For a secular or churchly person, when turning to God, it is important to adhere to Orthodox church rules. To be heard, prayer must be said with reverence and affection. The main thing for a true Christian is that the thought always corresponds to the words, and the heart answers the words of the prayer.
Gone are the days when the Orthodox Church considered electricity, radio and television and other attributes of technological progress to be the product of the devil. Modern technological innovations are widely penetrated and are actively used in the religious sphere.
In the aspiration of the human spirit to its Creator, such events as the prelaunch blessing of rockets at the cosmodrome, consecrating flights of clergymen with the help of helicopters and quadrocopters, etc., help. texts are unthinkable without computer help.
Representatives of various religious denominations also do not stand aside from the achievements of the era of the digital revolution. The Pope uses Biblezon, a digital tablet built on Android 7 specifically for Catholics. In memory of gadgets intended for followers of Islam (Enmac MQ and BQ Istanbul phones), the translation of the Koran in 29 languages of the world has been loaded. In-Touch Tablets has launched a line of Bible tablets. In the Protestant Church of Hesse and Nassau, the parishioners of the German town of Wittenberg are met by a robot priest.
For Christians in our country today, such religious institutions have been created and are developing as clergy on the Internet, the Orthodox Internet resource "Pravmir.ru", the video channel "Father Will Answer", the virtual online chapel of All Saints, etc. religious holidays, listen to the sermons of priests, get acquainted with Orthodox medicine, etc.
Combination of tradition and progress
With the penetration of high technologies into the spiritual sphere, the church and temple life changes, and the forms of participation of the praying person in the process of his communication with higher powers are transformed. The guide to the world of prayer may well be a computer or telephone. Priest Dimitri Berezin, chairman of the Missionary Department of the Moscow Diocese, said: “Praying is a good and godly deed. Therefore, to use the monitor in order to warm up in oneself the prayerful warmth to the saint of God, to dispose oneself through gazing at his face to prayer - does not contain anything bad in itself. " The church rules do not, and indeed cannot be, any prohibitions about the mp3 format, audiobooks, or other media. After all, the main thing in prayer is not the source of the texts, but the spiritual mood. Therefore, everyone is free to choose the form of the prayer word at their discretion. In addition to the paper versions, the Bible for the eBook EBook has been released. The AppStore and Android have about 10 mobile applications by Orthodox Prayer Book. A special application "iReby" for the iPhone has been created, which allows you to remotely order the performance of prayers in churches - treb. And the YouVersion e-Bible app has hundreds of millions of users.
Today, as in other historical stages (for example, in the era of printing), the church and digital technological innovations are on the same side. But there are certain canons from which the Russian Orthodox Church retreats only as necessary, guided by ideas about what is permissible. This applies to the general trend, as well as visiting temples and communicating with a confessor in confession, where the combination of tradition and progress should be balanced and reasonable.
Unity of form and content
The famous saying of the Apostle Paul says: “Everything is permitted to me, but not everything is useful. Everything is permitted to me, but nothing should possess me. " Therefore, the enthusiasm for technical means in the church should not be excessive. According to Archimandrite Ambrose (Yurasov): "And there is no harm to those who have prayer to God in the first place, and then work with these technical means." The most important rule of appeal to higher powers with the help of prayer should be observed. Do it without fuss, with reverence and a spirit of mind, passing every word "through" yourself. As the Holy Fathers said, one must learn to "enclose the mind in the words of prayer." It is such a prayer that is considered pronounced according to church rules and serves as an indicator of a person's spiritual life.
But how and where to pray - everyone decides for himself. In church or outdoors, at home or on the road, in front of images or at the monitor screen, reading a prayer while standing or sitting, aloud or to oneself, by heart or from a piece of paper or from electronic media. All this is secondary. The main thing is the spiritual attitude and sincerity with which we turn to God.
