Elder Sophrony on approaching the Jesus Prayer
I propose
to devote this chapter to setting out as briefly as possible the more important
aspects of the Jesus Prayer and the commonsense views regarding this great
culture of the heart that I met with on the Holy Mountain. Year after year
monks repeat the prayer with their lips, without trying by any artificial means
to join mind and heart. Their attention is concentrated on harmonizing their
life with the commandments of Christ. According to ancient tradition mind
unites with heart through Divine action when the monk continues in the ascetic
feat of obedience and abstinence; when the mind, the heart and the very body of
the ‘old man’ to a sufficient degree are freed from the dominion over them of
sin; when the body becomes worthy to be ‘the temple of the Holy Ghost’ (cf.
Rom. 6. 11-14). However, both early and present-day teachers occasionally
permit recourse to a technical method of bringing the mind down into the heart.
To do this, the monk, having suitably settled his body, pronounces the prayer
with his head inclined on his chest, breathing in at the words ‘Lord Jesus
Christ, (Son of God)’ and breathing out to the words ‘have mercy upon me (a
sinner)’. During inhalation the attention at first follows the movement of the
air breathed in as far as the upper part of the heart. In this manner
concentration can soon be preserved without wandering, and the mind stands side
by side with the heart, or even enters within it. This method eventually
enables the mind to see, not the physical heart but that which is happening
within it—the feelings that creep in and the mental images that approach from
without. With this experience, the monk acquires the ability to feel his heart,
and to continue with his attention centered in the heart without further
recourse to any psychosomatic technique.
True Prayer Comes Through Faith and
Repentance
This
procedure can assist the beginner to understand where his inner attention
should be stayed during prayer and, as a rule, at all other times, too.
Nevertheless, true prayer is not to be achieved thus. True prayer comes
exclusively through faith and repentance accepted as the only foundation. The
danger of psychotechnics is that not a few attribute too great significance to
method qua method. In order to avoid such deformation the beginner should
follow another practice which, though considerably slower, is incomparably
better and more wholesome to fix the attention on the Name of Christ and on the
words of the prayer. When contrition for sin reaches a certain level the mind
naturally heeds the heart.
The Complete Formula
The
complete formula of the Jesus Prayer runs like this: Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of
God, have mercy upon me, a sinner; and it is this set form that is recommended.
In the first half of the prayer we profess Christ—God made flesh for our
salvation. In the second we affirm our fallen state, our sinfulness, our
redemption. The conjunction of dogmatic confession with repentance makes the
content of the prayer more comprehensive.
Stages of Development
It is
possible to establish a certain sequence in the development of this prayer.
First, it
is a verbal matter: we say the prayer with our lips while trying to concentrate
our attention on the Name and the words.
Next, we
no longer move our lips but pronounce the Name of Jesus Christ, and what
follows after, in our minds, mentally.
In the
third stage mind and heart combine to act together: the attention of the mind
is centered in the heart and the prayer said there.
Fourthly,
the prayer becomes self-propelling. This happens when the prayer is confirmed
in the heart and, with no especial effort on our part, continues there, where
the mind is concentrated.
Finally,
the prayer, so full of blessing, starts to act like a gentle flame within us,
as inspiration from on High, rejoicing the heart with a sensation of divine
love and delighting the mind in spiritual contemplation. This last state is
sometimes accompanied by a vision of Light.
Go step by step
A gradual
ascent into prayer is the most trustworthy. The beginner who would embark on
the struggle is usually recommended to start with the first step, verbal
prayer, until body, tongue, brain and heart assimilate it. The time that this
takes varies. The more earnest the repentance, the shorter the road. The
practice of mental prayer may for a while be associated with the hesychastic
method—in other words, it may take the form of rhythmic or a-rhythmic
articulation of the prayer as described above, by breathing in during the first
half and breathing out during the second part. This can be genuinely helpful if
one does not lose sight of the fact that every invocation of the Name of Christ
must be inseparably coupled with a consciousness of Christ Himself. The Name
must not be detached from the Person of God, lest prayer be reduced to a
technical exercise and so contravene the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not take the
name of the Lord thy God in vain’ (EX. 20.7; Deut. 5.11).
