Fr. John of St. Bruno, OCD
In the primitive Carmelite rule, St. Albert exhorts the hermits on Mount Carmel: “Everyone should remain in their cells or nearby and day and night contemplate the law of the Lord and be vigilant in prayer” (chap. 10). However, a similar command regarding prayer is already given by the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonian Christians: “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17).
Since ancient times, many have tried to satisfactorily explain this requirement of Scripture and incorporate it into everyday life. Interpretations often diverged, and some had to be rejected. For example, the “Messalians,” advocates of a 4th-century Syrian heretical movement, wanted to fulfill this command through individual prayers recited one after another. To pray this way, they resigned from work, especially manual labor. Another solution, adopted by St. Augustine and which later became the most widespread, was proposed by Origen: “He prays unceasingly who combines prayer with necessary work and necessary work again with prayer.”1 This understanding corresponds to the words of our rule that we did not mention above, namely that the brothers should pray and contemplate constantly, “unless they are otherwise engaged for just cause” (ibid chapter 10).
However, the question arises whether it is possible to gradually permeate even this necessary work with prayer, so that it becomes a prayer not just because it is done for the Lord, but so that one can work in His presence. The tradition of the Church, especially the monastic tradition, responds that this is possible, and that through the prayer of the heart and its firmly connected so-called Jesus prayer, practiced today especially by monks (but also by laity) in the Eastern Churches. It is precisely about this prayer, as a possible enrichment of our spirituality, that I would like to briefly discuss.
Hesychia
The tradition of the Jesus prayer is associated with the spirituality of the hesychasts, seekers of spiritual peace, tranquility, and silence, that is, a state of quieting the soul and senses, which enables a subsequent constant attentiveness to God and receptiveness to His inspirations, to the voice of the Holy Spirit. However, to achieve this state, a gradual purification of the heart is necessary, because “from the healing of the heart springs health in the spiritual realm, so that we are drawn to God and His realities, while worldly affairs and sin lead us to resistance and even hatred.”2 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Mt 5:8).
But what should we understand by the term heart? The understanding of this term by different authors does not always have the same meaning. Theophan the Recluse sees it as an organ of feeling – it is, therefore, the “place” where we can experience, “feel” God. “The heart has the energy of all the powers of the soul and body,” it is “the focal point of all human mental and physical powers.”3 We can understand it as a kind of center of a person's being, the “place” where a person is most themselves.4 Scripture warns us that if one does not guard one's heart, it can become a place from which evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, covetousness… proceed (Mk 7:21–22). Fortunately, the heart of a person who desires an ascetic life is usually not so thoroughly “soaked” in sin, but ascetics realize that each of us is affected by evil in varying degrees, which creates a wall between man and God, and this evil must be removed in order for a person to return to a natural state of harmony with God. However, fulfilling this task is not within human power. A person indeed cooperates with their asceticism, but it consists mainly in allowing God to act. Already St. Irenaeus, whose teaching can be considered the theological foundation of hesychasm, says: “You do not make God, but God makes you…,” to which, on the other hand, it is necessary “to lend a heart that is soft and willing to change and to preserve the form that the artist has inscribed on it. By Divine artistry, the clay that is in man is gradually covered… Creation is up to God, but being created is up to man. When a person gives to God what is His, faith and submission, they receive the artistic creation and become God’s perfect work.”5
The cooperation of God's grace with human cooperation, which ultimately leads to the purification, “seeing God,” i.e., perceiving His presence, and to a state in which things and indeed everything does not distract us from God, but rather everything points to Him, can be schematically divided into three degrees, which largely coincide with the degrees of prayer. The first degree is moral; it primarily involves renouncing sin and anger, which lead us away from God the most. In the second degree, the focus is primarily on monitoring attention. The goal is to maintain attention on the words of the prayer and eliminate distracting thoughts. At this level, it is also important to learn to distinguish good thoughts, those that lead us to God, from evil thoughts, that is, distracting ones that sow distrust and confusion. The third degree is a certain simplification of prayer. Evagrius affirms that for the mind, it is sometimes necessary to free itself from all thoughts, to become a pure light, in which God’s light shines through. John Cassian, however, realizes that the state of a mind emptied of all thoughts can be dangerous; after perfect purification, it is therefore necessary to provide our mental faculties with “food,” which is the Holy Scripture. This is likewise supported by the experience of the Russian pilgrim, who reveals that: “Dobrotoljubie6 is the key to understanding Scripture.” “I began to realize what the hidden inner man is, the heart, what true prayer is, worship in spirit, the kingdom within us, inexpressible intercession and groaning of the Holy Spirit, what the words mean: abide in me, give me your heart, be clothed with Christ, what are the betrothal of the Spirit in our hearts, what the heart’s cry means: Abba! Father! and many more.”7
