NOTES for Eph 6:18-19

We have a rather strange custom of connecting certain life situations with certain prayers, of turning for help in prayer to particular saints depending on the difficulties we are experiencing. The word of God gives us no basis for this. On the contrary, in today's apostolic reading the apostle Paul says: pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and supplication. What is essentially important in prayer, according to the apostle's word, is faithfulness to God, expressed in the fact that we turn to Him at all times, and not only in a difficult moment.

It is also essential that the apostle calls us to pray in the spirit. The Greek original has no capital letters except at the beginning of periods, and therefore these words allow a double interpretation. First, prayer must come from the very depth of the human person; prayer in the spirit is far from limited to the prayer text we pronounce with our lips. Second, it is probable that the apostle means prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit, and not only the babbling of which a person is capable by himself. The matter is by no means special gifts of the Spirit, such as prayer in other tongues. Yet if we believe in the reality and effectiveness of the sacrament of chrismation, in which the Lord through the Church gives us not manifestations of the Spirit, but the Spirit Himself, then our capacity for meeting the Almighty in prayer is limited by our will and only by our will.

What is prayer? The simplest and clearest answer: the communion with God, the words that we tell him hoping to hear the answer. So; but it is when we are alone. For example, on a desert island. And there everything is not also simple: because people leave all the same inhabited places to arrive to the deserted islands. This definition would be completely exhaustive only in case if in all the universe there was only one person.

But such was never the case and will probably never be it. And the problem is not even there, but in the fact that a person, according to God's word, "is not complete" (" It is not good that man should be alone", as transmits it God's words the King James Version translation). And if man is not alone, then his communication with God will be not only his personal affair, no matter how much the communication itself is personal. Indeed, the relationship of man with God and his relationship with other people are interrelated things. And if we made another step and looked at the situation, how it develops in the people of God? Here already it is not any more simply a human community, here is a community connected with this God's presence, sanctifying each of his members, action which makes of the people of God what it is.

And with such an influence, when it is in particular God's presence which unites the people and makes it one whole spiritual, the prayer already does not just cease to be a private affair of the individual, but becomes directly a matter of divine-human. And in the church all these relationships and interdependencies still strengthen: because the Church brings to the world the Kingdom, and in the Kingdom sanctifies already not simply God's presence, it is directly quite penetrated by the breath of God, which transforms and sanctifies everything. And the prayer of every inhabitant of the Kingdom wove into this breath, by becoming its integral part.

So the prayer of a person becomes the prayer for all the people of God, becoming at the same time the prayer of these people. And, perhaps, God only knows, which place occupies such a prayer in the construction of the Kingdom, in the creation of this spiritual unity, which constitutes the fabric of the Kingdom. But, be that as it may, the prayer is already here not simply the communion with God, but also the edification with God. And every of such prayer of course brings near the day of the final triumph of the Kingdom, which the Savior brought into the world.

From the theme of social relations Paul moves to the theme of Christian ministry and its place in society. He immediately proclaims that Christians do not struggle against people, even if those people are in power. Following Jewish usage, he calls people "flesh and blood." The aim of their struggle is the spiritual forces that determine the condition of the fallen world, which he calls "rulers," "authorities," and "controllers of this present darkness" ("world rulers of the darkness of this age"), connecting with them "the breath of evil that is under heaven" ("spiritual hosts of wickedness under heaven," v. 12). The goal of Christians, as we can see, is not the seizure of power or social change as such, but the lessening of the influence of those forces of evil which, while acting mainly through people, are not themselves human, using the human person only as an instrument. Of course, a person can become such an instrument only by giving consent to it.

In saying this, the apostle was probably warning those who were carried away by ideas of religious-political messianism, which were widespread in those days in synagogue and near-synagogue circles. And any struggle for power in general, if it becomes an end in itself, by no means lessens the measure of evil in the world; it gives the spirits of darkness the broadest scope for their activity. Only the Kingdom entering the world can lessen that measure, and therefore the Christian's main task is witness to the Kingdom and to salvation, as well as to the One who brought it into the world. But for this witness to be adequate, the witness needs faithfulness ("truth") and righteousness, without which one cannot share in the Kingdom (vv. 14-15). And the main weapons of the witness in resisting the evil in which the world lies are trust in God ("faith"), righteousness, which is the best witness to the Kingdom, and the Torah, the word of God, which makes it possible to distinguish good from evil and to make the right choice in the difficult situations in which the witness sooner or later will find himself (vv. 14-17). On that choice, in the end, will depend not only the fate of those to whom he bears witness, but also his own salvation.