Attention of Mind Gained
When the
attention of the mind is fixed in the heart it is possible to control what
happens in the heart, and the battle against the passions assumes a rational
character. The enemy is recognized and can be driven off by the power of the
Name of Christ. With this ascetic feat the heart becomes so highly sensitive,
so discerning, that eventually when praying for anyone the heart can tell
almost at once the state of the person prayed for. Thus the transition takes
place from mental prayer to prayer of the mind and heart, which may be followed
by the gift of prayer that proceeds of itself.
Do Not Hurry
We try to
stand before God with the whole of our being. Invocation of the Name of God the
Saviour, uttered in the fear of God, together with a constant effort to live in
accordance with the commandments, little by little leads to a blessed fusion of
all our powers. We must never seek to hurry in our ascetic striving. It is
essential to discard any idea of achieving the maximum in the shortest possible
time. God does not force us but neither can we compel Him to anything
whatsoever. Results obtained by artificial means do not last long and, more
importantly, do not unite our spirit with the Spirit of the Living God.
It’s a Long Path
In the
atmosphere of the world today prayer requires super human courage. The whole
ensemble of natural energies is in opposition. To hold on to prayer without
distraction signals victory on every level of existence. The way is long and
thorny but there comes a moment when a heavenly ray pierces the dark obscurity,
to make an opening through which can be glimpsed the source of the eternal
Divine Light. The Jesus Prayer assumes a meta-cosmic dimension. St John the
Divine asserts that in the world to come our deification will achieve plenitude
since ‘we shall see Him as He is’. ‘And every man that hath this hope in him
purifieth himself, even as he is pure … Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not:
whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him’ (cf. 1 John 3.2, 3, 6).
In order in Christ’s Name to receive forgiveness of sins and the promise of the
Father we must strive to dwell on His Name ‘until we be endued with power from
on high’ (cf. Luke 24-49). In advising against being carried away by artificial
practices such as transcendental meditation I am but repeating the age-old
message of the Church, as expressed by St Paul: ‘Exercise thyself rather unto
godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable
unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is
to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. For therefore
we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is
the Saviour of all men’ (1 Tim. 4.7-10)
It’s Not Like Transcendental Meditation
The way
of the fathers requires firm faith and long patience”, whereas our
contemporaries want to seize every spiritual gift, including even direct
contemplation of the Absolute God, by force and speedily, and will often draw a
parallel between prayer in the Name of Jesus and yoga or transcendental
meditation and the like. I must stress the danger of such errors—the danger of
looking upon prayer as one of the simplest and easiest ‘technical’ means
leading to immediate unity with God. It is imperative to draw a very definite
line between the Jesus Prayer and every other ascetic theory. He is deluded who
endeavors to divest himself mentally of all that is transitory and relative in
order to cross some invisible threshold, to realize his eternal origin, his
identity with the Source of all that exists; in order to return and merge with
Him, the Nameless transpersonal Absolute. Such exercises have enabled many to
rise to supra-rational contemplation of being; to experience a certain mystical
trepidation; to know the state of silence of the mind, when mind goes beyond
the boundaries of time and space. In such-like states man may feel the
peacefulness of being withdrawn from the continually changing phenomena of the
visible world; may even have a certain experience of eternity. But the God of
Truth, the Living God, is not in all this. It is man’s own beauty, created in
the image of God, that is contemplated and seen as Divinity, whereas he himself
still continues within the confines of his creatureliness. This is a vastly
important concern. The tragedy of the matter lies in the fact that man sees a
mirage which, in his longing for eternal life, he mistakes for a genuine oasis.
