The Jesus Prayer for Beginners

in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit this evening i wanted to address the topic of the jesus prayer for beginners last time we were together i talked about the meaning of the jesus prayer the jesus prayer explained and the jesus prayer again is a very short prayer lord jesus christ son of god have mercy upon me a sinner very short but we saw last time how in this very short prayer we have a lot of rich theology so i have put together 12 suggestions for people who are just beginning to pray the jesus prayer and i think we can all say honestly that we are all just beginning to pray the jesus prayer in my own pastoral practice i see sometimes or people sometimes making what i would consider to be mistakes when initiating the jesus prayer praying the jesus prayer a lot of people pray the jesus prayer it's certainly a jewel of orthodox spirituality although some non-orthodox christians have also read about it and practice it as well the first thing that i want to say about beginning the jesus prayer is be modest be modest practice the jesus prayer for five minutes or less this is very important because when you go for much longer if you decide to go for 15 20 minutes or half an hour it will bring you into spiritual territory and i can explain what i mean by that which will be unexplored there are also other problems that come from this potentially i know it seems odd to hear from a priest that there can ever be a problem from praying how can there possibly ever be a problem from praying well it's the way that we pray that sometimes generates the problem of course prayer as communion with god does not generate problems obviously but the way that we pray sometimes does and the jesus prayer is a very particular kind of prayer that we in western societies are not that used to it's not like praying a prayer out of a prayer book it is a prayer which is repeated slowly and which is taken up by the heart and is prayed by the heart and becomes part of who we are can even be part of our awareness part of our breathing so it is a different kind of prayer and my suggestion is that we make a modest start now when i'm saying not more than five minutes i'm not saying that you can't pray the jesus prayer during the day at certain intervals during the day on any occasion perhaps while you were driving perhaps while you were at work or at school but what i'm saying is that in terms of a period of dedicated concentrated if i may put it that way prayer it ought not to exceed five minutes and two minutes is not ridiculously short actually that's a fair amount of time to pray the jesus prayer so when i say five minutes i'm not saying five minutes prescribed i'm saying up to five minutes but possibly less than five minutes secondly when you do pray for less than five minutes don't rush don't count how many times you were repeating the jesus prayer there's no particular utility in doing that what does it matter whether you prayed the jesus prayer 25 times or 50 times well if you happen to be using a prayer rope and of course it's beautiful to use one but by the way not obligatory in the orthodox church to use one you will probably know how many times you prayed it because you're probably aware of how many knots are on your prayer rope and if you happen to have one that has a hundred knots and you made it around the whole rope well you know that you prayed it a hundred times that's good i'm not sure how that will help you but you would know that so the important thing is not how many times you pray the jesus prayer because if you are counting you are more likely to step up the speed the important point is instead that you prayed it well for a short period of time and who knows how many times you repeated it during that time period this is not the critical factor for sure thirdly be careful with the breathing those of you who've read about the jesus prayer know that it is very easy to unite with your breathing and in some respects that makes it much easier to pray it roots it deeply into the soul and the body and we are psychosomatic being so when you do that that's a help when you do that but it can also be a hindrance because you will know that if you change your pattern of breathing you can hyperventilate if you concentrate on your breathing too much you can hyperventilate and you of course you know that hyperventilation is occurring not only when people are gasping for air it can be quite subtle but it changes the way you breathe and it changes the way you feel and it's not a friend when you're praying hyperventilation i'll make it absolutely clear is not an advantage when you're praying the jesus prayer it is a disadvantage so you need not unite the jesus prayer to your breathing at all if you would like to and it's helpful you can but you need not do it necessarily and you probably realize after these first three points that i'm saying them because people are reading a lot of material about the jesus prayer including remarks about breathing including in some places stories of people praying the jesus prayer five thousand times ten thousand times that kind of literature is out there it's not that it's not helpful literature but it may not be directly helpful to you and so i think we need to put it all in a context be careful with the breathing