“Lord, have mercy”, “Kyrie eleison” or “Kurielaison” is found in the liturgical worship from at least the 4th century and it’s use in Christian prayer may well be ancient. To ask for divine mercy is not to be seen as something gloomy and exclusively penitential. While the cry for mercy certainly involves sorrow for sin, it speaks also of divine forgiveness. It affirms that God’s loving kindness and compassion are greater than my brokenness and guilt.
The answer to the appeal of the disciples given by our Lord – The Lord’s Prayer, indeed the model for all our praying. Yet, next to the Lord’s Prayer, there is a further way of praying that is particularly commended within the Orthodox Church to all who seek living, inner prayer; and that is the Jesus Prayer. This is a short invocation, frequently repeated, most commonly in the form “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.”
Prayer is God – it is not something that I initiate but something in which I share; it is not primarily something that I do, but something that God is doing in me: St. Paul’s phrase, ‘not I, but Christ in me’ (Galatians 2:20). The path of inner prayer is exactly indicated in St. John the Baptist’s words about the Messiah: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). It is in this sense that to pray is to be silent. ‘You yourself must be silent; let the prayer speak’ – more precisely, let God speak. True inner prayer is to stop talking and to listen to the wordless voice of God within our heart; it is to cease doing things on our own, and to enter into the action of God.
