“Who when he had heard, that it was Jesus of Nazareth, began to cry out, and to say: Jesus son of David, have mercy on me. And many rebuked him, that he might hold his peace; but he cried a great deal the more: Son of David, have mercy on me.”
Prayer of the heart
The Jesus Prayer
The short, ceaseless invocation of the Christian East — its roots in the Gospel cries for mercy, the unbroken prayer of the desert monks, the hesychast prayer of the heart, and its spread through the Philokalia and The Way of a Pilgrim.
The prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Shorter forms are also used — "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me," or simply "Lord, have mercy" (Kyrie eleison). In the hesychast tradition the words are repeated slowly and without ceasing, often in rhythm with the breath, until the invocation becomes the unceasing "prayer of the heart."
Where it comes from
The dated sources the library holds, oldest first — in their own words.
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30
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31
“And the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven; but struck his breast, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
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420
John Cassian Patristicc. A.D. 360–435
“O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me, for this verse has not unreasonably been picked out from the whole of Scripture for this purpose. For it embraces all the feelings which can be implanted in human nature, and can be fitly and satisfactorily adapted to every condition, and all assaults.”
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450
Diadochus and the invocation of the Name
In the fifth century Diadochus, Bishop of Photike, counsels the unbroken inward repetition of the name of the Lord Jesus as the way to gather the scattered mind — an early witness to the prayer of the Name in the Christian East.
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600
St. John Climacus: the Name and the breath
In The Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John Climacus of Sinai gives the remembrance of the name of Jesus a central place in the monk's unceasing prayer, joining it to the very rhythm of the breath — an image that becomes central to the later prayer of the heart.
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1,351
Hesychasm and St. Gregory Palamas
The "prayer of the heart" practised by the monks of Mount Athos is challenged, and then defended, by St. Gregory Palamas; the councils of Constantinople of 1341, 1347 and 1351 vindicate the hesychasts and their prayer.
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1,782
The Philokalia
St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and St. Macarius of Corinth gather the great hesychast texts on the prayer of the heart into the Philokalia, published at Venice in 1782 — the classic anthology of the Jesus-Prayer tradition.
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1,884
The Way of a Pilgrim
An anonymous Russian account, The Way of a Pilgrim, tells of a wanderer who learns to pray the Jesus Prayer without ceasing; first printed at Kazan in 1884, it carries the prayer into the modern world and, through later translations, to the West.