The Prayer for Everyone

Is the Jesus Prayer a monastic specialty, or the whole Church’s prayer? The tradition’s answer, from Gregory Palamas to the modern elders and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, is unambiguous: it is for everyone — laypeople, families, workers — practiced with sobriety, in its simple forms, within the Church’s life. This file assembles that teaching and its practical shape for the non-monastic Christian.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Question and Its History

Because the prayer’s classical literature is monastic — written by monks, for monks, about a practice perfected in cells and deserts — the suspicion recurs in every generation that the Jesus Prayer is for professionals, and that laypeople meddle with it at their peril. The warnings literature (see Prelest and the Need for Guidance), read carelessly, can reinforce the impression. But the tradition itself, examined, answers otherwise, and has answered otherwise at every period.

The fourteenth century put the question directly, and the hesychasts’ answer became famous. The Life of St. Gregory Palamas by his disciple Patriarch Philotheos (Kokkinos) recounts that the monk Job, hearing Palamas teach that the apostolic command to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) lay upon all Christians and not monks only, privately demurred — until a divine messenger confirmed to him the truth of what Palamas taught; the story was transmitted precisely as a charter for universal unceasing prayer (Philotheos Kokkinos, Life of Gregory Palamas, the Job episode; recounted from this source in Ware, The Power of the Name, SLG Press, 1974, and in the introduction to The Art of Prayer, ed. Chariton, trans. Kadloubovsky and Palmer, Faber, 1966). The same century’s manuals assume lay practice at the prayer’s simple levels: the counsel of the hesychast masters was never that the worker in the world should not invoke the Name, but that he should not attempt the enclosed hesychast’s advanced regime (Ware, The Power of the Name, 1974).

The Russian tradition institutionalized the lay answer. St. Seraphim of Sarov’s “little rule” explicitly provides for those “in the world”: the short morning-midday-evening cycle, with the Jesus Prayer said inwardly during work and travel — unceasing invocation scaled to a working day (the rule as transmitted in the Sarov–Diveyevo tradition: Chichagov, Letopis’ Serafimo-Diveevskogo monastyria, 1896; Little Russian Philokalia, vol. 1, Platina, 1978; see From Nil Sorsky to Optina). The Way of a Pilgrim‘s hero is a layman; St. John of Kronstadt was a married parish priest praying amid crowds (see Theophan, Ignatius, and the Pilgrim); Theophan the Recluse’s correspondence — the source of The Art of Prayer — was very largely direction of laypeople, to whom he taught the same standing-before-God with the mind in the heart, adjusted in measure and not in kind (Theophan, in The Art of Prayer, 1966).

The Modern Consensus

The twentieth century’s teachers made the universality explicit. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s The Power of the Name — probably the most widely read modern introduction — states as its settled position that the Jesus Prayer is for every Christian: it requires no special technique, no monastic setting, and no unusual state of life, only faith, attention, and perseverance; the breathing methods are not for unguided use, but the invocation itself is “for everyone” precisely because its essence is not method but penitent address (Ware, The Power of the Name, 1974; similarly his chapter on prayer in The Orthodox Way, rev. ed., SVS Press, 1995). Fr. Lev Gillet wrote his classic essays expressly for non-monastics (A Monk of the Eastern Church, The Jesus Prayer, rev. ed., SVS Press, 1987). The Greek elders of the Athonite revival counseled streams of lay pilgrims in the prayer: St. Porphyrios taught visitors to say the prayer gently, without pressure or anxiety, as the soul’s turning toward Christ in love rather than a task to be forced (Porphyrios, Wounded by Love: The Life and the Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios, ed. Sisters of the Holy Convent of Chrysopigi, trans., Denise Harvey, 2005, the counsels on prayer); St. Paisios of Mount Athos answered lay questioners on the prayer constantly, insisting it belongs to mothers, workers, and children — with humility and without delusion-hunting (Paisios of Mount Athos, Spiritual Counsels, vol. 6: On Prayer, Holy Hesychasterion “Evangelist John the Theologian,” Souroti, Greek ed. 2012; see Section 09 and the saints’ own collections, St. Porphyrios and St. Paisios).

