First Prayer:

Immaculate, undefiled, without beginning, invisible, incomprehensible, unsearchable, unchangeable, unsurpassable, immeasurable, long-suffering Lord, who alone possess immortality and dwell in unapproachable light; who made the heaven, the earth and the sea and all that was created in them; who grant to all their requests before they ask; we pray and beseech you, Master who love mankind, the Father of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who for our sake and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and Mary, the Ever-Virgin and glorious Mother of God.

Teaching us first by words and later also showing us by deeds, when he underwent the saving Passion, he granted us, your humble, sinful and unworthy servants, an example to offer supplications by the bending of neck and knees for our sins and those committed in ignorance by the people. Do you, then, who are full of mercy and love for mankind, hear us on whatever day we call upon you; but especially on this day of Pentecost, on which after our Lord Jesus Christ had been taken up and been enthroned at your right hand, God and Father, he sent down on his disciples and Apostles the holy Spirit, who settled on each one of them and they were all filled with his inexhaustible grace and spoke in strange tongues of your mighty works and prophesied.

Now therefore hear us as we pray, remember us, humble and condemned, and turn back the captivity of our souls. Receive us as we fall before you and cry out, ‘We have sinned’. On you we have been cast from the womb. From our mother’s womb you are our God. But because our days have wasted away in vanity, we have been stripped of your help, we have been deprived of all defence. But confident of your compassion we cry, ‘Do not remember the sins of our youth and cleanse us of our secret faults. Do not cast us aside in the time of old age. When our strength fails, do not abandon us. Before we return to the earth, count us worthy to turn back to you and give heed to us with kindness and grace. Measure our iniquities by your acts of compassion. Set against the multitude of our offences the depth of your compassion. Look from your holy height, Lord, upon your people here present and who await from you rich mercy. Visit us in your goodness; deliver us from the oppression of the devil; make our lives safe with your holy and sacred laws. Entrust your people to a faithful Angel guardian; gather us all into your kingdom; give pardon to all who hope in you; forgive their sins and ours; purify us by the operation of your holy Spirit; destroy all the wiles of the foe against us’.

And then this prayer is added:

Blessed are you Lord, Master almighty, who made the day light with the light of the sun and the night radiant with the rays of fire; who have granted us to pass through the length of the day and to draw near the beginnings of the night. Hear our supplication and that of all your people. And pardoning all of us our offences, voluntary and involuntary, accept our evening entreaties and send down the multitude of your rich mercy and acts of compassion on your inheritance. Wall us about with your holy Angels; arm us with the arms of justice; fence us with the rampart of your truth; guard us by your power; deliver us from every misfortune and from every trick of the adversary. Grant us also that both the present day with the coming night and all the days of our life may be perfect, holy, peaceful, sinless, without stumbling, without dreams, at the prayers of the holy Mother of God and of all the Saints who have been well-pleasing to you since time began.

Second Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ our God, who, while still present with us in this life, gave your peace to humankind, and ever grant the gift of the all-holy Spirit to the faithful as an inheritance which cannot be taken away, you sent down this grace today in a more manifest form to your Disciples and Apostles and gave eloquence to their lips with tongues of fire, through which we, every race of humankind, having received the knowledge of God in our own language by the hearing of the ear, have been enlightened by the light of the Spirit, delivered from the darkness of error and, by the distribution and supernatural force of the perceptible tongues of fire, have been taught faith in you and have been illumined to speak of you as God with the Father and the holy Spirit in one Godhead, power and authority.

Do you, then, the radiance of the Father, the unchangeable and unalterable stamp of his Essence and nature, the source of salvation and grace, open also the lips of me, a sinner, and teach me how I should and for whom I ought to pray, for you know the multitude of my sins, but your compassion will overcome their measureless number. For see, with fear I stand before you, having cast away despair of my soul into the sea of your mercy. Govern my life, by the ineffable power of your wisdom, you who govern all creation by a word, who are the fair haven of the storm-tossed, and make known to me the way in which I shall walk.

Grant to my thoughts the Spirit of your wisdom, to my folly the Spirit of understanding, with the Spirit of your fear overshadow my deeds. Renew a right Spirit within my inward parts and make firm the instability of my mind with the sovereign Spirit, so that guided each day by your good Spirit to what is profitable, I may be found worthy to do your commandments and always keep in mind your Coming, which searches out all that we have done. Do not neglect me, so that I become deceived by the corrupted pleasures of the world, but give me strength to yearn for the enjoyment of the treasures which are to come. For you said, Master, that whatever someone asks in your name they receive without restraint from your co-eternal God and Father. And so I a sinner at the coming of your holy Spirit implore your goodness, ‘The things that I have prayed for grant me for my salvation’. Yes, Lord, the loving and most generous giver of every benefaction, for it is you who give superabundantly more than we ask. It is you who are compassionate, merciful, who without sin became a partaker in our flesh and who in loving compassion bend down to those who bend the knee to you and became the atonement for our sins. Give your people, Lord, your acts of pity; hear us from your holy heaven; sanctify us by the power of your saving right hand; shelter us in the shelter of your wings; do not despise the works of your hands. Against you alone we have sinned, but it is you alone that we adore. We do not know how to worship a strange god, nor to spread out our hands, Master, to another god. Forgive us our offences and, accepting our supplications on our bended knees, stretch out to us all a helping hand. Accept the prayer of all as acceptable incense, rising up before your kingdom, above all goodness.

And then this prayer is added:

Lord, Lord, who have delivered us from every arrow that flies by day, deliver us also from every deed that walks in darkness. Accept as an evening sacrifice the lifting up of our hands. Count us worthy also to pass through the stadium of the night untried by evils, and rescue us from every disturbance and fear which comes to us from the Devil. Grant our souls the grace of compunction and our thoughts concern for the examination at your dread and just judgement. Nail down our flesh with fear of you, and deaden our members that are on earth, so that, in the calm of sleep, we may be made radiant with joy by the contemplation of your judgements. Remove from us every unseemly imagining and harmful desire. Raise us up at the time for prayer strengthened in the faith and advancing in your commandments

Third Prayer:

Christ our God, ever-flowing Spring, source of life and illumination, co-eternal creative power of the Father, for the salvation of mortals, who fulfilled the whole dispensation with surpassing goodness; tore apart the indissoluble bonds of Death and the bars of Hell, trampling down multitudes of evil spirits; offered yourself as an unblemished oblation for our sake, giving your most pure body, intangible and inaccessible to every sin, as a sacrifice, and through this dread and inexpressible offering you granting us the grace of everlasting life. You descended into Hell, smashed the everlasting bars and showed the way up to those who sat below. With a bait of divine wisdom you hooked the author of evil, the dragon of the deep, bound him with cords of darkness in Tartarus and secured him with the unquenchable fire and the exterior darkness through your infinitely powerful strength. Glorious wisdom of the Father, who appeared to those in distress as a mighty helper and enlightened those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death, Lord of unending glory, beloved Son of the most high Father, eternal light from eternal light, Sun of justice, hear us who entreat you and give rest to the souls of your servants who have fallen asleep before us, our fathers, mothers and brethren and the rest of our relatives according to the flesh and all our kinsfolk of the household of the faith, whose memory we too now keep, because in you is the might of all things and in your hand you hold all the ends of the earth.

Master almighty, God of our fathers and Lord of mercy, Creator of the mortal and immortal race and of every human nature that is brought together and again dissolved, of life and death, of our sojourn here and our translation there, you apportion times to the living and establish the moments of death. You lead down to Hell and you lead up. You bind with weakness and release with power. You dispose all things for our use and direct what is to come for our advantage. You give life by hope of resurrection to those wounded by the sting of Death. Master of all things, our God and Saviour, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of those far off upon the sea, who on this final, great and saving day of Pentecost revealed to us the mystery of the holy, consubstantial, co-eternal, undivided and uncompounded Trinity and the coming and presence of your holy and life-giving Spirit poured out in the form of tongues of fire on your holy Apostles, setting them as Evangelists of our true faith, revealing them as confessors and heralds of true theology; who have also been pleased on this most perfect and saving Feast to receive suppliant prayers of atonement for those who are immured in Hell, granting us great hopes that repose and comfort will be sent down from you to the departed from the pains which hold them, hear us, lowly and wretched, who entreat you, and give rest to the souls of your servants who have fallen asleep before us in a place of light, a place of green pasture, a place of refreshment, from which all grief, sorrow and sighing have fled away, and establish their spirits in the tents of the Just and count them worthy of peace and repose. Because the dead will not praise you, O Lord, nor do those in Hell have the freedom to offer you thanksgiving, but we the living bless you and implore you and bring before you atoning prayers and sacrifices on behalf of their souls

And then this prayer is added:

God, great and eternal, holy and lover of humankind, who have counted us worthy to stand at this hour before your unapproachable glory to hymn and praise your wonders, be gracious to us, your unworthy servants. Grant us grace to offer you without conceit and with a broken heart the thrice-holy hymn of glory and thanksgiving for your great gifts, which you have made us and always do so.

Remember, Lord, our weakness and do not destroy us with our iniquities, but in our humiliation show us your great mercy, so that fleeing the darkness of sin we may walk in the daylight of justice; and having put on the weapons of light we may persevere unassailed by any assault of the evil one, and that with boldness we may glorify you for all things, the only true God and lover of humankind. For indeed, Master and Maker of all things, truly great is your mystery: the temporary dissolution of your creatures and after this their restoration and repose to the ages. We give thanks to you for all things, for our entrances into this world and for our departures, which through your unfailing promise betoken for us beforehand our hopes of resurrection and unending life. Would that we may enjoy it at your future second Coming, for you are the author of our resurrection and the impartial judge who loves humankind of what we have done in life, the Master and Lord of our reward.

