Is this kind of prayer acceptable?

[Latinitas]

Hi CAF apologists,

I’m at a devout Catholic college, and our Spirituality professor, who’s also a priest, recommended to us to pray the Jesus prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”, while inhaling and exhaling, and taught us about the Taboric light and hesychasm with it. He seemed to be rather positive about them. I, however, was under the impression that hesychastic prayer was theologically problematic, and ought to be avoided. I know there’s nothing wrong with the Jesus prayer, but the whole thing was somewhat suspect in my opinion. This priest is a good priest, and I know that he wouldn’t intend to teach anything heterodox, so I give him the benefit of the doubt, but I was wondering, is this kind of prayer acceptable? Or should I talk to him about this?

Thanks much for your help,
Benedicat Deus,
Latinitas

 

[Fr.Charles_Grondin]

The Church does not appear to have made any official pronouncements on this. The only real reference to it that I can find is from Pope St. John Paul II’s Angelus on August 11, 1996:

1. The hesychast controversy marked another distinctive moment in Eastern theology. In the East, hesychasm means a method of prayer characterized by a deep tranquility of the spirit, which is engaged in constant contemplation of God by invoking the name of Jesus. There was no lack of tension with the Catholic viewpoint on certain aspects of this practice. However, we should acknowledge the good intentions which guided the defense of this spiritual method, that is, to emphasize the concrete possibility that man is given to unite himself with the Triune God in the intimacy of his heart, in that deep union of grace which Eastern theology likes to describe with the particularly powerful term of “theosis”, “divinization”.

It appears to have developed solely in Eastern Orthodoxy and did not gain traction in Western Catholicism. However it does appear that Eastern Catholic Churches still practice this form of spirituality and thus any Catholic could do so as well.