The Jesus Prayer

In past posts, I have offered ideas on how to pray successfully using short phrases that are simply repeated over and over again.  See Phrases, or Using Saints in Basic Prayer.

I have also suggested that these prayers are especially effective because they increase mindfulness throughout the day.  Repeated often enough they return, unbidden, when the mind finds a moment to relax.

The king of such prayers is the Jesus Prayer, which is simply this:

“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This prayer emerges in the early history of the Orthodox Church.

It is the focus of an anonymous Russian work entitled The Way of a Pilgrim. This book, written as a novel, follows the quest of a poor anonymous peasant who yearns to learn to live out Paul’s words in Thessalonians, “Pray without ceasing.”

That it is a novel makes it more approachable than it might otherwise be.  If you like such books, it is well worth the effort.