Prayer of Jesus

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The Prayer of Jesus - Prayer of the Heart - Daily Prayers & Blessings

The Jesus Prayer, also known as The Prayer, is a short formulaic prayer esteemed and advocated especially within the Eastern churches: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." The prayer has been widely taught and discussed throughout the history of the Orthodox Church.

‘Lord, teach us to pray.’ (Lk 11:1), the apostles said to Jesus. It is a request that all of us make to God. How are we to enter into the mystery of living prayer? How can we advance from prayer repeated by our lips – from prayer as an external act – to prayer that is part of our inner being, a true union of our mind and heart with the Holy Trinity? How can we make prayer not merely something that we do, but something that we are? For that is what the world needs: not persons who say prayers from time to time, but persons who are prayer all the time.

When I was about twelve years old, I heard a story in a sermon that I have never forgotten. It is, I believe, a story recounted by the Curé d’Ars, but the preacher did not mention his name. Once there was an old man who spent several hours each day in church. ‘What are you doing there?’ his friends inquired. ‘I’m praying,’ he replied. ‘Praying!’ they exclaimed. ‘There must be a great many things that you want to ask from God.’ With some indignation the old man responded, ‘I’m not asking God for anything.’ ‘What are you doing, then?’ they said. And the old man replied, ‘I just sit and look at God, and God sits and looks at me.’

At the age of twelve, I thought that an admirable description of prayer, and I still think so today. But how are we to acquire prayer in this deep sense, prayer of simple gazing, prayer in which there is a personal encounter between myself and God? How shall we begin?

In answer to the appeal of his disciples, ‘Teach us to pray’, Christ gave them the Lord’s Prayer; and this is indeed the model for all our praying. Yet, next to the Lord’s Prayer used by Christians everywhere, there is a further way of praying that is particularly commended within the Orthodox Church to all who seek living, inner prayer; and that is the Jesus Prayer. This is a short invocation, frequently repeated, most commonly in the form ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.’ ‘The brethren of Egypt’, said St Augustine concerning the early monks, ‘offer frequent prayers that are very brief and suddenly shot forth.’

The Prayer of Jesus is precisely such an ‘arrow prayer’. Another ‘arrow prayer’, used, for example, in the movement of Fr John Main, is the phrase Maranatha, ‘Our Lord, come’ (1 Co 16:22). The Prayer of Jesus differs from this in being centred specifically on the Holy Name ‘Jesus’, and therein lies its distinctive value. Used faithfully, as a regular part of our life in Christ, the Jesus Prayer can indeed bring us to the sense of the Divine Presence of which the old man spoke: ‘I just sit and look at God…’

The experience of solitude and the intimate search for God in one’s own heart lead man to silence. In that void of thoughts, calm the cravings and calm the body, illuminate the Presence that has always been sought. Historical eremitism finds its root in this yearning for eternity and freedom from this very world. Paradise is present right now in the interior of the hermit, who by this very fact transfigures the world with his gaze. This loneliness of the heart is not necessarily due to the separation of men but to a life attentive to the divine presence, in any circumstance. This is also how the urban hermits live, who in their anonymous silence keep alive the original spirit of the first Christian communities; as close to Christ as they are away from all.