Category: Uncategorized

The Efficacy of The Jesus Prayer

The Jesus Prayer discovered me to be a liar, but is turning me into an honest man.

It is repetitious, but it isn’t vain, for by it I have observed my inner self transforming.

Yet at first, when I uttered the prayer, it amounted to something like this: “la de da-da, ya da-da, la de da-da-da, la de-da.”

Such was the superficiality of my inner life, and my lack of mental focus.

 

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner.”

 

Can there be anything more beneficial, for a Christian, than to keep our mind continually on Christ Jesus?

There isn’t a simpler or better tool, for a Christian to use, than the Jesus Prayer, as he works to forge the purity of his soul and follow the commands of his Lord.

Every master craftsman, or expert in any trade, has a particular tool they most love to use, the tool they turn to in all circumstances, the one they’ve come to trust, and can rely on as they accomplish their task.

The Jesus Prayer can be that special tool, which every master Christian holds dear and close to their heart, as they do their inner work.

Don’t ask me how, but the Prayer, when done with sincerity and with perseverance, begins to reveal ourselves as we truly are, and we discover that we aren’t what we thought we were.

For instance; I’m actually a sinner. I hadn’t realized this, but rather, believed I was basically a good person who happened to sin now and then. But that isn’t the same thing at all. Rather than sinning on occasion, I am steeped in it, and sadly, sin has come to define me. I am a sinner.

The prayer revealed this to me. As I repeated it throughout the day, the words sunk in and I began to hear them, then understand them, and finally the reality of them took hold of me.

“Lord Jesus Christ”…He is my Lord…Yet I do not live as His subject…Though I should…I live for myself…I live as a sinner. But the prayer is reminding me all the time to live as His subject. This is a blessing.

“Son of God”…this is not just any Lord…this is our Creator…this truth, obviously, demands our complete awe and obedience…but I have lived indifferently and apathetically…truly I am a sinner! I am beginning to see myself as I truly am…and the truth will set us free. I have hope!

“Have mercy on me, a sinner”…yes, truly I am one who needs mercy…my self-righteousness is not true righteousness…I am not God, but I am truly a creature…I am at God’s mercy in this life and in the life to come…in Him I have my being…I am not self-made but rather completely dependent for my existence…and I am a sinner, this is clearly evident to me now as I see how I live my life. Lord have mercy!

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

 

~FS

December 8

Stillness requires above all faith, patience, love with all one’s heart and strength and might (cf. Deuteronomy 6:5), and hope. For if you have faith, even though because of negligence or some other fault you fail to attain what you seek in this life, you will on leaving this life most certainly be vouchsafed the fruit of faith and spiritual struggle and will behold your liberation, which is Jesus Christ, the redemption and salvation of souls, the Logos who is both God and man. But if you lack faith, you will certainly be condemned on leaving this world. In fact, as the Lord says, you are condemned already (cf. John 3:18). For if you are a slave to sensual pleasure, and want to be honored by other people rather than by God (cf. John 5:44), you lack faith, even though you may profess faith verbally; and you deceive yourself without realizing it. And you will incur the rebuke: “Because you did not receive Me in your heart but cast Me out behind your back, I too will reject you” (cf. Ezekiel 5:11).

If you possess faith you should have hope, and believe in God’s truth to which the whole of Scripture bears witness, and confess your own weakness; otherwise you will inescapably receive double condemnation.

~St Gregory of Sinai

December 7

But the crucifixion of the mind by means of the commandments is an especially difficult task for man in our modern society, which breathes and cultivates a spirit of aggressive autonomy. To acknowledge the other and, what is more, to submit in obedience to the will of another, amounts to pure foolishness as far as the logic of independence is concerned. But the self-serving logic of our time is in fact a dead end both socially and in people’s personal lives. The crucifixion of the mind is especially relevant today, in that it has the power to heal the egocentrism of contemporary man.

~Archimandrite Zacharias

December 6

All men, both the weak and the strong, must crucify their mind if they are to fit in harmoniously and function properly in the Body of Christ. One should not forget that Christ, the Head of the Body, wears a crown of thorns and is in this world as one who suffers. It follows that a member of the Body who avoids pain, will fall away from the Body and be separated from the Head. But if he embraces the cross of loving obedience, his heart will be circumcised and bear the Name of the Lord within itself.

