Prayers/The Jesus Prayer

Jesus in prayer

'The more rain falls on the earth, the softer it makes it; similarly, Christ's holy name gladdens the earth of our heart the more we call upon it.'
-St. Hesychois the Priest, from the Philokalia

The Prayer (Background/ Intro)

'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

The Prayer goes back to the New Testament and has had a long, traditional use. The method of contemplation based upon the Holy Name is attributed to St. Simeon, called the "New Theologian" (949-1022). When he was 14 years old, St. Simeon had a vision of heavenly light in which he seemed to be separated from his body. Amazed, and overcome with an overpowering joy, he felt a consuming humility, and cried, borrowing the Publican's prayer (Luke 18:13), "Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me." Long after the vision had disappeared, the great joy returned to St. Simeon each time he repeated the prayer; and he taught his disciples to worship likewise. The prayer evolved into its expanded form: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner." In this guise it has come down to us frown generation to generation of pious monks and laymen.

The invocation of the Holy Name is not peculiar to the Orthodox Church but is used by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Protestants, though to a lesser degree. On Mount Sinai and Athos the monks worked out a whole system of contemplation based upon this simple prayer, practiced in complete silence. These monks came to be known as "Quietists" (in Greek: "Hesychasts").

St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), the last of the great Church Fathers, became the exponent of the Hesychasts. He won, after a long drawn out battle, an irrefutable place for the Jesus Prayer and the Quietists within the Church.

The Prayer is held to be so outstandingly spiritual because it is focused wholly on Jesus: all thoughts, striving, hope, faith and love are outpoured in devotion to God the Son.

Jesus taught that all impetus, good and bad, originates in men's hearts. "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh" (Luke 6:45).

All roads that lead to God are beset with pitfalls because the enemy ( Satan ) ever lies in wait to trip us up. In "mystical prayer" the temptations we encounter exceed all others in danger; Someone said that "mysticism started in mist and ended in schism"; this cynical remark, spoken by an unbeliever, has a certain truth in it. Mysticism is of real spiritual value only when it is practiced with absolute sobriety.

At one time a controversy arose concerning certain Quietists who fell into excessive acts of piety and fasting because they lost the sense of moderation upon which our Church lays so great a value. We need not dwell upon misuses of the Jesus Prayer, except to realize that all exaggerations are harmful and that we should at all times use self-restraint. "Practice of the Jesus Prayer is the traditional fulfillment of the injunction of the Apostle Paul to 'pray always:' it has nothing to do with the mysticism which is the heritage of pagan ancestry." The Jesus Prayer can be used for worship and petition; as intercession, invocation, adoration, and as thanksgiving. It is a means by which we lay all that is in our hearts, both for God and man, at the feet of Jesus. It is a means of communion with God and with all those who pray. The fact that we can train our hearts to go on praying even when we sleep, keeps us uninterruptedly within the community of prayer. This is no fanciful statement; many have experienced this life-giving fact. We cannot, of course, attain this continuity of prayer all at once, but it is achievable; for all that is worthwhile we must ". . . run with patience the race that is set before us . . ." (Hebrews 12:1).

The Prayer of the Heart

To cry out to God with adept longing is known to most Christians as the act of prayer: to bring before Him all one's sorrows, all one's joys, all one's thankfulness and all one's needs. Prayer is a divine dialogue between humanity and its Creator, in which the Maker of All hears the voice of that which His hands have formed, and responds in loving compassion to that voice. Such is indeed a worthy and valid form of prayer.

Yet such is not the only form of prayer. There is another manner in which the work of creation comes before his God, by which each human person is able to behold God face to face, to draw closer unto Him in perfect union and communion. It is a prayer beyond mere adoration, beyond supplication, beyond words themselves. It is truly worldess prayer, wrought from the heart itself, wherein the whole person communes with God directly, in purity, and realizes his salvation. Such prayer is that which the Fathers call the prayer of the heart, or the Jesus Prayer.

