G'day, my name is Matt Fradd and this is Ascension Presents.
By the way you may have noticed that I'm in a different place, right?
That's my house now.
I was in my office last time and we've just moved the camera to my house
and that's why it looks different.
Maybe you were looking at me and you were thinking “Has he done something with his hair?”
Not the hair. New place.
Today I want to talk about the Jesus Prayer.
From the get-go, Christians were known
— even before they were known as Christians at Antioch —
as those who called upon the name of the Lord.
And it makes sense, doesn't it? Jesus himself said,
“Whatever you ask in my name will be given to you.”
This is where the Jesus Prayer arose.
It's very popular in Orthodox circles as well as Eastern Catholic circles.
It's as much used and beloved in the East as the Rosary is used and loved in the West.
On every knot you say a prayer — very simple prayer —
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner,” or some variation of that.
You breathe in and you say “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God,”
and then you breathe out, “Have mercy upon me a sinner.”
And you just say it the whole way around and then you don't stop.
It's something you can do all day. You think, “All day?”
Yes, because you remember Paul said in one of his Epistles — I forget which —
we should pray consistently, pray at all times.
You think, “How do I pray at all times?”
Thomas Aquinas addresses this interestingly in the Summa Theologia.
He says, well in one sense, you can't pray at all times because, you know,
you've got to make dinner, you've got to engage in worldly activities, especially if you have a job.
You know, you've got to interact with people, you can't continually be say,
praying a psalm or going to Holy Mass.
You've got stuff you've got to do, duties that you ought to do.
He said in another real sense, we can pray at all times by continually desiring God.
And this is what, I think, the Jesus Prayer enables us to do.
It enables us to continually desire God. That's how I see it, at least.
It sort of re-orientates my inner disposition towards the divine, as it were,
and I begin to hunger for him.
Now, what's lovely about the Jesus Prayer is it's sort of psychosomatic.
Once you're done praying it you might put it down, but because you've been using your breath to pray it,
you'll continue praying it even on accident.
So I'll often find myself waking up in the morning and saying,
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner” without even meaning to.
Which I think is a rather beautiful thing.
Now, my wife did this recently, interestingly enough.
She had to undergo major surgery unfortunately — she's fine, thanks for asking —
but when she came out from the anesthesia she was saying,
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”
She didn't even remember saying this; it was the nurse who told her it.
So I think that's a really a beautiful way to pray.
I think of two things in the scriptures: you've got the publican’s prayer who says,
“God, be merciful to me a sinner”
and then you've got Peter’s proclamation of faith where he says,
“Where shall we go? You alone have the words of life...” right? You’re the son of God.
It seems to me that in the Jesus Prayer, we can bring those two very important things together.
We make an acclamation of faith — proclamation of faith —
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God,” right?
The second person of the Blessed Trinity is divine, he is God;
I'm making that statement, and then as I breathe out I say, “have mercy upon me a sinner.”
So I acknowledge his divinity, I acknowledge my wretchedness,
and when the two go together, that's a beautiful thing.
And I don't think you just have to think of mercy as forgiving my sins,
although we are in continual need of that, but other things as well.
You can imagine somebody who is blind who might say to a doctor,
“Please see me, would you? I know you’re booked, but see me, have mercy on me,” right?
It's not just about forgiving sins; it's about giving me what I need and what I am in need of.
And again, in the Jesus Prayer, when we turn to our Lord and say,
“Have mercy upon us mere sinners,” you're saying
“Divine physician, give me what I need. Not what I want; give me what I need.”
Now the Eastern fathers who have spoken so beautifully on the Jesus Prayer say that when we pray it
we shouldn't imagine Jesus in front of us.
It's not like the Rosary where you imagine a particular scene from the Gospels.
Rather, we should just recognize that Christ is present to us.
We don't recognize that in a visual way but we know in our intellect that he’s present to us,
and then we pray it.
So, two ways you can pray it — and the father's of the Church recommend this:
one is by taking a good amount of time, 30 minutes a day,
and in silence sitting down and just praying it.
*Breathes deeply*
And again as you go about your business, you know.
This is something that I do as I walk to the airport, walk through the airport,
even if I'm on stage giving a talk somewhere or laying in bed at night,
I like to keep this under my hand, this constant communication with the Lord.
Another nice thing about this is it makes it a lot more difficult to sin.
If you were on your deathbed and you knew you're about to die,
would you be more likely to sin or less likely?
Well, you'd be less likely. Why?
Well because you're about to be judged, right?
You're — in a sense, in a very real sense — before the throne of God
in a way that you haven't been in the rest of your life (or at least it appears that way).
When we pray the Jesus Prayer,
we are continually placing before our intellect the divine physician who loves us.
It's a lot more difficult to sin when you're in constant communication with the Lord.
Now what I'd like to do is throw up a link in the show notes where you might be able to buy a rope like this.
They come either with something like this on the end or just a woollen cross.
By the way, the reason it has a tassel... this is thought so that we can wipe our tears.
So that was the idea of it — that this was an act of repentance, you see.
So you can get them with the tassel or without.
I'll throw up a link in the, you know — just below the video there — so you can get one if you want to.
If you have any questions just write a #askMattFradd below
and I'd be happy to respond to you hopefully in an upcoming video.
You can follow me on Instagram and Twitter @mattfradd if you like, and I hope you will.
Good to chat with you! Chat with you next week.