Hi,
I personally find that I can concentrate on the entire mass. Let's say the mass is 2 hours long. I admit, if it is in English, I can really understand and pray every word of the liturgy.
However, as soon as abouna switches to Arabic, or we pray in Coptic, and I don't particularly understand the EXACT meaning of the words, I find it hard to actually pray. I know the hymn, and in some cases, i MAY know the meaning, but generally speaking - whether I know the meaning or not, because it is not in my mother tongue, I feel my prayers are not efficient.
Does anyone else have this problem?
The strangest thing is this:
The liturgy of the Eid (Major Feasts) is SO long, yet I really enjoy them. However, as soon as they start to sing Pinishti, I feel an urgency to just stop praying and take a break.
Would it be wrong therefore to take a break if you find yourself TOTALLY unable to concentrate??? It usually happens in cases where a deacon wants to show off and sing something he's learnt by himself in Coptic.. although I am deeply grateful that his ego has increased and he's happy, it sometimes makes me lose complete concentration.
There was once a time when a deacon sang something from a book NO ONE had heard of, it was in Coptic, and it was so long. We all left the Church. There was absolutely no books translated with respect to the book he was using. It was in complete coptic, and no one knew what he was singing.
Is that bad? I feel if I'm not concentrating, I'm just wasting time.
Comments
Mark 14:37-39
Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," he said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."
Romans 8:25-27
But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.
GBU,
R
Just 10 mins in the Church and we were both dying to leave.
The deacons were singing so badly. They were shouting.. the microphone/speaker system was something they chose from a nightclub environment. The Church is only 20m by 10 m2, and the speakers were so loud that the echo was unbearable.
I've never in my life wanted to leave a building so quickly.
And the head deacon has a habit of shouting/screaming in the microphone and playing the cymbals close to his mouth where the microphone is. I really wanted to go up to him, and just push him and tell him to be quiet. (God forgive me).
There were mobile phones going off, children crying, people talking.. i really couldnt concentrate - so I left.
Was that bad? I didnt really want to go back actually. I tried to tell abouna that he has to sort out the problem of the microphone.
Has that ever happened to anyone?
there needs to be two things in a church a) creche, where mothers can take the lil ones into a room which has a speaker so u can hear the mass n 2) ppl need to turn their fones off or on silent
my priest does not tolerate any fones going off and hes made a point to mention how disrespectful it is to have ur fones on loud and how distracting it is for him as well on NUMEROUS occasions and theres actualli been a significant decline
so i think at times priests need to lay down the law or ppl need to put signs up
in regards to mic's ahahahah again my priests will stop the mass and ask the mic volume to be altered or speak to the deacons on the side....
it can be extremely frustrating wen u cant focus or understand due to language....im not strong in arabic so i often just prefer to read the liturgy book even if im not in line with the mass....u learn so much from readingg
But you, or anyone here agree that it is pointless being in a Church if you cannot concentrate or pray because of the noise, and sometimes it is just best to leave; otherwise, you are just wasting your time, and even allowing idle thoughts to get into your head rather than pray.
In fact, in one church, the babie's room was much quieter than the Church.
It can get that bad.
The devil is always there in our minds to play around just enough to let your mind astray from what's going on for atleast couple of seconds. It's the way it is. and the best way to deal with this is to take the [b]most we can get out of prayer in church. [/b]
If the devil is not playing in your mind he will play in others and those will distract you. and if you take action upon that then the devil have overcome YOU, not specifically that person who had the phone ringing or whatever.
i would be surprised if anyone can concentrate for 2 or 3 hours!
i find about once every 15 - 30 mins i switch off for 1 or 2 mins, usually we are still on the same page in the book / projector, so i can catch up.
sometimes (actually, always) the stuff in the mass is so awesome that i just meditate on what has been said for 1 or 2 mins and thank God for His great love. i then catch up further down the page.
i don't think this is too bad (i hope not coz i just confessed rather publicly!), we are there to talk to God and be close to Him, not to show God we can read every word at the right moment exactly.
especially when the priest is praying the 'holy holy holy', it is so amazing i can't concentrate on it all at once, i usually end up thinking of Jesus' great sacrifice and my great sin and being deeply moved.
actually i think this is the aim of the mass, to show us we are sinners and to take part in God's great blessing through the body and blood of our Lord and Saviour even though we are not worthy.
i think if someone is being distracting, you shoud pray for that person silently and ask God to guide them. if there are children being noisy who you know personally, you can take them to the back and show them some nice things in the church, like saint pictures for example and explain to them quietly what is going on, and ask them about how God is helping them in their lives and answer their questions.
if you just stand there feeling grumpy for the distraction, i think that doesn't help.
i think another thing we should aim for during mass is to take care of each other, focusing on the other people communicating well with God, not just thinking of ourselves. so we can help parents by looking after their child for 10-15 mins, or you can help newcomers by showing them the page in the book etc.
if distractions are really bad, ask abouna after the mass what you can do to help, eg designing a nice poster for the back of church asking people to switch their phones off or setting up a rota to help with the creche, or buying some children's books for children to look at during the mass if they find it hard to concentrate. so that you are providing solutions to the problem, not just complaining!
yeah, qt, if all else fails head to the creche to get some peace!