Through your supreme condescension you became a partaker with us in the same flesh and blood and in those passions of ours that are blameless by willingly submitting to temptation, and, possessing compassionate pity, having yourself suffered by being tempted, and, as you promised, have yourself become a helper for us who are tempted, and so you have also led us to dispassion. Accept therefore, Master, our supplications and entreaties, and give rest to all the fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and children of each, and to every other kinsman and relative, and to all the souls who have gone to their rest before us in the hope of resurrection to eternal life, and establish their spirits and their names in the book of life and in the bosoms of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and in the land of the living, for the kingdom of heaven, in the Paradise of pleasure, through your shining Angels introducing them into your holy mansions. With them raise our bodies also on the day which you have appointed in accordance with your holy and unfailing promises. There is therefore no death for your servants, Lord, when we go out from the body and come to you, O God, but a translation from sorrowful things to better and more desirable, and rest and joy. But if we have in anything sinned against you, be gracious to us and them, because no one is clean of defilement before you, though they last but a day, except you alone, who appeared sinless upon earth, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we all hope to obtain mercy and forgiveness of sins. Therefore, as you are good and love humankind, remit, forgive, pardon us our faults, voluntary and involuntary, in knowledge and in ignorance, manifest and unnoticed, in deed, in thought, in word, of all our actions and movements. Give freedom and respite to those who have gone before us and bless all of us here present, granting a good and peaceful end to us and to all your people, and opening to us the compassion of your mercy and love for humankind at your dread and fearful Second Coming, and make us all worthy of your kingdom.

“Every translator is a traitor.”
(attributed to Eusebius Hieronymus – St. Jerome)

“Because no translation of the Bible is perfect or is acceptable to all groups of readers, and because discoveries of older manuscripts and further investigation of linguistic features of the text continue to become available, renderings of the Bible have proliferated.” (from “To the Reader” in the NRSV)

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It was in A.D. 1382 – about 70 years before the invention of the printing press – that the first entire Bible was translated into English: The Oxford / Wycliffe hand-written edition. Last spring, the latest translation of the English language Bible (the New Revised Standard Version – NRSV) was made available from the eight publishers that were licensed to print it. The translating committee of the NRSV worked under the auspices of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, which also holds the copyright.

A FAMILY LINEAGE OF ENGLISH BIBLES

The NRSV is the most recent revision in a family lineage of Bibles. Here is a brief look at them:

The WYCLIFFE BIBLE (1382) was, in part, an absolutely literal translation of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew manuscripts then available. But it also contained very free renderings (almost paraphrase) into 14th-century colloquial English. The Wycliffe Bible was immediately condemned by the Western church hierarchy.

In England, the KING JAMES VERSION (1611) was considered by much of the reading public to be a “barbarous” translation. One London clergyman claimed that the KJV “sounds like yesterday’s newspaper, and denies the divinity of Christ.” The Pilgrims who came to the New World in 1620 thought that the KJV was less a true Bible than a written reflection of their contemporary secular culture. They refused to bring it with them across the Atlantic. The translators of the KJV were called “damnable corruptors of God’s word.” A fifty-year struggle ensued before it was finally “authorized” to be read in the Anglican and Calvanist Churches in Great Britain. It became known there as “THE AUTHORIZED VERSION.”

The REVISED VERSION (1881-1895) was an update of the KJV. In its day, some considered it to be an “unfavorable paraphrase” of holy writ. The next Bible in this series of revisions was the AMERICAN STANDARD VERSION (1901). Conservatives immediately labeled it as too liberal in its renderings. The ownership of the copyright of the ASV passed to the International Council of Religious Education (one of the predecessors of the NCC’s Division of Education and Ministry). This council eventually began work on the next Bible within this tradition of the KJV.

The REVISED STANDARD VERSION (RSV) was released in piecemeal fashion amid both fanfare and controversy. The New Testament was published in 1946, the Old Testament was published in 1952, and the Apocrypha was completed in 1977, by which time the copyright was owned by the NCC. Many critics of the RSV, both during the mid-century as well as today, have called it “blasphemous and heretical.”

The preparation of all these Bibles was purely a Protestant effort (although Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox advice was sought for the full edition of the RSV). All have used a modified Elizabethan or Shakespearean, 17th century-English. Up through the 1950s, people thought that the King James Bible was what the Bible should sound like (despite the fact that the Greek of the New Testament was in the “koine,” or common tongue, and the Latin “Vulgate” Bible of the early 5th-century West was so called because it was rendered in the “vulgar,” common, or universal language of the era).

Of these Bibles, the KJV and the RSV have proven to be the most enduring, despite negative reactions from certain circles. And now, within this same family lineage comes THE NEW REVISED STANDARD VERSION – the NRSV (1990). Like its 17th-century British predecessor, the NRSV has 1) used the most currently available scholarship and authoritative manuscripts of the Hebrew O.T. and the Greek N.T., and it has 2) reflected the English language of its contemporary culture.

WHY CONTINUE TO REVISE?

As alluded to above, one reason for Biblical revision is that continual development in archaeological discoveries of secular and sacred sites, artifacts, and manuscripts help translators further their understanding of the vocabulary, grammar, and idioms of the Greek and Semitic texts. The result of all this is that the texts of the ancient documents have become more and more clear through serious and faithful study. Thus, the glaring errors and misunderstandings of earlier editions of the Bible have progressively been addressed, and what was once considered to be a definitive translation eventually became outdated.

A second reason for Biblical revision is the continual development of the “living” English language. Words and expressions of one generation do not necessarily carry the same meaning in successive generations. What may be considered in one era to be a venerable, dignified, majestic, reverent, and uplifting rendering may, in a later era, be misleading or even meaningless to the reader, the hearer, the one who chants the proclamation of the Scriptures, or even – sadly – the homilist.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE KING JAMES VERSION

The Old Testament of the KJV was based largely on manuscripts edited by Hebrew scribes between the 6th and the 9th centuries A.D. This text is called the “Masoretic” or Hebrew Bible. The N.T. of the KJV relied on very late Greek manuscripts that were based largely on originals from the 10th century. They were the only manuscripts available to the 17th-century scholars. Due to the obvious limitations of having only very late manuscripts from which to translate, the KJV is seen today to contain many defects and errors if compared to the most widely circulated (and thus, most widely accepted) and most ancient manuscripts.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE REVISIONS

Between 1611 and the mid-20th century, more ancient and more accurate Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Aramaic manuscripts and manuscript fragments of the Bible were located. For the O.T., these pre date the manuscripts that were available for the translation of the KJV in some cases by one thousand years. For the N.T., these newly recovered manuscripts had been copied only two or three centuries after the original composition of the books. These earlier editions of the Scriptures contain fewer accumulations of copyists’ errors that crept in over the centuries. (Take for example KJV 1 John 5:7: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” This is a very interesting and theologically profound statement. But it is absent from the RV and descendents. Critical study has found that this verse was a late addition to the Bible, and despite its theological significance, it has been deleted.) So, as each revision of the Bible was produced, more and more ancient manuscripts were compared: more and more authenticity and reliability was achieved.

Like the RV of 1895 and the ASV of 1901, the RSV of 1977 still remained faithful in many ways to the KJV. Thus, while clearly remaining within the linguistic tradition of the KJV, the RSV became a more accurate and faithful translation of the original Scriptures in recovering the original wording of the Hebrew and Greek texts than the KJV had been.

The RSV sought to “embody the best results of modern scholarship as to the meaning of the Scriptures, and express this meaning in English diction which is designed for use in public and private worship and preserves those qualities which have given to the King James Version a supreme place in English literature” (from the Preface to the RSV). Linguistically, this meant that 17th-century English usage was still the basis of the text. The RSV was clearly not a new translation of the Bible in contemporary language. It was, rather, a modification of Elizabethan English. The RSV preserved archaic forms (e.g., the use of thee, thou, thy, thine). It also preserved the verb endings -eth and -th. And it kept such archaic (obsolete?) expressions as it came to pass, peradventure, must needs, etc. But there were other words that, in 1611, had been accurate translations of the Hebrew and Greek. By the mid-20th-century these words had changed in meaning (e.g., “prevent” once meant “precede,” “conversation” once meant “conduct,” “ghost” once meant “spirit,” etc.)

THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

The SEPTUAGINT (LXX) is a 3rd-century B.C. translation of the Old Testament by Hebrew scholars into then-contemporary Greek, so that the Jews of the day could understand the Scriptures. (They no longer spoke nor understood Hebrew.) The LXX was the O.T. text most often (but not exclusively) quoted by the writers of the New Testament. The LXX was the version of the O.T. most widely used by the early Christian community. It was also the usual (but not exclusive) edition of the O.T. used by the Fathers of the Church in their writings and homilies. So the LXX, rather than the Hebrew Bible, became the authoritative version of the O.T. for Orthodox Christians. In the places where the wording of the LXX differs from the Hebrew (and this is frequent), the Church maintains that of the two, the LXX was made under the inspiration and revelation of the Holy Spirit. For example, see Psalm 51:5, Isaiah 26:17-18, or Isaiah 7:14 (and then Matthew 1:23) in various versions of the Bible. (See also T. Ware, THE ORTHODOX CHURCH, p. 208)

Neither the KJV nor any of its descendents mentioned in this article used the LXX as a primary text for the translation of the O.T. The LXX was a secondary reference, used only when the Hebrew or Aramaic Bible needed clarification. Thus, from the standpoint of the Eastern Orthodox Church (which considers the LXX as the official, authorized text of the O.T.) each version of the Bible cited here perpetuates a number of omissions, inaccuracies, and deficiencies.

