Monologistos Prayer in the Desert

Before there was a fixed Jesus Prayer there was the desert’s discovery: that unceasing prayer is best pursued not by many words but by one — a short formula repeated until it becomes the mind’s resting state. This file follows that discovery through the Apophthegmata, Evagrius, John Cassian’s Conferences, Diadochus of Photike’s “remembrance of Jesus,” and the letters of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Desert’s Problem: How to Obey 1 Thessalonians 5:17

The monks who filled the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts from the fourth century took the apostolic command to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) as a literal program, and their literature is in large part the record of the experiments it provoked. The general shape of their answer was work joined to short, frequent prayer: the weaving of rope while verses were repeated, prayer punctuating the day like breath. Within this economy the fathers developed what later Greek writers called monologistos euchē — “one-worded” or single-phrase prayer: a brief formula, biblical or quasi-biblical, said over and over, chosen precisely for its brevity, because a short prayer can be continual where a long one cannot, and because it concentrates rather than disperses the mind (the term and the history are treated in Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, trans. Cummings, Cistercian, 1978, and Ware, “The Origins of the Jesus Prayer: Diadochus, Gaza, Sinai,” in The Study of Spirituality, ed. Jones, Wainwright, Yarnold, SPCK, 1986). This collection’s account of the wider desert movement is deferred to The Desert Fathers; here the single thread of short prayer is followed.

The Apophthegmata: Short Prayer, No Fixed Formula

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers commend brevity in prayer repeatedly, and — the point matters for the later history — without prescribing any single wording. The emblematic saying belongs to St. Macarius the Great: “Abba Macarius was asked, ‘How should one pray?’ The old man said, ‘There is no need at all to make long discourses; it is enough to stretch out one’s hands and say, “Lord, as you will, and as you know, have mercy.” And if the conflict grows fiercer say, “Lord, help!” He knows very well what we need and he shows us his mercy’” (Apophthegmata Patrum, alphabetical collection, Macarius the Great 19, trans. Ward, Cistercian, 1975). Everything in the mature tradition is here in seed: the refusal of eloquence, the plea for mercy, the surrender to God’s knowledge of the need, the intensification of the same short cry under attack — everything except the Name, which the formula does not yet contain (Ware, “Origins,” 1986, notes precisely this: the desert’s short prayers are various, and devotion to the Name of Jesus as the formula develops gradually). Other sayings show the same pattern with other words: arrow-prayers from the Psalms, “God, be merciful to me a sinner” after the publican, cries of “Lord, help me” (Ward, Sayings, 1975, passim; on the publican’s prayer see The Biblical Roots). The desert’s contribution is thus the form — short, penitent, repeated — rather than the content of the later Jesus Prayer.

Evagrius: The Theology of Undistracted Prayer

Evagrius of Pontus (345–399), the desert’s first great theoretician, does not teach the Jesus Prayer, but the hesychast tradition is unthinkable without him. He defined prayer as “the ascent of the intellect to God” and taught that true prayer is “the laying aside of thoughts” — not of consciousness, but of the discursive and imagining activity that stands between the mind and God (Evagrius, On Prayer, in The Philokalia, vol. 1, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, Ware, Faber, 1979, where the treatise is printed under the name of Neilos; on the attribution to Evagrius see the editors’ introductory note there). His analysis of the eight logismoi (patterned tempting-thoughts), and his counsel to oppose each with a short scriptural word (the whole of his Antirrhetikos is a manual of such counter-verses), supplied the psychological framework within which a single, all-sufficient counter-word — the Name — would later find its place (Evagrius, Praktikos, trans. Bamberger, Cistercian, 1970; Ware, “Origins,” 1986). The later tradition corrected Evagrius where he needed correcting — his intellectualism was rebalanced by the biblical anthropology of the heart, above all in the Macarian homilies — but his ideal of imageless, undistracted prayer became and remained the Jesus Prayer tradition’s own rule (see the warnings against images in Prelest and the Need for Guidance; on Evagrius and Macarius see Ware, “Origins,” 1986, and the collection St. Macarius the Great).

Cassian: The Formula Institutionalized

St. John Cassian, transmitting the Egyptian tradition to the Latin West around 420, provides the first full theory of a fixed formula of unceasing prayer — though his formula is not yet the Name. In Conference 10, Abba Isaac gives Cassian the verse “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me” (Psalm 69:2 LXX [70:1]) as the formula to be held “unceasingly… in adversity that we may be delivered, in prosperity that we may be preserved,” turning it over in the heart during work, travel, and sleep’s borders, until the mind arrives by its poverty of words at the poverty of spirit that sees God (Cassian, Conferences 10.10, trans. Ramsey, Paulist, 1997). Here, for the first time, are the essential mechanics of the later Jesus Prayer fully articulated: one unvaried formula; its constant repetition in all circumstances; the deliberate restriction of the mind to it; the expectation that it will pass from effort to habit to prayer beyond words (Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, 1978; Ware, “Origins,” 1986, who calls Conference 10 the classic early account of formulaic unceasing prayer). That Cassian’s verse is a cry for help rather than an invocation of Jesus by name confirms the two-stranded genealogy: the discipline of the single formula and the devotion to the Name arose separately and fused later. Cassian’s own place in the tradition is treated in St. John Cassian.

