Priest. Would you mind giving a precise definition of what you call the Jesus Prayer? After all, every prayer addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ can be called the Jesus Prayer, and there are a lot of such prayers. I would like to know how to pronounce the Jesus Prayer correctly?
Enoch. We call the Jesus Prayer nothing more than the reverent invocation of the saving name of our Lord Jesus Christ - at every time, in every activity and in every place. This prayer is usually expressed in the following words: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner (or: sinner).” In short, we can say this: “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me (a sinner or a sinner).” In this form, it exactly corresponds to the words of the holy Apostle Paul: I would speak five words with my mind... rather than darkness with my tongue (cf. 1 Cor. 14:19). You can say even more briefly: “Lord, have mercy!”
Priest. What explains the fact that with a prayer for mercy we turn not to the Most Holy Trinity, not to God the Father and not to the Holy Spirit, but to the Son of God?
Enoch. You, of course, know that we turn our prayers to the Most Holy Trinity (“Most Holy Trinity, have mercy on us”), and to God the Father (“Our Father”), and to the Holy Spirit (“King of Heaven”). But in this case we turn to the Son of God. The reason for this is clear. We turn to the Son of God not because, of course, the Son of God prevails in the Triple Unity of the Divine, but because He acquired us to God and the Father with His Honest Blood and is our Savior and Reconciler with Divine truth.
He took our nature into His Divine Person, redeemed us from our sins with His life, death and resurrection, and bore for us the punishment that immediately lay upon us for our sins - our ancestors and our personal ones. And therefore, in all fairness, we must pray to Him as our Savior. He is our Mediator, Intercessor and Conciliator; Only by Him and through Him do our prayers receive their power, and we have access to the Heavenly Father: Whatever you ask of the Father in My name, that I will do (John 14:13).
There is no doubt, of course, that every other prayer addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ, compiled by the holy fathers, is divinely inspired, divine and partakes of the power of grace, according to our due attitude towards it, but with its greater or lesser complexity, it does not have that easy convenience so that one can read it constantly, at any time, during any activity, in any place. However, with all its brevity and simplicity, the Jesus Prayer contains everything that belongs to the Son of God, both according to the economy of our salvation and according to His Divine Hypostatic state. Confessing Him as Lord and Son of God, we recognize Him as the true God, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and calling Him Jesus Christ and asking “have mercy on us,” we confess the sacrament of economy, which it was pleasing to Him to perform for us for the sake of man and for our salvation; we recognize Him as our Savior, Who alone can save us. And this, as we know, is the whole essence of our Christian faith, the Gospel and all of Christ’s teaching.
Saint John the Theologian, finishing his Gospel, says: Now these things were written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that you who believe may have life in His name (John 20:31). In a word, the Jesus Prayer unites us with the Son of God, in the closest way, in Him it makes us partakers of eternal life. According to the word of the same apostle: In that life was (John 1:4).
(Collection about the Jesus Prayer. M., 1994. P. 201-202)