| The more immediate source of the Jesus Prayer is the practice of “monologic prayer” (i.e., prayer of a single word or phrase) found among the monks of 4th-century Egypt. Seeking to fulfill Paul’s injunction to “Pray without ceasing” ( 1Thes. 5.17 ), while performing manual labor they repeated short phrases or sentences, often from Scripture (e.g., Ps. 50 /51.1). Augustine of Hippo (354–420) described these prayers as “suddenly shot forth” into heaven like arrows (Letter 130.20). In the Apophthegmata or Sayings of the Desert Fathers there was a variety of such “arrow prayers”; the name “Jesus” sometimes occurs in them, but enjoys no special prominence. It is in the writings of Diadochos, bishop of Photike in Northern Greece (mid-5th century), that the Jesus Prayer first emerged as a distinctive spiritual way. Whereas the 4th-century desert fathers used many different “monologic” formulae, Diadochos recommended adherence to a single, unvarying phrase: “Give to your intellect [nous] nothing but the prayer Lord Jesus” (Century 59). He did not say whether other words are to follow this opening invocation. Diadochos adopted from Evagrios of Pontos (346–99) the teaching that inner prayer should take an “apophatic” or “noniconic” form, being free from images, intellectual concepts, and discursive thinking. While Evagrios himself did not suggest any practical method whereby such prayer can be achieved, Diadochos saw this as precisely the function of the Jesus Prayer. The human mind has an intrinsic need for activity, and this can be satisfied by giving it as a task the constant recitation of the words “Lord Jesus”: “Let the intellect continually concentrate on these words within its inner shrine with such intensity that it is not turned aside to any mental images” (Century 59). Thus the Jesus Prayer, as an image-free manner of praying, is not a form of imaginative meditation on specific incidents in the life of Christ, but a means whereby, in the words of Diadochos, we block “all the outlets” of the nous. As we recite the prayer, we are to have a vivid sense of the immediate presence of Christ, but this is to be unaccompanied, so far as possible, by images or intellectual concepts. |
| Prayer cannot be pure if the mind is actively engaged in following thoughts. For prayer to be pure, it must arise from a pure spirit; and this can only occur when one first stands watch and thus rises above thoughts and images. That is why Christ said, «Watch and pray»: prayer and watchfulness are inseparably bound. As St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, a nineteenth-century Russian ascetic in the Philokalic tradition, writes: «The essential, indispensable property of prayer is attention. Without attention there is no prayer». 597 The Tao is Spirit; in Jesus Christ that Spirit enters into flesh. So too with the inward life of His followers. Before His coming, followers of the Tao like Lao Tzu sat in open, objective awareness; after His coming, that spiritual awareness «takes flesh» in the form of prayer, bringing it to a new dimension. That is why attention (corresponding, in connection with Lao Tzu, to the pre-Christian era) and prayer (corresponding to the Christian era) are inseparably linked. Prayer cannot exist without the attention that must come before it and must work along with it. At the same time, however, attention is not enough in itself, now that the Tao has taken flesh. St. Symeon the New Theologian, in the fourth volume of The Philokalia, provides one of the best explanations we have found for the relationship between attention and prayer: «Watchfulness and prayer should be as closely linked together as the body to the soul, for the one cannot stand without the other. Watchfulness first goes on ahead like a scout and engages sin in combat. Prayer then follows afterwards, and instantly destroys and exterminates all the evil thoughts with which watchfulness has already been battling, for attentiveness alone cannot exterminate them. This, then, is the gate of life and death. If by means of watchfulness we keep prayer pure, we make progress; but if we leave prayer unguarded and permit it to be defiled, our efforts are null and void». 598 St. John Climacus (sixth-seventh centuries A.D.) was the abbot of the ancient Monastery of St. Catherine at the base of Mount Sinai, where the Prophet Moses received his revelation. His work on inner purification, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, has for centuries been considered a spiritual classic of the first magnitude, and was one of the first books to be printed in the Western hemisphere. Icon by Photios Kontoglou. |
| About Pages Проекты «Правмира» Raising Orthodox Children to Orthodox Adulthood The Daily Website on How to be an Orthodox Christian Today Twitter Telegram Parler RSS Donate Navigation The Struggle of Prayer – a Short Practical Guide Source: Gladsome Light Dialogues – An Orthodox Blog The truth is that prayer is easier said than done. Fr. Vasile Tudora 05 August 2020 Photo: pravoslavie.ru If you ask anyone in church about prayer they will most likely use a descriptor like: a pleasant experience‚ a conversation with God‚ a link with the absolute or other general terms‚ all positive in nature. Things are different however when‚ during Confession‚ a Father Confessor asks the same question. He will most likely hear more about lack of time‚ loss of focus‚ procrastination and struggle in general. The truth is that prayer is easier said than done. One of the main reasons that we struggle with prayer is that we expect from it a different experience than what we actually get in most cases. Reading books like The Way of the pilgrim or