Pints With Aquinas - The Jesus Prayer for Beginners | Mother Natalia | Last Call Ep. 19

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

It’s Last Call! Mother Natalia is back to teach us a realistic way to pray without ceasing.  Pints: Last Call Ep. 19 - - - 📚Resources Mentioned:  Christ the Bridegroom monastery website ��� https://www.christthebridegroom.org What God Is Not podcast: https://whatgodisnot.com/ Books: Way of a Pilgrim: https://a.co/d/0cHlXatl Beginning to Pray by Archbishop Anthony Bloom: https://a.co/d/0emxvwvF The Art of Prayer: https://a.co/d/03VTvZ5M Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown: https://a.co/d/04O6MnTh - - - Today’s Sponsors: Seven Weeks Coffee: Save up to 25% with promo code 'PINTS' at https://sevenweekscoffee.com/PINTS  John Paul the Great Catholic University: If you’re ready to start a degree or just want to sharpen your craft, go to https://jpcatholic.edu/pints to learn more. Exodus 90: Download the Exodus 90 app to start your 14-Day free trial or visit https://Exodus90.com/matt to learn more.  - - - Become a Daily Wire Member and watch all of our content ad-free: ⁠⁠https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe⁠⁠ 📲 Download the free Daily Wire app today on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, and more. - - - 📕 Get my newest book, Jesus Our Refuge, here: https://a.co/d/bDU0xLb 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mattfradd.locals.com/support⁠⁠⁠⁠ - - - 💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas⁠⁠⁠ 🎵 TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas⁠⁠⁠ 📚 PWA Merch – ⁠⁠⁠https://dwplus.shop/MattFraddMerch⁠⁠ 👕 Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com - - - Privacy Policy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dailywire.com/privacy⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people? Scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads than they do on social? Let me introduce you to fans. And they're here with me on Spotify. Trust me, I know fans. They don't skip. They stay for hours.

They don't move on. They manifest. They're not a demographic group. They're fans. Spotify advertising. You're among fans. What is the Jesus prayer? It's a way of repetitively using the name of the Lord in order to pray without ceasing.

Like, it's not about reflecting on the words or thinking about the words. It's that the words are bringing you into his presence. Mother Natalia, thank you for coming back to my show called Last Call, which is a second show. I like your new studio. Thank you. I like it a lot. I want to live here if they would let me. I'd like, can I set up a bed here? I'd probably be weird.

I want to talk about the Jesus prayer. Great. And so because many people will be familiar with it, but since many won't be, what is the Jesus' prayer? The Jesus prayer is a form of what I think people are now calling arrow prayers, like the short, succinct prayers that kind of get right to the point. And it developed, I can't give dates and things like that, but it developed amongst the desert, fathers and and then especially developed like on Mount Athos which is off of Greece and this island of monastics and but it's a it's a way of responding to St. Paul's exhortation when he says to the to the Thessalonians in his first letter to pray without ceasing so it's a way of

repetitively using the name of the Lord in order to to pray with without ceasing. Okay. Yeah. So even though I know these things, I'm asking you like I don't know them, but here's a question. Do you actually pray without ceasing? What does that look like? Great question.

So no, I don't, but I try and that's what I'm striving for. And yeah, so the Jesus prayer, the formula of it, there's different variations, but kind of a standard formula of it is Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God. mercy on me a sinner. So this developed through, again, like I said, through the desert fathers, but it's very based in scripture, you know, the blind man crying out, have mercy on me, son of David, have mercy on me, and the publican and the Pharisee, the story of the publican saying, Lord, have mercy on me a sinner, and so on and so forth. And so the goal is, if we can have this short prayer that's memorized and that we can start to say naturally, then it can become

something that we pray without ceasing. Like, if it doesn't take too much of our attention, then we can even be praying this in the midst of a conversation, ultimately. I wouldn't start with that. But, or while doing the dishes. Do you know that Thomas Aquinas talks about these short prayers? I don't. In the Sumer, yeah, he addresses the topic of whether or not we should pray at all times. And he says, it depends what you mean. Because, like, we have. stuff to do actually. But one of the things he says is, like, you should pray long enough until the heart is called. I don't think he uses the word heart, but these quick prayers

that he refers to, yeah, to kind of stimulate devotion, but that prayer should be cut off when, essentially, I think, we're no longer, like, praying from the heart and just rattling off prayers. Which the Jesus prayers also referred to as, like, the prayer of the heart. It's talked about synonymously with that. Tell me about the prayer rope. So this is called a Chotky or Chotky, which is just the Slavic word for knot, K-N-O-T. So it's just named after the fact that it's created with a series of knots.

