A short, repeated, prayer which takes the form of ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’, or some reduced version of this (such as ‘Lord Jesus have mercy on me’).

It is based on the plea of the two blind men in Mt 20:30–31 and the tax collector’s prayer in Lk 18:13.

Its usage by the Eastern branch of the church dates back to the 4th or 5th century.

It has also been used in Roman Catholic devotion (often in the form of ‘Lord, make haste to help me. Lord, make speed to save me’).

It has increasingly be used in the wider church – lay people included – as part of the burgeoning interest in contemplative practices.

It is used either as part of a person’s appointed prayer time, or as a person goes about daily tasks.

The repetition of the prayer is thought to fulfil Paul’s instruction in 1 Thess 5:17 to ‘pray without ceasing’.  The continued recital is thought to internalise the prayer, so that one’s whole life becomes a prayer.  To those who decry such repetition, Psalm 136 may be invoked, with its 26 repetitions of ‘His love endures forever’.

Early practitioners saw in the prayer a way of setting aside images, intellectual ideas and logical thinking.

Special reverence is given to the name ‘Jesus’.  Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia writes:

‘Fundamental to the tradition of the Jesus Prayer is a sense of profound reverence for the holy name “Jesus.” This is felt to act in a semi-sacramental way as a source of grace and strength. There is, it is believed, an integral connection between the name and the person named; to call on the Son of God by name is to render him directly and dynamically present. In this way the distant origin of the Jesus Prayer is to be found in the veneration of the name of God in the Old and New Testaments. Especially influential is Philippians 2:10: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bend” (cf. Jn. 16.23–24; Acts 4.10–12).’

Again:

‘The Jesus Prayer, as an image-free manner of praying, is not a form of imaginative meditation on specific incidents in the life of Christ, but a means whereby, in the words of Diadochos, we block “all the outlets” of the nous. As we recite the prayer, we are to have a vivid sense of the immediate presence of Christ, but this is to be unaccompanied, so far as possible, by images or intellectual concepts.’

Because the words of the prayer are few, and subject to unlimited repetition, the mind of the pray-er is stripped of thoughts, and led into silence and inner stillness.

Comment

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with the words of the Jesus Prayer.  Moreover, it may be a suitable and helpful way of uttering an ‘arrow prayer’ that invokes the Saviour’s name and pleads for his mercy and help.

However, some concerns may be mentioned.

• The injuction of 1 Thess 5:17 (‘Pray without ceasing’) does not give license to excessive repetition in prayer.  Indeed, our Lord himself against ‘vain repetitions’ in prayer (Mt 6:7).  Such repetitiveness may give the impression (to oneself and others) of piety, but easily collapses nto superstition.
• Although it is good for the praying mind to be rid of distractions, our prayer life should be nurtured by a mind full of truth, not a mind emptied of all thought.

Bruce Demarest, in Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, art. ‘Jesus Prayer’

Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, in The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, art. ‘Jesus Prayer’.