Norris Chumley - Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer: Experiencing the Mysteries of God and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of an Ancient Spirituality

This book is dedicated to Jesus Christ, and the likeness of him in all of us.

L YING ON MY DESK within easy reach is a small circlet of leather with a leather cross dangling from it. Woven into the circlet are one hundred wooden dowels. This object is a lestovka (or ladder), the traditional prayer rope of Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Christians. It was given to me by Father Paisij, a monk and deacon of the St. Jonas Monastery in Kiev, Ukraine. My friend Father John McGuckin tells me that my lestovka is very old, very rare.

I keep this treasured prayer rope always at hand, and often when I say the Jesus Prayer, my fingers move across the dowels and I remember Father Paisij and think of the countless other men of God who have prayed with this humble yet beautiful object.

A moment ago I mentioned the Jesus Prayer. Its likely that you arent familiar with it. Few people in our part of the world have ever heard of it. In fact, it was to bring the Jesus Prayer to the West that Father John and I made the film Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer and wrote this companion volume.

The Jesus Prayer goes like this:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Photo by Norris J. Chumley
An ancient gate on Mount Athos, near a skete (hermitage) where hermits reside and pray.

For at least 1,700 years this seemingly simple prayer has been the cornerstone of the spiritual life of countless monks and nuns of the Eastern Church. Yet outside the walls of their monasteries and convents, very few Christianseven those within the Eastern traditionhave ever heard of this prayer or experienced its power to touch the soul and transform ones life.

In Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer Father John and I have done our best to de mystify this ancient prayer, taking it out of remote monasteries and desert caves and into the lives of millions of believers who are yearning for the peace and reassurance that come from forming a deeper connection with God.

Both the film and this book are the fruit of a spiritual quest undertaken over the last eight years, a travelogue of the heart and mind that Father John and I made to document our search for ancient wisdom and spiritual practices that have been fundamental to the day-to-day life of Orthodox Christian monks and nuns. In our conversations with these holy, dedicated men and women, they revealed a secret to us that mystics have known for centuries: God is found in silence and through the constant interior repetition of the Jesus Prayer.

No one knows who composed the Jesus Prayer. We hear echoes of it in various verses in the Gospels. Some of the monks we met believe that the Jesus Prayer originated with Jesus Christs apostles. That is possible, but we simply dont have conclusive evidence. In any case, it is not the age of the prayer that is important, but its power .

As you read further, youll find that we have drawn upon classic texts of great saints and mystics who wrote about the Jesus Prayer, but your more immediate guides will be contemporary monks and nuns, bishops, and abbots and abbesses who know the mysterious power of the Jesus Prayer through personal experience. These holy men and women offered their full cooperation with this project; as a result, for the first time these private mystical practices can be revealed and shared with mass audiences.

The Jesus Prayer was the wellspring of Christianitys first mystical tradition. In the second century its power was discovered by ascetics and hermits in the deserts of Egypt and Syria. As Christianity spread across eastern Europe, it carried with it the mystical practices of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. To this day the constant recitation of and meditation upon the Jesus Prayer remains a central part of the spiritual life within the monasteries and convents of Eastern Christianity.

Photo by Ahmed Farid
Filming at St. Antonys cave, high above his monastery, near Al-Zaafarana on the Red Sea in Egypt. Our directors of photography, Patrick Gallo and Dwight Grimm, record our comments.