The Jesus Prayer E-Book

John Michael Talbot

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 172

Beschreibung

An ancient prayer for every day: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner." These words have strengthened and comforted believers for centuries. The Jesus Prayer comes to us from the Greek Orthodox tradition. In these pages, John Michael Talbot explores more of the roots of the prayer along with the theological and practical meaning of each word in the lives of believers today . He ends each chapter with a brief practice using the prayer.

Leseprobe

The Jesus Prayer

A CRY FOR MERCY, A PATH OF RENEWAL

John Michael Talbot

www.IVPress.com/ books

InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web:www.ivpress.comEmail:[email protected]

©2013 by John Michael Talbot

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press®is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website atwww.intervarsity.org.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Scripture quotations markedRNABare taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms © 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C., and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

While all stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Cover design: Cindy Kiple Images: cross: © zoran simin/iStockphoto rough white wall: © mrfotos/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-3577-5 (print) ISBN 978-0-8308-9558-8 (digital)

“Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God,

have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Contents

Contents

Introduction

Lord

Jesus

Christ

Son of God, Part 1

Son of God, Part 2

Son of God, Part 3

Have Mercy

On Me

A Sinner

Conclusion

The Roots of the Jesus Prayer

Bibliography

Suggested Reading

About the Author

Related Titles

Introduction

I discovered the Jesus Prayer at a time in my life when I desperately needed something to deepen my life in Christ.

After reading about the various major world religions, I rediscovered Jesus Christ while reading the Revised Standard Bible that my dear Methodist grandmother had given me for the confirmation I did not receive. I had wandered away from Christianity into rock ’n’ roll, but had come back after seeing firsthand that most of the stars who had everything I thought I wanted were really still very empty and unhappy. This led me to Jesus at the height of the Jesus Movement. Eventually I ended up recording Jesus music with Sparrow Records, a company that has since become the largest Christian recording company in the world.

But I was empty. I had memorized much of the Bible and had become a proverbial “Bible thumper,” but I had lost some of the simple Jesus I briefly experienced in the first days of my return to Christ. My Christian life began to bottom out. Then I discovered the early church fathers, or patristics, and began to study them. This led me to the monastic and Franciscan doorway to the Orthodox tradition and on to the Catholic faith. But this did not cut me off from my evangelical past. Rather, it enlivened it! Ironically, my Methodist grandmother once told me, “Johnny, now that you are Catholic I think you are a better Methodist than ever!”

I encountered the Jesus Prayer early on in a book called The Way of the Pilgrim. I was also reading Thomas Merton’s books and others like The Imitation of Christ and The Cloud of Unknowing. I was reading monastic sources like “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers” and various Franciscan books. I was then led to the Philokalia, or “the study of the beautiful,” which is a collection of sources from the Christian East.

The Jesus Prayer is a big part of Eastern spirituality. I must admit that I related more to the Western tradition, which came from a culture that more recently and directly gave birth to mine. It used a language that seemed more approachable. And I found that the Franciscan tradition went back to the gospel with a gentle but fierce directness that I liked.

Not long after I became the founder of a new integrated monastic community, the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, a child of our Franciscan mother in the Catholic Church. I immersed myself in the Christian East and the West. After a period of some dryness and disappointment I entered into an extended period of more intense solitude in my monastic cell, and began to restudy interfaith sources on monasticism and meditation. I also reinstituted an intensive daily practice of meditation. After ten or so years, and really allowing that stream to find its place in my Catholic Christian faith, I began to use and teach the Jesus Prayer with a whole new confidence.

Specifically, I encountered a deepening of my faith from the understandable things of faith and morality to a more habitual experience of God in contemplative grace beyond understanding, names, forms and description. Using traditional disciplines of asceticism and meditation, I found myself breaking through to contemplation with my spirit, which is part of the Catholic Christian heritage.

The Gift of the Mystical Tradition

In the monastic and Franciscan Catholic and Orthodox streams I discovered the contemplative and mystical traditions of which the Jesus Prayer is a vital expression. This enlivened my faith in a way I had hungered for but had not found very often in my experience. After that, new richness and vast horizons began to open up.

Many evangelical Protestants, and those of all expressions, have experienced something similar. We learn the Scriptures almost by heart. We learn much with our heads, but somehow the heart remains empty. Our salvation experience remains only an idea or an emotional high at best. Catholics and Orthodox can do the same through the study of patristics, liturgy, sacraments, ecclesiology or canon law.

I have found that my head-oriented and dry Christian faith is not limited to me. I often hear of a hunger for something more within my own tradition. Pastors, ministers and students find that once they are in active ministry, they begin to burn out because mere intellectual training and emotional experiences are not enough to sustain them. The very best expression of that “something more”—the Jesus Prayer—is from the monastic Christian East. But it has something for us all, East or West, secular or monastic.

Different traditions have tried to explain the mystical experience using various paradigms. After rather extensive experience of the meditation described in the Christian West, East and Far Eastern religions from a Christian perspective, I found the Pauline paradigm of spirit, soul and body worked best for me as a follower of Jesus. The body is the senses, emotions and thoughts of the brain. The soul is the spiritual mind or reason. The spirit is the place of passive contemplation.