;)
How can you pray in an environment that is so noisy, that distracts your attention - that is in a language that is foreign to you??
What kind of praying "efficiency" is that?
How on earth can you pray when you can't concentrate? That is the whole idea?
How can you pray in an environment that is so noisy, that distracts your attention - that is in a language that is foreign to you??
What kind of praying "efficiency" is that?
are you saying that you get 0 prayer in an environment like this?
Fr. Mikhail Ibrahim was once praying the Liturgy and was in deep prayer that he saw angels. there was a young deacon serving in the altar who kept on moving back and forth and was distracting Abouna. so, Abouna yelled at him and told him to stop moving (not sure if actually yelled or just told him to stop moving) and when he resumed to prayer, he saw that the angels had disappeared. After the Liturgy he came to this young deacon and got down on his knees and asked for forgiveness.
there was once a congregation whose priest did not have the best voice. so they asked him if they can bring another priest (who had a good voice) to pray for a day and he said sure. so they did and the priest had an amazing voice and because his voice was so good, none of them actually prayed for the entire liturgy because they were enjoying the good voice.
theses stories may not be relevant to the questions posed on this forum but i thought i add them as they may benefit some.
you can return to the question of this forum now...
[quote author=QT_PA_2T link=topic=7963.msg102838#msg102838 date=1241896486]
How on earth can you pray when you can't concentrate? That is the whole idea?
How can you pray in an environment that is so noisy, that distracts your attention - that is in a language that is foreign to you??
What kind of praying "efficiency" is that?
are you saying that you get 0 prayer in an environment like this?
Mina,
When a microphone speaker system is so loud that no matter where you stand, you'll get a headache..
Its that simple.
The deacons, unfortunately, do not realise what it is like to stand in the decks. Its very painful. The only people who are going to heaven are the deacons, and the rest of us - we can all of us "net-felliq" because they're not allowing us to pray.
Of course, this scenario is totally different than where you have a solo artist - wanna-be Coptic's got Talent deacon who INSISTS on just taking over the entire prayers with a solo routine in a language that no one understands.
If it was just 2 minutes long, - OK.. i'd pass it, but if his voice is bad, and he is singing loudly then at the end of the day, we'll get a headache anyway, and want to leave.
Look, i know a priest whose voice is not brilliant, he croaks when he prays because he's old.. and even when he was younger it wasn't that good.,.. but WE COULD ALL Pray during his mass - why? because he didnt scream down the mic, and 2, he prayed himself with understanding.
I'm not bothered if someone has a good voice or bad voice, its not a talent competition, but some deacons make it hard for us to pray because of how they play the cymbals, how they sing etc.
answer my question please as clear as i asked it
I did. I said I get a headache.
I go to Church feeling good and honoured, and I leave it with a headache.
I cannot pray in this noise. If I am not concentrating, then I am not gaining anything.
[quote author=minagir link=topic=7963.msg102846#msg102846 date=1241899783]
answer my question please as clear as i asked it
I did. I said I get a headache.
I go to Church feeling good and honoured, and I leave it with a headache.
I cannot pray in this noise. If I am not concentrating, then I am not gaining anything.
so NO PRAYER, not even .0000000001 of prayer?
[quote author=QT_PA_2T link=topic=7963.msg102847#msg102847 date=1241904467]
[quote author=minagir link=topic=7963.msg102846#msg102846 date=1241899783]
answer my question please as clear as i asked it
I did. I said I get a headache.
I go to Church feeling good and honoured, and I leave it with a headache.
I cannot pray in this noise. If I am not concentrating, then I am not gaining anything.
so NO PRAYER, not even .0000000001 of prayer?
I left with a headache and a strong urge to take the cymbals from the deacon and hit him with it.
If I had prayed 0.0000000000000001 of a prayer, I'd have been able to at least control the thought from entering my head.
Other groups like the various charismatic mega-churches tend to depend heavily on the pastor's charisma, eloquence, crowd-pulling ability and membership as an indicator of success. But I guess for us Orthodox, the content of the worship and active participation rather than the packaging would be more important.
maybe you shud try that
But on the more general point of the liturgy often being rather noisy, disorganised and not conducive to quiet contemplation. That does rather seem to be just the way things are. Even in my small congregation, children are moving around and whispering loudly sometimes, or people are coughing or making a noise, even while they are trying to concentrate.