It was Paul, Apostle of Christ, who had instructed the faithful at Thessaloniki and throughout the world to 'pray without ceasing' (1 Thess 5.17). Over a millennium later, a poor pilgrim on the Russian steppe wandered into a Sunday Liturgy and heard these words proclaimed. The command pierced him to the core. How does one pray without ceasing? If prayer is conversation or dialogue, as he had long understood it to be, how could it be possible to engage in such an activity at all times, through all the events of daily life and social interaction?

The pilgrim's story is told in the classic work of Russian folk lore, The Way of the Pilgrim. His engagement in finding an answer to this question brought him to the discovery of the Philokalia, the central work on Orthodox spirituality and prayer. With the Scriptures and this collected text in hand, he placed himself under the guidance of an experienced elder and engaged in a struggle to develop inner prayer that would occupy the whole of his life.

Engaging in inner prayer is a task to which every Christian is called. Paul's command to pray without ceasing applies to each Christian today, as much as it did to those in the Church at Thessaloniki. We are called to intimate communion with the Creator of Life, such that there is no moment when our souls and bodies are not enlightened by Him. It was St Evagrios of Pontos who wrote that 'prayer is the communion of the intellect with God,' and it becomes our task to transform our prayer from mere words, mere petitions, to the direct communion of the depths of our hearts and beings with God Himself.

One of the greatest tools by which the Church has encouraged this transformation in the individual prayers of its faithful has been through use of the Jesus Prayer. Its formula is simple: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' Yet this short phrase is not meant to be an end in and of itself, but rather a tool for a changed life of prayer. Its repetition, frequent and regular, causes the mind and heart to become accustomed to the continual outcry to God, until, in God's good time, one's whole being begins to realize its intimate proximity to God at all times.

Understanding the Jesus Prayer

An Eastern Orthodox Understanding (by Fr. Steven Peter Tsichlis)

THE CHALLENGE OF ST. PAUL

But this approach to the life of prayer has nothing to do with the Christianity of St. Paul, who urges the Christians of first century Thessalonica to "pray without ceasing" (I Thess. 5:1). And in his letter to Rome, the Apostle instructs the Christian community there to "be constant in prayer" (Rom. 12:12). He not only demands unceasing prayer of the Christians in his care, but practices it himself. "We constantly thank God for you" (I Thess. 2:13) he writes in his letter to the Thessalonian community; and he comforts Timothy, his "true child in the faith" (I Tim. 1:2) with the words: "Always I remember you in my prayers" (II Tim. 1:3). In fact, whenever St. Paul speaks of prayer in his letters, two Greek words repeatedly appear: PANTOTE (pantote), which means always; and ADIALEPTOS (adialeptos), meaning without interruption or unceasingly. Prayer is then not merely a part of life which we can conveniently lay aside if something we deem more important comes up; prayer is all of life. Prayer is as essential to our life as breathing. This raises some important questions. How can we be expected to pray all the time? We are, after all, very busy people. Our work, our spouse, our children, school-all place heavy demands upon our time. How can we fit more time for prayer into our already overcrowded lives? These questions and the many others like them which could be asked set up a false dichotomy in our lives as Christians. To pray does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things or to spend time with God in contrast to spending time with our family and friends. Rather, to pray means to think and live our entire life in the Presence of God. As Paul Evdokimov has remarked: "Our whole life, every act and gesture, even a smile must become a hymn or adoration, an offering, a prayer. We must become prayer-prayer incarnate." This is what St. Paul means when he writes to the Corinthians that "whatever you do, do it for the glory of God" (I Cor. 10:31).

THE JESUS PRAYER

In order to enter more deeply into the life of prayer and to come to grips with St. Paul's challenge to pray unceasingly, the Orthodox Tradition offers the Jesus Prayer, which is sometimes called the prayer of the heart. The Jesus Prayer is offered as a means of concentration, as a focal point for our inner life. Though there are both longer and shorter versions, the most frequently used form of the Jesus Prayer is: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." This prayer, in its simplicity and clarity, is rooted in the Scriptures and the new life granted by the Holy Spirit. It is first and foremost a prayer of the Spirit because of the fact that the prayer addresses Jesus as Lord, Christ and Son of God; and as St. Paul tells us, "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (I Cor. 12:3).