At the suggestion in 1973 of His Eminence Athenagoras, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain THE OXFORD ANNOTATED BIBLE WITH THE APOCRYPHA – REVISED STANDARD VERSION was published in 1977. This version comprised the O.T., N.T., and the completed edition of the “Apocrypha” (as the Protestants call it) or “Deutero-Canonical books” (as the Roman Catholics call them). Archbishop Athenagoras then officially endorsed the use of this Bible. It should be noted that although this 1977 translation of the Apocrypha relied primarily upon a 1935 edition of the LXX, it remains a fact that in the overall translation of the RSV O.T., the LXX is largely absent. (Remember that the work done in the preparation of this Bible was overwhelmingly Protestant, so there was a Western bias against the use of the LXX.) Nonetheless, despite its limitations, this complete edition of the RSV has been used as a textbook in most Orthodox (and non-Orthodox) seminary and university courses in Holy Scripture. It has been the basis for more Orthodox and (non-Orthodox) scholarly works on the Bible than any other English translation. It has been used more often in Orthodox (and non-Orthodox) liturgical translations and services of worship, as well as in church school curricula than any other American translation. It has been a truly “standard” text for some time.

THE KING JAMES VERSION

An American modernization of the KJV, revising punctuation, pronouns, and some of the archaic vocabulary of the KJV appeared in 1982. It was produced independently of the “family lineage” of the KJV mentioned in this article. It is called THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION – (NKJV). In its preparation, Greek LXX texts (together with the Latin Vulgate, and resources from manuscripts from the Dead Sea Caves) were consulted, but they were incorporated into this Bible only very minimally. The NKJV, being the work of American Evangelical Protestants, does not contain the Apocrypha (as do British editions of the KJV). Thus, the many omissions, errors, and deficiencies of the KJV have been perpetuated in the NKJV.

THE NEW REVISED STANDARD VERSION

For the past seventeen years, preparation of the NRSV has taken into account the continuous progress and developments in biblical scholarship, archaeological finds; clarification of Greek and Semitic texts and vocabulary; and the understanding of the historical, social, political, and religious backgrounds of scriptural writers. For its preparation, scholars were selected from throughout Christendom: twenty-four Protestant, five Roman Catholic, and one Eastern Orthodox. A Jewish scholar was also part of the translating committee. During the nearly two decades of preparation, the translators worked on the books of the Bible for which they were individually responsible, and then annually gathered for one week in January and one week in June to work together on the texts. The NRSV is termed, by the holder of the copyright, “A Standard for Our Time.”

Since the English language has changed more during the past four decades than at any time in history – and although these changes have been subtle, they have been substantive – it has been felt that a new revision within the lineage of the KJV was needed. The NRSV was intended to express Biblical terms in the literary style of today. The NRSV was intended to be “somewhat more literal than the RSV.” It departs less often from the Hebrew Masoretic text of the O.T. than the RSV. For the Orthodox, this fact creates obvious difficulties. However, even though the NRSV was to be as “literal as possible” in relation to the ancient manuscripts (Hebrew O.T. and Greek N.T.), it sought to be “as free as necessary” in order to guarantee that the English meaning is the same as it was in these original languages. Rather than continue with a modification of Elizabethan “churchley” language, the NRSV renders pronouns, verbs, and now-archaic expressions in the contemporary idiom. It corrects the often-confusing word order of the earlier versions, which followed the word order of an ancient language very closely, as in Zechariah 3:3 (compare KJV, RSV, and NRSV). It improves the clarity of the text for oral proclamation where it is impossible to distinguish between two homonyms, even given the context, as in Genesis 37:7 (again, compare KJV, RSV, and NRSV). The NRSV is not an “inclusive-language” Bible in the common understanding of that term. But, it thoroughly corrects the inaccuracies of the inherent masculine bias of the English language.

The initial reactions to the NRSV from Orthodox scholars (biblical and otherwise) have ranged from “I can find absolutely nothing good about it – nothing at all,” to “As far as I am concerned, the NRSV is the best translation available.” Most, however, being less zealous, give the NRSV qualified praise or qualified denunciation.

In order to keep any Orthodox Christian reaction to the NRSV in perspective, a noteworthy reminder would be that in Greece in 1901, the publication of a translation of the New Testament in contemporary Greek led to the downfall of the government and to student demonstrations in which eight people were killed. Although this is an extreme example, it typifies the intense concern for the Orthodox regarding the task of translating the Holy Scriptures.

ON THE POSITIVE SIDE…

The NRSV uses common-gender nouns and pronouns in referring to both men and women, when this was the context of the ancient texts. Unfortunately, in the past, these pronouns have been traditionally rendered in English in masculine form. The word “ish” in Hebrew and the Greek word “anthropos” have invariably been translated into English as “man”. The original understanding of these terms was “human species,” “human person: man and woman,” not exclusively “adult male,” or “husband” (which are specifically meant by the Greek word “aner”). The NRSV happily does not perpetuate the use of “man” or “men” when humanity (both men and women) is intended. An example of this is the declaration that “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Another instance of the use of common gender noun is the Greek “adelphos” or “adelphoi.” Previously this word has been translated into English as “brother,” “brethren,” or “brotherhood.” But the Greek (and its Hebrew equivalent) can mean either physical or spiritual relative/s or “brothers and sisters” and often referred to the whole Church. (See 1 Peter 2:17: RSV “Love the brotherhood.” NRSV: “Honor the family of believers.” – Vespers for Ss. Peter and Paul.) Note the manner in which most of the Epistles are introduced at Liturgy: “Brethren…” Clearly male exclusivity was NOT intended in the original texts. “Brother(s)” simply referred to the assembly of men and women which made up the local familial or ecclesial community. For examples, see Psalm 122:8 (RSV: “For my brethren and companions’ sake…” NRSV: “For the sake of my relatives and friends…”) and Psalm 133:1 (RSV: “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” NRSV: “…when kindred live together in unity”). Both of these are chanted at Daily Lenten Vespers and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. Other examples are Matthew 25:40 (RSV: “…one of the least of these, my brethren” NRSV: “…least of these who are members of my family” – Liturgy for the Sunday of the Last Judgement) and 1 Thessalonians 4:13 (RSV: “But we would not have you ignorant, brethren…” NRSV: “…brothers and sisters” – Liturgy for the Departed).

For the obvious distinction between brothers and sisters in the Greek, see Matthew 19:29 (Liturgy for the Sunday of All Saints). In correcting the innacuracies of the inherent masculine bias of the English language, the translators of the NRSV have attempted to undo the sexual bias of the original languages and cultures from which the Scriptures have been handed down. See Psalm 95:9; Luke 1:55, etc., where “father/s” and “forefather/s” mean “ancestor/s,” and “forebear/s.” In so doing, has the (historically factual, albeit inequitable) male domination within these cultures and their languages has been nuanced away?

HOWEVER…

When trying to be sensitive to the issues of legitimate gender-neutrality, and necessary intelligibility to the 20th-century reader, the English terms chosen by the translators at times provide awkward, forced, historically inaccurate, and even theologically questionable results.

In the NRSV, the terms “humankind” and “mortal/s” were often preferred over “people” or “humanity.” Regarding “humankind,” it might simply be a question of un-idiomatic grammar or lack of euphony. But the gender-neutral term “mortal” tends to focus not so much on humanity as such (the intended connotation of the original “anthropos”), but rather on mortality. Does this puzzle or enlighten? See Psalm 8:4 RSV: “what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?” NRSV: “what are human beings that you are mindful…mortals that you care for them?” (See also Psalm 144:3.)

The use of the stylistic title “son of man” (meaning “human”) in Ezekiel 2:1,ff and Daniel 8:17 is rendered in the NRSV “mortal” where the particular human being addressed was in fact a male. In addition, the Savior used this apocalyptic, messianic title for Himself – Matthew 25:13, Mark 13:26, John 3:13-14, and Apocalypse 1:13. This title is traced back to Daniel 7:13. The NRSV relegates this term to a footnote, giving as the actual TEXT of Daniel 7:13 “one like a human being.” Again, theological concerns might well be raised.

For further examples – good, not-so-good, and otherwise: Psalm 1:1 (RSV: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked…” NRSV: “Happy are those…” – Vespers on Saturday evenings and the eves of most Feasts); Mark 2:27 (RSV: “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath” NRSV: “The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath” – Liturgy for the first Saturday of Great Lent); John 12:32 (RSV: “…and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” NRSV: “And when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” – Matins for the Feast of the Holy Cross); 1 Corinthians 13:11 (RSV: “When I was a child (Greek = “infant”), I spoke like a child…; when I became a man (Greek = “aner,” English = “male”), I gave up childish ways.” NRSV: “…when I became an adult…”) But St. Paul was in fact a male human being.

For further comparisons, see KJV, RSV, and NRSV: Ephesians 5:22,ff (for the Crowning of a Marriage); 1 Tim 2:3; 12 (Liturgy for the 26th Thursday after Pentecost) – compare this with Exodus 21:2 (LXX).

Gender-neutral sensitivity is one thing. Theology is another. In Galatians 4:4-7: “But when the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman…so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hears, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir.” (RSV – Liturgy for the Nativity of Christ). In each case, the NRSV changes “son/s” to “child/ren.” The obvious parallelism between the “Son” and “son/s” is lost. Also, the term “child/ren” does not necessarily connote the implied filial relationship, but rather, a stage of development between birth and puberty. Has fidelity to the text (and by extension, fidelity to the faith and worship of the Church) truly been preserved in the best possible manner?

