The Jesus prayer.

In Psalm 123.3, the psalmist asked the LORD to show grace to his people. Quote it? Why sure.

Psalm 123.3 NRSVue

Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,

for we have had more than enough of contempt.

The Septuagint translated it ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς, Κύριε, ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς/eléison imás, Kýrie, eléison imás, “Mercy on us, Lord, mercy on us.” And in Jesus’s Pharisee and Taxman Story, it comes up again.

Luke 18.9-14 NRSVue

9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

To this day you’ll hear Christians pray a variation of Psalm 123.3, plus the taxman’s prayer, and Jesus’s name for good measure. We call it “the Jesus prayer.” It’s a really simple, really popular rote prayer. Probably the simplest.

Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ (or υἱέ Δαυὶδ/“son of David”) ἐλέησόν με, τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν/Kýrie Yisú Hristé, yié tu Theú, eléisón me, ton amartolón. “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Sometimes it gets shortened all the way down to Ἰησοῦ ἐλέησόν, “Jesus have mercy,” or Χριστέ ἐλέησόν, “Christ have mercy,” or Χριστέ ἐλέησόν, “Lord have mercy.” But no matter the form it takes, it’s the “Jesus prayer.”

It’s similar to what Bartimaeus shouted at Jesus to get his attention. We pray it for the same reason. We want mercy.

Mark 10.46-52 NRSVue

46 They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” 52 Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Good for him. ’Cause when we pray the Jesus prayer, sometimes we get naysayers who object to our praying this prayer. “Stop the vain repetitions. Mt 6.7 KJV That’s not how Jesus taught us to pray!”

Actually it is how he taught us to pray. In his story of the unjust judge, he taught us to be persistent, to cry out to God day and night, and not lose heart. Lk 18.1-8 This is that. It’s the prayer equivalent of a knock on the LORD’s door. It’s not a vain repetition; we’re not praying it for no reason. (Better not be, anyway!) We’re knocking so the door might be opened to us. Lk 11.9 Sometimes we gotta knock more than once. Sometimes we gotta get loud. But when we mean it, we’ll get his attention. He’ll hear. And respond.

Praying like “St. Francis” did.

You know how when you’re praying in a group, and the prayer leader says something really profound which you wholly agree with, and you can definitely say amen to that?

Rote prayers are the very same way. It’s someone else’s prayer, but you’re agreeing with the prayer… and some of ’em just nail it. It’s precisely what you wanna tell God. So go ahead and borrow their words. They don’t mind. God doesn’t either.

One of the more popular rote prayers floating around out there is “the peace prayer of St. Francis.” Which, let’s be honest, was never actually written by Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone of Assisi (1181-1226), the Catholic layman-evangelist who founded the Franciscan order. True, those of us who know about Francis’s life can certainly imagine him saying stuff like this, but just like a whole lot of popular internet quotes, ’twasn’t him. The Italians call this la preghiera semplice/“the simple prayer.” I don’t find it all that simple, but it’s still a good one to pray.

I prefer translating these things myself, so I took this from the original French. That’s right, the original French; not Italian like Francis spoke, nor the vulgar Latin which medieval Catholics used to communicate. The prayer was anonymously published in December 1912 in the Catholic magazine La Clochette, as Belle prière à faire pendant la messe/“Beautiful prayer to say during Mass.”

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there’s hatred I’ll place love.

Where there’s offense I’ll place forgiveness.

Where there’s discord I’ll place union.

Where there’s error I’ll place truth.

Where there’s doubt I’ll place faith.

Where there’s despair I’ll place hope.

Where there’s darkness I’ll place your light.

Where there’s sadness I’ll place joy.

Oh Master, I don’t seek to be comforted as much as to comfort,

To be understood as much as to understand,

To be loved as much as to love.

For it’s in giving that we receive.

It’s in forgetting that one is found.

It’s in pardoning that we’re pardoned.

It’s in dying that we’re raised to eternal life.

’Cause we wanna do as Jesus does.

There’s a lot of similarity between the St. Francis prayer and “John Wesley’s Rule,” another popular rote prayer attributed to the wrong guy. Seriously; Wesley didn’t write this prayer either. (And you thought misattribution was a recent thing.)

Do all the good you can

By all the means you can

In all the ways you can

In all the places you can

At all the times you can

To all the people you can

As long as ever you can.

