The Roots of Christian Mysticism Session 27
Summary of Andrew Louth's "The Jesus Prayer" talk, The London Christian Meditation Centre, St Mark's, Clerkenwell, 20 June 2006

What is the Jesus Prayer?

The normal formula is “Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy upon me (a sinner).”
It can be abbreviated and some books talk about the abbreviated forms. One book takes the view that the only crucial bit of the prayer is the name “Jesus”.

The Origins and History of the Jesus Prayer

It can be traced back to the Gospels if not earlier. For example Blind Bartimaeus calls out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:47). Such prayers are not formulae but cries for help. The Jesus Prayer is essentially a prayer addressed by a human being to God and is a call for help. The history of the Christian tradition shows there is very little evidence of which words Christians used when they prayed. We know when and how they prayed but not what was said.

With the beginnings of monastic literature there is more of a hint of which words were used and this is where the tradition of the Jesus Prayer really begins. John Cassian wrote a number of books for monks in the West about how to pray. He puts the idea across of praying with a short prayer which is repeated. The phrase he recommends is, “Oh God come to my help.” Prayer is not a technique but an engagement with God; a cry for help.

From the fifth century in the monastic tradition there arises the idea that short prayers are best. Various reasons are given but the most obvious is that they are easier to remember. As early as the fifth century we begin to find references to a short prayer that contains the name of Jesus. The first reference is a chance reference in Diadochus of Photike in the mid fifth century. He says that when the demons start to clamour; when we are oppressed by the thoughts of evil, the only way to resist is to use “the Jesus.” In later tradition there are references that suggest the use of a short phrase including the name of Jesus to draw our attention back to God.

In the ten century more developed phrases were used. In the fourteenth century monks who prayed the Jesus prayer caused controversy when they claimed that during prayer they beheld the uncreated light of the Godhead.

In the eighteenth century there was a collection of ascetic texts put together and published in Venice. This was the Philokalia (which just means anthology). It was published in 1782 and was in two volumes running to one thousand five hundred pages all beautifully produced. The anthology contains writings from the fourth to the fifteenth century which focus on the tradition of Hesychastic prayer. This includes the Jesus Prayer.

The Philokalia was quickly translated into Church Slavonic by a Russian monk on Mount Athos. When he translated it he called it Dobrotolgukia which he can only have arrived at by breaking up the word “Philokalia” and translating each part separately to arrive at “love of beautiful things.” This work became very popular in Russia. It was read by devoted Christian people generally and not just by monks. In the nineteenth century Way of a Pilgrim was published. “Pilgrim” means “wanderer” rather than someone who is going somewhere in particular. Pilgrims were a feature of nineteenth century Russia. Some pilgrims were interested in the Jesus Prayer and said it while they were walking. The pilgrim in the story was one such and he carried the Dobrotolgukia with him. In the nineteenth century it became a way that ordinary people prayed and in the twentieth century the Jesus Prayer was not simply used in the orthodox tradition but by all traditions and none.

The Point of the Jesus Prayer

It is a way of enabling us to pray quietly. It is praying as a way of being. The length of period for which the prayer is prayed may vary. It is a way of trying to create and preserve silence in which one can be attentive to God.

Eventually the form of the Jesus Prayer became fixed because it seemed to contain everything a Christian would want to say in prayer. It was not just a cry for help but also a confession of faith (Lord Jesus Christ). It is a step further to see Jesus Christ as Son of God. Paul said we can only say “Jesus Christ is Lord” in the power of the Spirit. Therefore to say it is to invoke the Christian doctrine of the trinity and express our faith in it. To say “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God” is to encapsulate the basic tenets of the Christian faith. It is a prayer for mercy for a sinner so the prayer is also a confession of our sinfulness and our need for God.

Silence

The main reason for our difficulty in maintaining silence in prayer is that as soon as we try to invoke the presence of God we very quickly find that we are there too with all our hopes, desires, fears and longings. If we try to pray early in the morning we soon start to wonder what the day will hold. Very quickly we are sitting in a very noisy, echoing chamber with all our thoughts banging about. Asking for mercy in the Jesus Prayer is an acknowledgement that although part of me wants to be in the presence of God there is part of me that doesn’t. The Jesus Prayer addresses and confesses this problem. We are caught up in attachments. We may think we want to be in the presence of God but we are so unaccustomed to it that other bits of us rebel. The Jesus Prayer is good because we admit we have a problem. The use of the Jesus Prayer can be calming because it draws us back to what we want to be at the heart of our lives and the thing that matters most of all. There are various ways that the prayer can do this. There is nothing prescriptive about the Jesus Prayer. For some people it doesn’t work at all. If it is not helpful then don’t use it to add to your sense of inadequacy and sinfulness. . R. S. Thomas wasn’t a candidate for the Jesus Prayer. He said he would either go mad or fall asleep.

