Many would like to continuously be in touch with God in prayer while doing their daily tasks. The Hesychists of the Eastern Christian Spirituality tried to do this. After all, prayer is nothing more than conversation with God. Petition, thanksgiving, sorrow, adoration, and love are the five main topics of prayer. The most common is petition or request. A request in prayer presumes belief in an Almighty Power who has the ability and desire to answer the request. This Prime Mover intervenes in history.

This implied faith is what Jesus meant in saying: “Your faith has made you whole.” A prayer of petition implies belief. The second topic is thanksgiving for prayer granted. The third topic is sorrow for not maximizing the gifts or opportunities that the Lord has given. Adoration in body or mind is an acknowledgement that we are creatures who owe everything that we are to the Creator. Finally, love, a relationship we learn mainly through revelation is the most basic Christian topic and emotion.

After over 300 years of persecution, the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal. At that time many early Eastern Christians went to the deserts of Egypt and Mesopotamia to flee from distractions and try to commune more intimately with the Creator. This Eastern Christian spirituality included the “hesychists” who tried uninterrupted communion with God as much as was possible.

But they soon realized that to have constant awareness of the Creator was not within their control. All they could do with prayer was to create an opening for God to take over. This was a mystic involvement with the Creator. The awareness of God was not theirs but God’s to grant. Although we know that God dwells in each of us, awareness is fleeting and effort is needed to for continuous awareness. The desert fathers tried to remove distractions and disciplined the body with fasting and vigils to come as close to communion with the Creator as is possible on this earth.

From this Eastern Christian spiritual tradition came the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner” often shortened to just one word, “Jesus.” It contained the transcendence of Jesus as both God and man and the lowliness of the petitioner, “a sinner.” Beyond being a socio-psychological mantra, it is at the same time an act of faith in a living God who intervenes in history and in Jesus, the transcendent God-Man. The Christian belief is that in each man, through baptism, lives the Holy Spirit. An awareness of this indwelling in His creatures is the precursor of the union of man with his Creator in the perfect happiness of heaven. The Jesus prayer makes possible continuous communion, while man pursues the ordinary activities of daily life.

Removing the cultural baggage of this Eastern spirituality presents us with an opportunity to practice continuous prayer in daily life. Our faith is that prayer prepares us and makes an opening for the Lord to take over. With the Jesus prayer and awareness of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we can continuously be in prayer. <emeterio_barcelon@yahoo.com>