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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI. We're a coalition of patriotic Americans who want to stop AI from taking our freedoms. Big tech is propping up AI-powered mass surveillance and exploiting our children online. This is not the future we want. The Alliance is working hard to ensure that we put Americans first. Join us at secureainow.org to learn more.
Paid for by the Alliance for Secure AI. What is the Jesus Prayer?
It's a way of repetitively using the name of the Lord in order to pray without ceasing. Like it's not about reflecting on the words or thinking about the words. It's that the words are bringing you into His presence.
Mother Natalia, thank you for coming back to my show called Last Call, which is a second show.
I like your new studio.
Thank you. I like it a lot. I want to live here. If they would let me, I'd be like, can I just set up a bed here?
That'd probably be weird.
I want to talk about the Jesus Prayer. Great. And so because many people will be familiar with it, but since many won't be, what is the Jesus Prayer?
The Jesus Prayer is a form of what I think people are now calling arrow prayers, like the short, succinct prayers that kind of get right to the point. And it developed—I can't give dates and things like that, but it developed amongst— the desert fathers, and then especially developed on Mount Athos, which is off of Greece and this island of monastics. But it's a way of responding to St.
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Chapter 2: What is the Jesus Prayer and how is it practiced?
And it's to give a physical object to hold onto as you're repeating the prayer so that you have a way of, I guess, like focusing your attention, you know. You have something that you're doing with your hands in order to bring you to the present and to focus.
Yeah, very good. Okay. I remember when my wife and I started praying the Jesus prayer, she had to undergo surgery for something. And she came out of anesthesia praying the Jesus prayer.
That's amazing.
Before she was conscious.
Yeah.
Because the nurse had to inform her that she was doing this and she didn't know.
Wow.
So, and I've heard stories like this. So this is part of why to go back to the praying without ceasing, I like to pray the prayer, and this is a very common practice, to pray the prayer with my breathing. And yeah, you might hear that it's like dangerous and you should do that with advice and stuff, but I've never known someone to be hyperventilating as they're praying the Jesus prayer.
So I think, you know, proceed with caution. But if you time the prayer with your breathing, So I typically pray in Lord Jesus Christ, pray out Son of God, pray in have mercy on me, pray out a sinner. I like that a lot because there is, I think, something poetic about especially the second half, breathing in His mercy and breathing out my sin.
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Chapter 3: How can one pray without ceasing?
not allowing unhelpful or distracting thoughts to penetrate our inmost being. The inmost being is what the fathers are talking about when they talk about the heart.
I mean, I get, yes, so that's awesome. Back to the point about prayer needing to mean it, right? I totally hear what you're saying that someone can hear that and go, well, what's the point then? You could think of it like when someone says, you know, when you go to Holy Mass, it needs to be like full participation.
And then someone gets scrupulous about that because they know that their mind wanders and then they give up. But, you know, provided you don't go down that rabbit hole, it's really helpful advice. I think it was Teresa of Avila who said something similar, right? That prayer where I'm not like intentionally talking to God isn't prayer at all. And
Maybe this is like a good reason to even shorten our prayers instead of trying to rush through them just like, okay, today I'm going to pray this one psalm and I'm going to try to mean it and I'm going to be okay that I'm going to fail as I try to mean it. That's going to be okay. I'm going to give myself permission to not be perfect and not hate myself when I fail, but to still try to mean it.
instead of just throwing up a cacophony of noise. And I do think too, you know, St. Theophane is, there could also be hyperbole there, you know, for the sake of driving home his point, because I do think that the point that he's getting at is a very valid one. And this is what you're describing of, it might be better for you to sit in the presence of the Lord
and really open your heart to Him and really offer Him yourself through presence to Him than it is to recite this particular litany or this particular novena or whatever of just, I'm rattling off the words, I'm not thinking about them, I'm not being present, I'm not, I'm just trying to check the box. Like that's the thing that it's like, that's destructive.
Yeah, so I guess I've got to be honest, I don't really understand what he means when he talks about in reference to the Jesus prayer. And maybe you don't either, you can tell me, but like if you're going to tell me to pray this without ceasing, or if not without ceasing, at least for large majorities of the chunks of the day.
And if I've got to do other things, then I actually am incapable of doing both. I'm incapable of being fully attentive to the words that I'm saying.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the Jesus Prayer in scripture?
Aquinas quotes Augustine when he responds to this idea of praying at all times. And if memory serves, he says something to the effect of, While we can't pray at all times in one sense, we can pray continuously, he says, through desire. So when I'm praying the Jesus prayer, I'm often not thinking of the words, especially if I'm praying it for hours on end or if I'm in the airport or grocery store.
