The desert of the heart, where silence becomes prayer.
The prayer of the heart is not an invention of monks, nor a technique for calming the mind. It is man’s answer to a call older than every answer: “My son, give me your heart” (Proverbs 23:26). God is the One who seeks first — “Adam, where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) — and prayer is the way man, at last, allows himself to be found. From Enos, who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord, to the weary Christian who whispers in his car “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” the same mystery is at work: God descends into the heart of man, and man is lifted up into the heart of God.
The Jesus Prayer is not merely a formula. It is a presence: spoken, but above all lived; learned, but above all received. In its few words the whole Gospel is gathered — Christ confessed as Lord, sin acknowledged, mercy asked, the heart opened to the uncreated grace of God.
The pages that follow trace its path: Scripture, the desert of Egypt, the Philokalia, the theology of Saint Gregory Palamas, Mount Athos, Saint Paisius Velichkovsky, the Romanian fathers, and then the person of today, who tries to keep his heart still amid traffic and haste. The aim is not only to inform but to form: that the reader be left not with knowledge alone, but be called to the work, to watchfulness, to the invocation of the Name.
A word of honesty. Words in quotation marks belong to Scripture or to the Fathers, with their sources; what is the teaching of the tradition is said as such. Psalm numbers follow the Septuagint, as in the Orthodox Church (so “Psalm 50” is Psalm 51 in many English Bibles). The brief “apophthegms” in the text are written in the manner of the desert sayings and are marked as such: they are not words of the Fathers, but a way of setting down the truth as the Fathers set it down.
Apophthegm in the manner of the desert fathers
A brother asked an elder: Abba, how shall I pray when my mind runs in every direction?
The elder said: Tie your mind to the Name of Jesus, as you tie a boat to the shore. The boat still moves, but it is not lost at sea. And do not look to see whether you feel anything; only say “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” and let God work in secret.
The heart, the mind and prayer
Why “prayer of the heart”? Because in Scripture the heart is not the organ of feelings but the center of the person. The Hebrew lev embraces what we separate into intellect, will and affection. There thoughts are hidden (“out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” Matthew 12:34); there the Law is written (“I will write it on their hearts,” Jeremiah 31:33); there God is seen (“blessed are the pure in heart,” Matthew 5:8); there God sends the Spirit of His Son (Galatians 4:6). But evil also lies in the heart: it can be hardened (Exodus 7:13), deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9), divided (Psalm 11:2), darkened (Romans 1:21). That is why the Prophets promise not a correction of man but a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26), and the prayer of the heart is the place where that promise begins to be fulfilled.
The Spiritual Homilies attributed to Saint Macarius the Egyptian (which modern scholarship links to the Syrian milieu at the end of the fourth century, hence the name Pseudo-Macarius) describe the heart as a small vessel in which beasts and God, angels and life, kingdom and grace dwell together (Homilies, 15). There too: the heart governs the whole body, and when grace takes possession of it, grace governs thoughts and limbs alike. This is not poetry about the heart; it is an anthropology.
The word “mind” needs clarifying here. In English, as in Romanian, it translates two things that Greek kept apart. Dianoia is discursive reason: it compares, argues, makes plans and narrates its own life. The nous is inner sight, the immediate knowledge by which man recognizes God and recognizes himself. When the Fathers speak of “bringing the mind down into the heart,” they do not ask that thinking cease, but that the nous no longer be dragged along by the torrent of inner debates, and take its place at the center of the person. Scripture does not set mind against heart: the same Paul wants to pray “with the spirit” and “with the mind” (1 Corinthians 14:15). Philosophically, this is where the difference from Plato lies, who locates the rational part of the soul in the head (Timaeus): hesychasm, following biblical anthropology, seeks the unity of the person at its center, not in one faculty set above the body.
And one thing more: prayer is not man’s alone. “The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). Man offers the heart; the Spirit works in it. That is why the tradition says the prayer of the heart is received more than it is learned.
The Name and the first prayers
Enos. The first witness to the invocation of the Name is Genesis 4:26. The Hebrew text says “then people began to call upon the name of the Lord”; the Septuagint, which the Orthodox Bible follows, says “Enos hoped to call upon the name of the Lord.” The nuance is precious: before the calling stands hope. Prayer begins as a hope that dares to speak.
