his perspicacious mind and enlightened heart, he made a choice: to talk about the simplest, but of absolute importance for a person, instead of speaking big words about what can wait - not because God is secondary, but because God is love.” And in this, at first glance, little detail the whole person is located, so Ambrose prayed to God together with the old woman, not for the successful outcome of the enterprise, but for the person. With his prayer he fulfilled her prayer, healed her soul, which was suffering in these turkeys. But this is prayer by agreement, when two hearts ache with the same pain.
How many times to forgive? And for what?..
It was in this context, after the parable of the lost sheep, after the instructions on how to look for a person who has turned away from you (“if your brother sins against you, tell him the truth between you and him alone...” (Matthew 18:15) were spoken by Christ words: “Where two or three are gathered in My Name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20).
With these words, the Lord asks us, people close to the lost person, to pray for him, when all efforts have already been exhausted and simple patience is no longer enough: “Lord, how much should I forgive my brother who sins against me, up to seven times,” asks the apostle Peter after this speech of Christ about the measure of love. And the Lord answers that there is no such measure: “I do not tell you until seven times, but until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21-22).
“His words,” writes St. John Chrysostom in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, “have the following meaning: if anyone sets Me up as the first foundation of love for one’s neighbor, I will be with him. But we see that many have different motives for love: one loves because he himself is loved, another because he is respected, another because his neighbor is useful to him. But it is difficult to find someone who would love his neighbor sincerely, for the sake of Christ. The saints did not love that way, but for the sake of Christ, because although they themselves were not loved, they continued to love. What in others serves to destroy love, here helps to strengthen it.”
