R
Reuben_J
Guest
So the proper term is prayer rope instea of prayer bead. It is interesting the Kyrie Eleisons is repeated 41 times. I think that is a very powerful prayer to say before God. I don’t remember we recite that in our personal prayer exceept for the short stanza during the Penential act during the mass. I know Catholics do this in the Divine Mercy prayer which is incidently one of the preferred prayers of my wife.In the Coptic Orthodox tradition in which the prayer rope originated (it is an Egyptian desert father, St. Pachomios, who is credited with creating it), neither the Jesus Prayer nor the Rosary occupy a central place in our worship (the Rosary not at all, and my priest says that the Jesus Prayer is a good prayer to pray extemporaneously, but of primary importance are our established traditional prayers, such as the Thanksgiving Prayer). Copts use it instead to mark the 41 Kyrie Eleisons that are part of every canonical hour, though I myself use instead a small hand cross that a friend sent to me from one of the monasteries in Egypt, as we mark each Kyrie Eleison liturgically with the sign of the Cross, so I’ve gotten used to keeping track of them that way.