Ways to do this wrong

IC XC
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NI KA

Right up front, it must be said that from the outside looking in it is 100% possible to do the “comparative religion thing” and say that the Jesus Prayer looks like chanting a mantra. You sit down (or stand up, whatever) and say the same short phrase over and over. You even match it to your breathing in “advanced practice”. It looks exactly like a mantra. I get that. Looking like a mantra, it is 100% deserving of the accusation of “vain repetition”.

But it’s not a mantra.

Even in Orthodoxy but certainly in Catholicism and various Protestant “mystical” groups, one can be exposed to a form of teaching that makes it 100% a mantra. All forms of “Christian Meditation” such as taught by certain Franciscans are only Vedic thought dressed up for Western Consumption and should be avoided like the New Age plague that they are. Yet, one can hear language of “entering into the silence” even in the Orthodox Church.

So there seem to be three misuses of the prayer to call out:

1. Mantric use – just saying the words
   • to get a feeling
   • to get into “the silence^tm“
2. Saying the words for a set time or a set number without realizing what they are

Number 1 is crucial in both its points. There are Catholics (and a few Orthodox) who teach if you just say the Jesus prayer “it’s working” when you get to a certain “state” in your brain. That’s the whole Vedic thing. The New Agers are right, though: it doesn’t matter what words you say to do that. You can get to the “state” in your brain saying “pizza” over and over. You can get to that state watching too much adult content. That’s the 100% clear evidence that you’re not saying a prayer but a mantra.

Another form of this sort of kinda implies that the words are important, but that you need only say the name of “Jesus” over and over. That’s more of exactly the same thing. Using the, pardon me, sacred words of Christianity to do Hindu or Buddhist things is just Hinduism or Buddhism in Christian vestments. A Catholic priest who did his PhD in this crypto-Hindu chanting thinks it’s really cool that he can combine his trips to india in the 1960s with his new faith but a pagan rite done in a chasuble is still a pagan rite. In fact, it’s a Black Mass. Stop doing it. Boomers gonna boom, bro.

Number 2 is only a misuse if one thinks it’s the whole point. Yes, we are saying the same words over and over, but we’re not reciting them. We’re not reading them. We’re talking to Someone. We’re talking to the person we love most in the whole world and asking him to shed his grace in our lives using the words of Holy Scripture. Where else can we say that? In the use of the Psalms as part of our daily prayer. We’re not saying only words: we’re saying the words the Holy Spirit has breathed for us to say. And thus: saying the Jesus Prayer becomes the cry of our own heart.

It is totally possible to go to Mass or the Divine Liturgy all one’s life and only say the words. The same is true of the Jesus Prayer. You can be saying the words all your life and they will all be meaningless. Stop doing it.

We are speaking with a living person.

To say “I love you” to your spouse, over and over can become very intimate, indeed. Or very annoying.

Strive for the former.