The Shape of Sober Lay Practice

Assembled from the teachers cited, the practical consensus for the layperson has a consistent shape:

  1. The simple forms. Oral and mental prayer — the words said with attention, aloud or silently — are the layperson’s whole program; the psychosomatic techniques are not attempted without an experienced guide, and are unnecessary: the tradition’s highest gifts have been given to those who never used them (Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus, trans. Lazarus, Watkins, 1965; Ware, The Power of the Name, 1974).
  2. A modest fixed measure, plus the day’s interstices. A small counted or timed portion within the morning and evening rule — set, ideally, with one’s priest or spiritual father — and beyond it the free use of the prayer in the day’s gaps: walking, driving, queueing, working with the hands, falling asleep. The prayer’s portability is its lay genius: it requires no book, no icon corner, no free hour (Theophan, in The Art of Prayer, 1966; Ware, The Power of the Name, 1974; see The Prayer Rope and the Rule).
  3. Within the Church’s life. Liturgy, confession, Communion, fasting: the prayer presupposes and serves them, never substitutes for them (Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus, 1965; see The Prayer Rope and the Rule).
  4. No experience-seeking. The lay practitioner aims at attention and repentance, expects dryness as normal weather, refuses images and phenomena, and measures progress — if at all — by patience and kindness at home, not by sensations in prayer (Theophan, The Art of Prayer, 1966; Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus, 1965; see Prelest and the Need for Guidance).
  5. Available counsel. Where an experienced guide exists, use him; where not, Ignatius’s rule of living by counsel — Scripture, the fathers’ writings, a sober confessor — applies to laypeople exactly as to monks (Brianchaninov, The Arena, trans. Lazarus, Jordanville, 1991).

The Theology of the Universality

That the prayer is for everyone is not a modern democratization but a dogmatic consequence, and the teachers draw it explicitly. Baptism, not tonsure, is the charter of the praying life: every baptized Christian is given the Spirit who cries “Abba” (Galatians 4:6) and is commanded — the command admits no monastic restriction — to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17); monasticism intensifies the common vocation, it does not own it (Ware, The Power of the Name, 1974; the Palamas–Job story above is the tradition’s narrative form of the same point). The prayer’s content, likewise, is the common faith: any Christian who can confess “Jesus is Lord” (1 Corinthians 12:3) possesses everything the formula contains. And the prayer’s precondition — knowing oneself a sinner in need of mercy — is the one qualification distributed to the whole human race without exception. What the monastic literature adds is experience of the road’s upper reaches and its hazards; what it never claims is a monopoly on the road. The sober summary, which this collection adopts as the section’s conclusion: the Jesus Prayer is the Church’s common inheritance, to be practiced by everyone in the measure of his life, with the same humility that the greatest hesychasts brought to it — and it is precisely the simple, unambitious, penitent practice of it that the warnings literature pronounces safe (Ware, The Power of the Name, 1974; Theophan, The Art of Prayer, 1966; Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus, 1965).

See Also

References

  • Ware, Kallistos. The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality. Oxford: SLG Press, 1974. (The prayer as for everyone; the Palamas–Job story recounted; the lay program.)
  • Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Way. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995.
  • Philotheos Kokkinos. Life of Gregory Palamas. (The Job episode, as recounted in Ware and in the introduction to The Art of Prayer.)
  • The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology. Compiled by Igumen Chariton of Valaam. Trans. E. Kadloubovsky and E. M. Palmer. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. (Theophan’s lay direction.)
  • Brianchaninov, Ignatius. On the Prayer of Jesus. Trans. Father Lazarus [Moore]. London: John M. Watkins, 1965; and The Arena, trans. Lazarus. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991.
  • Porphyrios, Elder [St.]. Wounded by Love: The Life and the Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios. Limni, Evia: Denise Harvey, 2005. (The counsels on gentle, unforced prayer.)
  • Paisios of Mount Athos, Elder [St.]. Spiritual Counsels, vol. 6: On Prayer. Souroti, Thessaloniki: Holy Hesychasterion “Evangelist John the Theologian,” Greek ed. 2012. (The prayer for laypeople.)
  • Chichagov, Leonid [Seraphim]. Letopis’ Serafimo-Diveevskogo monastyria. St. Petersburg, 1896; Little Russian Philokalia, vol. 1. Platina, CA, 1978. (St. Seraphim’s rule for those in the world.)
  • A Monk of the Eastern Church [Lev Gillet]. The Jesus Prayer. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987.
  • Scripture: Galatians 4:6; 1 Corinthians 12:3; 1 Thessalonians 5:17.