The Name. In biblical thought a name does not label a person; it makes him accessible. God places His Name in a place (Deuteronomy 12:11) and there lets Himself be met: “in every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you” (Exodus 20:24). The Name revealed to Moses (Exodus 3:14) does not satisfy curiosity but opens a relationship. “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe” (Proverbs 18:10). “Jesus” means “the Lord saves,” and the angel explains it by what He will do (Matthew 1:21). Peter will say that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12), and Paul that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13) and that no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3).
From this comes a balance we must state plainly: the Name is the place of God’s presence and action, but it is not identical with His Being. On this balance broke the dispute on Mount Athos in 1912–1913 called imiaslavie (“the glorifiers of the Name”), which held that “the Name of God is God Himself”; the position was rejected in 1913 by the Russian Synod. The tradition remains more prudent and deeper: in the Name we meet the Person, without the Name becoming an object we control. That is why prayer is not a magic formula: it does not work by being pronounced, but by the relationship that the pronouncing opens.
Short prayers. The Psalms are the school of short, repeated prayer: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak” (Psalm 6:2), “O God, come to my assistance” (Psalm 69:2), “Lord, hear my prayer” (Psalm 101:1). They do not explain or argue; they cry out.
Bartimaeus. The nearest Gospel root of the Jesus Prayer is neither the publican nor the thief, but the blind man Bartimaeus: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:47). He has everything the later formula will have — the Name, the messianic title, the plea for mercy — and has it in the mouth of a man who cannot see. Those around him rebuke him to be silent; he cries out “all the more” (Mark 10:48). One may read in this scene the struggle of prayer against noise within and without: the crowd of thoughts that tell us “be quiet, you don’t deserve it” is the first resistance. The same cry is uttered by the ten lepers (Luke 17:13) and the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:22). The publican adds “a sinner”; Bartimaeus adds the Name; the Jesus Prayer joins the two.
The publican and the thief. The publican, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13), does not argue or justify himself; he goes home “justified.” The thief on the cross does not ask for rescue but for presence: “Remember me, Lord, when You come in Your kingdom” (Luke 23:42; some manuscripts read “Jesus, remember me”). The Jesus Prayer gathers these sources: the invocation of the Name, the plea for mercy, and the confession of sin (“Against You alone have I sinned,” Psalm 50:4).
The command and the struggle. “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) is not a metaphor; but how can man pray without ceasing? The tradition answers: by short prayer, which depends on no place, book or mood, and which can descend into the heart. Yet Scripture shows that prayer is also struggle: Moses with raised hands (Exodus 17:11), Christ in Gethsemane, “His sweat like drops of blood” (Luke 22:44).
Apophthegm in the manner of the desert fathers
A brother asked an elder: Abba, how shall I pray without ceasing?
The elder answered: Do not begin with unceasingness; begin with sincerity. Say once, from the heart, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” The prayer of the heart is measured not in number but in depth.
The desert: where prayer took shape
After the Edict of Milan (313), Christianity became permitted, then favored, and many felt that spiritual life was growing cold. Thousands went out into the Egyptian desert: first as hermits (anchorites), then in communities (cenobites), with elders called abba and with short words of teaching, the apophthegms. The desert is not only a place but the state in which the noise outside stops and the noise within is heard. Those who fled there discovered that the hard battle is not with wild beasts but with thoughts.
Anthony the Great († 356), called “the father of eremitic monasticism,” left no formula of prayer, but he laid the foundation: stillness, watchfulness, the struggle with thoughts. To Arsenius, who asked God for guidance toward salvation, the answer came: “Flee, be silent, be still” — these, he was told, are the sources of sinlessness (Apophthegmata, Arsenius 2). And about prayer, Abba Macarius was asked how we ought to pray. He answered that there is no need for many words: stretch out your hands and say “Lord, as You will and as You know, have mercy on me”; and if the struggle presses upon you, “Lord, help me.” For God knows what we need and shows mercy (Apophthegmata, Macarius the Great 19). Notice the ending: not “as I feel,” but “as You will and as You know.” It is prayer as surrender, not as performance.