What do we do? In the past I struggled on occasion with a lack of a sense of God's presence in a liturgy, but I realised that it was not because He was not present by His Holy Spirit, but because the eyes of my heart were clouded. Rather like the passage..
(2Ki 6:15-17) And the servant of the man of God, rising early went out, and saw an army round about the city, and horses and chariots: and he told him, saying: Alas, alas, alas, my lord, what shall we do? But he answered: Fear not: for there are more with us than with them. And Eliseus prayed, and said: Lord, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw: and behold, the mountain was full of horses, and chariots of fire round about Eliseus.
What would we see, amidst all the noise, the babies and children, the phones ringing and people chatting? What would we see if the Lord opened our eyes? Would we see the heavenly host who accompany the Lord when he descends by His Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine? Would we see the saints worshipping beside us? Does Christ cease to make Himself present on the altar simply because the congregation, or even the deacons, are noisy and lacking attention?
And although I don't always like asking 'what would Jesus do?' because the answer often seems miraculously to be what we wanted to do in the first place, nevertheless, when Christ was pressed by noisy crowds what did He do? Did he give up speaking with His Father? Or the saints, when St Dioscorus or St Timothy were led off to exile should we imagine that they were unable to pray because they couldn't find any peace? Some of the saints were put in the galleys for years, chained next to men who had no faith and in the most vile of circumstances, but can we believe that they abandoned the life of prayer.
We should not say, 'I can't pray in these circumstances', whatever they are, but rather we should pray, 'teach me Lord how to pray in all circumstances'.
Are the words of the Agpeya meaningless, when we pray, 'We give you thanks in all conditions, and for all conditions'. If they are not meaningless then it must be possible, it must be God's will, that we be able to give thanks in prayer in whatever situation we find ourselves.
Perhaps there are two practical ways forward, and I am sure there are others. One is to be so rooted in the Jesus Prayer that we already have a quiet centre in our lives so that we can shut ourselves in this inner cell and find Christ present there, whatever the outward circumstances. This seems to me to be one of the main ways that the Fathers teach us to deal with being in the world. But of course this requires that we put in the effort to build this inner cell when we can. If there is no peace in our hearts from Monday through to Saturday then we will find it harder to enter into the quiet space in our hearts on Sunday if it is noisy.
Secondly, as has been described by others, it is possible to turn every distraction into a prayer, because we are not at the Liturgy for our own benefit, but to participate in the shared worship of the Church in the presence of God. If the shared worship of a particular congregation is noisy and lacks attention then ALL those in that congregation bear the responsibility to bring a sense of awe and respect back into the prayers. Have we prayed for each of those persons by name who are talking, or making phone calls? Or have we only complained in our hearts? Have we prayed for every infant, giving thanks to God for them, asking His blessing on them, as well as asking grace for the parents? Have we offered to help with a fidgety child? All of these are proper ways to deal with disruption, and they put the disruptions into the context of the Church family we belong to, rather than a religious performance of which we are only irritated spectators.
Have we prayed for the priests? Have we prayed for all the deacons? Have we asked that God would soften our hearts towards all of those who annoy us? Have we repented of bad feelings towards people?
There is much we can do before we should think that we must give up on a particular congregation. Indeed I find it almost impossible, because of my Christian background, to imagine congregation hopping. If there is something wrong then we need to be blaming ourselves rather than others. We are not spiritual enough to see the glory all around us. We are not spiritual enough to see Christ in all the noisy people around us. We are not spiritual enough to realise that it is our lack if prayer which has caused the lack of attention we deplore around us.
Here are plenty of things for me to think about in my own life.
God bless
Father Peter
1. If the problem is the mike or the speaker system may be you can suggest getting it changed. If the sound system is so bad chances are others are also being disrupted. You can use this opportunity to organize some fundraising for this project. This is what Ezekiel called “standing in the gap”.
2. If the problem is that the liturgy and hymns are mostly in Coptic or in Arabic I think this is a common problem. I personally don’t understand any of those. But we should also be appreciative about the efforts that are being taken by the COC to switch into local language. The church I go to have made tremendous progress in this aspect. But there still persists some problems such as not all the hymns are translated from Coptic and Arabic. Even those which are translated not, not many people know how to sing them in English or local languages if you are in Europe. For example, in my church there are few deacons who know the Hymn of the Intercession in English and if they are not there then it is sang in Coptic. May be we can help by learning the hymns in English or encouraging those who are able to do more translation. Remember the verse “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few”.
