As regular readers know, I practice the Jesus Prayer. This is one of the ways to transform your life in a living prayer, to fulfil the biblical injunction to pray without ceasing. It also provides a bastion against the passions, of course. In case you’re new to it, the Jesus Prayer is a simple cry to the Lord:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
The “a sinner” bit is not necessary, but this is how I was taught, and this is how I pray the Prayer.
My own practice of the Jesus Prayer is to pray it while waiting somewhere, simply repeating the prayer over and over again, seeking to mean the words without distraction. I also sometimes pray for longer periods, using my komboskini, an Orthodox prayer rope consisting of 10 decades of 10 knots, and going through all 100 Jesus Prayers. My former practice that I wish to re-start was to pray the Jesus Prayer for no less than 10 and no more than 20 minutes straight once per day alongside these other times of praying it.
The Jesus Prayer is about uniting the mind and the heart, about reaching a point where you have the self-activating prayer of the heart.
A while ago, I tweeted a picture of the komboskini and A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayer and was told that this was superstition — not just the prayers to saints in the book, but the komboskini as well. The Jesus Prayer, I am told, is vain repetitions.
Up front, I can see how a person might think repeating the same single-sentence prayer over and over again for ten to twenty minutes is “vain repetition.” It’s certainly repetition.
But is it vain? Is it empty?
The phrase “vain repetitions” comes from Matthew 6:7:
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. (KJV)
And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. (RSV)
The phrase, “use … vain repetitions” or “heap up empty phrases” is the Greek word: βατταλογήσητε — this verb means to prattle, to chatter, to be longwinded, or even “to blubber nonsensical repetitions” (that last from Strong’s Concordance). The nature of the careful, quiet, calm repetition of the Jesus Prayer as recommended by Orthodox spiritual fathers is quite the opposite of prattling, chattering, or blubbering nonsensical repetitions.
For me, though, the evidence really lies in the second clause, “for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” The careful, collected repetition of the Jesus Prayer is not predicated on this assumption. The Gentiles, the pagans whom Jesus has targeted in this teaching, believe that their particular brand of prayer, which includes the use of various titles some of which are, in fact, nonsense, is absolutely necessary for the gods to hear them. If you don’t use the formulae, or the right hymns, or what-have-you, the gods won’t listen.
But the remarkable thing about our God is that one of his properties is always to have mercy.
He, being unbounded love, is already listening. He is more ready to answer than we are to ask. And so we can approach the throne of grace with confidence.
Now, however, you may argue that some treat the Jesus Prayer or the Holy Name of Jesus in just this way. And maybe they do. But, if so, they are failing at the base realities of this teaching. My favourite nineteenth-century Russian, St Theophan the Recluse, says:
The Jesus Prayer is not some talisman. Its power comes from faith in the Lord, and from a deep union of the mind and heart with Him. With such a disposition, the invocation of the Lord’s Name becomes very effective in many ways. But a mere repetition of the words does not signify anything. -From The Art of Prayer, ed. Igumen Chariton, trans. Kallistos Ware, p. 99
Theophan is insistent that our faith and God’s grace lie at the heart of any effectiveness of the Jesus Prayer.
Let me, therefore, encourage you to take up this practice as a means to fill our idle moments and our desire for prayer without ceasing. It is a rich practice that bears fruit in our hearts by God’s grace.
Classically Christian 