God Is Love

The prayer of Mount Athos, who does not recognize it? It is comprised of one small phrase, of measured words.

"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner."

With the loud cry "Lord", we glorify God, His glorious majesty, the King of Israel, the Creator of visible and invisible creation, Whom Seraphim and Cherubim tremble before.

With the sweet invocation and summons "Jesus", we witness that Christ is present, our Savior, and we gratefully thank Him, because He has prepared for us life eternal.

With the third word "Christ", we theologically confess that Christ is the Son of God and God. No man saved us, nor angel, but Jesus Christ, the true God.

There follows the intimate petition "have mercy", and we venerate and entreat that God would be propitious, fulfilling our salvation's demands, the desires and needs of our hearts.

That "on me", what range it has! It is not only myself, it is everyone admitted to citizenship in the state of Christ, in the holy Church; it is all those who are members of the body of the Bridegroom.

And finally, so that our prayer be full of life, we close with the word "a sinner", confessing - since we are all sinners - as all the Saints confess and became through this sound sons of light and of the day.

Through this we understand, that this prayer involves:

Glorification

Thanksgiving

Theology

Supplication

and Confession

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra

Our Lord Jesus Christ

From the temporal to the eternal, from the earthly to the heavenly

Llaima Volcano, Chile.

“Pray, wherever you are, because you are the temples of God, for God lives not in man-made temples, but in your hearts.”

~St. John Chrysostom

embroidered sacred heart of Jesus

The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want

†

Templo de Santo Domingo, Puebla, Mexico by Alvaro Matias

Byzantine chanting at the Temple of St. Sava in Belgrade, Serbia.

“Under your mercy we take refuge Mother of God; may our petitions not be abandoned into temptation, but from danger deliver us, only pure & blessed.”

~Prayer to the Holy Virgin found in Egyptian papyrus fragments from the year 250 AD

17th-century Macedonian icon of the Crucifixion, with John the Baptist, from the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. The icon is distinguished by its unique combination of traditional Byzantine iconography that can be seen in the images of the Crucifixion and John the Baptist and later Macedonian style of icon painting, which indicates that it is likely a copy made from an icon of the 14th century.