3. Last but not least one should work on his praying habits diligently. Here is a saying I believe clarifies this point.
The brethren asked Abba Agathon, "Amongst all good works, which is the virtue which requires the greatest effort?" He answered, "Forgive me, but I think there is no labor greater than that of prayer to God. For every time a man wants to pray, his enemies, the demons, want to prevent him, for they know that it is only by turning him from prayer that they can hinder his journey. Whatever good work a man undertakes, if he perseveres in it, he will attain rest. But prayer is warfare to the last breath. The Desert Fathers
Related to this point, even in the best of situations, even in the very presence of Jesus the disciples were sleeping. This shows the weakness of humanity. We should do violence to ourselves to pray as is fit to God. Doing so we might fulfill scripture as it says “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men seize it”. Let us not be passive in our effort to pray but active and violent – violent against ourselves.
On a different note I am happy to hear that you invited your friend to church. Just to share my experience, people in my church usually tend to invite first time guest to our Saturday Liturgy which is once a month, a bit shorter and fully in English. May be you might suggest something like this to your abouna. Also we have a small bible study group which is very intimate and less intimidating for new comers.
What I found amazing is most people instead of being turned off by our relatively long Liturgy and unfamiliar language they are usually fascinated and eager to know more. However sometimes because we wrongly assume that there is no way they will enjoy something they don’t understand we might end up biasing them.
Remember me in your prayer
In Christ
Theophilus
I'm very appreciative of your answer.
Many thanks..
[quote author=peterfarrington link=topic=7963.msg102939#msg102939 date=1242069350]
Undoubtedly there are issues, especially in larger congregations I guess, with a lack of a sense of awe in the Liturgy, and these are things that the priest must work with the faithful to address.
I totally agree. What can we do though about this?
Actually Fr, its not really as if there is no awe during the liturgy, but there is a lack of respect even to some extent by the priest.. how he behaves, how he raises his voice when speaking to others, how he tells jokes during sermons etc... this cultivates a rudimentary lack of respect.
This is just ONE particular Church (the Church where we had to leave).
I cannot judge and say that he doesnt respect nor have "awe" for the liturgy, but he doesnt realise that his actions actually encourage slothfullness.
I went to another Church which was much poorer, much more secluded; yet the priest there insists on one thing: After the mass, you do not talk. You just leave. That's great. In fact, to get the orbana at the end is the most organised activity i have ever witnessed in any coptic Church - anywhere.
The priests really ought to take the lead in cultivating awe and respect for the Church. If children were making a noise, that would be OK. But if the children were screaming, the adults were screaming, the deacons were shouting, the priest was joking, the microphone was too loud - that too me is too much to bear, and many times I had to leave. Would you agree that that was the right thing to do? My inner eyes are so weak and short-sighted... I was hoping to developing 1st through prayer, and to pray I need a place where I can sit down in quietly and just "pray"! In all fairness, although they are good examples, but are they fair??
Are they fair to this situation??
But you touch on a very important point that I didnt consider at all:
The examples you mentioned are all cases where a person was in trouble and at that time prayed during the noise, and the hard-surrounding environment that doesnt encourage prayer at all...
But to answer it, i feel i must tell you that these examples are in the wrong the context as I went to Church to pray for a problem , and found that I was better off praying at home. The Church became a "problem".
When we are presented with difficult situations in life, I find myself praying in my heart, whether in the middle of the street, at work, on the bus... etc.. Exactly, and these circumstances are mostly outside church - in the real life where problems arise.
But would it be OK to leave the mass if I cannot pray at all, if being in the Church so much distracts my concentration that I'm just standing there idol??
St. John Climacus.
"After a long spell of prayer, do not say that nothing has been gained, for you have already achieved something. For, after all, what higher good is there than to cling to the Lord and to persevere in unceasing union with Him?"
St. John Climacus.
Dear brothers and Sisters and Fellow Copts:
To pray, one must be able to at least concentrate? You agree?
We should be able to pray in all places, and in all circumstances. Not with the mind in all cases, but the prayer of the heart should be constantly being raised to God.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy.
This does not require any great mental activity at all. It requires only a desire to be present to God at that moment. And even prayed without full attention is better than not praying at all.
Father Peter
Not at all, that would make prayer a mental activity.
We should be able to pray in all places, and in all circumstances. Not with the mind in all cases, but the prayer of the heart should be constantly being raised to God.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy.
This does not require any great mental activity at all. It requires only a desire to be present to God at that moment. And even prayed without full attention is better than not praying at all.
Father Peter
yeah - right, but the noise from a church disturbs my heart... it makes want to go and just do violent things to the head deacon who is causing all this noise.
What kind of prayer will my heart churn out?
The one who says 'pray at all times' surely meant that it was possible to pray at all times.
Father Peter
That is something you need to work through with your own FOC.
The one who says 'pray at all times' surely meant that it was possible to pray at all times.
Father Peter
Yes, I've started already anger management courses.
And what they advise is to take a break from people or situations that raise your temper.
Thanks
Father Peter