The problem is that through sin we often get stuck in a self-identity that is limited to our senses, emotions and thoughts. The spirit remains asleep. We are forgiven and empowered to holiness in Christ through the cross and resurrection. When the old self dies with Christ, then the spirit is reborn in his Spirit through the cross and resurrection of Christ, and we become an entirely new person. This is a breakthrough, liberation and rebirth in the fullest sense in Jesus!

But it does not stop there. This breakthrough in the Spirit then permeates our entire being, enlivening the reason of the soul and the senses, emotions and thoughts of the body so they fulfill their original purpose. Now the thoughts facilitate the spirit with good doctrine, emotions empower us with enthusiasm and the body becomes the vehicle where the wonder of this new life in Christ unfolds. We are truly “born again.”

A Repetitive Prayer

The Jesus Prayer is a rosary. A rosary is any repetitive prayer prayed on a knotted rope or beaded cord. Anyone traveling in the Middle East has seen Orthodox monks walking through the busy markets and praying a rosary. That rosary is the Jesus Prayer.

Some might rightly point out that Jesus condemned vain repetitions. Indeed, Jesus taught us the “Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father” specifically to teach us not to engage in vain repetitions. (Unfortunately, this sometimes happens with that very prayer when we pray too speedily.) The trick is to pray repetitions with real meaning, not to stop repetitive prayer altogether!

Many of the prayers of Orthodox Jews would have required that Jesus pray repetitive prayers. The great Shema Yisrael (“Hear, [O] Israel”) are the first two words of a section of the Torah and comprise the title (sometimes shortened to Shema) of a prayer that serves as a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. The first verse encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORDis one,” found in Deuteronomy 6:4. Shema means to “hear,” but in a way that is also obedient to what we hear. In English the word obedience comes from the Latin oboedire, which comes from ob (toward) and oeirdire (to hear, listen and do). Jesus certainly did not take issue with this prayer, but only in repeating it as rote ritual without right meaning and right intention, and as a genuine prayer.

So repetitive prayer is not the problem. Vain repetition is.

Breath

The Eastern monastic fathers teach us to unite the Jesus Prayer to our breathing. This is often frightening to those who are skeptical of uniting prayer with the breath due to its similarity with Eastern meditation. But there is a good reason for this teaching, which is similar to but distinct from the teaching of Eastern religions.

The words for Spirit in Scripture are rûaḥ in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek. Both mean “air, wind and breath,” specifically the air, wind and breath of a rational creature. In order to get a full breath of air we must relearn how to breathe with both lungs!

The apostle Paul instructs us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). Through the centuries we have tried different ways to fulfill this. We have prayed at various times of the day through the monastic Work of God or Liturgy of the Hours, which help us to pray always.

Some, like the fourth-century Messalian Euchites, went to the absurd extreme of constant prayer to the neglect of everything else. Others, like the monks of Cluny in tenth-century Europe, established a constant rotation of monks who prayed in their churches. The notion was that, as the body of Christ, if one was praying, all were praying. Today some similarly practice “perpetual adoration” of Jesus under the exposed bread and wine on the altar. Prayer vigils are also practiced in modern Protestant traditions.

Some of the church fathers taught that after fixed times of prayer we can continue to pray inwardly throughout our daily activities as a form of continual prayer. In his Commentary on the Psalms St. Augustine said, “There is another inward kind of prayer without ceasing, which is the desire of the heart. Whatever activity you happen to be engaged in . . . if you only long for that Sabbath then you do not cease to pray. If you do not want to pause in prayer then never pause in your longing.”

The Eastern monastic fathers taught that we can unite the Jesus Prayer with every breath. We need not be in a church or chapel, or even in a prayer space to practice this prayer. Think about it: What is the one thing we do without ceasing? We breathe. If we are not breathing, chances are we are already dead!

St. Hesychios the Priest (eighth or ninth century) said in On Watchfulness and Holiness: “Just as it is impossible to . . . live without breathing . . . we should use the name of Jesus as we do our own breath. Let the Jesus Prayer cleave to your breath, and in a few days you will find that it is possible [to pray without ceasing]. With your breathing combine watchfulness and the name of Jesus.” So, from the perspective of praying in the breath or Spirit of God with our spirit, or of praying “without ceasing,” uniting prayer with our breath works very well.

Using This Book

I have been teaching the Jesus Prayer for about a decade in retreats at our Little Portion Retreat Center, and more recently in hundreds of three-day parish missions all across America. People are responding! Most say that the Jesus Prayer helps them find a place of legitimate meditation with the use of their breath. Months and years after a particular mission I still receive encouraging communications that confirm that this Prayer has a profound effect on personal prayer life and the entire life of the church and the world. This book comes out of this experience.

Roman Catholics and Protestants appreciate the practices from the Christian East that balance our largely Western approach to faith. As we rediscover our own heritage and put it into practice, seekers will not have to look elsewhere (such as to Eastern religions) for the legitimate human need for meditative and contemplative prayer that brings health on the spiritual, psychological, emotional and physical levels of life.