And it's to give a physical object to hold onto as you're repeating the prayer so that you have a way of, I guess, like focusing your attention. You know, you have something that you're doing with your hands. hands in order to bring you to the present and to focus. Yeah, very good. Okay. I remember when my wife and I started praying the Jesus prayer, she had to undergo surgery for something.

And she came out of anesthesia, praying the Jesus prayer. That's amazing. Before she was conscious. Yeah. Because the nurse had to inform her that she was doing this and she didn't know. So, and I've heard stories like this. So this is part of why, to go back to the praying without ceasing, I like to pray. I like to pray the prayer, and this is a very common practice, to pray the prayer with my breathing.

And yeah, you might hear that it's like dangerous and you should do that with advice and stuff, but I've never known someone to be hyperventilating as they're praying the Jesus prayer. So I think, you know, proceed with caution. But if you time the prayer with your breathing, so I typically pray in Lord Jesus Christ, pray out, son of God, pray in, have mercy on me, pray out a sinner. I like that a lot because there's, I think, something poetic about especially the second half breathing in his mercy and breathing out my sin and in that order. Like I think we often get this mixed up in our heads that we have to purge ourselves of sin and get over our sin and then we can receive his mercy, but actually we need to receive

his mercy in order to even be able to get out of the sin. And so I like that order. But anyways, if you're able to practice praying the Jesus prayer with your breathing, then you start to realize that, well, breathing is something I do without ceasing as long as I'm alive. And so that's a way that we can start to subconsciously pray the Jesus prayer as we learn that we're doing it with our breathing, as Cameron did when she woke up from anesthesia. You know, she was just because she's breathing and because she had linked it to her breath, she was able to pray without even realizing it.

book I'd recommend to people is Way of the Pilgrim. Way of a Pilgrim. Yeah, someone gave that book to me long ago. And that's one of the books that really popularized the Jesus prayer. Yeah. All right, any further comments before I share with you some quotations from saints and spiritual writers about this? No, I don't think so. St. John Chrysostom says, brothers, be always occupied with the intellectual prayer and do not move far away from God until you receive God's mercy and pity. Never ask for anything but for his infinite mercy and this is enough for your salvation. I like that. This is enough.

That's helpful. When asking for his mercy, cry aloud in entreaty with humble and contrite heart from morning to night and if possible during the whole night. Saying unceasingly, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. I love that. I've never heard that quote before. I like it though because his mercy. is something that is just a safe bet to ask for. Like, we know that when we're asking for his mercy,

we are asking for something he wants to give us. We know it's in line with his will because God is mercy, right? He's not just merciful. It's not just an attribute of his. Like, there's never a point in which God can be not merciful. It's not an attribute. He is mercy. He is love.

And so I really like that because I might ask for a part of, particular thing that I want in life, but that might not be the thing that I need for union with him. And so he might not grant it for that reason. Whereas I know he wants to give me his mercy. I know his mercy is how I will achieve union with him. Yeah. So that's just like a safe thing to just ask for. And his mercy comes in all sorts of ways that don't necessarily look like mercy to us because we forget what mercy actually looks like because sometimes mercy looks like not getting the job that we want. But yeah. Yeah, and I think you can think of mercy in a broader sense than just forgiveness too. Oh, absolutely. Like even in our speech, if I say to someone like,

have mercy on me, I'm just, I might be saying, please help me. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So Thayer from the recluse, who I love, 19th century Russian Orthodox monk speaks a lot about the Jesus prayer and everything he says is bang on to me. Uh, uh, Every prayer must come from the heart and any other prayer is no prayer at all. Prayer book prayers, your own prayers and very short prayers, all must issue forth from the heart to God seen before you. And still more must this be so with the Jesus prayer? Thoughts on that. And then what do Eastern Catholics and Orthodox mean when they talk about the heart in relation to prayer?

