Living and Breathing the Jesus Prayer

Many years ago, I had a discussion with an Anglican priest about the Charismatic Renewal that swept through the Church in the 1970’s.  As we reminisced about the ‘good old days,’ (things always look better in the rear-view mirror), he asked me, “Are you familiar with the Jesus Prayer?”

Not wanting to display my Pentecostal ignorance, I said “Yes.”  I assumed that he was referring to the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name…” although I had never heard it called ‘the Jesus Prayer’ before.

It was only afterwards, whilst researching a dissertation on Eastern Orthodoxy, that I discovered that the Jesus Prayer was, in fact, an ancient prayer of spiritual contemplation first used in the 4th and 5th centuries by the monastic Desert Fathers and Mothers of Egypt.  (French archaeologist and Syriac scholar, Antoine Guillaumont, discovered the Jesus Prayer inscribed on the walls of a ruined cell in the monastic community of Kellia in Lower Egypt).   

A standard form of the Jesus Prayer is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Templates of the Jesus Prayer can be found in each of the Synoptic Gospels.  For example, in the gospel of Luke the tax collector prays, “God, be merciful to me a sinner” (18.13).  In the gospel of Matthew, a woman of Canaan cries out, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David!  My daughter is severely demon-possessed” (15.22).  And in the gospel of Mark, blind Bartimaeus exclaims, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” (10.47).

In effect, any prayer that invokes the name of Jesus, and acknowledges His power and one’s own need, is a ‘Jesus Prayer.’  However, the Jesus Prayer is more than just a cry for divine help — it is a means of focusing one’s attention on the living Christ, thereby fulfilling the command of the apostle Paul to “pray constantly” (1 Thess 5.17) and to “practice occupying your mind with the things above” (Col 3.2 Williams).

The 4th century Christian monk and ascetic, Evagrius of Pontus, advocated the Jesus Prayer as a means of connection with the risen Lord.  Recounting a meeting with the venerable monk, Macarius of Egypt, he said:

“Tormented by the thoughts and passions of the body, I went to find the Abbot Macarius.  I said to him, ‘My father, give me a word that I may live by it.’  Then Macarius said to me, ‘Attach the rope of the anchor to the rock, and by God’s grace, the ship will cross the diabolic waves of the deceptive sea and the tempest of the darkness of this vain world.’

“I said to him, ‘What is the ship, what is the rope, what is the rock?’  The Abbot Macarius said to me, ‘The boat is your heart: guard it.  The rope is your spirit: attach it to our Lord Jesus Christ who is the rock that has power over all the diabolic waves and surges that the saints are contending with.  For is it not easy to say with each breath: Our Lord Jesus, the Christ, have mercy on me.  I bless you, my Lord Jesus, help me?’”

It is the concept of spiritual attachment that I would like to explore in this article.

The art of drawing near to God

The letter to the Hebrews exhorts us to “draw near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (10.22).  That is good and well, but unfortunately the writer does not tell us precisely ‘how’ to come into God’s immediate presence.  In my opinion, that is more by design than accident.  The letter to the Hebrews, like much of the Bible, is written with an oriental mindset which prizes experiential knowledge above Aristotelian logic. 

To put it another way, the writer of Hebrews does not present a modulated system or a series of linear steps for approaching God.  First, do this; second, do that; third, do the other…  He appears to assume that his readers will discover for themselves the best way to draw near to God.

Similarly, when counselling Evagrius and the many other monks who sought his advice, the venerable Macarius relied upon his own experience of conversing with God in the desert.  For Macarius, the way to God and the experience of union with God issued from a personal revelation of the Holy Spirit.    

Drawing near to God is an art, not a science.  Like any intimate relationship, it cannot be reduced to a formula or technique.  It involves focusing one’s attention, or as Hebrews says, “fixing one’s gaze” on the Lord, to the exclusion of everything else.  The Jesus Prayer is a valuable tool that frees one’s mind from unnecessary thoughts and sharpens one’s focus on the One who is the source and perfecter of faith (Heb 12.2).

The Jesus Prayer is also known as the ‘Prayer of Contemplation.’  In contrast to transcendental meditation which advocates the emptying of one’s mind and absorption into a state of nothingness, the Jesus Prayer helps to fill one’s heart and mind with a vision of the Saviour.

Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware refers to the Jesus Prayer as a “prayer of simple gazing, prayer in which there is a personal encounter between us and God.”  It is Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet, gazing eagerly upon his face, and listening intently to his message (Luke 10.39).  As Kallistos Ware observes, 

“When using the [Jesus] Prayer, we seek to still our imagination.  Instead of calling to mind incidents from the life of Christ, we dwell upon his total and immediate presence.  When visual images occur, we set them aside.  We do not engage in chains of reasoning or a string of resolutions.  We think solely of Jesus himself.”

Orthodox Christians use the term ‘hēsychía’ to denote a state of union with God (theosis) on a level beyond images, concepts, and language.  The word literally means outer and inner silence and peace; and hence, contemplative quiet.  The Jesus Prayer is a key element in the cultivation of inner stillness and God-awareness.    

The 4th century Cappadocian Church Father, Gregory of Nyssa, taught that to encounter God, one must transcend the limitations of reason and engage in a spiritual experience that surpasses human comprehension.  He referred to this mystical encounter as “a sense of presence.” 

Kallistos Ware notes that “the aim of the Jesus Prayer is to establish within us this ‘sense of presence’ which will continue to exist at a deep level of our being even after we have stopped repeating the actual words of the Prayer.”

Worship and Bow Down  

Psalm 95.6-7 says, “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.  For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.”

‘Bowing’ and ‘kneeling’ are physical actions that signify an attitude of humility and reverence in the presence of Almighty God.  In fact, the Hebrew word for ‘worship,’ shachah, literally means to ‘bow’ or ‘stoop’ or ‘make oneself low.’ 

The Psalmist exhorts believers to “exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool, for He is holy” (Psalm 99.5).  The juxtaposition of these two words is telling: “Exalt the Lord” (lift Him up high), and at the same time, “Worship at His footstool” (make yourself low), because “He is holy” (there is no one like Him).  

The Jesus Prayer facilitates the bowing down of one’s soul before the Lord by focusing one’s attention on the uniqueness of the Son of God, while at the same time, recalling one’s utter dependence on His grace.  Acknowledging that one is a sinner might be a hard pill to swallow, especially for those people who have been indoctrinated with a ‘hyper-faith gospel’ and its lopsided view of imputed righteousness.    

However, even as great a Christian as the apostle Paul, in the twilight of his life, referred to himself as “the foremost of sinners” who had “received mercy” (1 Tim 1.15-16).

The Jesus Prayer is a counter-example to Adam’s pride who, by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, sought independence from God (Gen 3.1-6).  “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  As Father Michael Cleary observes in his wonderful little book, The Jesus Prayer Rosary, “Jesus doesn’t need to hear these words.  I need to say them.  That way, they might sink in!” 

The Jesus Prayer is all about spiritual connection — oneness with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Or, as St. Macarius expressed it, attaching one’s spirit to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Kallistos Ware sums it up beautifully:

“The aim of the Jesus Prayer, as of all Christian prayer, is that our praying should become increasingly identified with the prayer offered by Jesus the High Priest within us, that our life should become one with his life, our breathing with the Divine Breath that sustains the universe…. 

The more the Prayer becomes a part of ourselves, the more we enter into the movement of love which passes unceasingly between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality, (Oxford: SLG Press, 1987), p.25.