the Filokalia we May get a wrong impression of what prayer is‚ at least at the beginning‚ because we forget that the wonderful experiences described in these books belong to people that have literally struggled with prayer their entire lives. We all expect an exhilarating time rejoicing in the Lord while our souls are taken to the 3rd heaven. Well‚ this does not happen for the majority of us. Jesus Christ Himself prayed while on earth and not all His periods of prayer were a “walk-in-the-park” kind of experience. Take for instance the prayer in the garden of Gethsemane: “ And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly. And His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luk 2’:44). There was pain in His prayer but as He struggled in prayer His prayer became more profound‚ reaching out from the bottom of His human nature screaming for help and deliverance. The same is true for us: we tend to pray harder and with more seriousness when we face suffering. In suffering we genuinely pray‚ there is no more habitual‚ casual prayer‚ there is real purpose behind it. The problem is how do we transfer these rare moments of honest prayer into our daily praying routine? |
| Let us conclude our description of the physical technique of the hesychasts by mentioning one final point. None of our authors makes any reference to the employment of a komvoschoinion, a prayer-rope or chaplet, while saying the Jesus prayer. The basic principle of the komvoschoinion can in fact be found at least a millennium earlier than this. The monk Paul of Pherme, in fourth-century Egypt, whose custom it was to recite three hundred set prayers each day, used to put three hundred pebbles in his lap, throwing out one pebble at each prayer. Paul had only to string his pebbles together to make a primitive prayer-rope, but it remains unclear precisely when such prayer-ropes first appeared in the Christian East. Here is an interesting subject for further research. Unfortunately the book of Eithne Wilkins, The Rose-Garden Game: the symbolic background to the European prayer-beads (London 1969), sheds little light on the matter. ‘Analogy-Participation’ What are we to make of this psychosomatic technique? Some modern critics find it crude and naive, while Hausherr even dismisses it as a ‘déformation’ due to L’humaine bêtise’. Others, drawing attention to the Hindu parallels, conclude that the Jesus prayer is a ‘Christian mantra’ and classify the hesychasts as ‘Byzantine yogis’. The first point to note is that none of our five authorities states that the physical method is indispensable and compulsory, and none of them claims that it constitutes the essence of inner prayer. Nikiphoros in particular is entirely clear about this. Having described the technique of inner exploration, at once he adds that, if someone tries this out and finds after a time that it does not help him, then he may simply stop using the technique; it is sufficient to repeat the Jesus prayer attentively, without troubling oneself at all about the movement of the breath down into the heart. The psychosomatic technique, in other words, should not be described as ‘ the hesychast method of prayer’, for it is no more than an optional accessory, useful to some but not obligatory upon anyone. What matters is that we invoke the name of Jesus with inner concentration and living faith. That alone is the essence of the Jesus prayer; the manner of sitting and breathing, along with the fixing of our attention on different psychosomatic centres, are purely secondary. |
| The term hesychast (hesychasts) was used to designate a «hermit» or an anchorite from the very beginnings of monastic history. Together with hesychia it appears in the writings of Evagrius 14 (fourth c.), of St. Gregory of Nyssa 15 and in imperial legislation referring to monastic status. 16 Among all the early teachers of monastic spirituality, Evagrius Ponticus formulated, better than any other, that fundamental doctrine on prayer which would inspire the hesychasts in all later centuries. According to Evagrius, prayer is «the highest act of the mind», the activity «appropriate to the dignity of the mind», an «ascent of the mind to God». «The state of prayer», he wrote, «can be aptly described as a habitual state of imperturbable calm. It matches to the heights of intelligible reality the mind which loves wisdom and which is truly spiritualized by the most intense love.» 17 According to Evagrius, a permanent «prayer of the mind», or «mental» prayer (noera proseuch), is the goal, the content and the justification of hesychastic, eremitic life. He sees it as «natural» to the human mind. In prayer, man becomes truly himself by reestablishing the right and natural relationship with God. 18 Modern historical scholarship has shown that the doctrine on prayer found in Evagrius, was, in fact, an expression of peculiar Origenistic metaphysics, based on Neoplatonism, which conceived the «mind» as naturally divine and as having originally existed without matter, so that the present material world is nothing but a consequence of the Fall. 19 Actually, Evagrius was even formally condemned by the ecumenical council of 553 because of his Origenism. Nevertheless, his writings on prayer remained extremely popular, and were often circulating under pseudonyms, particularly that of St. Neilos of Sinai. This does not mean, however, that their readers shared the author " s metaphysical presuppositions. In the mainstream of the Eastern spiritual tradition, the mental prayer of Evagrius began to be understood and practiced in the context of a Christocentric spiritual ity. The «mind» ceased to be opposed to matter, because Christian monasticism fully accepted the implications of the Incarnation. Thus, the «mental prayer», addressed by Evagrius to the Deity, which he understood in a Neoplatonic and spiritualized sense, became the «prayer of Jesus». |