I love Theophan the Reclues. I've read The Art of Prayer, which is a collection, mostly of his sayings. I like him a lot. But I think I would caution listeners because in our current society, in our day and age, I think there could be a temptation to hear that and say, well, if it's not sincere and it's not from the heart, then it's no prayer at all, then why even try? Because I can't pray sincerely.

I can't pray from the heart. And so this is just a waste of time. Like, that's how I would hear that, you know? but I think it's important to remember that these quotes are always said in context. You know, like Theophan wasn't just preaching this to the world. I'm sure he was like speaking to a particular person who asked for a word or something and he knew this person's heart and all of that. I actually think there's a distinction right between choosing to pray absent-mindedly

and then just understanding that you're going to whether you want to or not. Yes. To me, that was a really liberating part of, say, praying the rosary is to just accept that I'm going to it poorly, which again is very different to putting myself in a place where I know I will pray it poorly. Yeah, and God encounters us in authenticity. He encounters us in reality, right? He's not encountering us in something that's unreal. And so if we are acknowledging the reality of our poor prayer and of saying, Lord, this is what I have to offer you and I'm distracted 500 times, but that means I come back 500 times, then I do think that he receives that and

blesses that. And the heart, yeah, this is a complicated concept. So I don't want to delve into it too deeply because I'm not educated enough to speak accurately to it. But what I will say is that the fathers talk often of guarding the heart. And they're not talking about, when they say guarding the heart. They're not talking about like make sure you don't feel certain feelings because I think we think of heart these days as where I feel things. When they talk about guarding the heart, which the Jesus prayer helps us to do because we have the name of the Lord always on our lips or in our mind or on our heart. Guarding the heart means not allowing unhelpful or distracting thoughts to penetrate our inmost being.

The heart, the inmost being is what the fathers are talking about when they talk about the heart. I mean, I get, yes, so that's awesome. Back to the point about prayer, needing to mean it, right? I totally hear what you are saying, that someone can hear that and go, well, what's the point then? You could think of it like when someone says, you know, when you go to Holy Mass, it needs to be like full participation. And then someone gets scrupulous about that because they know that their mind wanders and then they give up. But, you know, provided you don't go down that rabbit hole, it's really helpful advice. I think of Teresa of Avala who said something similar, right?

That prayer where I'm not like intentionally talking to God isn't prayer at all. And maybe this is like a good reason to even shorten our prayers instead of trying to rush through them, just like, okay, today I'm going to pray this one psalm and I'm going to try to mean it and I'm going to be okay that I'm going to fail as I try to mean it. that's going to be okay. I'm going to give myself permission to not be perfect and not hate myself when I fail, but to still try to mean it. Instead of just throwing up a cacophony of noise. And I do think to, you know, Thiafane, St. Theophan is, there could also be hyperbole there, you know, for the sake of driving home his point, because I do think that the point that he's getting at is a very valid one, and this is what you're describing of, it might be better.

for you to to sit in the presence of the Lord and really open your heart to him and really offer him yourself through presence to him than it is to to recite this particular litany or this particular novena or whatever of just I'm rattling off the words. I'm not thinking about them. I'm not being present. I'm not. I'm just trying to check the box. Like that's the thing that it's like, that's destructive. Yeah, so I guess I've got to be honest, I don't really understand what he means when he talks about in reference to the Jesus prayer. And maybe you don't either, you can tell me a bit, like, if you're going to tell me to pray this without ceasing, or if not without ceasing, at least for

large majorities of the chunks of the day, and if I've got to do other things, then I actually am incapable of doing both. I'm incapable of being fully attentive to the words that I'm saying. Aquinas quotes Augustine when he responds to this idea of praying at all times. And if memory serves, he says something to the effect of, while we can't pray at all times in one sense, we can pray continuously, he says, through desire. So when I'm praying the Jesus prayer, I'm often not thinking of the words, especially if I'm praying it for hours on end or if I'm in the airport or grocery store. But it does sort of like, I don't know, it had this real sense of bringing myself before the good

God and placing myself in his presence and desiring him in that sense. Well, I think it's the placing in the presence is the key. Like, it's not about reflecting on the words or thinking about the words. It's that the words are bringing you into his presence. And so it's about, like, am I in his presence as I'm with the person that I'm talking to? Am I in his presence as I'm doing this work? because if so, then I think that the prayer is coming from the heart. Oh, that's really good. Yeah, you wouldn't pray the Jesus prayer, experience his presence.

