The
Jesus Prayer
by 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 (1Thes 5:I7). 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 (Is 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 (Col 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 (Ps I33:2) 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 (Rom 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
Templegate Publishers Springfield, IL, 1966, p. 84 - 88
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