~Archimandrite Zacharias

December 5

We undergo a death at baptism, a real death. We actually die to sin, to our former way of life, to the lusts of the flesh, to the passions, to our fleshly outlook on life. We leave all this behind once and for all, and this is contained in the symbolic act of going down into the water. And because we have died a real death to sin, when we emerge from the water we receive the true life of resurrection. Indeed, we died to everything that is without value so that we might rise to everything that is precious and eternal. A covenant is made, and the whole of our Christian life consists of proving our fidelity to this covenant of holy baptism, and of living up to the honor God has bestowed on us.

~Archimandrite Zacharias

December 3

He who practices hesychasm must acquire the following five virtues, as a foundation on which to build: silence, self-control, vigilance, humility and patience. Then there are three practices blessed by God: psalmody, prayer and reading–and handiwork for those weak in body. These virtues which we have listed not only embrace all the rest but also consolidate each other. From early morning the hesychast must devote himself to the remembrance of God through prayer and stillness of heart, praying diligently in the first hour, reading in the second, chanting psalms in the third, praying in the fourth, reading in the fifth, chanting psalms in the sixth, praying in the seventh, reading in the eighth, chanting psalms in the ninth, eating in the tenth, sleeping in the eleventh, if need be, and reciting vespers in the twelfth hour. Thus fruitfully spending the course of the day he gains God’s blessings.

~St Gregory of Sinai

December 2

The physical senses and the soul’s powers have an equal and similar, not to say identical, mode of operation, especially when they are in a healthy state; for then the soul’s powers live and act through the senses, and the life-giving Spirit sustains them both. A man is truly ill when he succumbs to the generic malady of the passions and spends his whole time in the sickroom of inertia.

When there is no satanic battle between them, making them reject the rule of the intellect and of the Spirit, the senses clearly perceive sensory things, the soul’s powers intelligible things; for when they are united through the Spirit and constitute a single whole, they know directly and essentially the nature of divine and human things. They contemplate with clarity the logoi, or inward essences of these things, and distinctly perceive, so far as is possible, the single source of all things, the Holy Trinity.

~St Gregory of Sinai

December 1

There are eight ruling passions: gluttony, avarice and self-esteem–the three principle passions; and unchastity, anger, dejection, listlessness and arrogance–the five subordinate passions. In the same way, among the virtues opposed to these there are three that are all-embracing, namely, total shedding of possessions, self-control and humility, and five deriving from them, namely, purity, gentleness, joy, courage, and self-belittlement–and then come all the other virtues.

To study and recognize the power, action and special flavor of each virtue and vice is not within the competence of everyone who wishes to do so; it is the prerogative of those who practice and experience the virtues actively and consciously and who receive from the Holy Spirit the gifts of cognitive insight and discrimination.

~St Gregory of Sinai

November 30

The cardinal virtues are four: courage, sound understanding, self-restraint and justice. There are eight other moral qualities, that either go beyond or fall short of these virtues. These we regard as vices, and so we call them; but non-spiritual people regard them as virtues and that is what they call them. Exceeding or falling short of courage are audacity and cowardice; of sound understanding are cunning and ignorance; of self-restraint are licentiousness and obtuseness; of justice are excess and injustice, or taking less than one’s due.

In between, and superior to, what goes beyond or what falls short of them, lie not only the cardinal and natural virtues, but also the practical virtues. These are consolidated by resolution combined with probity of character; the others by perversion and self-conceit.

That the virtues lie along the midpoint or axis of rectitude is testified to by the proverb, ‘You will attain every well-founded axis’ (Proverbs 2:9 LXX). Thus when they are all established in the soul’s three faculties in which they are begotten and built up, they have as their foundation the four cardinal virtues, or rather, Christ Himself. In this way the natural virtues are purified through the practical virtues, while the divine and supranatural virtues are conferred through the bounty of the Holy Spirit.

~St Gregory of Sinai

November 29

According to St Paul (cf. Romans 15:16), you ‘minister’ the Gospel only when, having yourself participated  in the light of Christ, you can pass it on actively to others. Then you sow the Logos like a divine seed in the fields of your listener’s souls. ‘Let your speech be always filled with grace’, says St Paul (Colossians 4:6), ‘seasoned’ with divine goodness. Then it will impart grace to those who listen to you with faith.

Elsewhere St Paul, calling the teachers tillers and their pupils the fields they till (cf. 2 Timothy 2:6), wisely presents the former as ploughers and sowers of the divine Logos and the latter as the fertile soil, yielding a rich crop of virtues. True ministry is not simply a celebration of sacred rites; it also involves participation in divine blessings and the communication of these blessings to others.

~St Gregory of Sinai