Diadochus of Photike: The Remembrance of Jesus

The fusion begins, so far as the surviving texts show, with St. Diadochus, bishop of Photike in Epirus in the mid-fifth century. In his On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination he confronts the Evagrian problem — the intellect’s restlessness — with a new prescription: “When we have blocked all its outlets by means of the remembrance of God, the intellect requires of us imperatively some task which will satisfy its need for activity. For the complete fulfilment of its purpose we should give it nothing but the prayer ‘Lord Jesus’… Let the intellect continually concentrate on these words within its inner shrine with such intensity that it is not turned aside to any mental images” (Diadochus, On Spiritual Knowledge 59, in The Philokalia, vol. 1, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, Ware). He returns to the theme repeatedly: the “remembrance of Jesus” (mnēmē Iēsou), held with warmth of heart, cleanses the intellect, unifies its scattered energies, and kindles love (Diadochus, On Spiritual Knowledge 61, 85; Philokalia vol. 1). Scholars from Hausherr to Ware have accordingly treated Diadochus as the pivotal witness: in him, for the first time clearly, the desert’s single-phrase discipline has the Name of Jesus as its content, and the practice is given its enduring rationale — the intellect needs one occupation, and the Name is the one occupation that heals rather than feeds it (Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, 1978; Ware, “Origins,” 1986). Diadochus prescribes no complete sentence, and “Lord Jesus” in his text is remembrance more than formula; the fixed wording lay still ahead (see The Words and Their Variants).

Gaza: Barsanuphius and John

The sixth-century correspondence of the two great recluses of Gaza — Barsanuphius “the Great Old Man” and John “the Prophet” — shows the invocation of Jesus as ordinary spiritual counsel, woven into direction on every subject. To monks and laymen alike the Old Men prescribe short, constant invocation — “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” “Master Jesus, protect me and help my weakness,” and similar forms — as the remedy against thoughts, the companion of work, and the beginner’s whole rule; and they treat flexibility of wording as normal, fitting the formula to the person (Barsanuphius and John, Letters, trans. Chryssavgis, 2 vols., CUA Press, 2006–07; the Gaza evidence is analyzed in Ware, “Origins,” 1986, which stresses both the centrality of the Name and the absence of a single obligatory form). Gaza matters to the genealogy for a further reason: its school of radical obedience and disclosure of thoughts to an elder — transmitted to Dorotheus of Gaza and through him broadly — bound the practice of the invocation to spiritual direction from the beginning, an association the tradition never afterward loosened (Chryssavgis, introduction to Letters, 2006; see Prelest and the Need for Guidance).

By the end of the sixth century, then, all the elements were assembled: the discipline of the single short formula (desert, Cassian), the theology of imageless attention (Evagrius), the content of the Name (Diadochus, Gaza), the plea for mercy (Macarius, the publican), and the setting of obedience. The earliest surviving text of the complete standard formula — “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me,” in the Discourse on Abba Philemon — belongs to Egypt of perhaps the sixth or seventh century (A Discourse on Abba Philemon, in The Philokalia, vol. 2, Faber, 1981; Ware, “Origins,” 1986). The synthesis of these elements into a school, with watchfulness (nepsis) as its method and Sinai as its home, is the subject of The Sinai Synthesis.

References

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Trans. Benedicta Ward. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1975. (Macarius the Great 19 and the short-prayer sayings.)
Evagrius of Pontus. On Prayer (in The Philokalia, vol. 1, under the name of Neilos); Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. John Eudes Bamberger. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1970.
Cassian, John. The Conferences. Trans. Boniface Ramsey. New York: Paulist Press, 1997. (Conference 10.10, the Psalm-verse formula of unceasing prayer.)
Diadochus of Photike. On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination 59, 61, 85. In The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 1, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, Ware. London: Faber and Faber, 1979.
Barsanuphius and John. Letters. Trans. John Chryssavgis. 2 vols. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006–07.
A Discourse on Abba Philemon. In The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 2, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, Ware. London: Faber and Faber, 1981.
Hausherr, Irénée. The Name of Jesus. Trans. Charles Cummings. Cistercian Studies 44. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1978. (The scholarly history of monologistos prayer.)
Ware, Kallistos. “The Origins of the Jesus Prayer: Diadochus, Gaza, Sinai.” In The Study of Spirituality, ed. Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright, and Edward Yarnold. London: SPCK, 1986. (The standard genealogical account followed here.)
Scripture: Psalm 69:2 LXX; Luke 18:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:17.