Our attention may be helped by the use of a prayer rope. A prayer rope consists of knots rather than beads although in some orthodox countries e.g. Romania it does consist of beads. The ropes can be very elaborate. Father Sophrony who founded the orthodox monastery in Essex said that prayer ropes were not fashion accessories to be hung from belts or round waists. When not being used they should be kept away. The use of ropes in connection with the Jesus Prayer only dates back to the eighteenth century.

The use of the prayer rope gives the fingers something to do. In some ways it soaks up some of the attention. You quickly find out how long it takes to go through the prayer rope.

Other ways of using the Jesus Prayer can be found in the Russian teachers, particularly Theophan the Recluse. He envisages that the way you use the prayer is not to repeat it but to use the prayer as a way of calming us down to remain in silence until the silence ebbs away and then return to it.

Another way of thinking of the Jesus prayer is that it brings the mind down into the heart. This is “heart” in the biblical sense especially in the sense it is used in the psalms (Psalm 51). It is not to be thought of as the seat of emotions but as a more holistic place. The Psalms talk about the heart as the place where our thoughts come from but it is more than mind. It is more than our thinking capacity. The heart is something we need to discover. We tend to suppose we know who we are but when we try to pray seriously we are not clear who we are. The distractions that come up in prayer are reflections of bits and pieces of ourselves. They are often bits we are ashamed of, or sometimes we do things or say things that are surprising to us. The ascetic tradition is well aware of the fact that we have hidden bits of ourselves. Hiding bits of ourselves is not the best way of dealing with them. The best work on this is The Macarian Homilies. This presents an interesting picture of what it is to be human. It is as if we are a house with lots of hidden rooms. In prayer the whole house becomes light and a single thing. Ordinarily we experience ourselves as divided. The Christian ascetical tradition has little to learn from Freud!

One work describes sin as “atopos” literally “out of place”. We find that as we become more aware we become more in control of who we are. Theophan the Recluse says that the Jesus Prayer can be used to discover the heart and that this is a preliminary to prayer. Theophan says that what a Christian is doing in prayer is placing his mind in his heart and standing before God so that there is a unifying source to all we do. We act from the heart rather than from different bits of ourselves. The Jesus Prayer is sometimes referred to as The Prayer of the Heart.

The Jesus Prayer is calling on the Holy Spirit to come into our heart so we become more and more aware and whole so that we can pray properly. Attention is indivisible. If we cannot be attentive in prayer we probably cannot be attentive to other people.

The Name

One of the reasons the Jesus Prayer came to be so important was because it summed up many of the things central to the tradition. These can all be summed up under the Name. From the time of Plato, and even before, there have been two different ideas as to what a name is. Is it a label so that something could just as equally be called something else? Or is there something deeper? This is an interesting and complicated philosophical problem. In some ways names are labels because different languages use different words for the same thing. When someone becomes a monk he changes his name. In the bible personal names are thought of as being significant especially the name of God. This is both more and less than a label. It is less than a label because we do not know what it God’s name is. In the Hebrew bible the name of God is simply represented by four letters. The name was pronounced in the temple as part of the High Priest’s blessing and it was meant to invoke the presence of the Lord into that place. This is brought out in Deuteronomy where God says: “This is the place where I will place my name.”

In the New Testament the name becomes the name of Jesus and anywhere can be hallowed by the praying of the name of Jesus. The great privilege that Christians have is that we can pronounce the name in our heart.

The Jesus Prayer became important in the Orthodox Tradition because it was felt that use of the name was actually effective. The repetition of the name was a way of invoking the divine presence. This fits in with another aspect of orthodoxy and that is the use of icons because in an icon of Christ the face is represented. Icons remind us that prayer is about face to face encounter with Christ and when we encounter a face we give it a name.