Thoughts

Prayer of the heart focuses upon the divine Name because that Name itself is a personal theophany, a manifestation of God in Trinity.

By invoking the Name of Jesus, with faith and love, the worshiper ascends Mount Sinai in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, to stand in awe before the divine Presence.

Yet the Name he does reveal to Moses conveys all the truth about God that can ever be known or expressed.

“I AM,” he declares. “This is my Name forever.”

In the person of the incarnate Son, God continues to manifest himself as “I AM.”

Both the object and the content of such repetitive prayer is the divine Name.

According to Hebrew thought, a name bears or expresses the essence of the person or thing that bears it.

A key element in hesychasm is frequent repetition: continual prayer as a means to uninterrupted and ever deeper communion with God.

The psalmist declared, “I keep the Lord always before me;/ because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved” (Ps 15/16:8).

The apostle Paul exhorts his follower to “pray without ceasing” (adialeiptos proseuchesthe, 1 Thess 5:17), urging them to persevere, seeking constancy in prayer (tei proseuchei proskarterountes, Rom 12:12).

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

MARY McAleese has expressed “heartfelt sorrow” on behalf of the people of Ireland to former residents of State institutions for the abuse and neglect they suffered as children.

Speaking at a reception in Áras an Uachtaráin attended by more than 300 people, the President said: “The people of Ireland are desperately sorry for the many ways in which you were not cherished, in the abuse itself, in the silence, in the failure to act, in the failure to listen, hear and believe in time.”

Prayer, then, requires our cooperation with the Spirit of God through “a watchful mind, pure thoughts, and a sober heart.” (From the “Evening Prayer to Christ” of the Byzantine Compline service.)

With this conviction, the fathers turned to Holy Scripture in order to discern various levels of prayer that can be attained in the spiritual life.

A key passage is 1 Timothy 2:1, “First of all, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all.”

To the patristic mind these represent four stages or orders of prayer, from the most elementary to the most sublime.

Prayer, then, is not merely a gift; it is work.

It demands patience, persistence and ascetic discipline. It also demands the constant vigilance known as nepsis or “watchfulness.”

The Hebrew sage admonished, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” 10 (Prov 4:23, New American Standard translation.) “Watch!”

From the New York Times
June 25, 2009, 10:10 PM
When the Heart Pays the Price of Anger
By ROBERT ALLAN

Not long ago, a cardiac patient in a cardiac support group I was leading told of his response to a recent incident: He and a female friend were on the plaza at Lincoln Center after seeing a performance of Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore” when a car nearly hit the woman.

She ran after the vehicle, which was slowly moving away, and slammed the trunk with her rolled up program. The driver emerged from the car hurling expletives in her direction. The patient then hit the driver with his cane. The driver shoved the patient into a fender, at which point, the patient insisted, he had no choice … It was no ordinary cane he was carrying, but a beautiful 19th-century model with a sleek, sharp sword concealed within.

He then insisted that the driver “apologize at swordpoint” in front of a small crowd that had gathered. The characters in “Il Trovatore,” he added, proudly brandished swords.

The patient shared this story at his first — and only — session of the support group. (He terminated treatment, insisting that the others needed my help with their anger far more than he did.) Even after deliberating for several weeks, the patient felt justified and vindicated, totally satisfied by his actions.

Synergia

Such prayer, however, must never be treated as a technique, a Christianized mantra, whose use enables one to attain a particular spiritual end.

Prayer, as St. Paul insists, can never be manipulated, since in its essence it is not a human undertaking at all.

“We do not know how to pray as we should,” he declares, “but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom 8:26).

True prayer occurs when the Spirit addresses the Father, “Abba,” in the temple of the human heart. Prayer, therefore, is essentially a divine activity. Yet like every aspect of the spiritual life, it demands synergeia or cooperation on our part.

2. The Biblical Foundations of the Jesus Prayer

In answer to the Pharisees’ question as to when the Kingdom would come, Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God is not coming with observable signs…behold, the Kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:20-21).

the Hesychast Movement

The Jesus Prayer is often said to have originated in the context of the hesychast movement associated with St. Gregory Palamas and the Athonite monks of the 13th to 14th centuries.

“Palamism,” however, must be seen as the culmination of a long tradition which begins with the Holy Scriptures and the frequent invocations of the Name of Jesus they contain (Mk 10:47; Acts 4:12; Rev 22:20; etc.).

