From time to time during our church services we hear the words "LET US ATTEND!" This Is the imperative form of the verb "to attend". In ordinary language we might say "let us pay attention", "let us be attentive.' These are again 'minor words" which are often repeated during our services but which can easily escape our attention. Strange, is it not, that the very words which urge us to be attentive should escape our attention. These are minor words but words of great meaning and responsibility.

Attentiveness is one of the important qualities even in our everyday life. From childhood we have been taught to pay attention - by parents, by teachers, by superiors. Yet it is not always easy to pay attention. Our minds tend to wander, to be forgetful. It is difficult to force oneself to be attentive. Church recognizes this weakness and so tells us every now and again "LET US ATTEND", let us pay attention, be attentive.

To be attentive means to make our minds and memories concentrate on and be in harmony with what we hear. And more importantly, to attune our hearts so that nothing that happens in the church can slip by them. To pay attention means to listen and to hear, to look and to see. To pay attention means to free oneself from all thoughts and considerations, "all worldly cares." To pay attention means to open one's mind, one's soul and one's heart to all those rays of wisdom which flow to us from the Light of Reason, from the Sun of Truth, from Christ.

It also means to pay attention to everything in which the Church lovingly submerges us, but also to each other, to our neighbors, to their needs, so that we may indeed "with one mouth and one heart" glorify God in Holy Trinity. Christ has said "wherever two or three gather together in My name, I am among them." But He can be among them only if these "two or three" and the entire Church are linked by the Union of Love the very basis of which is the union of ATTENTION.

It is good to remember these words "LET US ATTEND" and to repeat them in one's spirit as we journey through life. As we look at the beauty of God's world, God's creation, it is good to tell oneself "LET US ATTEND." How much evil, pain, irritation, hostility, untruth would begin to disappear from our lives, from our relations with others, if we carry these words beyond the walls of our churches and used them as a lantern as a torch, to shed light on each step we take, each movement we make, each person we meet.