Spiritual heritage Perpetual prayer

  “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD [is] one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”.(Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

The Lord gave this commandment in the Old Testament. How mandatory it is for a Christian in the New Testament, who received the promises and to whom ways of salvation and eternal life in Jesus Christ have been revealed. Accordingly, evangelical teaching of perpetual praying has always been one of the characteristics (features) of a real Christian because it is a unique guaranteed means of communication between him / her and his / her Most Holy God.

So forefathers of the church have been endeavoring since the beginning of Christianity to incite and confirm the importance of permanent prayer because it is the actual means of constant co-existence in Jesus Christ. They have assured that this co-existence spiritually flares from the continuous reaction of love, faith and hope resulting from the action of the Holy Spirit inside the Christian being.

If this is the case, and if this is the principle of the real life of the human who lives in and with Jesus Christ, how then the case will be with a Christian monk!

So the monastery has done a comprehensive study about permanent praying in the light of the concept of the fathers of the church, in general, and its development in the Christian monasticism in the East, in particular.

The Biblical verse has had its own illuminating impact on the Christian heart that perseveres in repeating it day and night.

However, the flaring spiritual release inside a monk, fused in Jesus Christ, has made monks strongly adhere to the biblical verse and its spiritual essence through ceaseless repetition of the Lord Christ’s name in different ways. Thus, their lips, minds, and hearts will not stop repeating it, and contemplating Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Monks, of different environments and of different orders, have been using different Biblical words and phrases. There used to be, in Egypt, many forms of ceaseless repetition of Biblical verses and short prayers that are still being used up till now, in addition to other phrases, inspired by the Holy Spirit working in them. However, the prayer (0 Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have mercy upon me, the sinner) has become a characteristic type of this short prayer with the Fathers of the Greek and Russian Churches since middle ages up till modem times. It is a prayer that has required certain spiritual exercises and methods.

The study has revealed that the righteous monks, who had lived in Al-Muharraq Monastery, had approved the oldest form of Biblical short prayer allowing the individual monk to add the phrases that he might see a clue to saving his soul. Some of these forms have been found in the folds and margins of manuscripts held in the monastery:

How long, O LORD? Wilt thou forget me forever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!
O LORD, Jesus Christ, help me.
My LORD, Jesus Christ, to thee I give thanks.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, help me to do what pleases you.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, have pity on me.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, be gracious to me.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, forgive my transgressions.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, sustain me.
Jesus is the immortal and the eternal.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, remember me in your mercy.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, be merciful on me.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, be kind to me.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, I praise you.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, forsake my transgressions.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, sustain my frailty.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, support me in thy power.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, look down at me.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, bless me.
O LORD, Jesus Christ, to thee I confess my transgressions, praise thee, bless thy name, submit my soul, worship, and glorify thee for thine is power, kingdom, glory, potency, and mightiness forever, Amen.
 

Some monks were inclined to write down one or more of the sayings of the “Early Fathers of Desert” for the purpose of continuous contemplation. For example, there are some extracts of Saint Philemon’s sayings concerned with ceaseless prayer in the folds and on the margins of a manuscript. Saint Philemon lived in the wilderness of Sheheet in 6th century. This manuscript is an interpretation of the Book of Genesis, copied by Hegomen Eqlouda the Muharraqian (brother of Pope Ghabreal IV, the 86th Patriarch of Alexandria). This manuscript belongs to the 14th century and is kept in the British museum. While transcript the book, Hegomen Eqlouda wrote these extracts on the margin to contemplate them:

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit This is some of Father Philemon's biography: One of the brethren asked him, "Oh, Father, what can I do to be delivered? My mind is distracted and misled. I do what I mustn't: I do useless things".

The saint elder paused a little, and then said, "This casualty happens to non-spiritual people. It is one of their pains. What you feel now is an outcome of the longing for God that has come perfect and mature in you. But your enthusiastic curiosity to realize it has not flared yet".

"Then, what can I do, Father?" the brother asked. The great saint said to him, "Go and start a silent short prayer in repeating some words in your heart and mind, hence, get cleansed." The brother had no experience in what the saint elder said. "What is the silent short prayer?" the brother asked.

The saint elder said to him, "Go; carefully and wakefully persevere in repeating in your heart and mind: 'O LORD, Jesus Christ, be gracious to me!' for the blessed Diadekhus recommended this to the beginners".

With the help of God and with the prayers of the saintly elder, the brother obediently went. Repeating these short prayer words appealed to him little by little. However, he abruptly abandoned and parted with it. He couldn't wakefully restore and practice it. He came back to the saintly elder and told him what he had been through.

The saintly elder said to him, "Now that you have known the effect of consent and practice, and as you have experienced their sweetness, keep them always in your heart whenever you eat or drink. Talking to people, in or out of your cell, or walking on the road, don't let this prayer depart from your head or forget to recite it in your heart wakefully and carefully. Also recite psalms and other prayers. Yes! Even at the time of your urgent need, your mind should not cease this silent repetition and prayer. In this way you can truthfully pinpoint deep powerful meanings in the Holy Bible, hence giving your mind a permanent task. Thus accomplishing what the Apostle commanded: 'always pray'. Keep truthfully watching yourself. Keep your heart cleansed lest it might be filled with vain thoughts. Keep your heart and mind perseverant in reciting psalms or prayers, and say: Lord, Jesus Christ have mercy upon me! Make sure, if you're praying with your tongue, don't let words come out while your mind busy with other things."

 

Then the brother asked the saint elder how he could drive away sleep and vicious thoughts.

 

The saint elder said; "I have just told you what you can be armed with. You have no choice. You'd rather refuge to the perseverant secret repetition and observe your day and night prayers assigned by our saint Fathers. I mean the three, six, nine and eleven o'clock prayers. You must persist in keeping and doing what they have assigned. Don't care about what pleases people, but at the same time don't arouse enmity between you and them so as not to be driven away from God."

 

Father Samir Khalil, (Jesuit), who discovered these sayings of St. Philimon in the folds of the manuscript. He included it in a lecture of the international seminar about the Philocalia which was organized by the Greek Scholars' Society at Rome in 1989.

Printed in:

Proche – Orient Chrétien,

t. 43 (1993) pp. 5-38

 

Under title:

Un texte de la Philocalie sur la "prière à Jésus"

dans un manuscrit arabo – copte medieval