Serious theological implications are also evident in the translation of Matthew 10:38 (Liturgy for All Saints Sunday). The Greek (and RSV) is: “…he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me…” The NRSV, in a well-intended attempt to avoid the masculine pronoun, runs: “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me…” Is it the Savior’s Cross, or our own individual Cross that must be taken up? Clearly the Greek means our OWN Cross. Vicarious suffering for us by the Lord Jesus is not the intent of this verse. All of the Saints (and that’s us as well) are called to a mystical if not actual co-crucifixion, and co-suffering with the Savior in order to rise with Him and reign with Him (see Colossians 2:11-12 and Romans 6:3-4).

In attempts to render the message more intellegible for 20th-century readers, the NRSV has modified elements of the original texts which reflect specifically the culture, customs, and elements of the Mediterranean world in the 1st century. Take for example the fact that at the tax-collector Levi’s banquet, the guests reclined at table – the usual manner of partaking of a meal (Luke 5:29 – Liturgy for the 21st Saturday after Pentecost). The NRSV reports that they were “sitting at the table,” and the footnote states that “reclining” is the Greek term. Should “reclining” have been preserved in the text of the Scriptures, with an explanatory footnote about Middle East practice?

For the Orthodox, these issues warrant study for two reasons. Faithful translation of the actual text of the Holy Scriptures is just as vital as faithful transmission of the actual context and historical situation (however limited and fallen) into which the actual text of the Holy Scriptures was revealed, incarnated, and recorded.

Another special concern to Orthodox Christians is the NRSV rendering of Psalm 51:5. This Psalm is important because it occurs quite often in the liturgy of the Church. It is also important because it is one of the instances where the Scriptures articulate most poignantly and eloquently the basis of our understanding of Christian anthropology, original (or ancestral) sin, and the theology of salvation. Remember that the O.T. for the Orthodox is the LXX. The LXX reads: “Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me…” This is quite different from the Masoretic Hebrew, used by the KJV, the RSV, NKJV, NRSV, and virtually all Western Bibles, English or otherwise. The emphasis of these Western editions is that: 1) in sin and/or guilt my mother conceived me; and 2) I was born guilty / in sin; etc. Although this is typical of the theology of Western Christendom, it is highly foreign to the theology of Eastern Christendom.

The greatly loved hymn of the Divine Liturgy, “Only-begotten Son and immortal Word of God…” (attributed to St. Justinian the Great) takes as its source the term “monogenes” from John 1:14; 3:16; 1 John 4:9 (see also 1 John 5:18). This is not the place for a detailed study of this expression. However, suffice it to state here that an only child (Luke 7:12: the son of the widow of Nain; Luke 8:42: Jairus’ daughter; Hebrews 11:7: Abraham’s son Isaac) AND the Only-begotten Son of God are simply different. The Risen Lord Jesus is the pre-existent, Only-begotten God, the Son. The NRSV has taken this title and rendered it “…the Father’s only Son.” Could a greater sensitivity to the Tradition of the doctrinal formuale and hymnography of the Church have been useful in rendering the translation of this term?

In the NRSV, the second verse of the very first book of the Bible (read at the Vespers of the first day of Great Lent and at certain feasts) becomes “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” The footnote states: “OR while the spirit of God OR while a mighty wind.” The KJV states: “And the Spirit of God moved…” The RSV: “the Spirit of God” (with the footnote: “OR wind”) Other contemporary English Bibles vary from “spirit of God,” to “a divine wind,” to “a great wind.” The Hebrew of Genesis 1:2 is “ruah;” the Greek is “pneuma.” Both of these terms may be translated “spirit,” “breath,” “life,” or “wind.” For obvious reasons, Christians might prefer the use of the word “spirit” for this verse. All these meanings are equally revelatory and significant. Sometimes it is simply not possible to find a single English equivalent term to render the full bredth, meaning and overtones of a Hebrew or Greek original. Perhpas the KJV and RSV take just as many liberties to project upon this word the Christian interpretation with a capitalized “Spirit” as does the NRSV and other Bibles in rendering it “wind,” “breath,” etc?

This present First Edition of the NRSV may not actually become “a standard for our time.” It is in many ways a verbal icon (if you will) OF our time. It has taken advantage of the very latest and best in the field of Biblical scholarship of the Hebrew O.T. and the Greek N.T. (but alas, not the LXX). Within the lineage of the KJV, it has consistently shifted English usage to the contemporary “koine” or “vulgate” of today’s America. It has avoided the enticements of “feminist theology” that would androgenize the language concerning the Holy One that He Himself has revealed to us (see Psalm 118). It has not (unfortunately) avoided some insensitivity to theological and cultural issues that are part of the faithful transmission and Tradition of the Word of God to His people. Because it has attempted to be inclusive to some, it has become exclusive to others (a sign of our times).

The NRSV is a human translation of the Divine revelation. And despite the tremendous scholarship, untiring dedication, and meticulous care of this work – or any “synergia” (our cooperation or fellow-working with God), we will always end up with a fallible, human product: limited and fallen – no matter HOW good, correct, and orthodox.

An Orthodox assessment of the NRSV? This author is unqualified for such a task. However, we must not deny the legitimite good work done in the NRSV. We would do well to give thanks to God for whatever in it is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8, NRSV). Where we see it to be less than illuminating, we would also do well not to curse its dark points, but seek to improve what calls out for improvement, fidelity, and enlightenment.

The NRSV may well prove to be just the catalyst to motivate English-speaking Orthdox Christians to begin the work of translating an edition of the Holy Scriptures. Perhpas the nine Orthodox jurisdictions belonging to the NCC (and any others, for that matter) could assign biblical and linguistic scholars from among their ranks to prepare an Orthodox Christian revision. (The Roman Catholics produced the RSV Catholic Edition in 1966.) Biblical translating is an awe-some vocation. The translator stands on holy ground, bearing the tremendous responsibility of articulating the revealed language of Theophany in the common language of humanity. The effort of a pan-Orthodox team of translators and editors could pick up where the NRSV has left off. They could produce an accurate, Orthodox verbal icon of the Good News of salvation adequate to and authorized for proclamation in the midst of the contemporary American liturgical assembly. This Bible would not be so much an icon of the present age (there are enough of those). Rather, it could be a verbal icon of Him Whose glory is unto the ages of ages – Who was revealed and became incarnate within this age.

The Jesus Prayer

Fr. Thomas Hopko

The most normal form of unceasing prayer in the Orthodox tradition is the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer is the form of invocation used by those practicing mental prayer, also called the “prayer of the heart.” The words of the prayer most usually said are “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” The choice of this particular verse has a theological and spiritual meaning.

First of all, it is centered on the name of Jesus because this is the name of Him whom “God has highly exalted,” the name given to the Lord by God Himself (Luke 1:31), the “name which is above every name.” (Philippians 2:9-10, cf Ephesians 1:21)

…for there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

All prayer for Christians must be performed in the name of Jesus: “if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” (John 14:13-14)

The fact that the prayer is addressed to Jesus as Lord and Christ and Son of God is because this is the center of the entire faith revealed by God in the Spirit.

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus answered, “Blessed are you…for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven…and on this rock I will build my Church…” (Matthew 16:16-18)

That Jesus is the Christ, and that the Christ is Lord is the essence of the Christian faith and the foundation of the Christian church. To believe and proclaim this is granted by the Holy Spirit.

…no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. (I Corinthians 12:3)

… every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:11)

In calling Jesus the Son of God is to acknowledge God as His Father. To do this is, at the same time, to have God as one’s own Father, and this too is granted by the indwelling Spirit.

And when the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:4-6)

When we cry “Abba! Father!” it is the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God … (Romans 8:15-16)

Thus, to pray “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God” is already to be a child of God, and already to be certain that the Holy Spirit is in you. In this way, the Jesus Prayer brings the Spirit of God into the heart of man.

“Have mercy on me a sinner” is the publican’s prayer. When uttered with humble conviction it brings divine justification. (cf. Luke 18:9-14) Generally speaking, divine mercy is what man needs most of all. It is for this reason that the numberless repetition of the request for the Lord’s mercy is found everywhere in the prayers of, the Church.

And finally, all men are sinners. To know this is a fact, and to confess it with faith is to be justified and forgiven by God. (cf. Romans 3:10-12, Psalm 14:1-3)

The Jesus Prayer basically is used in three different ways. First as the verse used for the “prayer of the heart” in silence in the hesychast method of prayer. Second as the continual mental and unceasing prayer of the faithful outside the hesychast tradition. And third as the brief ejaculatory prayer used to ward off temptations. Of course, in the actual life of a person these three uses of the prayer are often interrelated and combined.

In the hesychast method of prayer the person sits alone in a bodily position with his head bowed and his eyes directed toward his chest or his stomach. He continually repeats the prayer with each aspiration and breath, placing his “mind in his heart” by concentrated attention. He empties his mind of all rational thoughts and discursive reasoning, and also voids his mind of every picture and image. Then, without thought or imagination, but with all proper attention and concentration he rhythmically repeats the Jesus Prayer in silence – hesychia means silence – and through this method of contemplative prayer is united to God by the indwelling of Christ in the Spirit. According to the fathers, such a prayer, when faithfully practiced within the total life of the Church, brings the experience of the uncreated divine light of God and unspeakable joy to the soul. Its purpose is to make man a servant of God.

…the mind when it unites with the heart is filled with unspeakable joy and delight. Then a man sees that the Kingdom of heaven is truly within us.

When you enter the place of the heart…give thanks to God, and praising His mercy, keep always to this activity, and it will teach you things which you will learn in no other way.

