The Prayer of the Heart

What in the world is the prayer of the heart?

The prayer of the heart, or the Jesus prayer, is an ancient prayer drawn from the Scriptures and expressed as the simplest petition one can offer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner....

The best-known work on the prayer is the anonymously authored classic of Russian spirituality, The Way of the Pilgrim. It's definitely worth reading, but it presumes certain convictions on the part of the reader. It assumes, first of all, that the reader is acquainted with repetitive, ritual, and liturgical forms of prayer, which most Americans just aren't. It also presumes belief in the Orthodox concept of salvation, called theosis, which most Americans don't.

So I offer this as my humble introduction to the prayer of the heart which has accompanied the way of this pilgrim for these four months. I also hope it will be a useful introduction to the theory and practice of prayer ropes and prayer beads as well as the deeper meditative nature of prayer. I write this not as an exhortation to conform to a spiritual practice, but as an invitation to join with me in a prayer that has brought profound comfort to me through the stress of my travels.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner....

Most basically, you need to know that you don't just say the prayer once. You repeat it over, and over, and over. It's a drumming beat.

The prayer is not meant to be a one-time petition; indeed, its less a petition than a meditation. American Protestantism has almost entirely lost the art of contemplative prayer, as opposed to the petitionary prayer that dominates our worship services and daily devotions: "Lord, I just want this; Jesus, I'd like that." And I certainly don't mean selfish petitions! By no means! "Lord, I want peace of mind for this brother and sister in Christ who is in deep need; Jesus, I just pray to you for the work of this Christian orphanage in such and a such a place."

But petitionary prayer is not the sort of deep communion with God that prayer has always offered. For that, we require the flip side of the coin: contemplative, or meditative prayer. In this sort of prayer we search for an inner silence so we can hear the still small voice of the transcendent and imminent God. Most often, we look for this by the quiet reading of the Scriptures; the ancient liturgical art of Lectio Divina, or Sacred Reading, is a contemplative, very slow, out loud reading of the Scriptures. Petitions are an important facet of prayer; but prayer-as-communion requires going further.

The Jesus Prayer stands as the hinge between petitionary and meditative prayer. It's a petition for Christ to have mercy on us, whether for our sins or in the hardships we face because of the fallenness of the world; but it's equally a reflection on the essential truth of the Christian faith: that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is boundlessly merciful to us wretched sinners.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner....

The repetitions of this prayer can go on silently, in the background of your mind, all day (and when you really get into it, in your dreams as well). When beginning, as advised in the The Way of the Pilgrim, one should take a significant time alone- several hours over the course of several days- in order to simply pray the prayer. Only then can it get into your subconscious in such a way that is spontaneously prayed in the midst of everyday activities, as I chat with others, as I wait in line for a bus, as I type this post.

The prayer, you see, is not meant to be something you pray in the forefront of your mind all day and night. We're not monks; we have vocations to attend to. Rather, it is meant to form a constant background to your life-experience. Repentance toward God is not a one-time event that 'gets us saved' or something we do after we've sinned; rather, it is an attitude we must actively cultivate in order to inform our everyday interaction with God, other persons, and the world.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner....

I say this specifically as I anticipate two objections to the practice of repetitive, nigh-subconscious prayer: one very American-Protestant, the other very Lutheran.

On the one hand, you might say, how can such a prayer be truly meaningful if it isn't prayed sincerely and in the foreground? This objection, I think, is a sad symptom of our American obsession with petitionary prayer, on the one hand, and authenticity, on the other. Yet as I said, the Jesus Prayer stands on the hinge between petitionary prayer and contemplative prayer. It is voiced in the words of a petition, yes, but contemplative prayer is as much a dialogue between us and God as it is a lone cry out to God. It is repeated over and over less because we are calling out again and again (and again!) to God than it is because in these words, from our tongue, God is crying out again and again (and again!) to us to live in the light of the answer of this prayer: Yes, I do! I shall always have mercy on you, my child!

Prayer does not begin with the presence of God, but with his absence. We cry to the Lord in our distress not because he is visibly there, but because he seems so far. The prayer is repeated because it is a seeking for the presence of God, ready to come to the foreground in the most difficult situations precisely because it is always there in the background. Many times on this journey I have found myself suddenly in a tight spot, in need of aid, and have found that rather than beginning to stumble onto words, the words were already on my lips! Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!