Fixed formula

In human experience prayer offers the way to recover that language, for authentic prayer transcends human language and issues in the silence of God. It is this intuition, confirmed by ecclesial experience, that led ancient spiritual guides to develop what is called “hesychast” prayer.

Teaching on Jesus Prayer: Part V

No noise

p. 213 continued. Yet silence, at least in present times, seems to be the most difficult of virtues to acquire.

We fear it, and we run from it in a relentless search for noise and distraction. A stroll on the beach requires the companionship of a ipod. At the workplace, or waiting on the phone, or shopping for groceries, we expect to be “entertained” by music – any music, so long as it focuses our attention outside ourselves and away from the inner being.

Silence means a void, a dreadful emptiness that demands to be filled. What we choose to fill that void with most often produces not only noise but agitation through overstimulation. Sensory overload is addictive. It becomes an escape from the present, from the self, from God.

Feast of the Sacred Heart

Summer hot days and short nights are conducive to this feast of Our Lord's Sacred Heart.

No need for catechesis about this feast. Those of us who have a devotion to Our Lord's humanity know from the inside the value of pausing before the pictures of Jesus and let our heart's desire have the quality of time to meet.

We had a long festive mass this morning for Eucharist and there were special antiphons. We sang all the verses of the songs and even the service music was done in harmony like Sunday.

No one minds longer prayers when they come from the heart.

Silence of the Heart

continued: p. 212 from Scripture in Tradition by John Breck

The first prayer of thanksgiving after communion, in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, declares: "Thou art the true desire and the ineffable joy of those who love, thee, O Christ our God, and all creation hymns thy praise forever!"

The longing for communion with God is a major incentive to prayer, which may be described as "conversation" with God at the level of the heart.

Penthos

continued: p. 212 on Prayer of the Heart: Sacrament of the Presence of God from Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church by John Breck

Each of us, without exception, bears within the inner recesses of our being the “image” of our Creator. Fashioned in that divine image, the holy fathers declare, we are called to grow toward the divine “likeness” (Gen 1:26f).

In the words of St. Basil the Great, the human person “is an animal who received the command to become god,” that is, to become a participant in the very life of God through the deifying power of the divine energies or operations of the indwelling Spirit. The motivating force behind this sublime vocation is eros or epithymia, an intense longing or deep affective desire for union with the Beloved.

Deepest Desire: Hesychia and Prayer of the Heart

continued: p. 211 from Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church by John Breck

The deepest sadness and the greatest joy in Christian life are caused by an innate longing for God, a passionate quest for intimate and eternal communion with the Persons of the Holy Trinity.

Such longing brings sadness, because in this life it goes largely unfulfilled. Yet rather than lead to frustration, it can produce an ineffable joy, nourished by the certitude that ultimately nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, that our desire for union with him will ultimately be answered beyond our most fervent hope.

The Jesus Prayer, a Teaching

Meg: For several years I've taught and practiced the Jesus Prayer. It is so powerful I would like to take several sessions on this blog to present it once again as if I've never taught it before.

For my basic text I am going to use John Breck's Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church, Chapter 12, p. 211. The book is published by St Vladimir's Seminary Press New York: 2001 ISBN 0-88141-226-0. The entire book is brilliant, but for now I'll simply attend to the Chapter on the Jesus Prayer.

Chapter 12. Prayer of the Heart: Sacrament of the Presence of God

John Breck: In the realm of prayer, as in the realm of dogmatic theology, developing tradition within the Church must be rooted and shaped by the canonical Scriptures. We address our Prayer to the Father, through the mediation of the Son, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Meg: Many of us are reading through the 3,000 pages of the Ryan Report from Dublin. This view on USA story of the past three years gives some perspective of the size, depth, breadth of the moral crisis among clergy and religious. Compassion must prevail, but action must be taken to prevent this today and tomorrow.

Costs for clergy sex abuse at $2.6 billion

Mar. 14, 2009
By Nancy Frazier O'Brien,
Catholic News Service

Accountability

2009 report on clergy abuse

WASHINGTON
U.S. dioceses and religious orders spent more than $436 million in 2008 on settlements and other costs related to clergy sex abuse, a decrease of 29 percent over the $615 million paid out in the peak year of 2007.

One of our nuns is in a dying condition. Her room is just below mine here at Our Lady of Grace in Beech Grove. I visit her everyday and pray with her, mostly in sweet silence. She seems to be at peace and in no pain. She used to carry around the house this book, He and I, by Gabrielle Bossis. Here's a quote she’d remember: