These sessions will introduce the participants to one of the oldest and most beautiful methods of Byzantine worship: praying with the heart by the invocation of the name of Jesus. To help people gain a sense of the reality of God—God within, the centre of their being—is inherent to Christian development. The Church has long distinguished between knowledge about God and actually knowing God. Knowledge about God cannot transform us, whereas the person who experiences the reality of God within allows God to transform him. The Christian goes inward to encounter God “in the heart” before he moves outward in charity to others. The Jesus Prayer enables us to move in that direction.

The person who is not exposed to the presence of God within will easily accept the absence of God as real. Gradually what the person accepts psychologically becomes real for him. So helping the participants acquire a sense of the reality of God is the criterion for all the teaching methods, lessons and activities of these sessions.

More specifically, these sessions aim:

  1. To increase the participants’ awareness of their life in Christ;
  2. To give the participants the means of a direct encounter with God, leading to a deep relationship within the confines of the heart;
  3. To offer the participants the experience of God leading to the transformation rather than offering the participants a formula about God which gives knowledge;
  4. To offer the participants the opportunity of realizing that they are being transformed from within by God so that they may go out to others in the same Spirit;
  5. To provide the means to allow the participants to lose their self-centredness as they allow God to transform them;
  6. To offer an appreciation of the human growth towards Christian maturity consistent with the principles of psychological maturity;
  7. To offer the goal of fullness of one’s infinite potential via the means of synergy (reciprocity between God and the human person).

There is no cost and there is no registration.

All sessions will take place in Holy Eucharist Parish church.