The Jesus Prayer
Also called the Prayer of the Heart.
A single repeated sentence at the centre of Orthodox contemplative practice.
The Jesus Prayer is one sentence, asking mercy, and it is repeated. Shorter and longer forms are both in use, and the practice is to say it until it continues without deliberate effort.
It is closely associated with the Philokalia and with the hesychast tradition, and it reached a wide readership in English through the nineteenth-century Russian account known as The Way of a Pilgrim, whose narrator learns to say it continuously.
It is often counted on a prayer rope. Teachers in the tradition are consistent that sustained practice belongs with a spiritual director rather than alone.
Why the words are not here
The one Orthodox source this site holds, Hapgood's service book of 1906, does not print it, and that was checked against the scan rather than assumed: it is a book of services, and the Jesus Prayer belongs to private practice rather than to any of them. The wording also varies between the short and long forms and between English renderings, so choosing a form without an edition to cite would be inventing one.
Every text on this site names the edition it came from and was checked against it twice. A prayer nobody can cite an edition for does not get printed here, however well known it is. The verification record lists what was held back and why, and how rights are established explains the test.
When is this prayer said?
The moments this prayer is associated with. Each page carries cited guidance on how different traditions meet that moment.
Which tradition is this prayer from?
This page describes a prayer and, where we hold one, prints a named edition of it. It does not tell you whether to say it, or when. That judgment belongs to someone credentialed in the tradition, and nobody has signed anything here.
Content last changed 15 October 2026. Dates come from this page’s own revision history, not from the last time the site was deployed.