Editor’s note: To help readers enhance their prayer life, not only during Great Lent but throughout the year, the Orthodox Observer will present selected prayers by Archbishop Demetrios from his recent book “Speaking to God.”

Lord, I have to tell You that prayer is a problem for me. How should I collect my spirit, which is split and squandered in a thousand pieces? How should I concentrate; how can I close off from all around me and within me each entrance from the outside world, appearances, and sensations?

My mind buzzes like a beehive. My ears are bombarded by a million noises. In my eyes images and pictures flash constantly one after the next. And when I close my eyes, my imagination composes and presents me with a sight of many colors.

How should I restrain all of these things, so that I can focus my being and its senses in prayer?

When I speak with someone else, God, I don’t need to make a huge endeavor at self-concentration. The other person’s presence is felt absolutely. I see him, I hear him, and I hold his hand.

But You, God, I don’t see You. You are invisible, inaccessible to our sense of vision. Nor can I apprehend You by my hearing. My five senses betray me. How, then, should I fix my attention on Your face?

They say the only approach to this is through faith. But my own faith is weak and pallid.

Do You see then, God, how hard this attempt is for me? That’s why I dare ask You for forgiveness, if so often, for allotting so short a time for prayer, and even then in that time my mind races incessantly here and there, while my soul is besieged by and yields to a whole crowd of things that are completely foreign to prayer.

Empower my faith, O mighty God. Grant me the great gift of feeling Your Presence at the time of prayer.

Show Your face to Your servant. Then, I know, the confusion in my thoughts will cease and will stop running toward external things. My soul will be in the clear and beyond any fogginess; its eye will meet the light of Your face, and will be captivated by it.

Oh, that You would have given me this gift! How much more I would have been able to love You then. And how much better would I have prayed...