Pray without Ceasing

Mother Anne Clarke, Abbess OSB, Malling Abbey

‘Pray without ceasing’ – Session 1: ‘I AM’

Jesus said ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' Our whole being needs to be engaged when we pray. As we drop into a place of stillness of mind, body and spirit we touch into a deeper way of knowing where we are open to the divine presence. Our spiritual senses come alive.

‘The Epistle of Privy Counsel’, by the same anonymous 14th century author as ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, says that ‘God is my being’ and encourages us to offer that simple sense of our being to God. We let go of any thoughts about who or what we are and simply stay with the sense of being. He encourages us to pray ‘O Lord, all that I am I offer to you for it is yourself’.

Like the early Christians he teaches that encapsulating prayer in a simple phrase or even a single word is a helpful way in to the stillness where God is encountered. I like to condense his prayer into the phrase ‘I AM’, said silently with my breathing. It has a double meaning, which we find when Moses encounters God in the burning bush. Moses says ‘Here I am’, and as we say ‘I am’ we are with Moses saying ‘I am here and I am listening’. Then when Moses asks for God’s name, God replies ‘I AM who I AM’, the God beyond all words and concepts, the God that cannot be named.

We start with a simple body awareness exercise (as given in the handout ‘Body awareness into prayer’) that helps to awaken a whole-body awareness. Then we move into a time of silent prayer, using the phrase ‘I am’ as our anchor. During the time of prayer, when your mind wanders off let the sense of your breath draw you back to the present. Whisper inwardly ‘I am’, giving word to your intention to be present to God with the whole of your being. Return to that sense of your whole body alive and present, maybe revisit each arm and leg in turn to renew that sense.

Close with the prayer: O Lord, all that I am I offer to you for it is yourself. Amen.

Session 2: ‘Lord Have Mercy’

At Malling Abbey we use the phrase ‘Lord Have Mercy’ frequently in our liturgy, both in English and in the original Greek: ‘Kyrie Eleison’. It is a very early Christian prayer and has been carried forward in the original Greek even when the rest of the liturgy has been translated into other languages.

These days it is often seen as penitential and is used in many Eucharistic rites in place of a prayer of confession. I used to get hung up on a sense of grovelling before God and so felt uncomfortable using this phrase. But it’s central to Christian prayer and worth understanding more of its background so that it can take its rightful place in our prayer.

In the desert tradition we find:

Abba Macarius was asked, "How should one pray?" The old man said, "There is no need at all to make long discourses; it is enough to stretch out one's hands and say, 'Lord, as you will, and as you know, have mercy.' And if the conflict grows fiercer, say, 'Lord, help!' He knows very well what we need, and he shows us his mercy."

It is a plea for God’s help in all things, not specifically focussed on our sinfulness. We see this in its liturgical use, especially in the Eastern Churches, as a response in a litany of intercession. We do this in our own Eucharist. The Kyrie Eleison without any petitions in our offices is the residue of what was once a longer litany of intercession.

Mark Francis, a Catholic writer, says:

Its emphasis is not on us (our sinfulness) but on God’s mercy and salvific action in Jesus Christ. It could just as accurately be translated "O Lord, you are merciful!"’

(Mark R. Francis of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, quoted in Wikipedia article “Kyrie”)

So he frames it as an act of praise rather than penitence.

The writer Helen Luke in her book ‘Old Age’ points out that the literal meaning of the word ‘mercy’ has to do with exchange. I’ll quote Cynthia Bourgeault who also picks up on this in her discussion of Abba Macarius’s prayer:

At those innermost depths of our being, the human and the divine are always commingling in a dynamic and life-giving exchange.
And in fact, that's the literal meaning of the word "mercy." It comes from the Old Etruscan root merc – as in "commerce" or "mercantile" – meaning "exchange." Mercy has fundamentally nothing to do with "pity" or "clemency," with which it is often confused. It is rather the direct experience of the unity restored: my own aliveness and God's aliveness flowing as a single united will. And from this sacred commerce, renewed continuously at the center of our being, all else will flow.

This sense of exchange, of flow between me and God is at the heart of prayer. God’s mercy is the expression of God’s longing for relationship with us. We can sense ourselves immersed in God’s mercy, at one with it, whilst also knowing God’s otherness and the need for God’s mercy to reach across the gulf between us. It’s one of the paradoxes of prayer.

In our previous session we focussed on the sense of ‘I AM’, the ‘I AM’ of God at the core of our own ‘I am’. ‘All that I am I offer to you for it is yourself’. For me that resides at one end of a spectrum of awareness in prayer, a deeply inward end.

But God is also utterly transcendent and beyond this physical world. We can drop down inside to encounter God but we can also reach out, and for me praying ‘Lord Have Mercy’ is that reaching out. Sometimes one end is more in focus, sometimes the other, sometimes the whole as an integrated field of inner and outer. Really it is always both / and even as our awareness shifts around. I find myself with the sense of a ray that extends from deep within me through to the heart of God way beyond all things, with my awareness moving along this ray.

I touch into ‘Lord have mercy’ in a physical way, as does Abba Macarius when he talks about stretching out one’s hands and saying ‘Lord have mercy’. In this session we will use this linked gesture and verbal prayer. We will start our time of silent prayer standing up but please only stay standing for as long as is comfortable. If you wish to remain sitting throughout that is fine.

When standing in prayer in this way you may experience a particularly powerful sense of the whole field of God’s mercy, from the centre of your being and reaching out to infinity.

We will start with the same body awareness exercise as in the first session but remain standing after signing ourselves with the cross.

Keeping your arms relaxed let them float up so that your hands are outstretched, with a sense of reaching out to God from your heart. Feel your arms buoyed up so that it takes little effort. Silently, inwardly, repeat the words ‘Lord have mercy’.

Let the words flow with your breathing, finding their own rhythm. Let your gesture and the words together carry your intention to be present to God and to rest in God’s mercy.

When you feel the need to sit, carry with you that sense of physically reaching out in the way that you sit, placing your hands upturned on your thighs. Let your whole being reach out to God.

If the words drop away simply be with the silence and when your mind wanders off, come back gently to the words ‘Lord have Mercy’.

© The Benedictine Community at Malling Abbey 2025