Yet another nice way to stretch out “Love your neighbor.” Mk 12.31, Lv 19.18 If you were looking for any loopholes, Wesley’s rule stitches most of them shut.

Basically the St. Francis prayer is about trying to minister to others, trying to spread the Spirit’s fruit instead of throwing poop like a monkey. As humans do. It’s about how we oughta act on God’s gifts, rather than just pray they happen, while we sit by passively and wait for God to reprogram or smite sinners. It’s about how we oughta use the fruit the Spirit gave us, rather than store them up for a rainy day… whenever that comes.

The purpose of the Spirit’s gifts are to pay ’em forward. This prayer helps us adjust our attitudes so we’re reminded we’re meant to share, not hoard. Give, not just receive.

So when you’re at a loss for words with God, pray this prayer.

Memorized any good prayers lately?

ROTE PRAYER roʊt pr(eɪ)ər noun. A prayer we’ve memorized.

How’d you learn your phone number?

Assuming you have; lots of us just trust our phones to remember ’em for us. When I first got my phone number, anytime someone asked for it, I had to look it up. Eventually I got what I thought was a good idea: Convert it to letters! If I couldn’t remember 268-3276, I could sure as heck remember ANT-FARM. (Which is not my actual number; I use it as an example.) Problem is, whenever you sign up for the Starbucks app and tell ’em your phone number is ANT-FARM, they object and demand digits, so now you gotta go through the mental process of “Okay, A is 1…” ’cause you forgot no phone numbers start with 1, ’cause in the early days of telephones they saved 1 for long distance numbers. But here I am digressing again.

A blessed few of us have really good memories, and don’t have to resort to silly mental tricks to get phone numbers in our brains. Most of us just go with blunt-force rote memorization: We recite the number over and over and over and OVER till it’s embedded in our memory like a shank in a prison snitch. (Awful simile, but you’ll remember it, won’tcha?)

Okay, so how’d you learn to pray?

Assuming you have; many don’t. As for those Christians who do, many of us resort to rote prayers. We learned ’em when we were kids, or we say them so often in church they just kinda stuck in our minds. We learned them by repeating them till they stuck. And when it comes time to pray, that’s what we pray. Like the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven…” and so forth. And it’s totally okay to pray such things, ’cause Jesus said so. “When you pray, say this.” Lk 11.2

Lots of us Christians do rote prayer… and lots of us Christians refuse to do rote prayer. ’Cause they got it into their heads rote prayer isn’t authentic prayer. “The only real prayer,” such people insist, “is extemporaneous prayer: Use your own words, speak from your heart, and say it to God. Don’t use somebody else’s words. Those aren’t your words. God wants to hear your words.”

Yes he does. But that’s not why we pray rote prayers.

It’s a submission thing. (Unless you’re not into that.)

The first time I heard somebody rant against rote prayer, she was basically mocking mainline churches. She grew up a mainliner, left ’em to become Fundamentalist, and had become one of those conspiracy-theory Fundies who think every church but hers is devilish. She didn’t wanna legitimize anything they did as worship. Rote prayer especially.

To her mind, the reason people pray rote prayers isn’t to learn from the prayers of Jesus or other Christians; isn’t to learn to pray, isn’t to conform our will to that of others. Rote prayers are entirely so you can pretend to pray. They’re not really prayer; they’re just some holy-sounding words you can recite but not truly mean. Just say your lines, feign prayer, and it’ll count as prayer, and you’ll be holy for going through the motions. It’s pure hypocrisy.

“That,” she’d explain, “is what mainliners do instead of worship.” It’s all dead religion. And it’s not just mainliners; Catholics and Orthodox and Episcopalians and most of the other churches do it too. They’re all hypocrites and going to hell.

Her teaching didn’t set right with me. ’Cause the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a rote prayer, y’know. One we were taught in Sunday school, ’cause Jesus taught it. One we were taught to recite. And taught, correctly, that it’s so we can learn to pray; and when we pray it we need to mean it. And once we apply that instruction to every rote prayer, we realize the whole point of rote prayer.

