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For non believers:
''O Master, Lord our God, call to Thy holy Illumination Thy children who see Thee not and who believe Thee not, and grant them great grace to be renewed unto life everlasting.''
== Thoughts on Orthodox Witnessing ==
"...we have to understand that faith is God's gift. Just as a person can be born blind, or with very good vision and good hearing, so it is with faith, it's a gift of God. If this gift is given to you then value it, so you may not loose it. If a person doesn't have that gift, we are most likely left to pray for such people, so that the Lord may bestow upon them that gift. You cannot convince a person that God exists, it's not some theorem that can logically be proven. And so, brothers and sisters, we have to pray and God will open people's eyes and they will see."
"People want to find God, but sometimes we push them away from the Holy Church with our false conservatism. When we say that 'Well if God wanted, these people would come to Church on their own' and try to relax ourselves with that, this is wrong. We need to go around the world and spread the good news.
The Church's sermon goes in two directions: to one group of people for salvation, to the others in witness. It goes for salvation to those who accept this and become good Christians. In witness it goes for those who do not accept it, so that during the last judgement they are told: you saw and heard, but did not accept. Therefore our sermon is never in vain. It's either for salvation or in witness."
Fr. Oleg Stenayev, Head of the A.V. Khomiakov Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Non-Traditional Religions and Help to Drug Abusers (Moscow). Radio Radonezh, "On God's Vision"
"...If a person has left the faith and Church, then one can truly help them through prayer more than through anything else. Concerning the actual prayer itself, one can more accurately suggest: a heartful prayer, a prayer that doesn't weaken, which doesn't loose hope in a week, month, or years, when we are not leaving the person one on one with their inner weaknesses and problems. If we continue to stand for him in this way before God, then this will resonate in his soul sooner or later."
Fr. Maxim Kozlov, Church of the Holy Martyr Tatiana, Moscow State University.
== Resources ==