The chapters of this book are formed around each word of the prayer. Reflecting on the words will bring us into a full understanding of the words of the Jesus Prayer. After that we will pray the words with a greater intuitive grasp.

At the end of each chapter you will be invited to pray the Jesus Prayer. I encourage you to set aside a few minutes each day to begin to pray in this way.

If you want more detailed background on the origins of the Jesus Prayer, you will find an appendix at the back with further information.

It is my prayer that this book will encourage you to take a similar spiritual journey in Christ without encountering the many pitfalls and obstacles I encountered. I was helped enormously by my spiritual father. I now seek to repay that debt of love to you!

Practice

The actual words of the Jesus Prayer are simple. The traditional prayer is, “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” These words come mainly from Scripture and are rich in meaning, but for now let’s just get used to praying them.

The Jesus Prayer is united with the breath in two motions: the in breath and the out breath. Breathing in we say, “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God.” Breathing out we say, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Originally, the Prayer concluded with “Son of God.” The words “have mercy on me, a sinner” were added later for the novices (new monks). The young of ancient tradition were not that different from young converts today who sometimes think they have the answers that their elders have missed. The Eastern monastic elders added these words to keep the young novices in their place!

Breathing this Prayer for a few minutes we will begin to notice an almost natural motion. Breathing in fills us up, and breathing out empties us. Breathing in causes us to hold on, and breathing out causes us to let go.

This works well with the actual meaning of the words. The first words fill us with all that is beautiful: the personal lordship of Jesus, personal salvation, the anointing of the Spirit, the Trinity, the incarnation, the church and the sacraments. The second group of words causes us to let go of anything standing between us and full communion with God through Jesus and with all people.

This letting go is most powerful. We are often filled with all kinds of rationalizations and justifications about why we are not in full communion with God and the church. While these might make sense or may be largely correct, they will never free us from our ego attachments to our opinions and agendas regarding God, the church, others and ourselves. Breathing out is a powerful tool for letting go.

Take a few minutes and practice this. Sit straight but comfortably. Breathe deeply through your nose, but not artificially. Allow yourself to fill up with God, and then let go of anything standing between you and full communion with God through Christ (or the church as a body or as individuals).

The Way of the Pilgrim says, “Now if you will listen, I will read how you can learn ceaseless interior prayer.” The elder opened the Philokalia to the account of St. Simeon the New Theologian and began reading:

Sit alone and in silence; bow your head and close your eyes; relax your breathing and with your imagination look into your heart; direct your thoughts from your head into your heart. And while inhaling say, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” either softly with your lips or in your mind. Endeavor to fight distractions but be patient and peaceful and repeat this process frequently.

St. Calistas and Ignatius in their work Directions to Hesychasts also say:

Sitting down in your cell, collect your mind, lead into the path of your breath along which the air enters in, constrain it to enter the heart together with the air, and keep it there. Keep it there, and do not leave it silent or idle; instead give it the following prayer: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Let this be its constant occupation.

1

Lord

The words of the Jesus Prayer are important. But they are not the most important. The fathers call this “Prayer of the Heart.” When we pray the Prayer we use the faculty of intuition to grasp its realities. But we cannot intuit them if we do not have at least a basic understanding of what the words actually mean. Let’s walk through the words briefly so that we can immerse ourselves in the deeper meanings of the Prayer later.

Lord

The first word in The Jesus Prayer is Lord. There are several Hebrew and Greek words in Scripture that are used of God. Of course, they all go back to YHWH, or the Tetragrammaton, a Greek word meaning “the four letters,” the actual name of God which was not to be pronounced by the human tongue, according to the Jews. God remains transcendent, beyond all human thought and words. Thus, in place of the Tetragrammaton, Adonai, Jehovah or Lord have been inserted.

The incomprehensibility of God is brought out in the apophatic Christian tradition, which is also spoken of by the Greek philosophers. They say that what we can say about God is next to nothing compared to what we cannot know with the mind or describe with human words. This is the realm of paradoxes or apparent contradictions that speak deeper truths. Here silence sometimes speaks best of the eternal Word.

The Greek word is more understandable. It is kyrios, which means “supreme in authority, controller, God, Lord and master.” It is still heard today in Catholic liturgies of the East and West in the Kyrie Eleison or the “Lord Have Mercy” that begins every Mass.

While these scriptural words are indeed most interesting, I would like to focus on the derivation of the English word for Lord. The word is hlafweard, a thirteenth-century word which means “the maker or keeper of the bread.” Hlaf means “loaf,” and weard means “lord” or “master of a household, ruler, superior,” also “God.”

The English word lord goes back to the feudal system, which was set in place after the fall of the Roman Empire. Feudalism was good in that it kept Europe from lapsing into barbarianism. In that system a person called a “lord” was placed in charge of a region. The poor grew the wheat, which they brought to the local lord, who processed it into flour and bread, and distributed it to the people of his region. It was not an equal distribution, but according to need. Some needed more and some less. This was similar to the process of Acts 2 and 4. As long as the lord was good, or benevolent, it worked well. When it failed, it went terribly wrong.