When we pray rote prayers properly, what we actually do is conform our will to those prayers. Yeah, they’re someone else’s words. But for it to be an authentic prayer, and not hypocrisy, we gotta mean their words. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we have to mean Jesus’s words. When we pray one of King David’s prayers out of Psalms, we have to mean his words. When we pray some other Christian’s prayers out of a hymnal or prayer book, we oughta mean their words. When we sing a hymn or worship song in church, we oughta mean those words. It’s all the same practice.

If we can’t say them and mean them, don’t say them! We should at the very least try to mean them; try to wrap our brains around ’em, understand what they mean, and believe what they say. (And ask the Holy Spirit for help when necessary.) Either way, strive for authenticity. Be real with God. Say it and mean it.

If you asked that anti-mainliner what she believed about the Lord’s Prayer, it’s entirely likely she’d say all the same things I just said. All the same things the Sunday school teachers taught. When you recite it, mean it. She wasn’t merely repeating it mindlessly, nor using it to pretend to pray. But good luck convincing her other churches pray it the same way she does. Some people simply can’t see beyond their prejudices.

The power of rote prayers.

When we recite a rote prayer, and mean it (’cause don’t bother to recite it otherwise), they’re extremely powerful.

When Jesus taught us to pray, “Hallowed be thy name” and so forth, Lk 11.2 KJV it’s because that’s his will. That’s God’s will. Jesus told us to pray God would honor his name, make his kingdom come, have his will done, and give us daily bread and forgiveness and grace from testing. And God wants to honor his name, make his kingdom come, have his will done, and give us stuff. We’re conforming and submitting to God’s will. We’re learning to think like God does.

Often we’ll get to the part of “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” Mt 6.12 and to be honest forgiveness is a tricky one. Some of us haven’t forgiven our debtors. We still have grudges. We’re still annoyed at fellow Christians. And neighbors, and especially enemies. We know we need to forgive; Jesus told us to; we just aren’t there yet. Some of us are trying to get there, and some aren’t. When we pray it and don’t mean it, we come under conviction: “Oh yeah; Jesus wants me to forgive.” Ideally it spurs us to work on this.

True, some Christians will just recite the words and work on nothing, ’cause to them the Lord’s Prayer is dead religion. The rest of us will submit to them, because to us the Lord’s Prayer is living religion.

Same with other rote prayers: We conform our own will to the words. It’s powerful stuff. When we’re just talking with God, casually or formally, it might never occur to us in mid-prayer, “I forgot this” or “I should do that” or “God wants me to pray for these things.” He might remind us to—if we’re listening to him, and sometimes we’re not. Just like sometimes we aren’t really listening to the rote prayers. But again: When we do, when we conform to what we’re praying, it’s powerful stuff.

It’s why the very last thing we wanna do is recite rote prayers mindlessly. That’s a mockery of faith. But the heartfelt, mindful, meant rote prayer is an act of surrendering our very thoughts and words—our all—to God.

Yeah, we can pray extemporaneously, for all the stuff we wanna talk to God about. Go ahead and do that too. But Jesus doesn’t want us to forget the stuff in his prayer. His prayer reflects God’s heart. Our off-the-cuff prayers reflect our hearts—which need work. If we pray nothing but the extemporaneous stuff, we shouldn’t expect to see a lot of heart-repair done too quickly. On the other hand if we do pray the Lord’s Prayer…

And same with other rote prayers. Most of the more popular prayers are a bunch of bible quotes. Some are wholly taken from the scriptures. So when we pray them, we’re likewise praying for stuff God already wants us to pray. Doesn’t it make sense to pray for things we already know God wants us to have and think?

“But they’re someone else’s words.” Relax; this isn’t plagiarism. God is fully aware we didn’t compose these prayers. But when they express how we feel, or says the very same things we wanna tell God, it’s totally fine with him if that’s what we pray. And totally fine with our fellow Christians: We have a long history of rote prayers. The Psalms are rote prayers, y’know.

Put a few of ’em into your brain and start praying them.

Te Deum.

Te Deum teɪ 'deɪ.əm is a rote prayer. Really it’s a hymn which dates back to the late 300s. It’s named for its first words, Te Deum laudamus/“To God we praise.” Traditions say it was written by St. Ambrose when he baptized St. Augustine. Or St. Hiliary or St. Nicetas of Remesiana wrote it. Meh; who cares how we got it. It’s been a popular prayer for the past 17 centuries, and has been set to music many times in many ways.

The Presbyterian Church’s Book of Common Worship translates it like so.

