The Most Powerful Prayer of All

My doctor has always believed that the Irish are in fact one of the lost tribes of Israel. I always took his conviction with a pinch of salt, that is until I began to study Aramaic, when I had to think again. Let me explain what I mean.

When the ancient Jews gave a person a name, that name was meant to define their identity and their purpose, who they were and what they did. That is why when God finally told his people his name, he told them that it is Love. When St John said that God is love he was only repeating what Jesus himself had told him and the other Apostles. That is what he is in himself as well as what he does. Notice that this name was not a noun but a verb, so God was both love and loving at the same time. We do not have a tense in the English language to help us appreciate precisely what this means, but the ‘present continuing tense’ in the Irish language does. It means that God has loved us, is loving us, and will continue to love us forever.

The Simplest Prayer of All

In order to tell us this and explain what it means for us, God sent us his only son, who was, and still is, the flesh and blood embodiment of his infinite loving. This means that all who were, and still are open to receive his son’s love, will receive the self-same life and love that animates him now. This love
can save us all from enthralment to the selfishness and sinfulness that is the cancer of the soul. That is why God insisted that his son be called Jesus, which means the one who saves us, the deliverer, or the Saviour because only his love can do what nothing else can do. That is why his holy name is the most powerful name on earth as St Paul tells us. “God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on mand in the underworld should bend the knee at the name of Jesus” (Philippiansm2:10-11). It should not be surprising then that it was made into, and constantly used as a prayer, in the early Church that came to be called the Jesus Prayer.
Repeating this prayer in its shortest form, as taught by Abbot Macarius, came to be used as a special act of devotion and was particularly championed by St Bernard and then by the Dominican and Franciscan schools of spirituality.

The Sacred Monogram – IHS

However, it was with St Bernadine of Siena (1380-1444) and his fellow Franciscan reformers of the fifteenth century that this devotional practice took off in a major way. He told the hundreds of thousands of his followers to enshrine the word Jesus on their hearts and continually recite it with their tongues, but lest they forget to do this to do something else too.  The abbreviation for the Greek word for Jesus, IHS (Ihsous) was used by ancient scribes. For St Bernadine, it became a monogram or Christogram that he encouraged them to place in and outside of their churches, public buildings, and inside and outside of their own homes, as tourists can still see all over Italy to this day. The genius of this short prayer is that it can be just as helpful to complete beginners on their spiritual journey as it can be to those advanced in the mystic way. Remember the advice of Abbot Isaac to John Cassian to use the prayer ‘O God come to my aid, O Lord make haste to help me’ throughout the day to keep the mind and heart fixed on God.

Learning From My Mother

You can do the same with the simple prayer ‘Jesus’, as my mother did.  It is particularly helpful when the spiritual life deepens, for then the simpler the prayer the better.  What better prayer to make than this; calling on his name for help in good times and in hard times when all seems to be well or when everything seems to be falling apart? Then, when mystical purification is at its height and only a single word is as much as a person can muster, what more appropriate word can be used as a prayer for spiritual succour and support than using the Holy Name of Jesus. When towards the end of her life my mother was lying in bed seriously ill with her rosary beads in her hand, she was almost in tears. She told me she could no longer say her favourite prayer as she used to. All she could say was the single word, the simplest and most powerful of all prayers, the holy name of Jesus. When after her death I told my father about her tears he said they were not tears of pain but of joy. He said she had never been more joyful at the end of her life than at any other time.

The Circle of Fire

After the Renaissance and the decline of the Greek language in favour of Latin, the IHS came to be used as an acronym for the Latin, ‘Jesus Hominum Salvator’, meaning ‘Jesus Saviour of Humankind’. The three nails used to fix Jesus to the Cross were then added to the monogram, and a small cross was mounted on the letter ‘H’. There is no letter ’J’ in the Greek alphabet and that is why the letter ‘I’(iota) was used to write the first letter of the holy name, and that usually remained after the Latin came to be used in the new acronym.

However, lest we should forget, our redemption did not end with his death on the Cross, but with his glorification, so the monogram was set in a circle of fire. The circle of fire represents the Sun which from the earliest times was seen as a symbol of the Resurrection and glorification of Jesus. The flames that radiate from the perimeter are meant to be a continual reminder of the unquenchable fire of love that Jesus first released upon us all on the first Pentecost day and on every subsequent day for those who are open to receive it.

The Prayer That Will Always Be Answered

When you recite the word ‘Jesus’ as the prayer ‘par excellence’ you need say no more. The One who hears your prayer hears your deepest needs that Jesus came to satisfy, even though you may not realize what they are yourself, and so cannot find words to express them.

The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means (Romans 8: 26-27).

When you are in trouble and the whole world seems to have conspired against you, do not think you have to explain your plight to the One who knows anyway; just say the ‘Jesus Prayer’.  When you are in the blackest moment of the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ and the very gates of hell seem to be open to engulf you, just say the ‘Jesus Prayer’. It is not a mantra, but the most powerful prayer of all and a prayer which will always be answered because as Jesus promised at the Last Supper, “Anything you ask for from the Father he will grant in my name (John 16:23-24). When I asked a contemporary contemplative how he prayed, he said, “I use the Holy Name followed by the words of St Thomas, ‘My Lord and My God’ and then the prayer of St Francis, ‘My God and My All’ which is the motto of the Franciscan order. But the prayer I use most is the Holy Name until Love’s response is savoured in Silence”. The cry to Jesus for help, for courage or perseverance for deliverance was the commonest prayer made by the martyrs in penal times as they were being cruelly butchered to death. They had learnt this prayer from the Jesus Psalter, a devotion composed by a Brigittine monk, Richard Whitford, shortly before the age of persecution began. JESUS PSALTER (catholictradition.org).

Persevere Come What May

If you persevere. come what may, this prayer will gradually lead you into the prayer of experience, when what was asked for in darkness will be received in light. It is the light of the same love that raised Jesus from the dead and will raise us from the dead too, from the tomb that we have made for ourselves through sin and selfishness. This will enable us to rise in, with, and through Jesus, drawing us up and into his all-engrossing and totally enthralling loving of God. It is here that we are filled with the fruits of this contemplation so that Jesus can continue to do again through us what he first did himself whilst he was on earth and did again through the Apostles and those who followed him after his Resurrection.

David Torkington’s blogs, books, lectures, and podcasts can be found at https://www.davidtorkington.com/