John Cassian († c. 435), formed in Egypt, carried the tradition to the West and recommended for unceasing prayer a verse from the Psalms: “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me” (Psalm 69:2; Conferences, 10). Invocation, petition, humility: the same structure the Jesus Prayer would have later.
The thought before the sin, watchfulness and stillness
Evagrius of Pontus does not make a list of sins; he follows the thought at the moment of its birth. A logismos is not just any thought but a charged thought: it arrives with an image and a desire attached and asks to be received. He described eight such root-thoughts: gluttony, fornication, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory and pride; from this list the seven capital sins would be born, through Cassian and Gregory the Great. The process has stages: the assault (prosbole), coupling with the thought through dialogue (syndyasmos), consent (synkatathesis) and, at the end, passion (pathos) — a scheme John Climacus and Hesychius would refine. The place of short prayer is at the very first stage: you do not argue with the thought and you do not analyze it; you call on Christ.
The goal is not the absence of emotion but apatheia: freedom from enslavement to passion, which Evagrius considers the gateway to love (agape). The analogy with modern psychology is real, but must be held in check: what we call today rumination, avoidance or automatic thought resembles the logismoi in mechanism, not in purpose. The Fathers are not curing a symptom but freeing a person for communion. (Evagrius is not a saint of the Church and was condemned posthumously together with Origenism; yet his practical work entered the tradition through Cassian, Maximus and John Climacus.)
Watchfulness (nepsis) is vigilance: continuous attention to what is happening within. Without it, prayer becomes mechanical; without prayer, watchfulness becomes mere psychology. And guarding the mind means, in the teaching of the Fathers, not feeding the thought: you do not analyze it, comment on it or justify it.
Stillness is not a relaxation technique but a different relation to time and to speech. Isaac the Syrian says that silence is the mystery of the age to come, while words are the instrument of this world (Ascetical Homilies). Man begins to listen before he answers. John Climacus, in Step 27 of the Ladder, defines it almost paradoxically: the effort to circumscribe the bodiless within a bodily house — that is, to bring your mind home, into your body, into this moment.
Apophthegm in the manner of the desert fathers
A brother said: Abba, thoughts attack me without ceasing.
The elder answered: Let them come; do not open the door. Thoughts are like dogs: if you give them no bread, they leave.
How the prayer received its present form
The Jesus Prayer did not descend all at once, as a ready-made formula. It grew, and several landmarks are secure. Diadochus of Photike (fifth century) asks that the mind be kept to a single work: the remembrance of the “Lord Jesus.” Barsanuphius and John of Gaza (sixth century) counsel short prayer and the remembrance of the Name in hours of struggle. John Climacus (seventh century) binds the remembrance to the breath: let the remembrance of Jesus cling to your breathing, and then you will know the benefit of stillness (Ladder, Step 27); and the Name is, for him, the weapon with which enemies are whipped (Ladder, Step 21). Symeon the New Theologian († 1022) speaks, from experience, of tears and light. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Nicephorus the Solitary, Gregory of Sinai, Callistus and Ignatius set out the method: the prayer, the breath, attention to the heart, the guarding of the mind.
The long form, with “on me, a sinner,” settled late, and Gregory of Sinai, as far as I know, also allows shorter forms. This says something important: the power of the prayer lies not in the number of words but in the relationship they open. Yet the present formula is spacious: “Lord Jesus Christ” is confession of faith; “Son of God” is dogma; “have mercy” is petition; “a sinner” is the truth about me, spoken before the One who forgives.
The Philokalia is the collection of texts compiled by Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Saint Macarius of Corinth and printed in Venice in 1782, with writings from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries. It is not a manual of technique but a school of attention: it shows how the mind is purified, how the heart is guarded, how delusion is avoided. In Romanian it was translated by Saint Dumitru Stăniloae, priest and confessor (1946–1991, twelve volumes), with notes that made it a work of theology in its own right.
