The prayers of our Church talk about purification and illumination

ΤΗΕ ROLE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

previous:

http://hristospanagia3.blogspot.com/2018/09/how-do-we-get-purified-and-illumined.html

All Church services, as well as Her ascetic-hesychastic tradition, usually refer to three spiritual states we can find ourselves in (two of them are already mentioned earlier):

• 1st spiritual state: purification from the sinful passions of our soul and our body
• 2nd spiritual state: illumination of our nous by the Grace of the Holy Spirit
• 3rd spiritual state: deification (théosis) of our soul and body, again by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Fathers of our Church mainly talk about purification and illumination.

The Church services are expressions of the logic worship, meaning the act of worshiping God using our reason (diánoia, brains, intellect) and not our heart. What we do with our heart cannot be heard; the prayer of the heart is mystical (secret). During our church services, we utter, read, and chant; we actually use our reason to deliver our prayers and speak them out loud, so anybody else can hear them. This prayer is called logic prayer. This is the logikí latreía (logic worship), prayers written down by our Holy Fathers, which talk mainly about these two stages: purification and illumination.

f. Savvas Agioreitis

To be continued...