Prayer is an effective power that brings us into contact with the Christ who is actually present within us. He is the source of every power, blessing, and life: “Whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redempion” (1 Cor 1.30). He who does not use the power of prayer never makes contact with the Christ who is within him. He thus lives alienated from God’s wisdom. He remains deprived of his righteousness, sanctification and redemption. However hard we may try to know Christ without prayer, we would only know him as a Saviour of people, a Redeemer of others, a Sanctifier of saints, a Justifier of sinners. We would remain deprived of all these gifts and graces. We will not receive them unless we first receive Christ through prayer within our lives. We should first make him at rest in our hearts so he may live in us. He should share everything with us and manage all our affairs.

Christ will never unite with one’s thoughts, emotions, will or senses unless he first unites with one’s soul. So man should first open his whole being in prayer that Christ may rest in the recesses of his soul. God has created this soul in his own image for himself that he may own it and rule it completely. He is thus able to manage man’s life and command his thoughts, emotions, will and senses.

Christ becomes king over man’s soul through man’s frequent prayer and the outpouring of his self. He becomes the true centre of its being and movements. At that stage, man will never find rest in anything except in Christ alone, where the image would rest in its own likeness. Since the soul has been created for immortality, it will thus find in Christ, when it unites with him, its ultimate joy. Through his existence, he consummates its own existence and immortality.

[Fr. Matta El Meskeen (the Poor), Orthodox Prayer Life]