Palamas: the body, the light and the knowledge of God
Saint Gregory Palamas (c. 1296–1359) defended hesychasm in his dispute with Barlaam of Calabria. Barlaam, a scholar formed in Greek philosophy, invoked apophaticism to argue that God cannot be known except through concepts and symbols, and that the light of Tabor is a created phenomenon. Palamas (the Hagioritic Tome, the Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts) answers with a distinction that is also philosophically remarkable: God is, in His Being, unapproachable and imparticipable, but gives Himself through uncreated energies — not appearances, but He Himself in action. Without this distinction, God either remains so far away that prayer is a monologue, or descends into creatures in order to be known and becomes a part of the world. The council of 1351 received this teaching as the confession of the Church.
When Barlaam mocked the hesychasts by calling them “souls in the navel” (omphalopsychoi), he was not merely joking: he meant that a prayer involving the body — breath, posture, heart — confuses the material with the spiritual. Palamas’ answer is more than the defense of a method: the whole person was created in the image of God and the whole person is redeemed; the Word became flesh; on Tabor the uncreated light was seen by the apostles with the eyes of the body, but eyes changed by the Spirit, not merely through the senses and not through mere thought. If the body were ballast for prayer, the Incarnation would be a digression. This is the deep stake of the dispute, rather than the details of breathing.
Athos and the chain of transmission
Gregory of Sinai (c. 1265–1346) brought the hesychast method from Sinai to Athos, and Athos kept it as a living tradition, passed from elder to disciple, not from books. In the twentieth century the prayer of the heart had witnesses of great simplicity here: Saint Silouan the Athonite († 1938), whose rule of humility remains: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair”; his disciple, Elder Sophrony Sakharov, who gave it theological language; Saint Joseph the Hesychast († 1959), who revived the practice; Saint Paisios of Mount Athos († 1994), who spoke of prayer as love. What unites these lives is not a technique but obedience: prayer is received through humility, from a living hand.
Saint Nicodemus of Tismana († 1406) brought Athonite monasticism to Wallachia. But the decisive link between Athos and the Romanian lands is Saint Paisius Velichkovsky (1722–1794). Born in Poltava, he was looking for a prayer that would fill his heart, not merely a monastic life on the outside. He spent about seventeen years on the Holy Mountain, then came to Moldavia, to Dragomirna, Secu and Neamț, where he built a great community of hundreds of monks, with the Jesus Prayer at its center, with obedience and with the reading of the Fathers. Under his guidance a great deal of patristic literature was translated; he himself gave the Slavonic Dobrotolubie (1793), the Slavonic version of the Philokalia, through which it reached his disciples, in Moldavia and in Russia. His teaching was balanced: prayer with the lips for beginners, of the mind for those who gain attention, of the heart for those who receive grace; without forcing the breath, without seeking lights and sensations.
The Romanian fathers and prayer among the people
From the Paisian school came great men of prayer in the following centuries: Saint Callinicus of Cernica (1787–1868), the gentle and radiant hesychast; then, in the twentieth century, Saint Cleopa of Sihăstria (Fr. Ilie Cleopa, 1912–1998), who made the words of the Fathers accessible to ordinary people; Saint Paisie of Sihăstria (Fr. Paisie Olaru, 1897–1990), known for the gift of tears and for the peace he gave to those who sat near him; Saint Sofian of Antim (Fr. Sofian Boghiu, 1912–2002), iconographer and spiritual father; Saint Dumitru Stăniloae, priest and confessor (1903–1993), who also passed through the prison of Aiud; Fr. Arsenie Papacioc (1914–2011), who likewise went through prisons and persecution; Fr. Ioanichie Bălan (1930–2007), the chronicler who gathered the lives and words of the fathers. Saint Cleopa and Fr. Arsenie Papacioc withdrew in 1952–1954 into the Stănișoara Mountains, pursued by the Securitate. These men did not theorize about the prayer of the heart; they lived it, in cells, in prisons and in the villages they served.
And the prayer came down among the people without a program. In villages an old man or woman said “Lord Jesus, have mercy” constantly — while milking, kneading bread, walking the road, in times of war and poverty, in hospital and in prison. They were the anonymous hesychasts of the people: men and women who never read the Philokalia but lived it without knowing. Communism tried to suffocate faith; in many hearts it only deepened it, and in prisons the Name of Jesus was for many food and silent resistance.
