The Cross & The Cosmos : The Jesus Prayer: make it an A-Z of confession

This blog entry combines two very long established practices of the worldwide church.

The Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ is one of the most ancient recorded prayers and is used today by countless Christians, especially by members of the Orthodox (Eastern) churches, who say the prayer over and over as a preparation for a time of personal prayer. Some use a knotted prayer rope similarly to rosary beads, the knots making for a discipline in the number of times the prayer is said. There is more about the practice of using the Jesus Prayer on this blog through the link at the bottom of this entry.

Self-evidently, the prayer has a confessional element. For me, and I guess for some others too, confession is, perhaps, the most difficult part of our personal prayer life: there is a defence mechanism that switches in all too readily which tries to persuade us we don’t have much to confess! Or, perhaps more dangerously, that there are a lot of people who behave far more badly than us – so why should we ‘beat ourselves up’ with remorse for a comparatively ‘low-sin’ lifestyle?

A regular practice of honest self-examination should quickly help us to see that every one of us (YES –everyone!) has several patterns of thought, or habits, or conscious actions that we try hard to hide from others – and from God. But how to identify these?

I offer here a way of using the Jesus Prayer to help with self examination. Have a look at the pattern of the prayer below and see if that can help. It is in alphabetical form. Not every letter will be relevant to you – but it would be surprising if some weren’t! If you can truly and honestly get from A to Z without any being relevant, you might want to look hard at the stanzas and then consider whether you can write one or more stanzas of your own to incorporate your own particular shortcomings!

More likely, there may be three, four, five, or more that you can identify; so try repeating these over and again as your personal confessional. OR, there may be just one, either in the suggested paragraphs or on your heart that you want to make into a single repeated petition -because you know that, of all things, keeps you from a joyful and fruitful relationship with God.

The Jesus Prayer: as an A-Z of confession