The Jesus Prayer - Learning to Pray without Ceasing

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner"
The roots of the Jesus Prayer lie in Scripture. The publican prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). Paul exhorted, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). And Peter preached, “This man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth... There is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:10,12) The fundamental idea of the Jesus Prayer is to pray constantly. This requires a kind of attention to God that becomes habitual while one goes about the tasks of daily life. The prayer is a short formula that is repeated constantly in rhythm with one’s breathing or heartbeat. After a period of learning, the prayer repeats itself naturally without conscious effort. It is sometimes called “the prayer of the heart.” Today the most common form of the prayer is “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” But the emergence of the prayer was gradual. Different forms of words and different understandings of their function can be seen in the fifth to eighth centuries. In the Middle Ages the prayer became widely used among Orthodox monks. Much later, in the late nineteenth century, the anonymous Way of the Pilgrim took the prayer to the West from Russia. In The Way of a Pilgrim 'The Jesus Prayer' is a familiar expression. The form of the prayer uses the words:		Other Spiritual Practices Lectio Divina Prayer Tradition Discernment Prayer Journal Journaling
	'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 (1 Thess 5:17). 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. But it is not enough to make this profession of faith; it is not enough to believe. The devils also believe and tremble (James 2:19). 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 offered up in prayer. What is of general use, and God given, is the actual praying, the repetition of the words, without any physical endeavor - 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.