Lord Jesus Christ
Son of God
Have mercy on me.
Have mercy on me.
Lord Jesus Christ
Son of God
Have mercy on me.
Have mercy on me.
Have mercy on me.
Have mercy on me.
Have mercy on me.
Have mercy on me.
This Cyber-Psalm is a song based on the Orthodox Jesus Prayer. I’ll put up a recording soon.
Sounds very Old Testament to me. As New Testament believers, in Christ, we have assurance of God’s mercy and so don’t have to beg repeatedly for it.
As you know for various reasons I’ve been grappling with Christian uses of mantras and Zen, etc. so this is part of that exploration. I tried repeating this all day long either aloud or in my mind and one thing that I became aware of was the non-judicial use of “have mercy.” Yes, in Christ we receive mercy but it was meaningful for me to ask Christ for mercy simply to help me through a difficult situation. And that’s the sense that I think you see this phrase used by people in Matthew and Luke (I believe).
Fair enough. Yes, it works as a personal response to God despite being theologically questionable.
If it’s said as a mantra, however, it would not be a personal response to God, would it?