This course is designed to familiarize the student with the history, practice, and depths attainable through practice of the Jesus Prayer, known also as the Prayer of the Heart. Early on within the Christian community, around the third and fourth centuries, groups of men and women literally moved into the deserts of Egypt and Syria.

There they were able to strip themselves of everything superfluous and self-centered in order to live as closely as possible to the presence of God. They had answered literally the call of Jesus to leave all and follow him. Pseudo Marcarius, in his Spiritual Homilies, describes these men and women as “intoxicated with God”. Called by the Holy Spirit that had sent Jesus into the desert, they sought to pray always as St. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians: “Pray without ceasing.” (I Thessalonians 5:17).