But it does sort of like, I don't know, it had this real sense of bringing myself before the good God and placing myself in his presence and desiring him in that sense.
Well, I think it's the placing in the presence is the key. Like it's not about reflecting on the words or thinking about the words. It's that the words are bringing you into his presence. And so it's about like, am I in his presence as I'm with the person that I'm talking to? Am I in his presence as I'm doing this work? Because if so, then I think that the prayer is coming from the heart.
Oh, that's really good. Yeah. You wouldn't pray the Jesus prayer, experience his presence, go, hang on, hang about. I'm not meaning, got to go back into the antechamber and mean the words. Okay. Exactly. That's helpful. So we've tried a lot of coffee over the years, but our sponsor Seven Weeks Coffee is the one that my wife and I keep coming back to. It's not just great coffee.
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Chapter 5: What role does the prayer rope play in the Jesus Prayer?
He just needs you to be like consumed with the future or the past.
Oh, absolutely.
And I do that quite often where it's like I escape into some fantasy world that isn't mine and it will never be mine. or I'm hung up on something stupid I said or worried about or embarrassed about or proud about or something that's happened somewhere else, and so that I'm not actually here.
I often think sins of the flesh especially and maybe other sins that are somewhat intoxicating are just a way to not be here. Much of our dissociative behavior is like that, whereas the invitation is like, no, remain here. Don't go anywhere. Stay here, like in the pain, in the awkwardness, in the whatever.
Because God is an ever-present God, which means he's always now. He's not a God of the future. He's not a God of the past. He's the God of the ever-present, the ever-now. And so, yeah, the devil wants us to be pulled away from being in the now with him.
Tell me what you think of this analogy. It came to me. It felt pretty powerful. It might not be.
All right. I'm excited.
All right. So the scriptures talk about us being temples of the Holy Spirit. And you're like, well, I don't know what that means. But I don't know how plastic is made. So it makes sense that I wouldn't know that. But what it must mean, in part, is that God is somehow within me, I guess. I don't know what that means either. But I suppose, therefore, I can be attentive to him.
I can stand before him, as it were. And that seems to be the point of the Christian life, eh? And so then I had this thought, I was sitting on a porch with my beautiful dog, Pushkin, who's hopefully gone on to his reward, depending on whose side you're on. And he'd sit there with me as I'd have my smoke. But he'd get up and he'd wander off, you know.
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Chapter 6: How does the Jesus Prayer relate to breathing techniques?
Okay, this quote comes from Elder Joseph the Hesychast, who I've already told you I need to look like one day. He's also great. I feel like I could pull that beard off. He's a good man. He's rough to read.
Oh, yeah. I told someone one time that I was reading my Elder Joseph the Hesychast, because that's what the book is called, My Elder Joseph the Hesychast, and they were very confused and thought I had an elder named Joseph.
Yes, yes. All right, well, he says, "'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'" Before you say something much more profound, I want to say, as I often say, that these practices, I mean, I'm sure maybe you disagree and maybe these much more saintly men than me would disagree, are not required, strictly speaking, for us to live the Christian life or to be saved.
Sometimes I think we can fall into this trap of finding something that's incredibly useful and then talking about it, because it's blessed us so much, as if it were indispensable, thereby heaping up burdens on people who are like, okay, what am I going to do? I've got to add this thing to my list, you know? So don't hear that to our dear listeners who are like, okay, I'm already doing the rosary.
Now I've got to do this thing. If you feel that, that's not my intention at least. It's just here's another beautiful aid to help you, and it's something you could choose to do if you wanted to.
Yeah, and I don't even have anything really to add to this quote, because I feel like it's just what we've already been saying. But I would agree with you. I mean, we are all called to pray without ceasing. That's been made clear. Good point. But I don't think that this is the only way to do that.
And I do think that we need to be attentive to, again, the Holy Spirit is dwelling within us, and we need to be attentive to His movement within us. to what we are being called to enact in our own lives. Because it might even be that, sure, this is something that the Lord wants you to receive and focus on, but maybe not right now.
And when we become so fixated on, this is the thing I want to do, this is the thing that I think I need to do to be holy, and we're so fixated on that, even if it's not working, that we're totally missing what the Lord wants to do. So do be attentive to what's happening within you. You know, like,
the disciples on the way to Emmaus recognized the Lord and said, we're not our hearts burning within us. So like, if you're listening to this, you're listening to this about the Jesus prayer and your heart is burning within you and you're like, I want this, then listen to that. But if it's not, then listen to that.
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