Some authors also consider the return to “ordinary life,” from which the ascetic perhaps partially withdrew for the purpose of purification. Jean Yves Leloup describes the story of a young man from Paris who went to Mount Athos to learn how to pray and how to contemplate like the hesychasts. He found an elder who continually guided him until the young man reached the highest levels of prayer and was overtaken by a desire that “all people be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.” He became completely love, entirely fire. When his elder noticed this, he reprimanded him: “That’s enough! Now go! Leave Athos and return home! There it will be shown what remains of your beautiful hesychastic contemplations.” Similarly, we can also see many who stayed in the monastery, but after a time spent in solitude and after achieving the purity of heart and kardiognosis8 began to receive an abundance of disciples and followers, or just those who wanted to “hear the word,”9 whether from the ranks of brothers and monks or from the laity. Thus, these fathers also “went out” (from seclusion) and, without harm to their spiritual lives, engaged in apostolate. Surely there were also many unnamed ones who neither returned “to the world” nor became famous spiritual leaders, yet discovered how deeply apostolic life in solitude is and helped many with their hidden prayer and sacrifice.
The Jesus Prayer
Theoretically, the Jesus Prayer is just one of many ways to attain inner prayer; however, in the Orthodox Church, it has gained such popularity and spread that it is often identified with inner prayer itself. Its extraordinary role in the process of purifying the heart is also emphasized. It is often presented as a “quick way” to continuous prayer, as the simplest way to direct attention to the heart. However, these expressions need to be understood relatively. Even in the writings of the ascetics, we can also read that prayer is also “invisible martyrdom,” especially at times when we uncover the hidden passions within our hearts and are besieged by various difficult-to-manage thoughts against which we need to stand up with prayer and gradually triumph over them.
The Jesus Prayer is also schematically divided into three basic stages: the prayer of the mouth, the prayer of the mind, and the prayer of the heart, although, for example, Theophan the Recluse insists that prayer is authentic only when all these elements are present together. Thus, the stages of prayer intertwine, and it is about which dominates.
In the beginning, the Jesus Prayer is a verbal prayer like any other. The words should be pronounced out loud, or at least formulated silently. One must concentrate on the words of the prayer through the effort of will. During this stage, we often experience prayer as a difficult task that requires perseverance and humility.
After some time, the prayer should become more internal; the mind often repeats it while the mouth is silent. The prayer gradually attains a rhythm appropriate to the person praying and is often repeated even without (perceptible) effort of our will. The elder Partenius says that there is in us a kind of “stream that murmurs.”
The final stage is entered when the prayer penetrates our hearts and internally shapes and transforms us. Gradually, it increasingly identifies with the rhythm of the heart (which we perhaps should not understand literally only as the heartbeat but as a kind of ideal rhythm of the praying person) and becomes a continuous prayer.
At this point, it seems appropriate to mention several observations of our Father Wilfrid Stinissen.10 He believes that the Jesus Prayer cannot be very well united with the heartbeat unless one has prayed it nearly continuously for a long time. Even among hermits on Athos, it is said to be difficult to find someone who has reached this point. To embark on this path so radically also requires the help of an experienced elder. He also asks whether the Western person has enough psychological balance to dare to step onto this path. He then offers a second direction of spiritual pilgrimage, which he sees the Jesus Prayer as a starting point – a beginning that should lead to silence. Thus, according to him, sometimes it suffices to say the prayer once and then remain in silent prayer. Only when distracting thoughts reappear is it good to return again to the explicit text of the prayer.
It seems that both of the “methods” of the Jesus Prayer described here can be useful. What is important is that we enter into prayer; and after some time, we will know for ourselves which of the ways suits us better. I think we need not entirely accept Stinissen's opinion that prayer is hard to unite with the rhythm of the heart unless we pray it nearly constantly, especially if we do not understand the rhythm of the heart only literally, as individual heartbeats, but – as mentioned above – if we pray it in a rhythm that we discover as suitable for ourselves, in a rhythm of our person, in a rhythm which helps us to find calmness and stillness before God's face.
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