…when your mind becomes established in the heart, it must not remain idle, but it should constantly repeat the prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!” and never cease.

For this practice, keeping the mind from dreaming, renders it invincible against all suggestions of the devil and every day leads it more and more to love and longing for God. (St. Nicephorus, 14th c., Discourse on Sobriety)

To practice the hesychast method of prayer requires always and without exception the guidance of a spiritual guide, one must not use this method unless one is a person of genuine humility and sanity, filled with all wisdom and peace. To use this method without guidance or humble wisdom, is to court spiritual disaster, for the temptations that come with it are many. Indeed, the abuses of the method became so great in recent centuries that its use was greatly curtailed. Bishop Theophan tells that the bodily postures and breathing techniques were virtually forbidden in his time since, instead of gaining the Spirit of God, people succeeded only “in ruining their lungs.” (cf. The Art of Prayer, lgumen Chariton, ed.)

Such abusive and abortive used of the method – itself something genuine and richly rewarding were already known in fourteenth century Byzantium when St. Gregory Palamas defended the tradition. And evidence exists from as early as the fourth century to show that even then people were using the prayer foolishly and to no avail by reducing it to a “thing in itself” and being captivated by its form without interest in its purpose. Indeed, the idolatrous interest in spiritual technique and in the pleasurable benefits of “spirituality” and “mysticism” are the constant temptations of the spiritual life – and the devil’s most potent weapon. Bishop Theophan called such interest “spiritual hedonism”; John of the Cross (16th c. Spain) called it “spiritual gluttony” and “spiritual luxury.” Thus, by way of example from various times and places, come the following admonitions.

Those who refuse to work with their hands under the pretext that one should pray without ceasing, in reality do not pray either. Through idleness…they entangle the soul in a labyrinth of thoughts…and make it incapable of prayer. (St. Nilus of Sinai, 5th c., Texts on Prayer)

As long as you pay attention only to bodily posture for prayer and your mind cares only for the external beauty of the tabernacle (i.e. proper forms), know that you have not yet found the place of prayer and its blessed way is still far from you.

Know that in the midst of all spiritual joy and consolation, that it is still more necessary to serve God with devotion and fear. (St. Nilus of Sinai, Texts on Prayer)

It is natural for the mind to reject what is at hand and dream of something else to come … to build fantasies and imaginings about achievements before he has attained them. Such a man is in considerable danger of losing what he has and failing into self-delusion and being deprived of good sense. He becomes only a dreamer and not a man of continual prayer (i.e. a hesychast). (St. Gregory of Sinai, 14th c., Texts on Commandments and Dogmas)

If you are truly practicing the continual prayer of silence, hoping to be with God and you see something sensory or spiritual, within or without, be it even the image of Christ, or an angel, or some saint, or if an image of light pervades your mind in no way accept it…always be displeased with such images, and keep your mind clear, without image or form…and you will suffer no harm. It has often happened that such things, even when sent by God as a test before victory, have turned into harm for many…who have then done harm to others equally unwise…leading to pride and self-conceit.

For the fathers say that those who live rightly and are faultless in their behavior with other men…who seek God with obedience, questioning and wise humility…will always be protected from harm by the grace of Christ. (St. Gregory of Sinai, Instructions to Hesychasts)

The use of the Jesus Prayer outside the hesychast method for unceasing prayer is to repeat the prayer constantly and continually, whatever one is doing, without the employment of any particular bodily postures or breathing techniques. This is the way taught by St. Gregory Palamas in his short discourse about how unceasing mental prayer is the duty of all Christians. (see p. 130) Anyone can do this, whatever his occupation or position in life. This also is shown in The Way of the Pilgrim.

The purpose and results of this method of prayer are those generally of all prayer: that men might be continually united with God by unceasing remembrance of His presence and perpetual invocation of His name, so that one might always serve Him and all men with the virtues of Christ and the fruits of the Spirit.

The third method of using the Jesus Prayer is to have it always ready for moments of temptation. In this way, as St. John Climacus has said, you can “flog your enemies, i.e. the temptations, with the name of Jesus for there is no stronger weapon in heaven or on earth.” (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 21) This method works best when one practices the prayer without ceasing, joining “to every breath a sober invocation of Jesus’ name.” (Evagrius of Pontus) When one practices the continual “prayer of the heart,” and when the temptations to sin enter the heart, they are met by the prayer and are defeated by grace.

Man cannot live in this world without being tempted. When temptation comes to a person, there are only three possible results. Either the person immediately yields to the temptation and sins, or he tries to ward off the temptation by the power of his will, and is ultimately defeated after great vexation and strife. Or else he fights off the temptation by the power of Christ in his heart which is present only by prayer. This does not mean that he “prays the temptation away.” Or that God miraculously and magically descends to deliver him. It means rather that his soul is so filled with the grace and the power of God that the temptation can have no effect. It is in this sense that the Apostle John has written: “no one who abides in Christ sins.” (1 John 3:6)

He who sins is of the devil…The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God commits sins; for God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin for he is born of God. By this may be seen who are children of God, and who are children of the devil. (I John 3:8-10)

One becomes a child of God, born of God in the Church through baptism. One continues as a child of God and does not sin only by continual prayer: the remembrance of God, the abiding in Him, the calling upon His name without ceasing in the soul. The third use of the Jesus Prayer, like the first two, is to accomplish this end: that man might not sin.

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The Jesus Prayer

by Fr. Steven Peter Tsichlis

Prayer is the basis of our Christian life, the source of our experience of Jesus as the Risen Lord. Yet how few Christians know how to pray with any depth! For most of us, prayer means little more than standing in the pews for an hour or so on Sunday morning or perhaps reciting, in a mechanical fashion, prayers once learned by rote during childhood. Our prayer life-and thus our life as Christians-remains, for the most part, at this superficial level.

THE CHALLENGE OF ST. PAUL

But this approach to the life of prayer has nothing to do with the Christianity of St. Paul, who urges the Christians of first century Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing” (I Thess. 5:1~). And in his letter to Rome, the Apostle instructs the Christian community there to “be constant in prayer” (Rom. 12:12). He not only demands unceasing prayer of the Christians in his care, but practices it himself. “We constantly thank God for you” (I Thess. 2:13) he writes in his letter to the Thessalonian community; and he comforts Timothy, his “true child in the faith” (I Tim. 1:2) with the words: “Always I remember you in my prayers” (II Tim. 1:3). In fact, whenever St. Paul speaks of prayer in his letters, two Greek words repeatedly appear: PANTOTE (pantote), which means always; and ADIALEPTOS (adialeptos), meaning without interruption or unceasingly. Prayer is then not merely a part of life which we can conveniently lay aside if something we deem more important comes up; prayer is all of life. Prayer is as essential to our life as breathing. This raises some important questions. How can we be expected to pray all the time? We are, after all, very busy people. Our work, our spouse, our children, school-all place heavy demands upon our time. How can we fit more time for prayer into our already overcrowded lives? These questions and the many others like them which could be asked set up a false dichotomy in our lives as Christians. To pray does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things or to spend time with God in contrast to spending time with our family and friends. Rather, to pray means to think and live our entire life in the Presence of God. As Paul Evdokimov has remarked: “Our whole life, every act and gesture, even a smile must become a hymn or adoration, an offering, a prayer. We must become prayer-prayer incarnate.” This is what St. Paul means when he writes to the Corinthians that “whatever you do, do it for the glory of God” (I Cor. 10:31).

THE JESUS PRAYER

In order to enter more deeply into the life of prayer and to come to grips with St. Paul’s challenge to pray unceasingly, the Orthodox Tradition offers the Jesus Prayer, which is sometimes called the prayer of the heart. The Jesus Prayer is offered as a means of concentration, as a focal point for our inner life. Though there are both longer and shorter versions, the most frequently used form of the Jesus Prayer is: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This prayer, in its simplicity and clarity, is rooted in the Scriptures and the new life granted by the Holy Spirit. It is first and foremost a prayer of the Spirit because of the fact that the prayer addresses Jesus as Lord, Christ and Son of God; and as St. Paul tells us, “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. 12:3).

THE SCRIPTURAL ROOTS OF THE JESUS PRAYER

The Scriptures give the Jesus Prayer both its concrete form and its theological content. It is rooted in the Scriptures in four ways:

1) In its brevity and simplicity, it is the fulfillment of Jesus’ command that “in praying” we are “not to heap up empty phrases as the heathen do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them . . . (Matt. 6:7-8).

2) The Jesus Prayer is rooted in the Name of the Lord. In the Scriptures, the power and glory of God are present in his Name. In the Old Testament to deliberately and attentively invoke God’s Name was to place oneself in his Presence. Jesus, whose name in Hebrew means God saves, is the living Word addressed to humanity. Jesus is the final Name of God. Jesus is “the Name which is above all other names” and it is written that “all beings should bend the knee at the Name of Jesus” (Phil. 2:9-10). In this Name devils are cast out (Luke 10:17), prayers are answered (John 14:13,14) and the lame are healed (Acts 3:6-7). The Name of Jesus is unbridled spiritual power.

3) The words of the Jesus Prayer are themselves based on Scriptural texts: the cry of the blind man sitting at the side of the road near Jericho, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” (Luke 18:38); the ten lepers who “called to him, ‘Jesus, Master, take pity on us’ ” (Luke 17:13); and the cry for mercy of the publican, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:14).

4) It is a prayer in which the first step of the spiritual journey is taken: the recognition of our own sinfulness, our essential estrangement from God and the people around us. The Jesus Prayer is a prayer in which we admit our desperate need of a Saviour. For “if we say we have no sin in us, we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth” (I John 1:8).

