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Course 3 · Lesson 3.3

The Jesus Prayer: its words, its history and its Eastern setting

10 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 3 outline

Module 1: The Idea of a Rule

  1. What a rule of life is, and what it is for
  2. Pachomius and the first written rule
  3. Basil of Caesarea and his Rules
  4. Benedict: the Rule as a school of the Lord’s service
  5. Adapting a monastic rule for ordinary life

Module 2: The Hours and the Psalms

  1. Origins of fixed-hour prayer in Jewish and early Christian practice
  2. The Divine Office in the West and the hours in the East
  3. How to pray the Psalms: lament, praise, trust, wisdom and imprecation
  4. Building a simple office for one person

Module 3: Scripture and the Prayer of the Heart

  1. Lectio divina: reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation
  2. Meditative reading compared with study and with Ignatian imaginative prayer
  3. The Jesus Prayer: its words, its history and its Eastern setting
  4. Practicing the prayer of the heart, with its cautions

Module 4: Fasting, Giving, Rest and the Year

  1. Fasting in Scripture and tradition, and its safe limits
  2. Almsgiving and care for the poor
  3. Sabbath rest and the Lord’s Day: how traditions differ
  4. The church year: Advent to Pentecost and the ordinary weeks

Module 5: Conscience, Confession and Worship Alone

  1. Examination of conscience: methods old and new
  2. Confession in the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions
  3. Repentance, confession to God and to a trusted person when no minister is available
  4. What worship alone can include: prayer, Scripture, song, the hours
  5. What the traditions say requires a church or ordained minister

Module 6: Seasons and Ordinary Duties

  1. Silence as a discipline and its dangers
  2. Planning a day, a weekend and a longer retreat
  3. Work as part of the rule: ora et labora
  4. Hospitality, family and neighbor

Module 7: Dryness, Perseverance and Review

  1. Dryness and the dark night: what the tradition teaches
  2. Acedia: Evagrius, Cassian and the noonday demon
  3. Doubt and perseverance
  4. Accountability for a rule of life
  5. Reviewing and revising a rule at thirty days, ninety days and one year

All courses

Program / Course 3: The Rule of Life / Lesson 3.3

What you will learn

  • State the words of the Jesus Prayer and name the Scripture behind them.
  • Trace its history from the desert tradition to the Philokalia.
  • Explain what hesychasm is and why it is tied to Mount Athos.
  • Describe how the Orthodox Church frames the prayer and how others have received it.

The big idea

The Jesus Prayer is a short prayer, usually Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, repeated slowly and with attention. It grows from the Gospel cries for mercy, from the New Testament honor given to the name of Jesus, and from the desert tradition of short, continual prayer. It reached its fullest development in the Orthodox East, especially among the hesychasts of Mount Athos, and has since been adopted by many Western Christians. The tradition sets it within repentance, church life and guidance.

Key terms

Jesus Prayer
A short prayer addressed to Jesus, asking mercy, repeated as a way of continual prayer.
Hesychasm
A tradition of stillness and inner prayer in the Christian East, from the Greek word hesychia, meaning quiet or stillness.
Philokalia
A collection of writings by Eastern monastic authors on prayer and watchfulness, published in Greek in 1782 and later translated.
Mount Athos
A peninsula in northern Greece with a long-standing Orthodox monastic community.
Starets
In the Russian tradition, a spiritual elder, a monk or priest who guides others in prayer.
Prayer rope
A knotted cord used to count repetitions of the prayer. It is not a magic object but a tool for keeping count.

Background

The words of the prayer gather several strands of the New Testament. The tax collector in Luke 18:13 says, God be merciful to me a sinner. Bartimaeus, the blind man, cries out, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me (Mark 10:47). The name of Jesus is honored in Philippians 2:10-11 and Acts 4:12. The prayer joins these in a short form. The earliest evidence for its exact wording is later than the New Testament, and the prayer took the form familiar today over several centuries.

The desert tradition already valued short prayers. In his tenth Conference, John Cassian reports the advice of an Egyptian elder to use a single verse, O God, make speed to save me, as a continual prayer. Later Eastern writers moved to the name of Jesus. Diadochus of Photike in the fifth century recommended remembering Jesus, and John Climacus in the seventh wrote of uniting the remembrance of Jesus with the breath. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the practice was central among monks on Mount Athos and in Sinai.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The words and their meaning

The prayer in its usual form has four parts. It addresses Jesus as Lord and Christ and Son of God, a confession of faith. It asks for mercy, the cry of the tax collector and the blind man. It names the speaker as a sinner, not to wallow in guilt but to stand honestly. Variations exist. Some shorten it to Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Others add the plural, have mercy on us, or on the world.

The Eastern tradition holds that the name of Jesus is not a magic formula. The prayer is a cry of trust, and the name carries the presence and power of the one who bears it, in the sense that the name stands for the person.

Step 2: Hesychasm and Athos

Hesychasm is the tradition of stillness. Its writers taught that the mind should be gathered into the heart and kept watchful, with the name of Jesus as a guard. In the fourteenth century, Gregory Palamas, a monk of Athos and later archbishop of Thessalonica, defended the hesychasts against the scholar Barlaam of Calabria, who held that their claim to experience God was mistaken. Church councils in Constantinople in the 1340s sided with Palamas.

The controversy produced Palamas’s teaching that God is unknowable in his essence but known in his energies. Orthodox Christians treat this as part of their theology. Catholics and Protestants differ in their judgments, and the question is among the matters on which East and West have not agreed. A beginner does not need to settle it to learn from the prayer.

