Learning to pray from the gospels

Spiritual Life, Summer 1999 by Cunningham, Lawrence

CURIOUS BUT TRUE FACT is that the Rule of Benedict, designed for those who devote their lives to prayer and work, recommends that monastic prayer should be ordinarily brief and pure (brevis et pura) and, further, insists that community prayer always be brief This stipulation for brevity in chapter twenty of Benedict's rule for monks reflects an ancient tradition that finds echoes in Cassian's Conferences that tell how the desert ascetics loved psalm fragments for their prayer. Cassian said that the perfect prayer of the monk was the psalm phrase, "0 God, come to my assistance / 0 Lord, make haste to help me." Saint Augustine, in a famous letter to the aristocratic Lady Proba, recommends that she use very short prayers which the bishop of Hippo likens to fiery javelins hurled towards God.

Other Forms of Prayer

This affection for short, pithy prayers, found in many early Christian writers on spirituality, stands behind the established spiritual tradition of the "Jesus Prayer," developed in the Christian East in the late patristic era and immortalized in the classic nineteenth-century Russian work The Way of a Pilgrim. The repeated invocation, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" (or some variant of that phrase), it was believed, could be said with regularity to a point where the prayer and all that it represented could be completely internalized. Apart from the liturgy itself, it is the preferred occupation of Orthodox monks who daily pray the Jesus Prayer in some form "on the rope" (i.e., the rosary of a hundred knots for the counting of the invocations).

The Western analogue to the Jesus Prayer is the custom, fully developed in the fourteenth-century English work The Cloud of Unknowing (whose theological roots go all the way back to the patristic period), that recommends the use of a single word or syllable "fastened in the heart" so that no matter what happens it "will never be let go" (chapter 7). The discipline taught by the Cloud author has come down to us, through the efforts of such contemporary figures as John Main and Thomas Merton, as "centering prayer" or, in a somewhat different fashion, through the musical settings of the Taize Prayer.

These discrete traditions, practices, and disciplines have been part and parcel of our common spiritual heritage for nearly two millennia. The deep biblical background for such practices can be found in the warning of Jesus that words of prayer should not be multiplied "as the pagans do," in the example of the Publican who stood in the rear of the temple beating his breast and repeating his self-accusation as a sinner before God, as well as in Paul's injunction that we should "pray always." Such short prayers are also part of our recent Catholic past. As school children, many of us were taught the value of reciting "ejaculations" (short prayers) on many and sundry occasions. It is almost a spontaneous tic for me to say "My Jesus, mercy" every time I hear an ambulance siren (frequent for me since we live only three blocks from the local emergency room!), a practice taught me by the nuns when I was in grammar school.

That practice, and similar ones, allows us to foster the habit of prayer without the necessity of carving out times and places for more formal exercises. The practice of short prayers also aids in developing a contemplative spirit in the midst of life-a habit of living more consciously in the presence of God-and an attitude lovingly described (and prescribed) in the classic treatise The Practice of the Presence of God by the seventeenth-century Carmelite friar Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. Every short prayer said during the day is a brief moment of recollection, putting us back into God's presence.

What words should we use in formulating these prayers? There are, of course, classic expressions like that of the Jesus Prayer or the simple single words like "Abba" or "Mercy" or other words recommended by those who practice Centering Prayer. The old Raccolta, with its catalog of "indulgenced" prayers, and other manuals of piety have pages of suggestions. Over the years I have also made a collection of these short prayers as I have encountered them in my reading.

Gospel Prayers

While thinking about this tradition of short prayers and their place in Christian spirituality, I was struck one day by the realization that the Gospels are filled with short questions, reactions, and exclamations addressed to Jesus which would make excellent short prayers. As inspired words, they not only reflect direct discourse directed to Christ but have been preserved in the tradition both for our edification and for our use. Recently, while on a speaking trip, I had an afternoon free. So, with the aid of a motel bible, I went through the Gospels and culled out a large selection of such texts, wrote them out on paper. Upon examination, I found that they expressed a wide range of sentiments, aspirations, and petitions that corresponded to the common needs we bring to God in prayer. My hasty research turned up over thirty-five direct addresses to Jesus. Although, if we look at the variants in the synoptic gospels, the list could be enlarged.