The Jesusgebet - in western languages also „heart prayer “mentioned (Greek and slawisch usually: mental and/or internal prayer) - are a prayer and a Meditationsform from the eastchurch range, which find increasingly also in the abendländischen Christianity spreading. She is regarded here pretty often in her methodology as a correspondence to except-Christian (Asian) Meditationsformen. As main source of this spreading the book must „sincere narrations of a Russian

Pilgrim “are valid.

The editorship history of this at that time anonymous book published is not yet completely investigated. Anyhow all translations at the basis the lying Russian expenditure of the first four narrations of 1884 is in Kazan already the 3rd edition, itself from the 2nd edition (1881) and with this again from the l. Edition (around 1870) quite differentiates. So much seems to be safe that the 3rd edition was drawn up by the large Russian Starez bishop Theophan the Klausner (1815-1894). 1911 appeared in Moscow - also anonymous - three further narrations, which carried one more a teachful character.

The prayer way publicised stated in the two parts „of the sincere narrations “and is the result of one more than one and a half millenia lasting historical development. The origins of this way lie in the NT, in the impact prayers addressed to Jesus: Mt 15,22; 20,31; Mk 10,47; Process card 17,13; 18,13 and 18,38; furthermore in the reminder to pray incessantly: Process card 18,1; Eph 6,18; l Thess 5.17 (l Thess 5.17 is the starting point „of the sincere narrations “). Crucial development takes place in connection with the Hesychasmus. Derived from the Greek word „Hesychia “(literally „peace “), is the Hesychasmus a special form of the spirituality of the desert, which is testified for the 3rd century in the Egyptian and particularly in the sinaitischen Mönchtum later. Witnesses are primarily the father sayings (Apophthegmata Patrum), the biographies of the desert fathers, in the sinaitischen Mönchtum Johannes Klimakos (580-650) and finally Gregor Sinaita (1255-1346). Hesychia means the internal and outside condition of the peace, silence, the silence, the collection and leaving with the writers mentioned. read on (…)