But how can this been truly the authentic voice of the Spirit if its a ritual? And how can it be authentic if I'm hardly even aware of praying it? For that, I think we need to revisit our understanding of authenticity. What is truly real is not the glamorous or the spontaneous, the sudden ecstatic outburst or the words of our own mouths, but those deep things within us that inform our world and transform our lives, even when we're barely aware of them.

I think this response goes a long way toward meeting the Lutheran concern, which I myself have had to struggle with as a sincere adherent of Luther's theology. How can I pray this prayer for mercy, over and over, when I believe that God has already declared me as sinless as possible, and as righteous as Christ? And how, when that declaration came about not even by 'choosing Jesus' or saying the 'sinner's prayer' (as most evangelicals believe), but only by his unmerited grace?

In the first case, by I point to everything I said above. This is less a petition than it is a contemplation; and it is less my crying out to God than it is a lesson in the right order of things- Jesus of Nazareth is Lord, Messiah, and Son of God, and I am a sinner in need to his mercy- that shapes who I am and where I am in God's creation. So if you, like me, believe that justification is by grace alone through faith alone, and are concerned at the nature of this repetitive, ritual prayer of the heart, go back and reread what I wrote to our Protestant brothers and sisters.

But second, I would emphasize that if we, as Lutherans, are to be serious that justification is by 'double forensic imputation'- that is, our sin is legally credited to Christ crucified, and his righteousness is legally credited to us- and not by the growth in visible righteousness as Catholics believe, then we need to get serious about sanctification. For when we say that Christ is regarded as our sin, and we are regarded as Christ, the Catholic response is that we believe in a 'legal fiction' and are accusing God of willful ignorance; but if God is to be God, let us be clear that in legally regarding us as the righteousness of Christ, we have no doubt that we one day will be transformed from glory (of our legal partaking in Christ's righteousness) to glory (of our visible partaking in Christ's righteousness). For me, praying the Jesus Prayer means getting serious about sanctification.

But enough of arguments. After all, my point is not to convince anyone to pray this prayer, but merely to share my experience of it; I only counter these objections in order to defend my own actions.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner....

Back to the practice of the prayer itself.

One thing that helps me pray the prayer throughout the day has been timing it with my breathing, as suggested in The Way of the Pilgrim. At first this is fairly difficult, since during hours and days of practice you need to really pray it quietly, but out loud. That's how you drum it into your head. But eventually you let your voice fade away, and only your lips continue. Once I got to this point, I timed it as such:

(while breathing in): Lord Jesus Christ...
(while breathing out): ...Son of God...
(while breathing in): ...have mercy on me...
(while breathing out) ...a sinner...

And on the next breath, you start right over again, with 'Lord Jesus Christ...'

Eventually, you can even let your lips slide and just flick your tongue in the now-familiar motion. It is also said in The Way of the Pilgrim to time the words and syllables to your heartbeat; personally, I've never found this helpful, as my heartbeat and my natural breathing rhythm are simply off, and the syllables don't line up most of the time. But if it works for you, or if the heartbeat works better than the breathing, go for the other or both.

A note on the structure of the prayer: some time, word out the fullest meanings of each word of the prayer. It's fascinating, and for those of you, like me, who enjoy a bit of biblical, theological, and historical study, it's an excellent way to incorporate your intellectual interests into your prayer life. For instance:

Lord. In Hebrew, this could be Yahweh, the personal name of the one patron deity of the Hebrews, who we know under the name Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It could also be Adonai, the term in Hebrew used when 'Yahweh' cannot be spoken aloud with a meaning of 'master' or 'suzerain.' This is a fun place to incorporate the scholarly work of an M.G. Kline or a Michael Horton on the parallelism between the covenant at Sinai and the suzerainity treaties of the Ancient Near East (if that makes no sense, don't worry). And then there's the Greek, Kyrie, which brings me back into the central spine of this prayer: "Kyrie eleison," "Lord have mercy." And then there's the Latin Dominus, where I incorporate the parallelism between Paul's 'Jesus is Lord' and Roman imperial ideology/theology's "Caesar is Lord," which in turn contrasts the Kingdom of God with the Imperium Romanum.

And you can go on and on, with each word of the prayer. I suppose if you really want to hear my personal reflections on each one, you can email me, but I won't bore you with them here. My simple point is that the prayer is absolutely packed with meaning.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner....

