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The Jesus Prayer

5 min

Settle into stillness, and slowly repeat:

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

About this prayer

The short, repeated prayer of the Christian East: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Prayed slowly and often, it draws the mind down into the heart.

History

The Jesus Prayer is the heart of the hesychast tradition, distilled from the Gospel cries for mercy and the counsel of the Desert Fathers to "pray without ceasing." Refined in the monasteries of Sinai and Mount Athos and gathered in the Philokalia, it became the people's prayer through The Way of a Pilgrim. A knotted prayer rope (chotki) is often used to count the repetitions.

How to pray it

Sit or stand in stillness. Slowly repeat the prayer, uniting the words to your breath if it helps — "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God" as you breathe in, "have mercy on me, a sinner" as you breathe out. Let the words rest in the heart rather than the mind. Begin with a fixed number — a decade of the rope, or one hundred — and let the prayer accompany you through the day.