This impersonal form of ascetics leads finally to an assertion of divine
principle in the very nature of man. Man is then drawn to the idea of
self-deification—the cause of the original fall. The man who is blinded by the
imaginary majesty of what he contemplates has in fact set his foot on the path
to self-destruction. He has discarded the revelation of a Personal God. He
finds the principle of the Person-Hypostasis a limiting one, unworthy of the
Absolute. He tries to strip himself of like limitations and return to the state
which he imagines has belonged to him since before his coming into this world.
This movement into the depths of his own being is nothing else but attraction towards
the non-being from which we were called by the will of the Creator.
Knowledge of Personal God
The true
Creator disclosed Himself to us as a Personal Absolute. The whole of our
Christian life is based on knowledge of God, the First and the Last, Whose Name
is I AM. Our prayer must always be personal, face to Face. He created us to be
joined in His Divine Being, without destroying our personal character. It is
this form of immortality that was promised to us by Christ. Like St Paul we
would not ‘be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up
of life’. For this did God create us and ‘hath given unto us the earnest of the
Spirit’ (2 Cor. 5.4,5).
Personal
immortality is achieved through victory over the world—a mighty task. The Lord
said, ‘Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world’ (John 10. 3 3), and we know
that the victory was not an easy one. ‘Beware of false prophets … Enter ye in
at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate,
and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it’
(Matt. 7.13-115).
Wherein lies destruction? In that people
depart from the Living God
To
believe in Christ one must have either the simplicity of little
children—‘Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 18.3)—or else, like St Paul, be fools
for Christ’s sake. ‘We are fools for Christ’s sake … we are weak … we are
despised … we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of
all things unto this day’ (1 Cor. 4.10, 13). However, ‘other foundation can no
man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 3.11). Ê»Wherefore
I beseech you, be ye followers of me’ (1 Cor. 4.16). In the Christian
experience cosmic consciousness comes from prayer like Christ’s Gethsemane
prayer, not as the result of abstract philosophical cogitations. When the Very
God reveals Himself in a vision of Uncreated Light, man naturally loses every
desire to merge into a transpersonal Absolute. Knowledge which is imbued with
life (as opposed to abstract knowledge) can in no wise be confined to the
intellect: there must be a real union with the act of Being. This is achieved
through love: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart … and with
all thy mind’ (Matt. 22.37). The commandment bids us love. Therefore love is
not something given to us: it must be acquired by an effort made of our own
free will. The injunction is addressed first to the heart as the spiritual
centre of the individual. Mind is only one of the energies of the human. Love
begins in the heart, and the mind is confronted with a new interior event and
contemplates Being in the Light of Divine love.
A Difficult Task
There is
no ascetic feat more difficult, more painful, than the effort to draw close to
God, Who is Love (cf. 1 John 4.8, 16). Our inner climate varies almost from day
to day: now we are troubled because we do not understand what is happening
about us; now inspired by a new flash of knowledge. The Name Jesus speaks to us
of the extreme manifestation of the Father’s love for us (cf. John 3.16). In
proportion as the image of Christ becomes ever more sacred to us, and His word
is perceived as creative energy, so a marvelous peace floods the soul while a
luminous aura envelops heart and head. Our attention may hold steady. Sometimes
we continue thus, as if it were a perfectly normal state to be in, not
recognizing that it is a gift from on High. For the most part we only realize
this union of mind with heart when it is interrupted.
In the
Man Christ Jesus ‘dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily’ (Col. 2.9).
In Him there is not only God but the whole human race. When we pronounce the
Name Jesus Christ we place ourselves before the plenitude both of Divine Being
and created being. We long to make His life our life; to have Him take His
abode in us. In this lies the meaning of deification. But Adam’s natural
longing for deification at the very outset took a wrong turning which led to a
terrible deviation. His spiritual vision was insufficiently established in
Truth. Our life can become holy in all respects only when true knowledge of its
metaphysical basis is coupled with perfect love towards God and our fellow men.