fourthly keep in mind that you are praying to a person the jesus prayer is addressed to christ it isn't simply a series of words that you repeat to calm down it isn't a mantra it isn't any of those things it isn't a way to relax none of us will protest if it helps us relax but that isn't the primary function or purpose of the jesus prayer to relax there are other ways that you can relax this is a prayer when we repeat the jesus prayer we are praying to christ it is intensely personal we are addressing him by name how is it possible to address anyone by name and then declare the activity impersonal this is not possible when when people do this it is not the jesus prayer i mentioned previously that father alexander schmidt liked to distinguish between the jesus prayer and the jesus prayer and he wrote one as two separate words that's what we're talking about tonight and the other one he wrote is one word jesus prayer and he had something else in mind which was not positive in his point of view when he used that expression and that's the kind of thing that i am talking about now and it is something to be avoided it is a prayer to christ you are addressing a person the person of the lord jesus the divine human person of the lord jesus when you pray and he is relating to you personally so it is intensely personal from both sides fifthly consider beginning with liturgical prayers and psalms before you start your five minutes rather than looking at the computer and working on your computer standing up and five seconds later praying the jesus prayer which perhaps you can do you might consider instead having working up to the praying of the jesus prayer and we're not talking again about a long introduction or prelude we're talking about a couple of minutes pray from the prayer book a couple of prayers pray a psalm this helps wake up the heart to the fact that you're praying and helps get you ready so some kind of prayerful preparation which includes includes liturgical prayers and or assam or psalms plural i think is very very helpful sixthly don't imagine things when you pray the jesus prayer don't actively visualize anything and this you may find rather striking or surprising don't imagine christ you may think well now that's very difficult i'm praying to him personally we realize that but don't imagine him don't visualize visualization is not part of prayer and this is very clear in the orthodox tradition it's not to say that when we pray that we don't visualize because we have brains a thought process and if you have a thought you have images i understand that what i'm saying is don't plan to visualize don't incorporate it into your prayer christ is beyond any image that you can possibly have of him when you pray he is beyond that image he is still a person and we know and we have fairly accurate descriptions of what he looked like the icons of christ show that accurate description but that doesn't mean that when we pray that we imagine christ we don't we don't use other visualization techniques in order to pray either in part because they can become distractions and in part because no visualize visualization technique is pure prayer it's not to say they are all bad i'm not making that assumption but some people imagine them to be prayer itself when it is not don't visualize the seventh point i wanted to make is don't expect instant quiet when you pray the jesus prayer people often tell me i'm starting to pray this jesus prayer i hear more noise after i start well there's a reason for that our hearts are filled with a lot of noise so we start praying the jesus prayer and somehow again perhaps from reading literature or perhaps we've picked it up on our own we have kind of sentimental and romantic notions about praying the jesus prayer you begin and immediately we're in a kind of a pristine state we enter the heart and how beautiful that is it's an inner paradise it is an inner paradise that's absolutely true but it is an injured damaged inner paradise as well and it is full of noise so when we begin to pray we hear that noise that's not a bad thing that's not a reason to give up but it's the kind of noise that you and i need to confront don't be discouraged by it keep praying the noise level will come down but not in five seconds the more you pray it the more quiet your heart will become eighthly understand that the heart is both competent to pray and wounded this is hard for us to grasp the heart is wounded in part that's why we have noise we have sins that come out of the heart we have passions that come out of the heart often our heart is not fully functional we find this very discouraging because we feel this when we pray at the same time the heart was created by god to be competent to pray the heart was made by god to have direct unmediated communion with god that's a very audacious statement you know but this is what we have always taught the heart has been created by god to have direct unmediated communion with him and so wounded as our hearts are they are still created for prayer and you and i can keep that in mind as encouragement when we pray the ninth point i wanted to make is know that prayer is a grace but that it's also work we need to ask for the holy spirit's help when we pray we need the holy spirit to pray in fact what we discover when we practice the jesus