
The Fruits of the Jesus Prayer ( Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos Vlachos )
-I will mention to you some of the fruits of the Jesus prayer, since i can see you are very eager to learn. In the beginning the Jesus prayer is the bread which sustains the athlete,then it becomes oil which sweetens the heart and,in the end,it becomes wine which intoxicates man,that is,which creates ecstasy and union with God.
To be more specific,The first gift which Christ gives to the man of prayer is the awareness of his sinfulness. He stops believing that he is ” good” and considers himself”the desolating sacrilege..standing in the holy place”(Matt,24,15).
Like the saw of a surgeon cutting through bone,the sharp word of the spirit penetrates to the depths of the soul.There is so much impurity within us!Our soul reeks.Sometimes people come in my cell and they give a bad odour..from their inner filth.Well then,whatever was unknown before to the athlete,is now revealed to him through the Jesus prayer.
As a result,he considers himself below all people and thinks Hell is his only eternal habitation and starts crying.
He cries for his dead self. Is it possible for one to cry for the dead of his neighbour and not for the dead who is in his own house?In this way the athlete of the Jesus prayer,too,does not see the sins of others,but only his own death.His eyes become fountains of tears which flow from the affliction of his heart.
He weeps like a condemned person,and at the same time he cries,”Have mercy on me”,Have mercy on me”,”Have mercy on me”.
With these tears,as we said above,the purification of soul and nous begins.As water cleanses dirty things,as the falling rain clears the sky of clouds and the earth from filth,likewise tears cleanse and whiten the soul.The tears are water of the second baptism.Thus the Jesus prayer brings the sweetest fruit of purification.-Is man completely purified when divine grace visits him?-He is not purified completely,but is always seeking purity of heart for purification is a never ending effort.St.John Climacos reports this saying which he had heard from a monk,who had achieved dispassion.
“The perfect but still unfinished perfection of the perfect”.The more one weeps the more one is purified;the more one sees the deeper layers of sin the more he feels the need to weep again.