You may have heard of the “Jesus Prayer.” It is a short prayer, also sometimes called “the prayer of the heart.” It is rooted in Psalm 123:3, Luke 18:13, and Luke 18:38, and in its most complete form is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” I wrote about it in my post, 10 Breath Prayers.
However, you may not be aware of a book about the Jesus Prayer that is a classic of Christian spirituality and, in particular, Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In fact, the manuscript was discovered and copied by an Orthodox abbot at Mount Athos in the 19th century. It was first published in 1884 under the title, “Sincere Tales of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father.” Today it is known as The Way of a Pilgrim.
It is an anonymous account of an early 19th century Russian Christian’s spiritual journey. He tells how one day in church he heard Paul’s exhortation (in 1 Thessalonians 5:17) to “pray without ceasing” and wondered (as many modern Christians do) if such a thing were possible.
He began asking others about Paul’s words, thus beginning a quest to learn to pray constantly (via a mystical tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy known as hesychasm).
The anonymous pilgrim wanders all over Russia while praying the Jesus Prayer. He progresses from praying those words hundreds of times a day to thousands of times, until the words were woven into his heart. He describes his pursuit like this:
That is how I go about now, and ceaselessly repeat the prayer of Jesus, which is more precious and sweet to me than anything in the world. At times I do as much as forty-three or four miles a day and do not feel that I am walking at all. I am aware only of the fact that I am saying my prayer.
When the bitter cold pierces me, I begin to say my prayer more earnestly, and I quickly get warm all over. When hunger begins to overcome me, I call more often on the name of Jesus, and I forget my wish for food. When I fall ill and get rheumatism in my back and legs, I fix my thoughts on the prayer and do not notice the pain. If anyone harms me I have only to think, “How sweet is the prayer of Jesus!” and the injury and anger alike pass away and I forget it all.
I have become a sort of half-conscious person….Thus, although I have not yet reached that ceaseless spiritual prayer which is self-acting in the heart, yet I thank God I do now understand the meaning of those words I heard in the Epistle–“Pray without ceasing.”
The Way of a Pilgrim introduced me not only to the Eastern practice of hesychastic prayer, but also to the Philokalia, a collection of spiritual writings by 36 Orthodox authors (such as Peter of Damascus and Symeon the New Theologian) from the 4th through the 15th centuries. It would make an illuminating devotional companion to the spiritual classic, The Practice of the Presence of God.
Have you read The Way of a Pilgrim? Have you prayed the Jesus Prayer? Does the Russian pilgrim’s experience sound strange to you? Or inviting? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think of this post.