A second note about the structure: not with every word, but with its overall trust, the prayer descends from the highest heights of Godhead (Lord, Yahweh) down to me, a sinner. Strange to think about, given the Orthodox theology of sin, but as a Lutheran what petition better expresses the total depravity of humankind in contrast to its righteous Creator?

Indeed, if this were a prayer designed for one-time petition, it's a rather depressing one. It begins with the Lord, yes, but it ends with 'a sinner.' It's designed to be repeated: the final word 'sinner' demands that we run back to the 'Lord,' beginning the prayer anew with every breath.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner....

So a word about the chotki, the Orthodox prayer rope. It's a series of knots tied together in a circle, with a cross usually hanging off of it. They come in a number of varieties, with varying number of knots; mine is the 100-knot variety, with three blue beads and the cross punctuating each series of twenty-five petitions. It's not as though I need to keep track of how many times I've prayed (the Orthodox do, but I feel a little uncomfortable keeping track of a supposedly ceaseless prayer). Rather, the chotki reminds me to pray, and hear Spirit calling to Spirit within me. Moving my now-calloused thumb from knot to knot pushes me to continue these repetitions when my soul becomes, my body lazy, and my mind weak, so that when true laziness, or weakness, or exhaustion come, the prayer of the heart will be right there. I find it useful; you may not. That's fine!

Certain Lutherans going straight back to the sixteenth century have incorporated this ancient prayer into a theologically-acceptable version of the rosary, as well. Unlike the Anglican version of the rosary, which is physically different from that used by Catholics, Lutherans like me (hardly in the majority) use one that is identical in organization to the Catholic version. It is a loop of five 'decades,' or ten beads, separated by four distinctive beads, with a fifth central piece containing an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary. From this Marian piece hangs another series of beads, five in all, with the two beads farthest up and farthest down on this hanging bit that are also distinctive from the inner three. At the bottom hangs a crucifix.

Yet whereas the decades on the Catholic rosary are used to recite the Hail Mary ("Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Christ. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death), the Lutheran version employs these decades to pray the Jesus Prayer. Using the rosary, I work my way up from the crucifix, where I invoke the name of the Trinity ("In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen."), I pray the Nicene Creed on the first distinctive bead; three prayers of the heart on the next series; a Gloria Patri (Blessed be the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and evermore shalt be, world without end, amen.) on the chain between the uppermost of these three and the next distinctive bead; and an Our Father (i.e., the Lord's Prayer) on the second and uppermost of these distinctive beads.

Skipping the Marian image, I proceed directly to the first decade of ten Jesus prayers; at the chain between the last of the decade beads and the connecting distinctive bead, I pray the Gloria Patri, and then the Our Father on the distinctive bead. This process repeats five times until I reach the image of Mary again. Here, I pray the pre-Tridentine Hail Mary; that is, the first two sentences, taken from Luke 1:28 and 1:42, without praying the third sentence, added by the Council of Trent, which prays directly to her for intercession on our behalf. Then I just reverse the order down the last beads- the Our Father, the Gloria Patri, the Jesus Prayers, and the Nicene Creed- before finishing "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen."

Here's a very similar summary: http://www.giftsofaith.com/Files/lutheranrosary.pdf

Why this excursus into the Lutheran rosary? Well, besides the fact that I've mentioned it in my posts before without explaining, it helps illustrate the multifaceted uses of the Jesus Prayer. The prayer of the heart is there so that we can "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and it is largely meditative and contemplating. But it's also a petition, as it is most obviously in this Lutheran rosary. That is why I pray this version of the rosary before church; for that is when I most thoroughly need to ask for God's mercy upon this sinner, when I prepare my heart and mind to receive him who comes to us in his body and blood.

And here I note that as with all great spiritual practices, there is the threat of pride. What I must strive to remind myself is that praying the prayer of the heart does not bring about God's mercy; if anything, God's mercy is bringing about this wellspring of prayer within my heart. And it is not in actually doing deeds of righteousness, whether in saying the prayer or just being a good person, that I am actually made righteous; the righteousness of Christ, legally imputed to me, is rather the foundation of why I am transformed into a better person, first inside, then out. And still better, it is not in cultivating an attitude of repentance, or asking for God's repentance, that I am prepared to receive Holy Communion, but rather I am humbled by the declaration of 'righteous' which alone allows me to partake of the glory of God incarnate.

Even so, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner....