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http://sgpm.goarch.org/Monastery/index.php?p=8 �If the practice of prayer is to proceed successfully, it is always essential at the outset to lay everything else aside, so that the heart is completely free of distraction. Nothing should obtrude on the mind:neither face, nor activity, nor object. At such a time all is to be driven out.�
- Bishop Theophan the Recluse
Interpretation of the Prayer: Lord, have Mercy!
An extract from The Philokalia, Vol. 5 (not yet published in English) On the importance of awareness and understanding in prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me! And more concisely: Lord, have mercy! These prayers have been bequeathed to Christians from the time of the Apostles and it was decreed that they should constantly use these invocations, as also they do. However, while doing so very few now know the meaning of: Lord, have mercy! Therefore they invoke fruitlessly. They cry: Lord, have mercy! but do not receive mercy from the Lord because they themselves do not know what they are seeking.
And so we must know: What kind of mercy from the Lord Jesus is this? What Kind? Every kind: all that is needed by us in our present fallen state is in His right hand. For He, from the time when He was incarnated and became man, and endured such sufferings, and by the shedding of His most holy blood redeemed man from the hands of the devil - from that time HE has become in some special way the Lord and Sovereign of human nature. Thus everything of ours is now in his hands.
The Lord was even before his incarnation, from the beginning, Lord of all, seen and unseen, as their Creator and Maker. According to their being so it is and will be...
