The Jesus Prayer Part 19 - Contemplative Prayer

Col 4:2
Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving;

Eph 6:18
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

In this post I am going to write a little about contemplative prayer. The goal of contemplative prayer is to be aware of, focus on, and interact with, and draw closer to God in prayer. To quote a catechism entitled On the Law of God, "Contemplation of God is the description of the spiritual mood in which man intentionally introduces into, maintains in his conscience, the thought of God, of His highest properties, the matter of our salvation and of our eternal future, etc." Prayer is traditionally described as being done on three levels, the physical, the mental, and the heart.

We begin by physically saying the words that we offer up to God. We can start with the words the Lord Himself gave us in the Lord's prayer, the Psalms, or other hymns and prayers of the Church. We offer these words up to God because we know it is right to offer them up to God and that they express how we should relate to God.

We take the words that we are saying and focus on them and make them our own. They cease to be external words that we read and become our own words as they penetrate our mind and become our thoughts. This requires attention and perseverance as outside thoughts try to distract us from prayer. Being told that "he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" and "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you", we know we can trust God to reward our struggles in prayer to draw closer to Him and become transformed by the renewing of our mind. In the words of Fr. Thomas Hopko...

When reading or chanting the psalms, the person does not try to think about each word and phrase. Rather he cuts off all reasoning, and opens his heart to the Lord, uniting “his mouth with his mind,” (St Benedict) and allowing the Word of God to be planted within him to blossom in his soul with the fruits of the Spirit. This also is the case with churchly hymnology. It is sung for the glory of God and the edification and expansion of the soul through the contemplation of the Lord in His words and works of salvation, much more than for any intellectual instruction.

The next level of prayer is to penetrate from the mind into the heart. In order to properly pray from the heart, we must have our heart right with God, as Christ said "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God". This means not just saying the words, but meaning them and following God in our daily lives as Christians. We are told that our treasure is where our heart is and that it is from the heart that our actions come, so part of having a positive relationship with God is to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as a reflection of our love for God based on the love that we have received from God. This has been expressed in writings like where On the Law of God says "Orthodoxy teaches us that the Christian faith is inseparably bound to love for God. And love always demands a living, personal relationship with the one we love. In our relationship with God, this love is first of all made manifest in prayer." and where These Truths We Hold - The Holy Orthodox Church: Her Life and Teachings, a book of teachings compiled by a monk at St Tikhon's Monastery, says that "Our prayers will gradually grow more perfect as we improve the manner of our lives and cleanse our hearts of sinful passion. This banishment of sinful ways from our lives brings as its reward our success in prayer. At the same time, we must say that prayer cannot achieve perfection in isolation, but must be accompanied by all the virtues, for as we grow in virtue, so does our prayer grow ever more perfect."

Repetition of the Jesus prayer, along with psalms, hymns, and other short prayers, has traditionally been used as an exercise in  focusing the mind and heart on God. We can reflect on the words themselves of the prayer, as I have done in some of my previous posts. We can take those words and make them our own, and we can put those words into action in our lives as we grow closer to God by keeping Him in constant remembrance in prayer. To quote Fr. Thomas Hopko again...

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.

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.