The Jesus Prayer

Met­ro­pol­i­tan An­thony Bloom

Those who have read The way of a Pil­grim are fa­mil­iar with the ex­pres­sion The Jesus Prayer. It refers to a short prayer the words of which are: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sin­ner", con­stantly re­peated. The Way of a Pil­grim is the story of a man who wanted to learn to pray con­stantly (1Фес. 5:17). As the man whose ex­pe­ri­ence is being re­lated is a pil­grim, a great many of his psy­cho­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics, and the way in which he learned and ap­plied the prayer, were con­di­tioned by the fact that he lived in a cer­tain way, which makes the book less uni­ver­sally ap­plic­a­ble than it could be; and yet it is the best pos­si­ble in­tro­duc­tion to this prayer, which is one of the great­est trea­sures of the Or­tho­dox Church.

The prayer is pro­foundly rooted in the spirit of the gospel, and it is not in vain that the great teach­ers of Or­tho­doxy have al­ways in­sisted on the fact that the Jesus Prayer sums up the whole of the gospel. This is why the Jesus Prayer can only be used in its fullest sense if the per­son who uses it be­longs to the gospel, is a mem­ber of the Church of Christ.

All the mes­sages of the gospel, and more than the mes­sages, the re­al­ity of the gospel, is con­tained in the name, in the Per­son of Jesus. If you take the first half of the prayer you will see how it ex­presses our faith in the Lord: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God". At the heart we find the name of Jesus; it is the name be­fore whom every knee shall bow (Ис. 45:3), and when we pro­nounce it we af­firm the his­tor­i­cal event of the in­car­na­tion. We af­firm that God, the Word of God, co-eter­nal with the fa­ther, be­came man, and that the full­ness of the God­head dwelt in our midst (Кол. 2:9) bod­ily in his Per­son.

To see in the man of Galilee, in the prophet of Is­rael, the in­car­nate Word of God, God be­come man, we must be guided by the spirit, be­cause it is the spirit of God who re­veals to us both the in­car­na­tion and the lord­ship of Christ. We call him Christ, and we af­firm thereby that in him were ful­filled the prophe­cies of the Old Tes­ta­ment. To af­firm that Jesus is the Christ im­plies that the whole his­tory of the Old Tes­ta­ment is ours, that we ac­cept it as the truth of God. We call him Son of God, be­cause we know that the Mes­siah ex­pected by the Jews, the man who was called "Son of David" by Bar­ti­maeus, is the in­car­nate Son of God. These words sum up all we know, all we be­lieve about Jesus Christ, from the Old Tes­ta­ment to the New, and from the ex­pe­ri­ence of the Church through the ages. In these few words we make a com­plete and per­fect pro­fes­sion of faith.

But it is not enough to make this pro­fes­sion of faith; it is not enough to be­lieve. The dev­ils also be­lieve and trem­ble (James 2:I9). Faith is not suf­fi­cient to work sal­va­tion, it must lead to the right re­la­tion­ship with God; and so, hav­ing pro­fessed, in its in­tegrity, sharply and clearly, our faith in the Lord­ship and in the Per­son, in the his­toric­ity and in the di­vin­ity of Christ, we put our­selves face to face with Him, in the right state of mind: "Have mercy on me, a sin­ner".

These words "have mercy" are used in all the Chris­t­ian Churches and, in Or­tho­doxy, they are the re­sponse of the peo­ple to all the pe­ti­tions sug­gested by the priest. Our mod­ern trans­la­tion "have mercy" is a lim­ited and in­suf­fi­cient one. The Greek word which we find in the gospel and in the early litur­gies is elei­son. Elei­son is of the same root as elaion, which means olive tree and the oil from it. If we look up the Old and New Tes­ta­ment in search of the pas­sages con­nected with this basic idea, we will find it de­scribed in a va­ri­ety of para­bles and events which allow us to form a com­plete idea of the mean­ing of the word. We find the image of the olive tree in Gen­e­sis. After the flood Noah sends birds, one after the other, to find out whether there is any dry land or not, and one of them, a dove - and it is sig­nif­i­cant that it is a dove - brings back a small twig of olive. This twig con­veys to Noah and to all with him in the ark the news that the wrath of God has ceased, that God is now of­fer­ing man a fresh op­por­tu­nity. All those who are in the ark will be able to set­tle again on firm ground and make an at­tempt to live, and never more per­haps, if they can help it, un­dergo the wrath of God.

In the New Tes­ta­ment, in the para­ble of the good Samar­i­tan, olive oil is poured to soothe and to heal. In the anoint­ing of kings and priests in the Old Tes­ta­ment, it is again oil that is poured on the head as an image of the grace of God that comes down and flows on them (Пс. 133:2) giv­ing them new power to ful­fil what is be­yond human ca­pa­bil­i­ties. The king is to stand on the thresh­old, be­tween the will of men and the will of God, and he is called to lead his peo­ple to the ful­fil­ment of God's will; the priest also stands on that thresh­old, to pro­claim the will of God and to do even more: to act for God, to pro­nounce God's de­crees and to apply God's de­ci­sion.

The oil speaks first of all of the end of the wrath of God, of the peace which God of­fers to the peo­ple who have of­fended against him; fur­ther it speaks of God heal­ing us in order that we should be able to live and be­come what we are called to be; and as he knows that we are not ca­pa­ble with our own strength of ful­fill­ing ei­ther his will or the laws of our own cre­ated na­ture, he pours his grace abun­dantly on us (Рим. 5:20). He gives us power to do what we could not oth­er­wise do.

The words milost and pomiluy in Slavonic have the same root as those which ex­press ten­der­ness, en­dear­ing, and when we use the words elei­son, "have mercy on us", pomiluy, we are not just ask­ing God to save us from His wrath - we are ask­ing for love.

If we turn back to the words of the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sin­ner", we see that the first words ex­press with ex­act­ness and in­tegrity the gospel faith in Christ, the his­tor­i­cal in­car­na­tion of the Word of God; and the end of the prayer ex­presses all the com­plex rich re­la­tion­ships of love that exist be­tween God and his crea­tures.

The Jesus Prayer is known to in­nu­mer­able Or­tho­dox, ei­ther as a rule of prayer or in ad­di­tion to it, as a form of de­vo­tion, a short focal point that can be used at any mo­ment, what­ever the sit­u­a­tion.

Nu­mer­ous writ­ers have men­tioned the phys­i­cal as­pects of the prayer, the breath­ing ex­er­cises, the at­ten­tion which is paid to the beat­ing of the heart and a num­ber of other minor fea­tures. The Philokalia is full of de­tailed in­struc­tions about the prayer of the heart, even with ref­er­ences to the Sufi tech­nique. An­cient and mod­ern Fa­thers have dealt with the sub­ject, al­ways com­ing to the same con­clu­sion: never to at­tempt the phys­i­cal ex­er­cises with­out strict guid­ance by a spir­i­tual fa­ther.

What is of gen­eral use, and God given, is the ac­tual pray­ing, the rep­e­ti­tion of the words, with­out any phys­i­cal en­deav­our - not even move­ments of the tongue - and which can be used sys­tem­at­i­cally to achieve an inner trans­for­ma­tion. More than any other prayer, the Jesus Prayer aims at bring­ing us to stand in God's pres­ence with no other thought but the mir­a­cle of our stand­ing there and God with us, be­cause in the use of the Jesus Prayer there is noth­ing and no one ex­cept God and us.

The use of the prayer is dual, it is an act of wor­ship as is every prayer, and on the as­ceti­cal level, it is a focus that al­lows us to keep our at­ten­tion still in the pres­ence of God.

It is a very com­pan­ion­able prayer, a friendly one, al­ways at hand and very in­di­vid­ual in spite of its mo­not­o­nous rep­e­ti­tions. Whether in joy or in sor­row, it is, when it has be­come ha­bit­ual, a quick­en­ing of the soul, a re­sponse to any call of God. The words of St. Symeon, the New The­olo­gian, apply to all its pos­si­ble ef­fects on us: "Do not worry about what will come next, you will dis­cover it when it comes".

from Liv­ing Prayer