| The first two orders [St John " s and St Basil " s] have an identical structure. The difference between them consists solely in the broader compass, in St Basil the Great " s Liturgy, of the Eucharistic prayer which effects the mystery. There exist innumerable expositions of the Liturgy, some from the holy Fathers and others from simple, pious Orthodox Christians. As an example of the latter, we have the «Meditations on the Divine Liturgy» by the Russian writer, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809–1852). In these expositions those who so wish can gain a more detailed and deeper understanding of every moment of the sacred rites. In the present survey of the Orthodox divine services, it is only possible briefly to explain the course of the Liturgy and to mention the significance of its most important parts. The word, «Liturgy,» means «common/general service.» Following the Mystical Supper itself, which was celebrated by the Lord Jesus Christ with the disciples on the night in which He was betrayed, it is a sacramental act of the closest union with Christ for those who believe in Him, an expression of the unity between the body of the Church and her Head. The other services can be served privately, or even in private accommodation, and without any connection to other prayer services; the other services can even be read or chanted if the necessity arises without a priest, according to the special order which the typicon provides for such an occasion. The Liturgy can only be celebrated by a canonically ordained Bishop or Presbyter on a consecrated Holy Table in church, or, in exceptional cases, elsewhere on the specially consecrated antimension, or liturgical cloth. It also requires a special preparation in prayer. Three parts follow each other in the Liturgy: a) the proskomidi [prothesis], b) the Liturgy of the Catechumens and c) the Liturgy of the Faithful. The proskomidi is the liturgical «preparation» celebrated by the priest. It takes part without the participation of the faithful; their participation is expressed only by their offering the bread for the proskomidi, the prosphora. The proskomidi consists in the preparation of the Holy Lamb on the diskos [paten] and the wine in the Cup for their impending change of the elements. Around the bread, the Holy Lamb, other, smaller particles are placed in honour of the Mother of God and to commemorate all the assemblies of the saints, and for the propitiatory remembrance of living Orthodox Christians and of the departed,-«those that have offered it, and those for whom they have offered it» [From the Prayer of the Prothesis]. These particles are tipped into the Cup after the communion of the faithful, at the end of the Liturgy. |
| “The collection of texts follows a broad but generic master-theme: the correlation of the search for inner stability with the quest for the transcendental vision of God… whereby the human soul, at its highest level of cognition, might awake in its upper levels of sensibility into the unmediated presence of God,” Father McGuckin said. Father McGuckin highlighted three Orthodox saints—St. Paisy Velichkovsky, a Romanian Orthodox saint, and the Greeks St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite and St. Makarios of Corinth—who made important contributions to the Philokalia and helped disseminate it throughout the Eastern world. Among the Philokalic spiritual practices that these writers and translators emphasized was the Jesus Prayer, a meditation that repeatedly recites the phrase “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner,” until it becomes ingrained in the mind and heart of the person saying it. Following the death of St. Paisy, who labored to bring the Philokalia to the Slavic countries, the text was brought further east to Russia and the Ukraine. Here, the Jesus Prayer made its way out of monastic communities and gained popularity among the laity. In the mid-19th century, two Russian mystics published the Way of the Pilgrim, the story of a poor peasant who masters the Jesus Prayer as he journeys through Russia. The story’s translation into English helped give the Philokalia its final push from the monastery into the “global village,” Father McGuckin said. “And nowhere [was] that global village more epitomized than New York… in the hip 1960s of the 20th century,” he said. During this time, the American public was becoming increasingly interested in mystical traditions such as Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. It was at this time that Salinger penned Franny and Zooey. The book chronicles the existential crisis of Franny Glass, a Manhattan college student in her twenties who plunges into despair over the selfishness and superficiality she perceives around her. In her anguish, she becomes preoccupied by the Way of the Pilgrim and recites the Jesus Prayer incessantly. |
