Jesus Prayer question

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IsidoreOfKiev

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So I was talking to a friend today about the Jesus Prayer and he had a question that I really couldn’t answer…it goes like this:

If we primary focus our spiritual life on the Jesus Prayer, isn’t that being kind of selfish since we are only praying for ourselves “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on ME a sinner.”?

Now I know that St. Seraphim of Sarov said “Acquire the spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved.” but my friend asked that wouldn’t a deepening in the spiritual life necessarily make you change the focus of praying for yourself to praying for others?

How would one answer these questions? My friend is not against the Jesus Prayer, we just like to talk theology and philosophy and question each other.
 
IsidoreOfKiev said:
So I was talking to a friend today about the Jesus Prayer and he had a question that I really couldn’t answer…it goes like this:

If we primary focus our spiritual life on the Jesus Prayer, isn’t that being kind of selfish since we are only praying for ourselves “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on ME a sinner.”?

Now I know that St. Seraphim of Sarov said “Acquire the spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved.” but my friend asked that wouldn’t a deepening in the spiritual life necessarily make you change the focus of praying for yourself to praying for others?

How would one answer these questions? My friend is not against the Jesus Prayer, we just like to talk theology and philosophy and question each other.
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When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He asked the Father to “let this cup pass from ME”, not “let this cup pass from everyone around Me”. If it was OK for Jesus to pray for Himself, it should be OK for us too. 👍
 
I see what you are saying, but the question was about people whose spirituality primarily is linked to the Jesus Prayer. Obviously, even those of us who practice the Jesus Prayer also participate in the liturgical life of the church which includes prayers for others…

I suppose one answer…to answer this scholastically would be that there is a “virtual intention” inherent that you not only want mercy for yourself but for the entire world as well.
 
IsidoreOfKiev said:
I see what you are saying, but the question was about people whose spirituality primarily is linked to the Jesus Prayer. Obviously, even those of us who practice the Jesus Prayer also participate in the liturgical life of the church which includes prayers for others…

I suppose one answer…to answer this scholastically would be that there is a “virtual intention” inherent that you not only want mercy for yourself but for the entire world as well.
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I guess my real question is do you want an answer from a Christian perspective? Because AFAIK there’s absolutely nothing in the Bible, Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant teaching that I’ve ever heard of that says you can’t pray for yourself. :confused:

Also, just FYI, there was another thread about this here a few years ago - some good comments in there that might be helpful. 👍
 
One of the fruits of this prayer is, hopefully, humility…a humble friend is a friend in deed. 🙂
 
IsidoreOfKiev said:
If we primary focus our spiritual life on the Jesus Prayer, isn’t that being kind of selfish since we are only praying for ourselves “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on ME a sinner.”?
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I never met a person whose primary focus in their spiritual life was the Jesus Prayer.
 
When you say the Jesus prayer you are asking the Lord to have mercy on you a sinner. That puts things into perspective. As you grow holier and to be a more loving person from saying that prayer, then others will want to have the peace that you have found, and that will be evident in you. That is how we affect the people around us with the grace of God.
 
IsidoreOfKiev said:
So I was talking to a friend today about the Jesus Prayer and he had a question that I really couldn’t answer…it goes like this:

If we primary focus our spiritual life on the Jesus Prayer, isn’t that being kind of selfish since we are only praying for ourselves “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on ME a sinner.”?

Now I know that St. Seraphim of Sarov said “Acquire the spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved.” but my friend asked that wouldn’t a deepening in the spiritual life necessarily make you change the focus of praying for yourself to praying for others?

How would one answer these questions? My friend is not against the Jesus Prayer, we just like to talk theology and philosophy and question each other.
Click to expand...
When I pray the Jesus Prayer, each 25 knots (which is separated by a silver bead on my prayer rope) I change from “have mercy on me, a sinner” to "have mercy on -----(fill in the blank with, my mother, my children, the clergy, the unborn, the church, the Pope, etc.) and I omitted “a sinner” except when my intention is for myself (usually the first set of my prayer).
 
Keep in mind: The Jesus prayer is just one part of a balanced spiritual praxis… the hours, the divine liturgy, fasting, and study are other requisite parts of a balanced spiritual praxis
 
We do not spend enough time reflecting on ourselves, inviting Christ into our souls. Introspection is getting harder than ever in our noisy fast-paced society. We have puritanical values that say a person is judged by his work, discouraging stillness and silence as a form of idleness. Our society makes us think it is selfish to take time out to focus ourselves on Christ. How backwards is that!

The spiritual fathers tell us the practice of looking inward is an essential component of being transformed by Christ. When we do this, we can see our passions and selfishness for what it is in comparison to Christ’s mercy and grace. Only when we can see ourselves for who we are can we see Christ in others and be ready to serve God by serving them.

He who busies himself with the sins of others, or judges his brother on suspicion, has not yet even begun to repent or examine himself so as to discover his own sins. -St. Maximos the Confessor

Why do we judge our brethren? Because we do not strive to know ourselves. Whoever occupies himself with self-knowledge never notices others; judge yourself, and you will stop judging others. -Seraphim of Sarov
 
If one is faithful to the Jesus Prayer…it will never be self-centered or routine…anymore than the Rosary, Stations of the Cross or any other memorized prayers are.

Any repetitive prayer - if prayed with an open heart and pure desire - will draw one closer to the Divine.
 
