The Jesus prayer is the key to the Holy Scriptures, the spiritual life, the Eucharist and any other prayer. It is the key to everything because through this prayer you force yourself to be alone with Christ for fifteen minutes, half an hour, an hour, two hours or even more, in the salvific state of the Alexandrian shoemaker. ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ – means ‘let me be with you’, ‘have mercy on me’ – means ‘cure my ungodly nature’. I keep telling you that the Jesus prayer should become your breath. Try to make this a rule. Let us wake up and stand for the Lord at night.
In the beginning you can keep a vigil for half an hour, and then see what will happen – the Lord will wake you up. This will certainly not happen in a day or two. The Lord will wake you up, you will stand up and begin: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’, and there will be no greater happiness in your life than this. Don’t you want to experience this? Do you think it is impossible? It is not. It does not matter whether you are a monastic or not. The father of Gregory Palamas, Constantine, was not a monastic, either. He held a high position at the Byzantine Imperial Court and he was constantly sunk in prayer.
Archpriest Theodore Gignadze
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