Praying in faith

Practices such as the Jesus Prayer, and the WCCM's "Maranatha", seem to me truly to be prayers, despite the latter's use of the term "mantra" for their repetitive formula.

The Jesus Prayer, as I have so often mentioned in this blog, derives from the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) and the accounts of Bartimaeus' healing (Mark 10:46-52) and the blind men on the road from Jericho (Matthew 20:29-34).

Terry Hinks, writing (on 1 Corinthians 16:19-24) in New Daylight:

Finally, [Paul] takes up the pen from the scribe to authenticate the letter in his own hand and with his own personal greeting. These are not just words – they are a blessing and not to be given glibly, far less carelessly. Without love we are nothing, as he said earlier in the letter. The gift becomes a curse if there is no love – either for the Lord or each other. The Lord of love remains the heart of the matter, hence Paul’s prayer and the prayer of the early church: ‘Our Lord, come!’ (v. 22) – in Aramaic, Maranatha.

Love is the final word – the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love Paul has for his difficult church in Corinth – not just any love, but a love for all and a love that we see in Jesus.

These are prayers, addressed in all humility to a God whose grace and mercy are present to us, and to all that is, in Christ Jesus. They are not intended to generate an experience, or even primarily to give rise to a state of mind, in the one praying. They are more like an opening of the heart to that presence as the gift of the Holy Spirit; the prayer itself is then a cleansing and a penitent thing, and its effects, if we need to look for effects, are more peace and stillness than anything else.

Increasingly I am convinced that much of the literature associated with the practice of Christian Meditation, especially those works by Laurence Freeman and Sarah Bachelard, is applicable almost equally to the Jesus Prayer; just as conversely, there is much that WCCM practitioners could learn from authors like Kallistos Ware and Frederica Matthews-Green! One hopeful contemporary sign is the openness in much of the Church to ideas from other streams of Christianity; in contemplative prayer, since the middle of the last century, we appear to be learning to pray together and to trust each other in the way that people like Thomas Merton and Thomas R Kelly seem to have dreamed of.  

It is the latter who seems to me to have summed up the source of the impulse to this kind of prayer in the fewest words:

In this humanistic age we suppose man is the initiator and God is the responder. But the living Christ within us is the initiator and we are the responders. God the Lover, the accuser, the revealer of light and darkness presses within us. ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’ And all our apparent initiative is already a response, a testimonial to His secret presence and working within us. The basic response of the soul to the Light is internal adoration and joy, thanksgiving and worship, self-surrender and listening.

Thomas R Kelly, 1941 (Quaker faith & practice 2.10)

Homewards

Most of us in the West have not grown up with the Jesus Prayer as part of our spiritual landscape, as so many seem to in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Consequently we have difficulty in finding examplars, let alone teachers (staretsy) of the way of the Prayer. And yet we are often advised to "always seek to find an experienced spiritual guide for our practice of the Jesus Prayer. Such a person is important in providing support, encouragement, insight and help on the spiritual path and in managing difficulties that arise in our prayer practice."

Many of the readers of the blog, I imagine, will find themselves in this predicament. Somewhere along the path we have encountered the Jesus Prayer, and something in our hearts has resonated to its simple words. We pick up a book, or visit a website, to find out more - only to meet with this impossible requirement. 

Or is it a requirement? Frederica Matthews Green:

Look for a spiritual mother or father. Many Orthodox Christians turn to their parish priest for this, while others seek one at a men’s or women’s monastery. If you can’t find one, embark on the Jesus Prayer with whatever resources you can gather, but retain an extra measure of caution about your own capacity for spiritual pride. You’re still bound to make some mistakes, but at least you won’t be surprised when you do. Attend worship; be part of a worshiping community. Receive the sacraments (in Orthodoxy, called “Holy Mysteries”). Go to confession, if that is part of your spiritual heritage.

Kallistos Ware went further: 

Yet today, in this present epoch of restless curiosity and ecclesiastical disintegration, there are in fact many who use the Jesus Prayer without belonging to any Church, possibly without having a clear faith either in the Lord Jesus or in anything else. Are we to condemn them? Are we to forbid them the use of the Prayer? Surely not, so long as they are sincerely searching for the Fountain of Life. Jesus condemned no one except hypocrites...

I've found, over the years since I was first introduced to the Jesus Prayer at the end of the 1970s, that there is that in the Prayer which is profoundly healing and, for want of a better phrase, inwardly stabilising. Even when I have been thoroughly lost and without bearings the Prayer has found me and brought me back; not only to its practice, but to the fellowship of the Church, and to the Eucharistic community itself. For me it has been the safest of havens, and a beacon in the shadows where I have found no other light.

Not everyone of course, will share this call - there are many paths up the Mountain, and none is better of itself. But I don't think, if you are one who finds the Prayer tugs at something in you far deeper than words or ideas, an inexplicable yearning when you read Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me... that you need fear slipping out on the running tide of those words. There is there, to repurpose Hopkins' words, "the dearest freshness deep down things", like the scent of the sea wind that will lead you home.