Step 3: The Philokalia and the pilgrim

In 1782 Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain and Macarius of Corinth published the Philokalia in Venice. It gathers writings from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries on prayer, watchfulness and the Jesus Prayer. It was translated into Slavonic and Russian and spread to monks and laity.

A Russian text of the nineteenth century, The Way of a Pilgrim, tells of a wanderer who learns the prayer from an elder and uses it throughout his travels. The book is a story and not a manual. It introduced the prayer to many readers in the West in the twentieth century. Its details should not be treated as an instruction method.

Step 4: Reception outside the East

Catholics and Protestants have also taken up the Jesus Prayer. Some Catholic writers have recommended it, while a 1989 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Christian meditation cautioned against borrowing methods from other religions without discernment, and spoke positively of the Eastern Christian tradition. Some Protestants use it. Others object that Matthew 6:7 forbids vain repetitions. Defenders reply that Jesus condemned heathen babbling that seeks to wear God down, and that a prayer from the heart is not vain, even when repeated.

These disputes reflect the larger differences between traditions. Anyone who takes up the prayer should read what their own tradition says.

  1. Which part of the prayer do I find hardest to say sincerely: the name, the request for mercy or the word sinner?
  2. Why might the church have valued a short prayer more than a long one in certain seasons?
  3. How does repetition help or hinder my attention?
  4. What does it mean for a name to carry presence?
  5. How does the cry of Bartimaeus differ from my ordinary prayers?
  6. Who in my tradition has written about this kind of prayer, and have I read them?

Examples

The prayer in the day

A delivery driver says the prayer quietly at red lights and before entering a house. It takes a few seconds each time, and he finds that he is less hurried. (A constructed example.)

The prayer at night

A woman who wakes at 3:00 a.m. and cannot sleep says the prayer slowly instead of reviewing her worries. Some nights she falls asleep and some she does not, but the hour is quieter. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

The Orthodox view

Orthodox Christians treat the Jesus Prayer as a treasure of their tradition, part of the life of repentance, the sacraments and obedience to a spiritual father. They teach that it is not a technique to produce experiences but a way of entering into constant remembrance of God.

The Catholic view

Catholics treat the Jesus Prayer as a legitimate prayer and some, including Catholic writers on spirituality, recommend it. The Church urges discernment about methods of meditation and reminds believers that Christian prayer is a personal dialogue with God.

The Protestant view

Protestant views vary. Some value the prayer as a Scripture-based petition. Others, citing Matthew 6:7, caution against repetition, or prefer to pray in free words. Most agree that a prayer addressed to Christ in faith is legitimate.

The scholarly view

Historians of Eastern Christianity note that the form of the prayer developed gradually, and that its connection with breathing and bodily posture is late. They debate how much hesychasm drew on earlier sources such as Evagrius and Macarius.

Why it matters

The Jesus Prayer is one of the best known forms of Christian short prayer, and a beginner will meet it in books and conversations. Understanding its origins protects against two errors: treating it as an exotic technique cut off from its church, and dismissing it as empty repetition. It also fits easily into a rule of life, since it asks for no time except attention.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The Jesus Prayer is a mantra borrowed from Eastern religions.

Correction: It is a Christian prayer rooted in the Gospels and developed by Christian monks in Egypt, Sinai and Athos. Its method of repetition is different from non-Christian mantras because it is addressed to a person.

Misunderstanding: The prayer works because of the exact words.

Correction: Orthodox teachers hold that the prayer is a cry of trust, not a formula. Variations exist and the words have no power apart from faith.

Misunderstanding: The Way of a Pilgrim is a how-to manual.

Correction: It is a story, probably composed in the nineteenth century, and not a reliable manual. A guide to the practice should be a living teacher or a trusted book of the tradition.

Knowledge check

What are the words of the Jesus Prayer and where do they come from?

The usual form is Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. It draws on the cry of the tax collector in Luke 18:13, the cry of Bartimaeus in Mark 10:47 and the New Testament honor given to the name of Jesus. The exact wording developed over several centuries.

What is hesychasm?

Hesychasm is the Eastern Christian tradition of stillness, from the Greek hesychia. It teaches the gathering of the mind into the heart and the keeping of watch, with the name of Jesus as a guard. It flourished among monks on Mount Athos and was defended by Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century.

What is the Philokalia?

A collection of Eastern monastic writings on prayer and watchfulness from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, compiled by Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain and Macarius of Corinth and published in Venice in 1782. It spread the Jesus Prayer among Russians and was later translated into Western languages.

Why do some Protestants have reservations about the prayer?

Some cite Matthew 6:7, which warns against vain repetitions, and prefer free prayer. Defenders reply that Jesus condemned babbling meant to wear God down, not prayer from the heart. Others value the prayer because it is addressed to Christ and based in Scripture.

Think it through

  1. Is there a short prayer from Scripture that you already use?
  2. What do you think about the idea that a name carries presence?
  3. What might you want to ask a guide before taking up the prayer?

Independent assignment

The roots of the prayer

In your notebook, write 300 to 450 words. Read Luke 18:9-14 and Mark 10:46-52. Write what each person asks, how they ask, and what the story says about the posture of the one praying. Then write the Jesus Prayer by hand and mark each phrase with the scripture it recalls. Do not yet practice the prayer for long periods. Do not post this.

Further study