| In Muslim confraternities during the present century, on the other hand, the physical exercises have been greatly emphasised. But most Muslim masters agree fully with Orthodox teachers in insisting that there can be no external techniques leading automatically to union with God. For both traditions, what matters is not outer technique but the inner attention of the heart, not the physical exercises but the One invoked; and in both traditions our meeting with the One invoked is a pure gift on his part. If, however, what matters is not the technique but the One invoked, then it follows that between hesychasm and dhikr there is in fact a profound difference. The Jesus prayer is fundamentally christocentric. We are not simply invoking God, but our words are addressed specifically to Jesus Christ — to God incarnate, the Word made flesh, the second person of the Holy Trinity who was born in Bethlehem, truly crucified on Golgotha, and truly raised from the dead. A religion such as Islam which rejects the incarnation cannot be invoking God in the same way as hesychasm does. When Kallistos and Ignatios Xanthopoulos said that the Jesus prayer is to be recited ‘with faith’, they meant faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man. An invocation not addressed to God incarnate is something altogether different from the Jesus prayer. As the Russian Pilgrim claimed, the Jesus prayer contains within itself the whole truth of the Gospel; once divorced from the context of the Gospel, it loses its proper meaning. It is a confession of faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour, not just one among many possible mantras. When comparing hesychasm, then, with yoga and with dhikr, we are never to forget that the fundamental point about any tradition of praying is not outer technique but inner content — not how we pray but to whom. Most pictures have frames, and most picture-frames have certain characteristics in common; yet the portraits within the frames may be altogether diverse. The decisive thing is the portrait, not the frame. |
| Better known in the West since the Middle Ages and more exalted in the East (where a special celebration in its honor takes place on the Fifth Sunday of Lent), the personality of John Climacus " the author of The Ladder«abbot of the monastery on Mount Sinai, is another great witness of monastic spirituality based upon invocation of the «name of Jesus.» Very little is known of his life, and even the date of his death is not solidly established (it is generally believed to have taken place some time around 649). His famous book, The Ladder of Paradise, has more definite leanings toward Evagrianism than has the Chapters of Diadochus, as can be seen from its detailed classification of the passions and from the extreme forms of asceticism which John required from his monks and which certainly denote Origenist spiritualism. This extremism pleased the French Jansenists of the seventeenth century, who contributed to the popularity of The Ladder in the West. But John« " s positive teaching about prayer, like that of Macarius and Diadochus, is centered on the person and the name of Jesus: it thus denotes a purely Christian incarnational foundation, and involves the whole man, not just the «mind.» «Let the memory of Jesus be united to your breathing: then you will understand the usefulness of hesychia.» 101 In John, the terms «hesychia» («silence,» «quietude») and »«hesychasts» designate quite specifically the eremitic, contemplative life of the solitary monk practicing the «Jesus prayer.» «The hesychast is the one who says »My heart is firm» [ Ps 57:8 ]; the hesychast is the one who says " I sleep, but my heart is awaké [Sg 5:2]. Hesychia is an uninterrupted worship and service to God. The hesychast is the one who aspires to circumscribe the Incorporeal in a fleshly dwelling. . . .» 102 The terminology which John uses will gain particular popularity among the later Byzantine hesychasts, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with their practice of connecting mental prayer with breathing; it is not a priori impossible that the practice was known in Sinai in the time of John. In any case, he understands «deification» as a communion of the whole man with the transfigured Christ. The «memory of Jesus» meant precisely this, and not a simple «meditation» on the historical Jesus or on any particular episode in His life. Warnings against any evoking, through imagination, of figures external to the «heart» is constant in Eastern Christian spiritual tradition. The monk is always called to realize in himself (his «heart») the objective reality of the transfigured Christ, which is neither an image nor a symbol, but the very reality of God " " s presence through the sacraments, independent of any form of imagination. |
| It is in that state of humble acceptance of our trials—constantly remitting them into the loving hands of God—that the Prayer of Jesus can become true Prayer of the Heart. Tweet Donate Share Code for blog From the Prayer of Jesus to Prayer of the Heart Archpriest John Breck The expressions “Prayer of the Heart” and “Prayer of Jesus” or “Jesus Prayer” are often used as equivalents. They should, however, be clearly distinguished one from the other. According to a person’s degree of spiritual maturity, the “Jesus Prayer” can be either active or contemplative. In the ... Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. For example, 5 euros a month is it a lot or little? A cup of coffee? It is not that much for a family budget, but it is a significant amount for Pravmir. If everyone reading Pravmir could donate 5 euros a month, they would contribute greatly to our ability to spread the word of Christ, Orthodoxy, life " s purpose, family and society. Donate Related articles Soul Talk Archpriest Stephen Freeman Everybody is familiar with the voice in their head. Sometimes it has the sound of a… Metropolitan Tikhon Addresses Tragic Florida Shootings… Natalya Mihailova Many have offered “thoughts and prayers,” but others are finding such sentiments to be empty, reflexive… Prayer of the Heart Abbot Tryphon The Jesus Prayer, also known as the Prayer of the Heart, is the central prayer for… |
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