By Fr. Maximos (Constas)
As we begin to enter into the practice of the Jesus Prayer to engage the presence of the Spirit within ourselves we began to encounter both passing and deeper, recurring thoughts that work to distract us from calling upon the name of the Lord. What is the origin of these thoughts, and what do they show us about ourselves and how we interact with the world? How does the Church teach us to deal with distracting thought as they come to us, and make room for Christ in our hearts?
My overall focus in all of the talks has been the practice of the prayer of the heart and its foundations. The prayer of the heart is one of the most beloved and powerfully transformative prayers of the Orthodox Church. It’s not insignificant, but perhaps the most important thing we can do in terms of Christian practice.
I began in the first talk by speaking about distractions, which are the chief obstacle to prayer, especially for us in this society and in this day and age. Rather than support a life of prayer our society keeps us perpetually distracted and erodes our ability to concentrate, compromises our ability to focus, and all of these things rob us of our ability to be present and in the moment. We’re always somewhere else at some other time thanks to these technologies. How can we not just survive, but even flourish spiritually in the face of these increasingly invasive technologies and distractions? On the one hand, society has given us the tools for its pseudo-enlightenment, and the Church on the other hand has given us the means to true enlightenment, which is the practice of inner attention, the custody of the mind and the heart, not allowing it to be penetrated from all the things from outside—which is the practice of the Jesus Prayer, outlined in a definitive way in the Philokalia. My second talk concerned the beginning of the solution, the Philokalia and its history, which I find fascinating. As it says in the Bible, You are teachers of Israel and you don’t know these things? If we don’t massively appropriate the tradition for ourselves, who’s going to? The most important thing in the second talk was the traditional path of entry into the Jesus Prayer, because as we said you can’t just read the book chronologically.
The map for turning into the inner world is given in the Jesus Prayer, which is not navel-gazing mysticism, or some esoteric practice of people living in mountain fortresses. All of the teachers of the Jesus Prayer have recommended the practice of inner attention and vigilance of the heart as an essential Christian practice for all. The Jesus Prayer is a deep and direct engagement with the Holy Spirit within us. The third talk was on the buried seed; it’s not about relaxing your mind and relieving stress. These dividends will be had, but the primary reason to undertake this discipline is for no other reason than to engage and cultivate the seed, as the Church Fathers call it, of the Holy Spirit that was planted in our heart at Baptism. So I talked about the Biblical basis for this material and some Patristic texts.
The next talk covered some specifics regarding the Jesus Prayer such as what one does to concretely practice it, and how one says the prayer, what are the forms of the prayer, and especially how the prayer is connected to one’s breathing. The overall structure and movement of the talks has been straightforward, from superficial distractions to an inward, deeper engagement with the grace of the Spirit and the Jesus Prayer which is the art of cultivating that grace.
I would like to briefly say something about Luke 24:13-3—the walk to Emmaus, and especially verse 29: stay with us for it is towards evening and the day is now far spent, in order to make some obvious connections. I’m intrigued by the phrase it is now towards evening, and the day is now far spent—there’s a bit of melancholy, belatedness, sorrow, and regret there. Night is coming when no man can work. If we look at our culture, we hear and see the signs of our late stage of western civilization. Is this the dying gasp? I don’t know, but to many it seems so. People talk about late capitalism, post-modernity, post-racial, even post-Christian. There is a sense of it being toward evening and the day having been far spent. And if the larger historical and cultural lateness doesn’t do anything for you, I see a lot of white hair out there—it’s towards evening for us. The meridian of our youth has long passed and we’re entering the twilight of our later years. Have mercy on us O Lord, have mercy on us. Think of all the verses about the time that was wasted and the precious little time that is left. On the Holy Mountain at Pascha time we say, “Christ is Risen! And here’s to next year!” And will there be a next year? My father died on Holy Thursday this past year—he didn’t live to see that Pascha. Fr. Seraphim Rose said, “It’s later than you think.”
That verse in Luke is a very rich source for this kind of thinking. But even more importantly is the request to abide with us, because night is coming. There’s something almost tragic in that, but also very beautiful in the acknowledgement that Whoever this is with us, He’s someone that we want to be with. Clergy are like the disciples, walking on the road; and it’s the walk of our life. We drag each other down. They’re not building each other up—they’re yammering and kvetching. And then Jesus shows up as a stranger and asks what they’re talking about, and because they’re in the state that they’re in they don’t recognize Jesus, and they mock Him— “What? Are you the only person who doesn’t know what’s going on? Are you living under a rock?” This is what happens. Rather than building one another up we drag one another down, and when Christ appears we don’t even recognize Him, we make fun of Him.
But that’s the surface. Something deeper is going on. We’re not our hearts burning within us? Our hearts know things long before our minds do, and it takes time for them to catch up with us. I was outside and far away and not attending to myself. The language of abiding is very profound and widespread in the New Testament and especially in the Gospel of John where it’s a major motif—abide in Me and I in you, and the vine, and it’s in Paul too, to live in Christ. It’s a profound ontological statement about the indwelling of God in man and men in God. We are to be in Christ—it is no longer I who live but Christ within me. The seeds of grace in Paul grew to such proportions that it wasn’t even terribly clear anymore who was who and what was what. The “I” remains, but the seed grew into the fullness of the stature of the maturity of Christ within Paul. There was a mingling, and where the life of Paul ended and where the life of Christ began was hard to discern. This is why he can be so bold as to say Be imitators of me—not because Paul is special but because the life of Christ is alive, active, and vibrant within him.
~ “Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction” delivered by Fr. Maximos (Constas) on Feb. 2014 to the clergy of diocese of LA and the West of Antiochian of N. America at the invitation of His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph. The audio version of this lecture first appeared on Patristic Nectar Publications, and is published here by permission.
Fr. Maximos is the presidential research scholar at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of theology in Brookline, MA. He is an Athonite monk, one-time professor at Harvard Divinity School, accomplished author and translator and lectures internationally in both academic and parochial venues.
