The Jesus Prayer by Jon Kennedy
The Way of the Pilgrim is a story, now available in paperback book form, by an anonymous writer. In 1884, the abbot of St. Michael's Monastery at Kazan found the story in the possession of a monk at Mt. Athos. The tale is set in Russia before 1861. The story tells of a wandering man looking for a way to pray without ceasing, as the Apostle Paul teaches in 1 Thessalonians 5:17.
Eventually, the pilgrim finds a monk who counsels him that, according to the teaching in The Philakalia (The Love of Good Things, a four-volume work of teachings on how to pursue the spiritual life, by fathers of the church), the way to achieve this state of spiritual advance is by reciting the Jesus Prayer continually. The Jesus prayer is, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
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Advocates of the prayer recommend using variations for praying for others, such as, “Lord have mercy on dear Patricia, who is ill with the flu,” or, “Raymond who is struggling with anger,” without judgmentally calling anyone else a sinner.
In The Way of the Pilgrim, the young man is told to start by reciting the prayer 3,000 times a day, using a knotted prayer rope to keep count of his total. Eventually, he says he was counseled to move his total repetitions per day up to 20,000.
