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THE JESUS PRAYER
Fr. Steven Peter Tsichlis
Prayer is the basis of our Christian life, the source of our experience of
Jesus as the Risen Lord. Yet how few Christians know how to pray with any depth!
For most of us, prayer means little more than standing in the pews for an hour
or so on Sunday morning or perhaps reciting, in a mechanical fashion, prayers
once learned by rote during childhood. Our prayer life - and thus our life as
Christians - remains, for the most part, at this superficial level.
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" (1 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" (1 Thess. 2:13) he
writes in his letter to the Thessalonian community; and he comforts Timothy, his
"true child in the faith" (1 Tim. 1:2) with the words: "Always I remember you in
my prayers" (2 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, our 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" (1 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" (1 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: 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). 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. The words of the Jesus Prayer are themselves based on
Scriptural texts: 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); the ten lepers
who "called to him, Jesus, Master, take pity on us' " (Luke 17:13); and the cry
for mercy of the publican, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:14). 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" (1 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
19th century Russian spiritual writer, distinguishes three levels in the saying
of the Prayer: 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." 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." 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 15:32). 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 relation ship 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.
APPENDIX
The purpose of this information is merely to introduce the practice of the Jesus
Prayer. The Jesus Prayer cannot be separated from the sacramental life of the
Church and asceticism. The following books are recommended for further study:
The Art of Prayer edited with an introduction by Kallistos Ware (Faber and
Faber: London) 1966 The Power of the Name by Kallistos Ware (SLG Press: Oxford)
1974 The Way of a Pilgrim translated by R. M. French (Seabury Press: New York)
1965 Christ is in our Midst by Father John of New Valaam (St. Vladimirs'
Seminary Press: New York) 1980 The Jesus Prayer by Per-Olof Sjogren (Fortress
Press: Philadelphia) 1975 Prayer of the Heart by George A. Maloney (Ave Maria
Press: Notre Dame) 1980
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