When a person begins to believe in God and comes to church, he discovers here many rules that are well known and familiar to believers and completely incomprehensible to non-church people. At first, such a mass of rules seems like unnecessary rituals, and only later does a person realize that in this way the church puts some kind of spiritual barrier between sin and man.
Man never stands still. Either he goes up or he steadily slides down in his spiritual state. It is in order to support a person every day that the church has established some prayer rules. These are, for example, morning prayers, prayers before meals, or evening prayers. For beginners, this all seems far-fetched and superfluous. But in fact, only a regular reminder of God sometimes makes it possible to refrain from condemnation, anger, lies and petty theft, that is, from those numerous sins that every day is filled with.
Morning prayer is gratitude to God for life and awakening. Starting the day with prayer, a person immediately tunes in to a blessed mood and good deeds. He asks for God's blessingupcoming activities.
The evening prayer ends the day. For beginners, any prayer rule can be shortened. For example, the usual evening rule begins with the prayer "To the King of Heaven." Then comes a short invocation to God, known as the "Trisagion", then - "Most Holy Trinity" and "Our Father". This is the usual beginning of prayers, this is how almost every prayer book begins. The evening prayers themselves were compiled by famous church fathers and contain penitential, pleading and thanksgiving invocations.
How long does the evening prayer take? For beginners, the prayer rule is usually shortened. It all depends on the age and he alth of the person. For example, children sometimes read only one prayer at night, and older people also shorten their prayers. But in fact, evening prayer does not take much time. The text, when unhurriedly pronounced, takes about fifteen minutes, you still need to add bows, reading the commemoration book. In general, an ordinary conscientious, unhurried parishioner prays for about half an hour in the evening.
This is quite a bit, so it is quite obvious that the evening prayer is quite a burden for beginners.
Orthodox visit the temple twice a week and on holidays. Some people find this too burdensome. Do not force yourself and immediately try to stand the whole service from beginning to end. Of course, while everything is incomprehensible and unusual, it is extremely difficult to do this. Church Slavonic is an additional complication. It looks like Russian, but many words are unclear or translatedotherwise. Some read evening prayers in Russian, trying to find a translation of the service. This is correct: prayer is a conversation with God, it should be understandable to the one who prays. But then, when everything gradually clears up, it is worth switching to the usual church language.
Evening prayer is a small step for beginners, the first step on the path of churching and finding true joy in God. A step that is not so difficult to pass.
