Live 4 The LORD

SUMMARY:

“Jesus Prayer”

 

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on me, A Sinner.

 

heart of practicing God’s presence, which is the essence of prayer

 

Like any prayer, it “works”, not by the power of some impersonal magic but by the power of personal faith and hope and love.

 

Just reach out to Jesus in blind faith. 

 

but this prayer is dialogue, relationship, reaching out to another person, to Jesus, God made man, invoking him as your savior, lover, lord, and God. You have faith and hope in him as your savior; you love him as your lover; you obey him as your lord; you adore him as your God.

 

In this prayer our attention is not directed inward, into our own consciousness, but only out onto Jesus. Even when we address Jesus living in our own soul, he is not self but other; he is Lord of the self.

 

Yet, although our intention in this prayer is not to transform our consciousness, this prayer does transform our consciousness. When we pray this prayer and invoke Jesus the Logos, Jesus the Logos acts and does in fact unify our consciousness. But this is not what we aim at; we aim at him. The unification of our consciousness happens in us (slowly and subtly and sweetly) only when we forget ourselves in him. This is one of the ways “he who loses his self shall find it.”

 

Repetition of the holy name conditions our unconscious mind to see this name as normal, as central, and to expect him to be present and active. This prayer in deed conditions us, but it conditions us to know reality.

 

The reason this prayer is so powerful is that the name of Jesus is not just a set of letters or sounds. It is a creative word. All our energy and effort is not strong enough to heal our own souls, but God’s word of power is. That word is so powerful that by it God made the universe out of nothing, and by it he is doing the even greater deed of making saints out of sinners. That word is Jesus Christ. It is a golden key. It opens all doors, transforms all corners of our lives.

 

“The name of Jesus Christ” is not only the key to power-filled prayer but the key to our salvation

 

Invoking his name invokes his real presence. To invoke Jesus’ name is to place yourself in his presence, to open yourself to his power, his energy, The prayer of Jesus’ name actually brings God closer, makes him more present. He is always present in some way. In saying it brings God closer, I do not mean to say that it changes God. It changes us.  It changes the real relationship; it increases the intimacy. It is as real as changing your relationship to the sun by going outdoors. When we go outdoors into the sun, we do not move the sun closer to us, we move ourselves closer to the sun. But the difference it makes is real: we can get warmed only when we stand in the sunlight—and in the Sonlight.

 

His coming is, of course, his gift, his grace. The vehicle by which he comes is also his grace: it is Jesus himself. And the gift he gives us in giving us his blessed name to invoke is also his grace. So, therefore, his coming to us in power on this vehicle, this name, is also pure grace. Even our remembering to use this vehicle, this name, is his grace. As Saint Therese said, “Everything is a grace.”

 

When we pray to the Father in Jesus’ name, we provide God with a vehicle to come to us— or, rather, we use the vehicle God has provided for us. We do not initiate, we respond; we respond to his grace by using the gift of his name that he gave us and told us to use; and he responds to our obedience by doing what he promised: actually coming. “To pray ‘Jesus’ is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies” (CCC 2666). In other words, it is sacramental. The very act of praying “Jesus” effects what it signifies, brings about what the name “Jesus” signifies, which is “Savior”, or “God saves”. The name of a person must be personally “involved” (that is, called upon) in faith and hope and love.

 

Perhaps the most shattering consequence of his real presence, which is brought about by invoking his name, is that we become unable to lie to ourselves any more. He is light, and wherever he inserts his lordship there is now an absolute necessity of honesty and a zero tolerance for any form of self-deception, self-congratulation, or self gratification, even those forms that felt necessary, natural, and almost innocent before. He is gentle, but he is light, and he simply does not and will not coexist with any darkness at all; either he casts it out, or it keeps him out. He subtracts our falsehoods. But he also adds his truth. Furthermore, he is stronger than sin; he exorcises sin more than sin exorcises him. All we have to do is to give him a chance. Open the blinds, and light casts out darkness every time. 

 

“The principal thing is to stand before God with the mind in the heart, and to go on standing before Him unceasingly day and night, until the end of life” (Bishop Theophan, quoted by Kallistos Ware in The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality)

 

IT IS NOT: It is not meditation. Its purpose is not to transform our consciousness and make us mystics, or to bring inner peace, or to center on our own heart. Whether these things are good or bad, these things are not what this prayer is for.