prayer is that the holy spirit who is given to us at baptism is praying in our hearts and we are trying to draw our prayer towards his prayer so that they are united into one prayer is a grace it is a gift but it is also work it is hard work to pray it is hard work to fight distractions it is hard work to fight the thoughts and images that seem to not only appear instantly but even multiply suddenly when we begin to pray but god gives us that grace when we ask him so that the work is balanced with the grace of god and with the sweetness that comes oftentimes when we are praying we feel that sweetness and we know that we haven't done anything for it nothing has come from us to create that kind of a sweetness that is the presence of the holy spirit and it is god's grace a sign of his love towards us the tenth point i wanted to make if you are praying the jesus prayer and you have a very strange or odd experience whether you consider it explicitly spiritual or not consult your spiritual father this kind of prayer will elicit reactions in a number of people you can well imagine that the journey into the heart is not an easy one or always a pleasant one and sometimes we are tempted when we pray really we ought not to be shocked by that sometimes we are tempted sometimes we have certain passions that can come to the fore when we are praying which is very painful for us but it's a reality when you're a wounded human being loved by god that when you pray you can have these experiences if you consider them out of the ordinary and disturbing and especially if they are repeating speak to your spiritual father about it don't just leave it it may be that you might have to change something in what you were doing in rare situations but these situations exist you may need to stop practicing the jesus prayer all together and do another kind of prayer this is possible and your spiritual father like your doctor family doctor will help you diagnose the problem and make some suggestions as to how you might address it if it's anything to be concerned about may not be of course but that of course tells us that we ought to when we are practicing the jesus prayer it's appropriate that we have recourse to someone who is also praying and who has pastoral responsibility for us the eleventh point if you practice the jesus prayer please keep in mind that you need also to participate in the liturgical worship and in the sacraments of the church it's very important to confess your sins it's very important to receive the body and blood of christ the jesus prayer is not a replacement for these things it is a very beautiful powerful prayer and it introdu and it brings us into the heavenly places together with christ but it doesn't mean that we stop going to church and if you look at the history of the church there was actually a movement which stressed prayer over participation in the worship of the church and although most people are not familiar with this word nasalianism or the message this was actually a heresy in the church we're used to people who who embrace heresies we tend to think of someone who teaches something very wrong about the trinity about christ but in this case they're teaching something which is incorrect and that is they are suggesting that personal prayer alone is sufficient for salvation the church doesn't teach that this is not part of the gospel it's not what the apostles taught it might be mystical it might be interesting it might even be very attractive because it points to a kind of a secret knowledge and secret experience and you know whenever you do that you're going to have people who are going to be interested right away it makes prayer more esoteric and christian prayer is not is not esoteric there's nothing secret here the only thing that is secret is your prayer and when you pray and how you pray when you are alone with god finally when you pray the jesus prayer allow the holy spirit to lead you to silence don't say i have a program of praying the jesus prayer for five minutes and it's going to happen if two after three minutes of praying the jesus prayer you feel that the holy spirit is leading you to a deeper place where the prayer seems to disappear go go the deeper place has no words at all this is what we need to discover said isaac the syrian as i mentioned earlier spoke about this he said silence is the language of the world to come it is a loaded silence it is fruitful it is full of communication but it is non-verbal completely non-discursive it is what the fathers of the church call pure prayer pure prayer has neither word nor image it's pure communion pure prayer if you are drawn to that kind of prayer by christ go with him this is a very beautiful place to be and this is where the jesus prayer god willing will take us we will get a taste of this prayer pure prayer neither however should we be disappointed if it doesn't come often we can't make pure prayer the objective of the first six months of praying the jesus prayer or set a kind of a limit on it as to when it's going to happen we pray in part out of obedience we pray out of love and we make the journey of prayer because we need to

Channel: Christ the Saviour OC

Views: 201,985

Keywords: Orthodox Christianity, The Jesus Prayer

Id: S_VeNg7GE2o

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2017