When we firmly believe that we are the creation of God the Primordial Being, it
will be obvious that there is no possible deification for us outside the
Trinity. If we recognize that in its ontology all human nature is one, then for
the sake of the unity of this nature we shall strive to make love for our
neighbor part of our being.
Our most
dire enemy is pride. Its power is immense. Pride saps our every aspiration,
vitiates our every endeavor. Most of us fall prey to its insinuations. The
proud man wants to dominate, to impose his own will on others; and so conflict
arises between brethren. The pyramid of inequality is contrary to revelation
concerning the Holy Trinity in Whom there is no greater, no lesser; where each
Person possesses absolute plenitude of Divine Being. The Kingdom of Christ is
founded on the principle that who soever would be first should be the servant
of all (cf. Mark 9.3 5). The man who humbles himself shall be raised up, and
vice versa: he who exalts himself shall be brought low. In our struggle for
prayer we shall cleanse our minds and hearts from any urge to prevail over our
brother. Lust for power is death to the soul. People are lured by the grandeur
of power but they forget that ‘that which is highly esteemed among men is an
abomination in the sight of God’ (Matt. 16.15). Pride incites us to criticize,
even scorn our weaker brethren; but the Lord warned us to ‘take heed that we
despise not one of these little ones’ (cf. Matt. 18.10). If we give in to pride
all our practice of the Jesus Prayer will be but profanation of His Name. ‘He
that saith lie abideth ii-i Him ought himself also to walk, even as He walked’
(1 John 2.6). He who verily loves Christ will devote his whole strength to
obeying His word. I stress this because it is our actual method for learning to
pray. This, and not any psychosomatic technics, is the right way.
Not a Christian Yoga
I have
lingered on the dogmatic justification for the Jesus Prayer largely because in
the last decade or so the practice of this prayer has been distorted into a
so-called ‘Christian yoga’ and mistaken for ‘transcendental meditation’. Every
culture, not only every religious culture, is concerned with ascetic exercises.
If a certain similarity either in their practice or their outward
manifestations, or even their mystical formulation, can be discerned, that does
not at all imply that they are alike fundamentally. Outwardly similar
situations can be vastly different in inner content.
When we
contemplate Divine wisdom in the beauty of the created world, we are at the
same time attracted still more strongly by the imperishable beauty of Divine
Being as revealed to us by Christ. The Gospel for us is Divine Self-Revelation.
In our yearning to make the Gospel word the substance of our whole being we
free ourselves by the power of God from the domination of passions. Jesus is
the one and only Savior in the true sense of the word. Christian prayer is
effected by the constant invocation of His Name: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the
Living God, have mercy upon us and upon Thy world.
Though
prayer in the Name of Jesus in its ultimate realization unites man with Christ
fully, the human hypostasis is not obliterated, is not lost in Divine Being
like a drop of water in the ocean. ‘I am the light of the world … I am the
truth and the life’ (John 8.12; 14.6). For the Christian—Being, Truth,’Life are
not ‘what’ but ‘who’. Where there is no personal form of being, there is no
living form either. Where in general there is no life, neither is there good or
evil; light or darkness. ‘Without him was not any thing made that was made. In
him was life’ (John 1:3).
When
contemplation of Uncreated Light is allied to invocation of the Name of Christ,
the significance of this Name as ‘the kingdom of God come with power’ (Mark
9.1) is made particularly clear, and the spirit of man hears the voice of the
Father: ‘This is my beloved Son’ (Mark 9.7). Christ in Himself showed us the
Father: ‘he that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (John 14:9). Now we know
the Father in the same measure as we have known the Son. ‘I and my Father are
one’ (John 10.30). And the Father bears witness to His Son. We therefore pray,
90 Son of God, save us and Thy world.’
To acquire prayer is to acquire eternity
When the
body lies dying, the cry ‘Jesus Christ’ becomes the garment of the soul; when
the brain no longer functions and other prayers are difficult to remember, in
the light of the divine knowledge that proceeds from the Name our spirit will
rise into life incorruptible.
By Elder
Sophrony