THE THREE LEVELS OF PRAYER

Because prayer is a living reality, a deeply personal encounter with the living God, it is not to be confined to any given classification or rigid analysis. However, in order to offer some broad, general guidelines for those interested in using the Jesus Prayer to develop their inner life, Theophan the Recluse, a 1 9th century Russian spiritual writer, distinguishes three levels in the saying of the Prayer:

1) It begins as oral prayer or prayer of the lips, a simple recitation which Theophan defines as prayers ‘verbal expression and shape.” Although very important, this level of prayer is still external to us and thus only the first step, for “the essence or soul of prayer is within a man’s mind and heart.”

2) As we enter more deeply into prayer, we reach a level at which we begin to pray without distraction. Theophan remarks that at this point, “the mind is focused upon the words” of the Prayer,”speaking them as if they were our own.”

3) The third and final level is prayer of the heart. At this stage prayer is no longer something we do but who we are. Such prayer, which is a gift of the Spirit, is to return to the Father as did the prodigal son (Luke 15~ 32). The prayer of the heart is the prayer of adoption, when “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit that cries ‘Abba, Father!’ ” (Gal. 4:6).

THE FRUITS OF THE JESUS PRAYER

This return to the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit is the goal of all Christian spirituality. It is to be open to the presence of the Kingdom in our midst. The anonymous author of The Way of the Pilgrim reports that the Jesus Prayer has two very concrete effects upon his vision of the world. First, it transfigures his relation ship with the material creation around him; the world becomes transparent, a sign, a means of communicating God’s presence. He writes: “When I prayed in my heart, everything around me seemed delightful and marvelous. The trees, the grass, the birds, the air, the light seemed to be telling me that they existed for man’s sake, that they witnessed to the love of God for man, that all things prayed to God and sang his praise.” Second, the Prayer transfigures his relationship to his fellow human beings. His relationships are given form within their proper context: the forgiveness and compassion of the crucified and risen Lord. “Again I started off on my wanderings. But now I did not walk along as before, filled with care. The invocation of the Name of Jesus gladdened my way. Everybody was kind to me. If anyone harms me I have only to think, ‘How sweet is the Prayer of Jesus!’ and the injury and the anger alike pass away and I forget it all.”

ENDLESS GROWTH

“Growth in prayer has no end,” Theophan informs us. “If this growth ceases, it means that life ceases.” The way of the heart is endless because the God whom we seek is infinite in the depths of his glory. The Jesus Prayer is a signpost along the spiritual journey, a journey that all of us must take.

The purpose of this pamphlet is merely to introduce the practice of the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer cannot be separated from the sacramental life of the Church and asceticism. The following books are recommended for further study:

The Art of Prayer edited with an introduction by Kallistos Ware (Faber and Faber: London) 1966
The Power of the Name by Kallistos Ware (SLG Press: Oxford) 1974
The Way of a Pilgrim translated by R. M. French (Seabury Press: New York) 1965
Christ is in our Midst by Father John of New Valaamo (St. Vladimirs’ Seminary Press: New York) 1980
The Jesus Prayer by Per-Olof Sjogren (Fortress Press: Philadelphia) 1975
Prayer of the Heart by George A. Maloney (Ave Maria Press: Notre Dame) 1980

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The Jesus Prayer

by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

THOSE WHO HAVE read The way of a Pilgrim are familiar with the expression ‘The Jesus Prayer’. It refers to a short prayer the words of which are: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,’ constantly repeated. The Way of a Pilgrim is the story of a man who wanted to learn to pray constantly (1Thes 5:I7). As the man whose experience is being related is a pilgrim, a great many of his psychological characteristics, and the way in which he learned and applied the prayer, were conditioned by the fact that he lived in a certain way, which makes the book less universally applicable than it could be; and yet it is the best possible introduction to this prayer, which is one of the greatest treasures of the Orthodox Church.

The prayer is profoundly rooted in the spirit of the gospel, and it is not in vain that the great teachers of Orthodoxy have always insisted on the fact that the Jesus Prayer sums up the whole of the gospel. This is why the Jesus Prayer can only be used in its fullest sense if the person who uses it belongs to the gospel, is a member of the Church of Christ.

All the messages of the gospel, and more than the messages, the reality of the gospel, is contained in the name, in the Person of Jesus. If you take the first half of the prayer you will see how it expresses our faith in the Lord: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God.’ At the heart we find the name of Jesus; it is the name before whom every knee shall bow (Is 45:3), and when we pronounce it we affirm the historical event of the incarnation. We affirm that God, the Word of God, co-eternal with the father, became man, and that the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in our midst (Col 2:9) bodily in his Person.

To see in the man of Galilee, in the prophet of Israel, the incarnate Word of God, God become man, we must be guided by the spirit, because it is the spirit of God who reveals to us both the incarnation and the lordship of Christ. We call him Christ, and we affirm thereby that in him were fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. To affirm that Jesus is the Christ implies that the whole history of the Old Testament is ours, that we accept it as the truth of God. We call him Son of God, because we know that the Messiah expected by the Jews, the man who was called ‘Son of David’ by Bartimaeus, is the incarnate Son of God. These words sum up all we know, all we believe about Jesus Christ, from the Old Testament to the New, and from the experience of the Church through the ages. In these few words we make a complete and perfect profession of faith.

But it is not enough to make this profession of faith; it is not enough to believe. The devils also believe and tremble (James 2:I9). Faith is not sufficient to work salvation, it must lead to the right relationship with God; and so, having professed, in its integrity, sharply and clearly, our faith in the Lordship and in the Person, in the historicity and in the divinity of Christ, we put ourselves face to face with Him, in the right state of mind: ‘Have mercy on me, a sinner’.

These words ‘have mercy’ are used in all the Christian Churches and, in Orthodoxy, they are the response of the people to all the petitions suggested by the priest. Our modern translation ‘have mercy’ is a limited and insufficient one. The Greek word which we find in the gospel and in the early liturgies is eleison. Eleison is of the same root as elaion, which means olive tree and the oil from it. If we look up the Old and New Testament in search of the passages connected with this basic idea, we will find it described in a variety of parables and events which allow us to form a complete idea of the meaning of the word. We find the image of the olive tree in Genesis. After the flood Noah sends birds, one after the other, to find out whether there is any dry land or not, and one of them, a dove – and it is significant that it is a dove – brings back a small twig of olive. This twig conveys to Noah and to all with him in the ark the news that the wrath of God has ceased, that God is now offering man a fresh opportunity. All those who are in the ark will be able to settle again on firm ground and make an attempt to live, and never more perhaps, if they can help it, undergo the wrath of God.

In the New Testament, in the parable of the good Samaritan, olive oil is poured to soothe and to heal. In the anointing of kings and priests in the Old Testament, it is again oil that is poured on the head as an image of the grace of God that comes down and flows on them (Ps I33:2) giving them new power to fulfil what is beyond human capabilities. The king is to stand on the threshold, between the will of men and the will of God, and he is called to lead his people to the fulfilment of God’s will; the priest also stands on that threshold, to proclaim the will of God and to do even more: to act for God, to pronounce God’s decrees and to apply God’s decision.

The oil speaks first of all of the end of the wrath of God, of the peace which God offers to the people who have offended against him; further it speaks of God healing us in order that we should be able to live and become what we are called to be; and as he knows that we are not capable with our own strength of fulfilling either his will or the laws of our own created nature, he pours his grace abundantly on us (Rom 5:20). He gives us power to do what we could not otherwise do.

The words milost and pomiluy in Slavonic have the same root as those which express tenderness, endearing, and when we use the words eleison, ‘have mercy on us’, pomiluy, we are not just asking God to save us from His wrath – we are asking for love.

If we turn back to the words of the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’, we see that the first words express with exactness and integrity the gospel faith in Christ, the historical incarnation of the Word of God; and the end of the prayer expresses all the complex rich relationships of love that exist between God and his creatures.

The Jesus Prayer is known to innumerable Orthodox, either as a rule of prayer or in addition to it, as a form of devotion, a short focal point that can be used at any moment, whatever the situation.

Numerous writers have mentioned the physical aspects of the prayer, the breathing exercises, the attention which is paid to the beating of the heart and a number of other minor features. The Philokalia is full of detailed instructions about the prayer of the heart, even with references to the Sufi technique. Ancient and modern Fathers have dealt with the subject, always coming to the same conclusion: never to attempt the physical exercises without strict guidance by a spiritual father.

What is of general use, and God given, is the actual praying, the repetition of the words, without any physical endeavour – not even movements of the tongue – and which can be used systematically to achieve an inner transformation. More than any other prayer, the Jesus Prayer aims at bringing us to stand in God’s presence with no other thought but the miracle of our standing there and God with us, because in the use of the Jesus Prayer there is nothing and no one except God and us.

The use of the prayer is dual, it is an act of worship as is every prayer, and on the ascetical level, it is a focus that allows us to keep our attention still in the presence of God.

It is a very companionable prayer, a friendly one, always at hand and very individual in spite of its monotonous repetitions. Whether in joy or in sorrow, it is, when it has become habitual, a quickening of the soul, a response to any call of God. The words of St Symeon, the New Theologian, apply to all its possible effects on us: ‘Do not worry about what will come next, you will discover it when it comes’.

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The Jesus Prayer — Sanctifying the Present Moment

Father Kevin Hunt, OCSO

from Living Prayer, Templegate Publishers Springfield, IL, 1966, p. 84 – 88

The Jesus prayer is a very short phrase: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It springs from the word of Jesus that we have in the Gospel of Saint John, where Jesus in his last discourse to his disciples says, “You have never asked anything in my name. Now, anything you ask in my name will be given to you.” The idea of asking in the name of someone is something we’re not too accustomed to these days. We think instead of back door politics: Knock, knock, knock. “Who’s there?” “George sent me.” The door opens and out comes the little money bag and off we go.

