I have received a lot of hits in the past week on my post about The Serenity Prayer. In addition, I have had many great conversations with friends in and around Hudson
“The Prayer” as it is sometimes referred to is a formula prayer that has been held in high esteem in the Eastern Orthodox Church since at least the Fifth Century CE. It goes like this:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.”
Or in the Greek…
“Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν.”
I first came across this prayer back at General Seminary when my professor Margaret Guenther taught and discussed the spirituality of the Eastern Churches. This prayer is to be repeated continually as part of a personal ascetic practice. The tradition is that as you repeat this prayer, your heart begins to open and by doing so you move closer to praying unceasingly as encouraged by the writings of Saint Paul. While this prayer is truly a possession of the Eastern Orthodox, I believe, if I am not mistaken, that when one recites the Anglican Rosary, a portion of that contemplative prayer includes The Jesus Prayer.
Most scholars suppose that the origins of The Jesus Prayer are found in the Egyptian desert where the Desert Fathers and Mothers settled in the Fifth Century CE. The form of the prayer that we know today apparently took shape over the course of the next hundred years and appears in the writings of Abba Philimon who lived sometime around 600 CE. Later a Greek saint by the name of Diadochos tied the practice of The Jesus Prayer to the purification of the soul and taught that the repetition of the prayer would produce inner peace. My favorite understanding of The Jesus Prayer comes from the anonymous nineteenth century Russian spiritual classic The Way of a Pilgrim. That is a book you should have in your library.
Father Steven Peter Tsichlis writing for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America states that “This prayer, in its simplicity and clarity, is rooted in the Scriptures and the new life granted by the Holy Spirit. It is first and foremost a prayer of the Spirit because of the fact that the prayer addresses Jesus as Lord, Christ and Son of God; and as St. Paul tells us, "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3).”
In his article, Father Tsichlis goes on to describe the scriptural roots of The Jesus Prayer. He writes: “The Scriptures give the Jesus Prayer both its concrete form and its theological content. It is rooted in the Scriptures in four ways:
1. In its brevity and simplicity, it is the fulfillment of Jesus' command that "in praying" we are "not to heap up empty phrases as the heathen do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them . . . (Matt. 6:7-8).
2. The Jesus Prayer is rooted in the Name of the Lord. In the Scriptures, the power and glory of God are present in his Name. In the Old Testament to deliberately and attentively invoke God's Name was to place oneself in his Presence. Jesus, whose name in Hebrew means God saves, is the living Word addressed to humanity. Jesus is the final Name of God. Jesus is "the Name which is above all other names" and it is written that "all beings should bend the knee at the Name of Jesus" (Phil. 2:9-10). In this Name devils are cast out (Luke 10:17), prayers are answered (John 14:13 14) and the lame are healed (Acts 3:6-7). The Name of Jesus is unbridled spiritual power.
3. The words of the Jesus Prayer are themselves based on Scriptural texts: the cry of the blind man sitting at the side of the road near Jericho, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me" (Luke 18:38); the ten lepers who "called to him, Jesus, Master, take pity on us' " (Luke 17:13); and the cry for mercy of the publican, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:14).
4. It is a prayer in which the first step of the spiritual journey is taken: the recognition of our own sinfulness, our essential estrangement from God and the people around us. The Jesus Prayer is a prayer in which we admit our desperate need of a Savior. For "if we say we have no sin in us, we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth" (1 John 1:8).”
I took out my copy of The Way of a Pilgrim the other day and began flipping through it coming across two highlighted passages. The first describes the author’s transformed vision of the world through the use of the Jesus Prayer. He writes: “When I prayed in my heart, everything around me seemed delightful and marvelous. The trees, the grass, the birds, the air, the light seemed to be telling me that they existed for man's sake, that they witnessed to the love of God for man, that all things prayed to God and sang his praise.” A most lovely image.
The second passage tells of the author’s transformed relationship with his peers and colleagues: “Again I started off on my wanderings. But now I did not walk along as before, filled with care. The invocation of the Name of Jesus gladdened my way. Everybody was kind to me. If anyone harms me I have only to think, ‘How sweet is the Prayer of Jesus!’ and the injury and the anger alike pass away and I forget it all.” Wouldn’t it wonderful to be that free?
Love One Another - Brian
Cultivating and Caring
Robert Corin Mooris
"What we cultivate and care about inwardly either freshens or poisons the bloodstream of humanity."
Source: Sojourners Voice and Verse
Colossians 1:15-23
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.
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