A BOOK about a prayer of one sentence and about being quiet might seem a simple project. But in the case of the prayer that has become known as the Jesus Prayer — “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on me (or us)” — there is a millennium of tradition with a theology leading to a participation in the actions of God, a psychology showing how the human personality can grow and change, and an ascetic practice that was the basis of monastic life. This tradition has become known as hesychasm or silence.

It began in the third century, when a young Egyptian, Anthony, was moved by a sentence in the Gospel exhorting him to sell his possessions and follow Jesus; and so he went to live alone. It came to a fulfilment a millennium later in the writings of Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, teaching a way of prayer enlightened by the presence of God, which were recognised as orthodox by Councils at Constantinople in 1341 and 1351.

This hesychastic approach to prayer was set out in a collection of texts, the Philokalia or Love of the Beautiful, published in 1782. There has been a rush of translations and editions in the past century in several languages, showing how this hesychastic approach to prayer is becoming more widely known and practised in the Christian West as well as the East.

This book guides us through this tradition by introducing the life and teaching of 15 leading monastics — a term that the author prefers to that of monk, since it includes women. It tells the stories of their lives, gives extracts from their writings, and shows how they added to this ongoing tradition. We are introduced to some of the most influential teachers of the Eastern Church, Evagrius of Pontus and Symeon the New Theologian among them, with a postscript about the life of Porphyrios, a contemporary monk and hospital chaplain in Greece. It makes this tradition accessible, describing the thinking of these in an informal style, and showing how the tradition evolved.

So you can read it in several ways, and maybe several times. It can be enjoyed as a colourful story about the lives of some of the great saints of the Church; then it can be read as a set of texts introducing ideas and disciplines from an often unfamiliar cultural world; and then it might be read slowly and reflectively, meditating on short phrases and passages. When you do this, you might find, as so many have before you, that silence has the power to change and transform the personality and lead to a new experience of God. If this happens, the author would consider that his purpose in writing has been achieved.

The Revd Dr John Binns is Visiting Professor at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge.

In the Stillness, Waiting: Christian origins of the prayer of the heart
Nicholas Alan Worssam SSF
Canterbury Press £16.99
(978-1-78622-488-0)
Church Times Bookshop £13.59