Apophthegm in the manner of the desert fathers
An old man in a village was asked: Grandfather, how do you pray?
He answered: As I breathe.
And what do you say?
Lord Jesus, have mercy.
And when do you pray?
When I get up, when I walk, when I work, when I sleep, when I die. And he added: It is not I who say it; it says me.
How prayer grows and how the heart is purified
The tradition distinguishes three stages of prayer, which are not rigid floors but states of the heart, between which a person can ascend, descend or waver: prayer of the lips, of the mind and of the heart. In the first, spoken aloud or in a whisper, the mind runs, the heart is quiet and the person struggles with tiredness; its purpose is to accustom the mind to the Name. In the second, prayer is gathered into thought: the mind runs less, a gentle peace appears, and the danger is pride (“I have arrived”) and the pursuit of spiritual pleasure. In the third, prayer descends into the heart and flows by itself; Isaac the Syrian says that when the Spirit takes up His dwelling in a person, that person does not cease to pray, because the Spirit prays in him unceasingly. There is also the gift of contemplation, which cannot be obtained: it is given to the pure in heart. That is why hurrying these stages is dangerous. The Fathers say: ask for humility, not for the prayer of the heart.
The purification of the heart is not a separate chapter; it is prayer itself. Passion, in the tradition that runs from the Stoics to Damascene and Maximus, is a movement of the soul contrary to nature; its root, for Maximus the Confessor, is self-love (philautia), which makes man seek his joy in things and seek it apart from God. Passions are healed by repentance and confession, by fasting and vigil, by watchfulness and the invocation of the Name. Man works, God purifies: this is synergy, the cooperation between human freedom and grace.
Risks, delusion and discernment
The Fathers feared prayer without measure more than the lack of prayer. Abba Anthony says that some have worn out their bodies by asceticism, but because they lacked discernment, they were far from God (Apophthegmata, Anthony 8). Cassian (Conferences, 2) shows the same Anthony placing discernment above the other virtues. Cassian also (Conferences, 9) puts in Anthony’s mouth a criterion that overturns the pursuit of “states”: prayer is not perfect when the monk is aware of himself or of the fact that he is praying.
This is a clear criterion for delusion (prelest): wherever the one praying watches himself praying, rejoices that he feels, counts, has “visions,” prayer has turned toward the self. The Philokalia repeats the same warning, among others in Gregory of Sinai: do not accept what you see or hear, outwardly or inwardly, but turn back to the humble invocation. The signs of delusion appear on three levels: psychic (exaltation, sleeplessness, obsessions, agitation), spiritual (absolute certainties, personal “revelations,” contempt for others) and behavioral (isolation, rigidity, fanaticism). The remedy is humility, obedience to a spiritual father, simplicity and patience: do not force the breath, do not hurry, do not complicate.
The role of the spiritual father is that of a mirror and a guardian, not a magician: he does not give you the prayer of the heart, but guards you from the dangers of the way. Prayer without a guide is climbing a mountain without a guide.
Apophthegm in the manner of the desert fathers
A brother said: Abba, I saw a light in prayer.
The elder answered: Do not believe it.
The brother said: But it was beautiful.
The elder said: All the more. Say “Lord Jesus, have mercy.” If the light is from God, it remains; if not, it leaves. True light does not puff you up; it humbles you.
The psychology of prayer, said honestly
The Fathers did not have the word “psychology,” but they described with rare finesse the dynamics of thoughts, attention and passions, and part of what they saw is recognizable in today’s language. It must be said honestly, though, what we know and what we do not. About repetitive prayer in general there is data: a study published in the BMJ (Bernardi et al., 2001) showed that rhythmic recitation of the rosary or of a mantra slows breathing to about six breaths per minute and improves cardiovascular regulation. About the Jesus Prayer in particular, as far as I know, controlled evidence is scarce; any claim about cortisol, the vagus nerve or the “default mode network” applied directly to it is extrapolation. And more importantly: the Fathers themselves do not present it as therapy. Peace, attention and gentleness are fruits, not the goal; whoever uses it only as a means of calming himself risks reducing it to a technique, exactly what this article says it is not.