In the Near East of Biblical times, “name” meant the presence or reality of the one whose name was called. That’s part of the reason why the name of the God of Israel became unspeakable: the name was never adequate to the reality. So asking in Jesus’ name is making present the full reality of what Jesus is, which is being present immediately to God.

This presence is not a confrontational one. It’s not the presence of speaking with someone on the phone. It is an immediate and absolute union, like the presence of two people in love: not something you intellectualize, not even necessarily emotional. It’s just there.

One of the best examples: two people who’ve been married a long time and have been through the good times and the bad together. One can be in the kitchen and the other in the living room, but they’re completely aware. Or one is doing a crossword puzzle and the other writing a letter, but they’re absolutely present to each other.

The Jesus prayer is a vehicle to achieving that presence with God. Using words makes it easier for us, just as between two people who love each other a glance or kiss makes it happen.

The Christian monastic tradition as a formal way of living goes back to the late third and early fourth centuries. The early monks, like the first Zen monks, were basically an uneducated people. They were the peasants of Egypt and Syria: hard-headed, ignorant, dumb people, at least according to the intellectuals of Alexandria and Jerusalem. At that time the name of Jesus was used as a prayer, in conjunction with various techniques. One of them was even watching your breath, which is so common in Zen meditation.

The monks would go into their cells and sit on small benches, four to five inches high. In Egypt they were made of papyrus; in Syria and Israel, probably clay or wood. Sitting on the bench, they would repeat this short prayer over and over again.

In repeating the Jesus prayer you are vocally making concrete who and what you are exactly at this moment. In Catholic tradition, we use the phrase “sacrament of the present moment,” indicating the reality of God right here. God is present because we’re sitting here, not because we would like to be walking outside. While fully conscious that I am sitting right here, I use this short prayer.

Tradition tells us that the prayer is a complete compendium of the Christian revelation. “Lord”: a term reserved for God, a translation of the word “adonai,” used in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. “Jesus Christ”: Jesus the ultimate and full revelation, God’s self-giving to us. “Son of God”: expressing the Christian realization that God in this person has given himself completely.

“Have mercy on me, a sinner”: this phrase is the hang-up for many of us. “Sinner” seems to represent all of our faults, all our failures to live up to some standard. I shave my head, my colleague doesn’t: sinner, sinner!

But the term “sinner” has a different significance in this prayer: we accept our condition as limited human beings, with all of the aches and pains that involves. We don’t set ourselves up as being holier-than-thou. We don’t make moral judgments on ourselves or others. In fact, in the Christian tradition, if anybody is sin, it’s Jesus Christ. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us, “he became sin for us.” In the same way, he becomes sin for the totality of humanity. Christians believe that in Jesus, God himself became man: there’s nothing outside of the human condition that is foreign to, him. He became a human being exactly the way that you and I are human beings. All of my emotions, all of the things that transpire within me are brought into the loving compassion and mercy of God when I repeat the prayer.

The vocal repetition of this prayer creates a rhythm which becomes part of us as we go through life, especially when we go into meditation-and there’s no place like meditation for experiencing the limitations of what it means to be a human being. All of our pains and frustrations come back to us. The greatest problem in meditation is that we start chasing after all of these things, like a dog chasing its tail: around and around she goes, where she stops, nobody knows. “Why did I do this?” “Why didn’t they realize what I meant?” “But of course they should have known.”

To take all of that as it flows in and bring it to this prayer is to bring forgiveness. God’s forgiveness means we forgive ourselves, and in so doing accept ourselves for who we are.

Because I am who I am concretely, right here, right now, I am the, totality of the pain of humanity. I am the pain of what’s occurring in Iraq right now. I am the pain of all those whom I hurt. The mercy of God is poured forth in me and through me upon the whole of creation.

One of the great aids to this prayer over the ages has been beads, such as the rosary. It’s amazing how just making a bead pass through your fingers as you say a short prayer can be helpful to you. It makes you do something simple and physical. The traditional Eastern Orthodox set of beads has one hundred.

A lot of people find it helpful to set a certain number of repetitions a day. In “The Way of the Pilgrim,” the seeker asks how to pray and is told, “Pray continually; this is the way.” How do I do that? “I’ll say this Jesus prayer a thousand times a day. Twenty-eight beads: if I go around this many times a day, I’ll do a thousand.” You reach a thousand. “Then I’ll do two thousand.” You reach two thousand. “I’ll do three thousand.”

And you do it no matter what happens. If someone starts banging an ashcan and you think, “They know I’m in here meditating. Look what they’re doing!,” you’ll never get it done. But if you say, “I’ve got to go around this string twice in the next five minutes,” you’ll do it.

Gradually the prayer travels away from your lips. It’s a good thing to start off saying it aloud. There are even times when you have to go back to doing that. I’ve been in a monastery over thirty-five years. There are still days that I have to go back, moments when I’m as mad as can be with the people I live with. I go into church or go off by myself to meditate, and find that I’m strangling So-and-so. If they were there, aaarrrgghh!

John Climacus wrote a book called The Divine Ladder in the sixth century. He says, “Here I am, walking around the monastery. I go by the cells of hermits and I hear these raging arguments going on. I go in and I knock on the door, figuring that someone is being killed, and a solitary hermit comes and answers the door.” John was one of the great teachers of this prayer.

Or I find myself starving for affection. I go off by myself in the woods and shout “LORD JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD, HAVE MERCY ON ME, A SINNER!”

Gradually, it goes from the mouth to the ear. You find yourself running out of breath, running out of voice, just forming the words with your lips. Then the lips stop, and it goes in deeper, to the inner ear. The words are still there. It goes from the inner ear to the breath, by itself, as you inhale, exhale: inhale, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” exhale, “have mercy on me, a sinner.”

We are accepting the totality of our humanity and transforming it. Not making it into an angelic nature, because we’re not angels-we’re human beings. Transforming it into what it is: that is the work of the prayer. Not looking for experiences, visions, special states, the twentyfive levels of consciousness, to walk on water, but to know that this, right now, is Jesus Christ, present to the whole world, in me, through me, because of me.

And so the Jesus prayer becomes a refrain. Driving your car, the Jesus prayer can be in your car. Taking a shower, the Jesus prayer is there. Going to sleep, the Jesus prayer is there. But as you do it, don’t get attached to the Jesus prayer. In the quiet, be quiet. ‘Me name of Jesus after a while becomes, as St. Bernard of Clairvaux says, “honey on the lips, music in the ear, and a melody in your heart.”

Father Hunt is at Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Adapted from a talk at a Christian-Buddhist workshop at Providence Zen Center in January, 1991.

“Remember God more often than you breathe.”
(St. Gregory Nazianzus, +389)

Prayer is more essential to us, more an integral part of ourselves, than the rhythm of our breathing or the beating of our heart. Without prayer there is no life. Prayer is our nature. As human persons we are created for prayer just as we are created to speak and think. The human animal is best defined, not as a logical or tool-making animal or an animal that laughs, but rather as an an animal that prays, a eucharistic animal, capable of offering the world back to God in thanksgiving and intercession.

Prayer is most specifically an encounter. It is a meeting between two living persons. It is a means of communion with God. It is where I meet God and He meets me…where I come to Him in my fragile brokenness. “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (Jas. 4:8). It is our task to simply begin to pray. If we take one step toward the Lord, He takes ten towards us — He Who saw the prodigal son while he was yet at a distance and had compassion and ran to the edge of the property and embrced him.

The Didache (late 1st century) prescribes that Christians should pray three times daily: evening, morning, midday. (This is actually taken from the earlier biblical tradition of the Jews, carried over and fulfilled within the Christian community.) We see that even King David states “Seven times a day will I praise You.” (Ps. 119:164) It was from this that since the 4th century, many Christians punctuated each day with seven set times for prayer — especially (but not limited to) monks, nuns, solitaries and hermits. Thus, the Church set forth a series of Daily Offices: Vespers at sunset; Compline at bed time; Matins at sunrise; the First, Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours with varioius biblical themes at 6:00 am, 9:00 am (see Acts 2:15), noon (see Lk. 23:44 & Acts 10:9), and 3:00 pm (see Mk. 15:34 & Acts 3:1), respectively. Much of the Daily Offices is comprised of the Psalter, the “Prayerbook of the Church” which are prayed or chanted in the Light of the Resurrection and seen as fulfilled in the Person of Jesus.

All prayer for the Eastern Orthodox is deeply Trinitarian. The three-fold invocation of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (whether explicitly stated, or simply implied as in the Jesus Prayer) sums up the very essence of our prayer. We do not simply address God. We pray to the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. To pray is to be taken up into the inner life of the Holy Trinity: the communion of Love, the interpersonal dialogue which exitst within God. God as Trinity is the source and end-point of all our prayer. (See Romans, chapter 8 — esp. vs. 26)

The most important theme for the spirituality of personal prayer in the Christian East is taken from St. Paul’s statement to “Pray without ceasing” (or alternatively, pray continually; pray constantly) found in 1 Thess. 5:17. It was from this that “The Jesus Prayer” emerged. This is a continual invocation of the Name of Jesus, which assists us in keeping guard, keeping vigilant, and provides us with a powerful confession of our faith. (See Phil. 2:9-11; 1 Cor. 12:3; Eph. 1:21; Lk. 1:31; Acts 4:12; Jn. 13:13-14; Gal. 4:4-6; etc.) “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Continual invocation of the Name of Jesus is not to be confused with the Lord’s own admonishment against “vain repetitions” of Matthew 6:7, where He refers to empty, endless phrases of pagn prayers. (The Holy Trinity = implied because 1] to call Jesus Lord is a gift of the Holy Spirit; and 2] if we call Him “Son of God” we are de facto affirming our belief in the Paternity of the Father.)

