7. The Pilgrim's Prayer

7.

The Pilgrim's Prayer

I had abandoned the religious activities of my youth in a reaction against not only the hypocrisy I saw in the church but even more so in a reaction to the hypocrisy I saw in myself.

Regarding the Russian pilgrim's “Jesus Prayer” for example––at first I couldn't even recite the words comfortably in English, so I learned to repeat it in the original Greek—the meaningless sounds of that language: “Kyrie Jesu Christe eleson mas” were less repulsive to me than the old trite saw: “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on us” was.

The author of The Way of the Pilgrim recommended that a sincere pilgrim should repeat this simple formula continually as he walks, and since he walks all day, he repeats the prayer several thousand times daily.

After a few days or weeks of this, he no longer needs to articulate the prayer—he repeats it silently as he walks, and eventually he will discover that the prayer has become, quite literally, the “Prayer of the Heart” since it is being repeated automatically night and day, awake or asleep, in his heart as they say.

I found through experience, that for myself at any rate, this is literally true.

During pilgrimage, for example, I would wake up in the middle of the night in strange surroundings and instead of normal fear I would experience the subtle but real comfort of the prayer running along quietly in my head

The prayer helped sustain my mental equilibrium, I guess you could call it.

Tomasito, 2009


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