The Jesus Prayer by Frederica Mathewes-Green

Author:Frederica Mathewes-Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paraclete Press
Published: 2009-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

The Holy Fathers make a distinction . . . between prayer of the mind in the heart and prayer moved by the Spirit. The first is the conscious action of the praying man, but the second comes to a man; and although he is aware of it, it works by itself independently of his efforts. This second kind of prayer, moved by the Spirit, is not something that we can recommend people to practice, because it does not lie in our power to achieve it. We can desire it, seek it, and receive it gratefully, but we cannot arrive at it whenever we want to.

The Prayer is designed to lead you further into communion with God, and you can prepare for that by practicing the spiritual disciplines, cultivating humility and repentance, and remembering to say the Prayer. “Try to acquire a kind of soreness in your heart,” St. Theophan wrote to a spiritual child. “Constant effort will achieve this quickly. There is nothing peculiar in this: the appearance of this pain is a natural effect. It will help you to collect yourself better. But the chief thing is that the Lord, who sees your effort, will give you help and grace in prayer. A different order will then be established in the heart.”

On the other hand, he warns, “it is possible . . . to attach our whole attention to this feeling of sweetness and warmth, taking pleasure in it as in a warm room or garment, and to stop at this point, without trying to climb any higher. Some mystics go no further than this, but regard such a state as the highest that man can attain: it immerses them in a kind of nothingness, in a complete suspension of all thought. This is the ‘state of contemplation’ attained by some mystics.” The attainment of tranquility and inner silence is not meant to be the journey’s end.

Q: STILL, ALL THIS REPEATING OF THE SAME WORDS SOUNDS LIKE A MANTRA.

The Jesus Prayer is not a mantra but an invocation; it is a prayer directed to the one you call “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” and whom you ask for mercy. That’s not the same thing as calling on the name of another god. The Postal Service will deliver any stamped envelope you put in the mail, but you alone decide what goes in the letter and whose address is on the front.

I don’t know a great deal about Buddhism or Hinduism, but it seems all three of our faiths recognize that something is wrong in the world, and things aren’t the way they ought to be. We would disagree on what caused this problem and how it is resolved, but we all observe the same prevailing conditions. In all three faiths, death to self-will is recommended as a way of dealing with the pain this situation inflicts.

After that, though, beliefs diverge. The distinctive thing about Christianity, in comparison with Buddhism and Hinduism, is that we don’t expect to pursue

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