However, even when we pray in secret, with the door closed (Mt. 6:6), we are never really praying “alone”. Prayer is communal — prayer is something that is of the total family, of the entire Church, invisible as well as visible. Prayer is our entry into the communion of saints (see Heb. 12:1-2), the angels and archangels, and the whole company of heaven (see Apoc. chapters 4 & 5). In the Lord’s Prayer (i.e. the prayer par excellence) the words “us” and “our” appear each four times, but “me” and “mine” never occur at all.

Finally, regarding prayer, we must remember that it is not simply a vertical issue (i.e., relative to us and God Who is “in the heavens”). It is also horizontal (i.e., we must think about our involvement with the rest of humanity “on earth”). We are called to pray for all mankind. The Church, whose very nature is missionary and evangelical, outward-looking and apostolic, does not exist for itself. It exists for the sake of the world; for the life of the world, and for its salvation.

Our tradition of prayer tells us that the one who prays only when he or she gets up to pray is not really praying at all. Prayer is not what we do. It is not one activity that we do from time to time among our other activities. Prayer is what we are. Prayer is who we are all the time. Prayer is being.

St. Paul tells us to pray continually, unceasingly. Yet we also read in the first/second century manual of church practice called the Didache that Christians are called to pray specifically three times each day: evening, morning and at midday. (This is simply an inheritance from Jewish daily synagogue and domestic practice of prayer.)

All of this is little more than a description (and a prescription) of living in the presence of God — abiding in the life of the Holy Trinity. But being in God’s presence demands a response from us one way or the other. As in the story of Luke 6:28-39, we can either sit quietly at the feet of the Savior or we ask Him to depart from our regions.

Bishop Kallistos writes that prayer is precarious. (The word “prayer” actually comes from the Latin “precaria” which means being vulnerable; subject to un-known or un-stable conditions; being dependent upon the will of another.) Metropolitan Anthony Bloom goes further. He writes that prayer — as an encounter with the true and living God — is dangerous, a judgement, a crisis. The Epistle to the Hebrews declares that it is a terrible, awe-some thing to fall into the hands of the living God (10:31). Awe-some and dangerous because my ego and will are effected. I will have to give up something of myself; a true and continual conversion of life; a change of direction. Prayer presupposes that I am willing to take off my shoes and stand on holy ground — God’s turf. Prayer presupposes that I place myself in the hands of Another — and not my own hands. Prayer presupposes that I am willing to turn and go in a new direction. “…Thy will be done…” This is very much against my so-called natural ego. St. Maximus tells us that this is really conforming myself to my “natural will” (as created originally by God, but subject to the downward spiral and consequences of the Fall of Adam and Eve.)

So why pray if it is so potentially unsettling? Why strive to abide in God’s presence if it is so dangerous? We are told that prayer is one of the most important ways home to our true native homeland. We pray because the Lord tells us to do so (“When you pray…” Mt. 6). We pray because it is related to other inter-dependent and mutually-inclusive steps on the pathway home. (These include such things as the study and incorporation of the holy scriptures, detachment and fasting, the sacramental life, works of mercy and love.) We are called upon to go about establishing a moral and ethical condition for prayer. In the patristic literature, this is called practicing the virtues. This gets us in the proper condition to pray and the proper response in our lives as a result of our prayer. The command of our Lord to “go, first be reconciled to your brother” (Mt. 5:24) before making our offering is not only prescriptive. It is descriptive. I cannot pray well when I am at odds with somebody. “Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive…”

Prayer takes on many forms. First, there is formal corporate prayer such as Vespers, Matins and the Divine Liturgy where we participate communally in the Liturgy of the Church. Second, there is formal private prayer such as the Daily Offices, the Psalter, etc., where (on our own) we employ text, words, images, concepts. For others we can intercede. For ourselves we can petition and confess. To God we can give thanks and praise. And finally, there is private, informal prayer where quietly we simply sit still: “I look at Him and He looks at me and we’re both happy.” This can be considered to be “imageless” or “non-conceptual” prayer — where we drop below our scatteredness and frenetic, frantic existence to a prayerful presence: to be, to abide. Here is where we need to allow the bushel of the little monkeys of our thoughts to calm down (or at least not let ourselves dwell on their clamor). This seems to be the least-often employed type of prayer among us, though it is one for which Eastern Orthodox spirituality is very well-known. According to St. Nicephorus, the Jesus Prayer is the best way (not automatic, but best way) to do this. St. Augustine prayed that “Our hearts, O Lord, are restless until they rest in You.”

St. Gregory Nazianzus tells us that we should remember God more often than we breathe (i.e., ideally prayer should be as much a part of us as our breathing). St. Theophan the Recluse tells us that to pray is to stand before God with the mind in the heart, day and night until the end of life. Mind in the heart. This means that we see ourselves as a psycho-somatic, integral whole. And it is there where God meets our true self — our whole being: body, mind, heart. Me as I truly am: no facades.

But how often God appears to be absent when I am present. How often it seems that God is not there when I have finally gotten around to thinking about Him….during the few minutes out of the day that I have reserved for Him. Metropolitan Anthony, again: “But what about the 23 and a half hours during which God may be knocking at our door and we answer ‘I am busy, I am sorry’ or we do not answer at all because we do not even hear the knock at the door of our heart, our minds, our conscience, our life. So there is a situation in which we have no right to complain of the absence of God, because we are a great deal more absent than He ever is..”

How seldom we are ever really present to anybody else. Stop and think of the last time you were totally attentive and completely, reciprocally there with the one encountered — be it your spouse, child, parent or friend. We usually rush here and there, doing this and that, peripherally touching base with those who happen to come our way. Our day-to-day encounters are the school, the training ground for our encounters with God. We may be bodily present with these persons, but are we mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and thus actually elsewhere? As with other people, so too with God. This is why we are called to lay aside our earthly cares — and that wheelbarrow-full of monkeys — and receive the King Who comes.

So, set about a daily of Prayer that is not too heavy — you can always modify it, if appropriate. Have a quiet place where you can go to pray. Your Bible, an icon, a candle, and some incense are suggested. Make a firm resolve to be regular and consistent (ask God to help you with this one). Work on those spiritual, ethical and moral conditions which are necessary for an authentic life of prayer: the Beatitudes, Matthew 25, etc. Let this time apart be something that punctuates your life, let it become habitual — practice makes permanent. And finally before you go out and buy manuals of prayer such as the 5-volumes of the Philokalia in order to learn about how to pray, take heed from an unlikely source. Nike has a good suggestion for us all: “Just do it.”

Liturgy

Liturgy (from the Greek for “public work” or “common action”) generally refers to the sacred action and corporate worship of the Church. It includes the Sacramental Mysteries as well as the daily, weekly, monthly, annual and Paschal services.

Divine Liturgy

The Divine Liturgy specifically refers to the service of the Holy Eucharist.

Vespers

Vespers is the sunset or evening service of the Daily Office.

Matins

Matins is the sunrise or morning service of the Daily Office.

Sacramental Mystery

A Sacramental Mystery is one of the many services which help in the sanctification of time and space — something that transforms, transfigures the world as a saving act. The Mysteries of initiation are baptism (Mt. 28:18-20; Rom. 6:4; Gal. 3:27) and chrismation (Acts 8:15-17; 1 John 2:27). The Mystery of Holy Communion / Holy Eucharist wherein we participate in the Body of Christ (Mt. 26:26-28; Jn. 6:30-58; 1 Cor. 10:16, 11:23-31) . The Mysteries of healing are unction (Lk. 9:1-6; Jas. 5:14-15) and penance (Jn. 20:22-23; 1 Jn. 1:8-9). The Mystery of matrimony is crowning in marriage (Gen. 2:18-25; Eph. 5:22-33). The Mystery of church order is ordination to the diaconate, the presbytery (priesthood) and episcopacy (Mk. 3:14; Acts 1:15-26, 6:1-6). There are other Sacramental Mysteries of the church such as monastic tonsure, Christian burial, etc.

Sign of the Cross

This is an action which one makes (usually on oneself) when we invoke the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is made with the right hand, forming two fingers together and three fingers together (Christ was divine and human; God is known in three Persons).

The Prayer of the Heart

This is the “Jesus Prayer” — “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It is a central element in Orthodox spirituality. St. Paul states that we should pray without ceasing; continually; constantly (1 Thess. 5:17) This prayer is one that the Orthodox in this manner.

Theosis

St. Peter states that we are partakers of divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). In restoring us to His Image and Likeness (which was lost at the Fall) God calls us to “come home” and share in the communion of Love that exists within the Holy Trinity. This concept of “divinization” means that our true and most authentic vocation as human persons is to become, by grace, what God is by nature and essence.

Icon

Literally, “image” in Greek. Human persons are icons of God (Gen. 1:26-27). In Orthodox churches and homes we find 2-dimensional icons of wood, pigment, and sometimes gold leaf. These depict Christ in His humanity; the angels and saints; saving acts and events in the Bible and in salvation history, etc. The icon can also be of a verbal nature…hence, the Book of the Gospels or the Bible is a verbal icon. Icons are normally venerated, respected or honored by the Orthodox. Worship is accorded to God alone. “I do not worship matter, but I worship Him Who became a material being for my salvation.” — St. John of Damascus

The Nicene Creed

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