The Jesus Prayer (Recitation Pt 3)

The history and use of this powerful prayer

My relationship with the Jesus Prayer began when I read the book, The Way of the Pilgrim. It’s a delightful story of a peasant who discovered the prayer, then devoted his life to spreading the practice and power of it through provincial Russia. The author, who wrote the book in the late 1800’s and remains anonymous, used the prayer as a kind of spiritual incantation. He literally just walked around Russia, praying the prayer, teaching about the prayer, and performing miracles with the prayer.

My personal theory is that The Way of the Pilgrim is fictional, and that it may have been an indictment against the lumbering and ineffective clergy in the Russian Orthodox Church of that era. (Father Zosima plays a similar role in The Brothers Karamazov, written about the same time.) Either way, this book popularized the Jesus Prayer among the common people of the Orthodox Church, and introduced it to spiritual wanderers like myself.

Delightful stories aside, the Jesus Prayer is incredibly important in the history of Christian spirituality. It is also profoundly biblical, ancient, and useful for today.

The Jesus Prayer

The prayer has many variations, but the most familiar is:

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

Fragments of the prayer can be found throughout the New Testament, but it is primarily rooted in two prayers from Luke 18. The first is the tax collector who stood at a distance and prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Lk 18:13) The second comes from the exchange between Jesus and a blind beggar. As Jesus made his way to Jericho, the beggar cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Lk 18:38)

Whenever I pray the Jesus Prayer, I often feel the urgency of the blind man. He cried out to God by asking Jesus not to pass him by. Something about that scene captures my imagination and sets the tone for my use of the prayer. I don’t imagine myself in his shoes, but I do feel that I am the inheritor of his desperate search and need for God.

An Ancient Prayer

Besides Scripture, the Jesus Prayer dates back to the earliest days of Christian monasticism. The very first monks used it in the early 400’s, when they pursued a life of contemplation in the deserts of Upper Egypt. It has even been found inscribed on a wall among the ruins of some nameless monk’s cell. But the prayer didn’t stay in Egypt. It became the fundamental ingredient to the spirituality practiced by the monks on Mount Athos, a reclusive peninsula in modern Greece that is populated by hermits and Orthodox monasteries.

Those ancient Egyptian monks prayed the Psalms, of course, but the Jesus Prayer was a tool they used to bury prayer deep into their hearts. They called it the prayer of the heart. The idea was that constantly meditating on this simple prayer would make prayer unconscious and ongoing. It was how they hoped to achieve Paul’s admonition to be constant in prayer (Rom 12:12; 1Thes 5:17). They would also use the Jesus Prayer, their posture, and their breath to enter a mystical state of consciousness. Thus Christian mysticism was born.

Full disclosure, the mystique of the Jesus Prayer was what originally appealed to me: the monks of Egypt and Mount Athos, the anonymous spiritual writings by a Russian peasant, and the hope of a mystical experience. I was infatuated with the prayer. I orbited around it, but rarely devoted myself to humbly praying it. I thought I was praying because I read the works, knew the history, and was in love with the idea of it. When I talk about wasting years trying to be a contemplative Christian, it is this that I’m referring to.

A Useful Prayer

My relationship with the Jesus Prayer is now, thankfully, more healthy. It is the prayer I pray most often, mostly because it’s so flexible. Much like the psalter, it provides a script that can guide our hearts to God. Unlike the psalter, the Jesus Prayer is so simple that we can use it in two, very different ways.

First, it is portable. It is a great prayer when you have dull moments to fill. Sitting at stoplights or on the subway, this prayer can slip neatly into your daily life and provide you with a moment of connection with God. Think of the Jesus Prayer as a country path. Nothing about it is mystical, and it holds no power in itself, but it points in a great direction. You can step onto that path and walk that direction anytime you want, for as long or as short as you like.

Second, is the contemplative use. Because it’s simple, this prayer can direct you to God, but it can also gently fade into the background as you sit at the feet of your Lord. I use it daily for this purpose. I connect my breath to the words and it becomes a powerful way to concentrate on God. I inhale with, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God. I exhale with, Have mercy on me, a sinner. I usually just think of the words, but I sometimes mouth them or even speak them out loud. Occasionally, I shorten it: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Regardless, I always continue to breathe slowly, and tether my heart and mind to God.

That’s the real purpose of this prayer: connecting to God. There is nothing special about the prayer itself, and I have never had what I would call a mystical experience. Those monks were starving themselves and meditating for hours. Anyone who does that will experience something mystical, whether they believe in God or not. That’s not the point. The point is that we get to sit at the Lord’s feet and adore him. That is the true mystery.

The Jesus Prayer is close to my heart because it charts the course of my romance with the Christian religion but, far more importantly, it is a place where God and I have routinely met. When I first started praying it, I was veering far outside the evangelical norm, but that was thirty years ago and things have changed. I hope you can utilize it without feeling weird. I also hope that, if you are like me, you can set aside the romance in order to actually fall in love with God.