We praise you, O God,

we acclaim you as Lord,

all creation worships you,

Father everlasting.

To you, all angels, all the powers of heaven,

the cherubim and seraphim, sing in endless praise:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,

heaven and earth are full of your glory.

The glorious company of apostles praise you.

The noble fellowship of prophets praise you.

The white-robed army of martyrs praise you.

Throughout the world the holy church acclaims you;

Father, of majesty unbounded,

your true and only Son, worthy of all praise,

the Holy Spirit, advocate and guide.

You, Christ, are the king of glory,

the eternal Son of the Father.

When you took our flesh to set us free

you humbly chose the Virgin’s womb.

You overcame the sting of death

and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

You are seated at God’s right hand in glory.

We believe that you will come, and be our judge.

Come then, Lord, and help your people,

bought with the price of your own blood,

and bring us with your saints

to glory everlasting. BCW 570-571

Sanctus.

A really old, really popular rote prayer.

The name Sanctus comes from the first word of the Latin translation of this prayer.
Musical bonus: A song by a friend of mine, James Thomas La Brie. Big instrumental first part; and of course his version of the Sanctus in the “Hosanna in the Highest” part. YouTube The first three lines come from Isaiah 6.3, where the serafs are shouting in praise of the LORD; the last three come from Matthew 21.9, where the people shout in praise as Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey.

Holy holy holy Lord

God of power and might

Heaven and earth are full of your glory

Hosanna in the highest

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord

Hosanna in the highest

The form comes from St. John Chrysostom. Earlier English translations, as are found in the Book of Common Prayer, have for the second line, “God of Sabaoth.” The Roman Missal has “God of hosts.” These are all translations of the Hebrew YHWH Chavaót/“LORD of vast numbers,” and Christians have variously translated chavaót as hosts, armies, “power and might,” troops, “angel armies” if you’re gonna make assumptions about what his armies consist of (and why can’t God mobilize his billions of human followers?), or “Sabaoth” if you don’t care to translate it. Me, I tend to go with “LORD of War,” because whenever YHWH Chavaót appears in the bible, the author usually expects God to kick some ass.

Many of these ancient prayers have of course been set to music. That’s the way most Protestants know of them: When I first wrote about the Sanctus years ago, one of the more common responses I got was, “I thought this was a worship song.” Well it is. But first it was a rote prayer. Musicians rediscover rote prayers all the time, and set ’em to music. If they don’t rhyme, chances are they began their existence as a prayer.

And like many a rote prayer, we can use this prayer to help us meditate. You wanna get your mind off the things around you, and concentrate on God? You tap those rote prayers. Repeat them to yourself, focus on the words, focus on the Lord, and praise him.

The serenity prayer.

One of the more popular rote prayers is “the serenity prayer.” It’s prayed by Christians and pagans alike, ’cause it’s the official prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous. Other 12-step programs use it as well.

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time,

enjoying one moment at a time,

accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world

as it is, not as I would have it,

trusting that you will make all things right

if I surrender to your will,

so that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

and supremely happy with you forever in the next.

Amen.

Credit for the prayer is usually given to American theologian and philosopher Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), although the original version looks a bit different. Its first publication was in the March 1933 edition of The Woman’s Press, in Winnifred Crane Wygal’s article “On the Edge of Tomorrow.”

Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.

Wygal was a grad student at Union Theological Seminary, Neibuhr’s school. In her 1940 book We Plan Our Own Worship Services, she indicated she got the prayer from him. Neibuhr’s daughter Elisabeth Sifton claimed her father wrote it for a Sunday service in 1943. As you notice, she was a bit off on the date—which caused some confusion, and controversy, when Fred R. Shapiro of Yale Law School published a New York Times article in 2008 stating he’d found the prayer published eight times before 1943. At the time, he questioned whether Niebuhr had even authored it. He doesn’t now.

Alcoholics Anonymous founder William Griffith Wilson (a.k.a. “Bill W.”) came across the prayer in early 1942. A member of his New York group found it in a New York Herald Tribune obituary and shared it. The group immediately adopted it, and included a copy of it in every outgoing letter.

Niebuhr admitted the idea behind the prayer had been “spooking around” for centuries. You can even find it expressed in Cicero’s Six Mistakes of Man: “The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.”