Hold God Near

“Prayer is beautiful, making distinct for the soul a notion of God. And the indwelling good is this — holding God settled in oneself through the memory. We thus become temples of God whenever the continuity of our memory is not interrupted by earthly worries and whenever the mind is not disturbed by unforeseen passions. The lover of God, escaping all this, retreats to God, driving out the passions which summon him to lack of self-control , and spends his time in the practices which work toward virtue.” St. Basil the Great, Epistle 2.

God, Who is never far from each one of us, is held nearby in our apprehension through prayer to Him. When we allow disturbances of the soul (psyche) to come and to take hold of us, we lose our grasp on Him Who is Life. Let us continually retreat to God, using the practices handed down to us. The hourly prayers or the short arrow prayers (‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ or ‘Make haste, O God, to deliver me!
Make haste to help me, O Lord! (Ps 70.1)’ or any of the spiritual disciplines we have received are tools by which we continually hold God near.