Non-Christian meditation seeks to empty the mind and erase consciousness of the self. The pilgrim encounters a starets (the Byzantine equivalent of a spiritual director), who teaches him the Jesus Prayer and instructs him in a form of repetitive practice that will help him move from praying the words aloud to praying them silently to, eventually, having his whole being become the prayer.Īlthough some commentaries compare this practice to the Hindu or Buddhist chanting of a mantra, there is a critical difference. The Way of the Pilgrim recounts the journey of a mendicant (religious beggar) across Russia, seeking a way to pray unceasingly. The prayer is so beloved of Eastern (and now, increasingly, Western) Christians that it is said to be the most frequently recited Christian prayer after the Our Father and the Hail Mary. Paul called prayer “without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

Popularized by an anonymous 19th-century Russian spiritual classic, The Way of the Pilgrim, the Jesus Prayer is associated with the kind of round-the-clock prayerful contemplation that St. The repetition of this prayer is central to the Eastern Christian contemplative tradition known as Hesychasm (from the Greek for “keeping silence”) or prayer of the heart, as it is often described in the West. It was my husband, devoted to Byzantine liturgy and spirituality, who first introduced me to the Jesus Prayer.

But there was no Jesus Prayer as such in my childhood missal or prayerbook.

And I was raised on (and have returned to) the practice of silently praying “My Jesus, mercy!” at the elevation of the Chalice at Mass. It is, in some ways, a more elaborate version of the Kyrie eleison (“Lord, have mercy”), that other litany we inherit from the East. The simplest formula of this brief repetitive petition – “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” – was of course vaguely familiar from the Gospel stories it echoes: the cure of the blind man (Mark 10:46-52), the publican’s humble confession in the parable (Luke 18:9-14). Growing up Catholic, I had never heard of the Jesus Prayer, at least not in the form in which it has been cherished and prayed by Orthodox Christians for centuries. 56 Ways to Be Merciful During the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Aleteia How a simple, timeless petition lets us truly “pray without ceasing”ģ7) Learn the Jesus Prayer and use it.

Jesus prayer in hindi