Intercession and the Jesus Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner.

Prayer may be secret, but it is never solitary. We cannot truly pray for ourselves unless, at least implicitly, we are also praying for others as well. There is in the strict sense no such thing as 'private' prayer, for we are always praying in and with the community of the total Church - which includes the living faithful and the departed faithful along with the gravely hosts. The Jesus Prayer is thus not only personal but corporate. Even when we are saying to Jesus, "... Have mercy on me", we are tacitly including in our prayer all those on whose behalf Jesus died and rose again. This is made much clearer when we use the form "... Have mercy on us".

Can we, however, use the Jesus prayer in a more direct way as a prayer of intercession, such as "... Have mercy on John ... Have mercy on Mary", mentioning by name those whom we have upon our heart? In and of itself there is nothing wrong about such a practice. But obviously it makes the Jesus Prayer into something different from what writers of old had in view when they spoke of Jesus Prayer as a 'putting away of thoughts', as a way of entry into inner stillness.

Fr Lev Billet, the " Monk of the Eastern Church" practiced the Jesus Prayer as a form of intercession in a particularly striking way. A small, vulnerable figure, poorly dressed, he used to wander through the streets of London during night hours, invoking the name of Jesus upon all those he passed, upon the homeless, the beggars, upon everyone in distress and moral danger. He wrote thus, "The name of Jesus is a concrete and powerful means of transfiguring others into their most profound and divine reality. Let us reach out toward the men and women whom we pass in the street, the factory or the office... If we see Jesus in everyone, if we say 'Jesus' over everyone, we will go through the world with a new vision and a new gift in our own heart."

May the Lord Jesus help us, in His grace, to intercede for others by invoking His name.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner.

Reference: The Jesus Prayer - Bishop Kallistos Ware