THE SCRIPTURAL ROOTS OF THE JESUS PRAYER

The Scriptures give the Jesus Prayer both its concrete form and its theological content. It is rooted in the Scriptures in four ways:

1) In its brevity and simplicity, it is the fulfillment of Jesus' command that "in praying" we are "not to heap up empty phrases as the heathen do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them . . . (Matt. 6:7-8).

2) The Jesus Prayer is rooted in the Name of the Lord. In the Scriptures, the power and glory of God are present in his Name. In the Old Testament to deliberately and attentively invoke God's Name was to place oneself in his Presence. Jesus, whose name in Hebrew means God saves, is the living Word addressed to humanity. Jesus is the final Name of God. Jesus is "the Name which is above all other names" and it is written that "all beings should bend the knee at the Name of Jesus" (Phil. 2:9-10). In this Name devils are cast out (Luke 10:17), prayers are answered (John 14:13-14) and the lame are healed (Acts 3:6-7). The Name of Jesus is unbridled spiritual power.

3) The words of the Jesus Prayer are themselves based on Scriptural texts: (a) the cry of the blind man sitting at the side of the road near Jericho, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me" (Luke 18:38);

(b) the ten lepers who "called to him, 'Jesus, Master, take pity on us' " (Luke 17:13);

and (c) the cry for mercy of the publican, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:14).

4) It is a prayer in which the first step of the spiritual journey is taken: the recognition of our own sinfulness, our essential estrangement from God and the people around us. The Jesus Prayer is a prayer in which we admit our desperate need of a Saviour. For "if we say we have no sin in us, we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth" (I John 1:8).

THE THREE LEVELS OF PRAYER

Because prayer is a living reality, a deeply personal encounter with the living God, it is not to be confined to any given classification or rigid analysis. However, in order to offer some broad, general guidelines for those interested in using the Jesus Prayer to develop their inner life, Theophan the Recluse, a 1 9th century Russian spiritual writer, distinguishes three levels in the saying of the Prayer:

1) It begins as oral prayer or prayer of the lips, a simple recitation which Theophan defines as prayers"'verbal expression and shape." Although very important, this level of prayer is still external to us and thus only the first step, for "the essence or soul of prayer is within a man's mind and heart."

2) As we enter more deeply into prayer, we reach a level at which we begin to pray without distraction. Theophan remarks that at this point, "the mind is focused upon the words" of the Prayer, "speaking them as if they were our own."

3) The third and final level is prayer of the heart. At this stage prayer is no longer something we do but who we are. Such prayer, which is a gift of the Spirit, is to return to the Father as did the prodigal son (Luke 15).

The prayer of the heart is the prayer of adoption, when "God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit that cries 'Abba, Father!' " (Gal. 4:6).

THE FRUITS OF THE JESUS PRAYER

This return to the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit is the goal of all Christian spirituality. It is to be open to the presence of the Kingdom in our midst. The anonymous author of The Way of the Pilgrim reports that the Jesus Prayer has two very concrete effects upon his vision of the world.

First, it transfigures his relationship with the material creation around him; the world becomes transparent, a sign, a means of communicating God's presence. He writes: "When I prayed in my heart, everything around me seemed delightful and marvelous. The trees, the grass, the birds, the air, the light seemed to be telling me that they existed for man's sake, that they witnessed to the love of God for man, that all things prayed to God and sang his praise."

Second, the Prayer transfigures his relationship to his fellow human beings. His relationships are given form within their proper context: the forgiveness and compassion of the crucified and risen Lord. "Again I started off on my wanderings. But now I did not walk along as before, filled with care. The invocation of the Name of Jesus gladdened my way. Everybody was kind to me. If anyone harms me I have only to think, 'How sweet is the Prayer of Jesus!' and the injury and the anger alike pass away and I forget it all."

ENDLESS GROWTH

"Growth in prayer has no end," Theophan informs us. "If this growth ceases, it means that life ceases." The way of the heart is endless because the God whom we seek is infinite in the depths of his glory. The Jesus Prayer is a signpost along the spiritual journey, a journey that all of us must take.

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