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On the Use of the Jesus Prayer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

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Extract

We must remember that by the term ‘Jesus Prayer’ the Byzantine East refers, loosely enough, to any invocation centring in the Saviour's name itself. This invocation has taken various forms depending on whether it was used by itself, or included in more or less developed formulas. Moreover, it is for the individual to decide on his special way of invoking the name. In the East it has tended to take definite shape in the phrase 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner', but this formula has not been, and is not, the only one. That is an authentic ‘Jesus Prayer’ in the Byzantine sense, which is a repeated invocation whose core and strength is the name of Jesus. One might say, for example, 'Jesus Christ', or ‘Lord Jesus'. The oldest formula, the simplest, and in our view the easiest, is the word ‘Jesus’ used by itself. It is in this sense that we shall speak here of the 'Jesus Prayer'.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 8 , Issue 91 , January 1954 , pp. 293 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © 1954 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 The translator thanks the Benedictines of Chevetogne for permission to publish the following slightly abbreviated rendering of an article, written anonymously by a monk of the Eastern Church. The original appeared in French in Irénikon Tome XXV, No. 4, 1952. To avoid any confusion, it should be said that this article was a résumé of a brochure On the Invocation of the that this Name of Jesus, published by the Anglo-Orthodox Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius in 1950.