No more “self-centered” than the Our Father:

…Give **us **this day **our **daily bread and forgive **us **our trespasses, as **we **forgive those who trespass against us. And lead **us **not into temptation, but deliver **us **from evil…🤷
 
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner” means to take responsibility for my individual sins and to recognize that I am the sinner (as if there were no other sinner), without hiding myself behind any comfortable and generic “we are all sinners, so we all need forgiveness”. Likewise, the Confiteor at the Mass, confessing our sins to the priest and saying the Act of Contrition don’t express a collective responsibility and don’t ask for a collective forgiveness, because sins are individual, examination of conscience is individual and repentance is individual.

Compare this to “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners” - the intensity is diluted, because the sense of standing alone and defenceless before God with my own sins is diluted. It’s like saying “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me among others, because I’m just one of so many sinners”. There is a time for being alone before God, expressing intense individual repentance and humility, and a time for praying for others, including or excluding the person who prays.
 
I think there are a few things to remember here. First, there isn’t any one form of the Jesus Prayer, but rather multiple forms. Anyone who’s read even a small amount of the literature written by the Fathers on the Jesus Prayer knows that one can change the formula of the prayer to pray for specific people or groups of people. This doesn’t change the basic spirituality of the prayer, but rather its focus. The point of the prayer itself is not the repetition of a formula, but the invocation of the Holy Name. “A Monk of the Eastern Church” (who’s name is currently escaping me) in one of his books on the Jesus prayer points out how the invocation of the Holy Name in the context of prayer transforms not only oneself, but also the entirety of creation, baptizing creation in the Holy Name and transfiguring it with the Light of Tabor.

Secondly, it is true that we are ultimately responsible for our own salvation; for cooperating with the saving action of Christ in our lives. We can do everything possible to lead others to Christ, but when the rubber meets the road, we cannot force someone to Christ. Naturally we ought to pray for others. But we cannot save them. Only Christ and their acting in synergy with His saving action can save them. The Jesus Prayer, in what I will call its “classic form,” is meant to focus on our personal salvation.

Thirdly, we ought not so quickly dismiss the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov. The lives of the saints have shown us time and again that when we work out our own salvation in fear and trembling others will notice and will be led to do the same. Perhaps not multitudes, but others nonetheless. If by working out my own salvation I lead just one person to Christ, then the ramifications ought not to be dismissed as a small thing. If we can help save just one soul, then we have helped save a soul of infinite worth.

I think the whole point is, the Jesus Prayer does not take place in a vacuum. It presupposes that we are being transformed by the humble recognition of our need for Christ’s mercy. If someone is praying the Jesus Prayer, but not changing their lives in the process, then they are not yet truly praying. But the more we pray, the more we are transformed, and the more we are transformed, the more the world around us is transformed, baptized in the name of Christ and transfigured by the Light of Tabor.
 
It’s also often abbreviated.

From: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” down to “Lord, Have mercy!” And many variations between.

It’s the prayer that we, as sinners, need to keep reminding ourselves that we are not able to save ourselves.
 
I think the Jesus prayer helps me to remember a few important thing: namely, that I am a sinner and that I need forgiveness and to constantly refocus on Christ who should be the center of my life at all times. Sometimes it is so easy to see how others need His forgiveness while forgetting that I am a sinner, even though I pray and go to The Liturgy.
 
From an Anglican site-
*
Some think it is a selfish prayer ‘have mercy on me’. No genuine prayer is selfish if prayed with humility – it is prayed in and with the Mystical Body of Christ and related to the whole cosmos. But if one is uncomfortable with the singular form one can pray ‘have mercy on us’.*

franciscan.org.nz/resources/the-jesus-prayer/
 
The Jesus prayer is the point of departure, faith is the path, union is the goal.

Today is the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. This scene on Mount Tabor fills today’s believers with wonder, as it did Peter, James and John, when they, “fell on their faces and were filled with awe,” (Mt.17:6). Pope Benedict XVI, in his Sunday Angelus, describes the Transfiguration of Jesus as revealing ‘the splendor of Truth and Love.’ In this splendor was the mystery of light, as Jesus’ face shone like the sun. Jesus confirmed His divinity and expressed an essential aspect of God, light, which appears throughout salvation history when God is near. In the Transfiguration, we are invited to meditate on the ‘mystery of God’s light,’ Jesus’ divinity and our role as children of God and therefore, children of the light.


Peace
 
The Name is power, but a purely mechanical repetition will by itself achieve nothing. The Jesus Prayer is not a magic talisman. As in all sacramental operations, the human person is required to co-operate with God through active faith and ascetic effort. We are called to invoke the Name with recollection and inward vigilance, confining our minds within the words of the Prayer, conscious who it is that we are addressing and that responds to us in our heart. Such strenuous prayer is never easy in the initial stages, and is rightly described by the Fathers as a hidden martyrdom. St Gregory of Sinai speaks repeatedly of the ‘constraint and labour’ undertaken by those who follow the Way of the Name; a ‘continual effort’ is needed; they will be tempted to give up ‘because of the insistent pain that comes from the inward invocation of the intellect’. ‘Your shoulders will ache and you will often feel pain in your head,’ he warns, ‘but persevere persistently and with ardent longing, seeking the Lord in your heart.’ Only through such patient faithfulness shall we discover the true power of the Name.
This faithful perseverance takes the form, above all, of attentive and frequent repetition. Christ told his disciples not to use ‘vain repetitions’ (Matt. 6:7); but the repetition of the Jesus Prayer, when performed with inward sincerity and concentration, is most emphatically not ‘vain’. The act of repeatedly invoking the Name has a double effect: it makes our prayer more unified and at the same time more inward.

Jesus Prayer - The Power of the Name
by Bishop Kallistos - Ware

Peace
 
A priest in my parish taught me to say the Jesus prayer as my Act of Contrition since I didn’t know the formal one. (I am a convert.)
 
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