The heart of modern man is often a wounded heart: wounds from childhood, from relationships, from loss, from rejection, from loneliness. Emotions are not man’s enemy; they are signals from the heart. Prayer does not cancel them; it can accompany them in a safe place, before Someone who does not reject. “Have mercy on me, a sinner” is then not self-devaluation but the truth spoken without a mask, in a relationship where the mask is no longer needed. You may keep the idea of the anchor: attention brought back, again and again, gently, because it is faithful both to the Fathers and to clinical observation.
For trauma, depression, severe anxiety or obsessive disorders (including religious scrupulosity, in which repetition can become compulsion), the help of a specialist does not compete with prayer but accompanies it; and the tradition itself asks for a guide.
Apophthegm in the manner of the desert fathers
A brother said: Abba, I have a wound in my heart.
The elder answered: Bring it to Christ. The wound is not the problem; the problem is that you do not bring it.
The prayer of the heart in the life of today’s person
Modern man lives in a world that is fast, noisy and fragmented, and yet the thirst for stillness, for meaning, for presence has never been greater. The Jesus Prayer suits this world precisely because it is short, can be said anywhere and requires no special conditions. The challenges of today’s person are three: the scattered mind (phone, notifications, haste), anxiety, and the paradoxical loneliness of one connected to everyone and united with no one. The Jesus Prayer does not solve them by technique; it receives them into a relationship.
In practice: in traffic, when you are stuck, instead of getting angry, you say in your mind “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” without taking your eyes and attention from the road (the prayer does not ask you to do less in order to be attentive, but to be more present); between two tasks or two messages; while washing dishes; in the evening, a few minutes of quiet before sleep. The phone is not the enemy but the context: it can be a reminder or a place to read the Psalms, but prayer is not said with half a mind while you scroll. It asks for attention, not perfection.
When prayer becomes a way of life, the relation to others changes: reactions soften, tone shifts, patience grows, judgment diminishes. The Fathers did not say “lifestyle” but “life in Christ,” “walking in the Spirit,” “abiding in the heart.” You do not have to be a monk to live the prayer of the heart; you have to be present, sincere and humble.
Apophthegm in the manner of the desert fathers
A brother said: Abba, I cannot pray in the world.
The elder answered: Make the world your desert.
The brother said: How?
With one word: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” It is not the place that stills you, but His Name.
The prayer of the heart and the age to come
The prayer of the heart does not belong to the past. If silence is, as Isaac the Syrian says, the mystery of the age to come, then one who prays in silence is already learning the language of the Kingdom. When God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28), there will be no more petitions, fears or needs, only presence. The prayer of the heart is a foretaste of that state: not an escape from the world but the beginning of its transfiguration — of the person, of relationships, of the atmosphere around the one who prays. At the hour of death, the prayer can be the companion who does not part from a person: many saints died with the Name on their lips or in their heart.
The Name that remains
We have come to the end of these pages, but not of the road, because the prayer of the heart does not end with the last word. History, theology, psychology, the sayings of the fathers have no other purpose than to lead to one thing: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” The prayer of the heart is not an idea but an encounter: between the weakness of man and the power of God, between man’s wounds and the mercy of Christ, between his fear and the peace of the Spirit. Everything begins with humility, and if one word were to remain from the whole Philokalia, it would be this, because humility is truth, and truth is the door through which God enters.
These pages are not only for monks or for “the advanced.” They are for the weary, wounded, lonely, restless and simple; for the one who no longer knows how to pray and the one who can no longer say anything. For all of them, the Name of Jesus is breath. And the world changes not by force, ideologies or programs, but by changed hearts: a person with a quiet heart spreads neither fear, nor hatred, nor disturbance, but peace.
Apophthegm in the manner of the desert fathers
A brother asked an elder: Abba, what shall I do to be saved?
The elder answered: Say His Name.
The brother said: And is that enough?
If you say it with a humble heart, it is everything. When you leave this world, you will take nothing with you but His Name.
When all things end — words, theories, books, pains, fears — one Name will remain, Jesus, and this Name will be light, peace, joy, life and eternity. These lines end here, but the prayer is only beginning.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.
Most Holy Theotokos, have mercy on me!
Most Holy Theotokos, have mercy on us!
Amen.