Go, hang about, I'm not meaning, going to go back into the antechamber and mean the words. Yeah, exactly. That's helpful. So we've tried a lot of coffee over the years, but our sponsor, Seven Weeks Coffee, is the one that my wife and I keep coming back to. It's not just great coffee. It's a brand built around values we take seriously. Seven Weeks Coffee is America's Pro Life coffee company on a mission to fund. pro-life movement, one cup of coffee at a time. Now, why are they called seven weeks coffee? Because at seven weeks a baby is the size of a coffee bean. And it's the same time, a heartbeat is clearly detected on an ultrasound. They've built their business around saving lives

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Metropolitan Anthony Bloom says, Oh, I love him. He is lovely. More than any other prayer, the Jesus prayer, aims at bringing us to stand in God's presence with no other thought but the miracle of our standing there and God with us. Because in the use of the Jesus prayer, there is nothing and no one except God and us. Yeah, I like that.

I would also highly recommend his book Beginning to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, beginning to pray. So excellent. I don't know if that's where that excerpt is from. It reminds me, can I share a quote from this book that I brought along with me? You've already made fun of me for the fact that it's large prints, but it's what they had at the library. It's Boys in the Boat by Daniel Brown, and it's about these Americans who went to the Berlin Olympics for rowing. But I read this the other day, and it reminded me so much of the Jesus prayer. As they struggled to regain their form, the Washington freshman came up with a mantra that their coxon George Mori chanted as they rode. Mori shouted, M-I-B, M-I-B, over and over to the rhythm of their stroke.

The initialism stood for mind-in boat. It was meant as a reminder that from the time an oarsman steps into a racing shell until the moment that the boat crosses the finish line, he must keep his mind focused on what is happening inside the boat. His whole world must shrink down to the small space within the gunwales. He must maintain a singular focus on the rower just ahead of him and the voice of the coxswain calling out commands. Nothing outside the boat, not the boat in the next lane over, not the cheering of a crowd of spectators, not last night's date, can enter the successful oresman's mind. M.I.B. Nothing, his whole world must shrink down to the small space within it. And I'm like, that's what

the Jesus Spirit is for us. Like this is our, this is our chanting to bring our mind into this moment into the person in front of me, into the space that I'm in. It's a constant, Akadia or acedia sloth is always a pulling out of the present in some way. It's a, a pulling into the future, a pulling into the past. It's a pulling out of now. And the Jesus prayers meant as Metropolitan Anthony Bloom said, it's meant to be a calling us into the presence of a standing in the presence of God and being where we are. Oh, that's good. We used to, someone used to meet with our community to just help us with like, I don't know, life skills, conflict resolution, stuff like that. And she used to always ask us at the beginning of our meetings, are you where your feet are?

And I'm like, that's it. That's the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer brings us where our feet are. That's excellent. And I love, you know, in our previous interview, you were talking about how we don't live in a two-story world. We often tend to think of God's up there and we're down here. I love that you're demonstrating that by reading a book on rowing and bringing out these beautiful spiritual insights. Yeah, someone recently said to me, you know, God, the devil doesn't need to get you to commit all sorts of depraved sins. He just needs you to be like consumed with the future or the past. Oh, absolutely. And I do that quite often where it's like I escape into some fantasy world that isn't mine and they will never be mine or I'm hung up on something stupid I said or worried about or

embarrassed about or proud about or something that's happened somewhere else. And so that I'm not actually here. I often think sins of the flesh especially and maybe other sins that are somewhat intoxicating are just a way to not be here. Much of our dissociative behavior is like that, whereas the invitation is like, no, remain here. Don't go anywhere. Stay here, like in the pain, in the awkwardness, in the whatever.

Yeah, because God is an ever-present God, which means he's always now. He's not a god of the future. He's not a god of the past. He's the god of the ever-present, the ever-now. And so, yeah, the devil wants us to be pulled away from being in the now with him. Tell me what you think of this analogy. It came to me.

It felt pretty powerful. It might not be. All right. I'm excited. All right. So the scriptures talk about us being temples of the Holy Spirit, you know? And you're like, well, I don't know what that means, right? But I don't know how plastic is made.

So it makes sense that I wouldn't know that. But what it must mean, in part, is that God is somehow. within me, I guess. I don't know what that means either, but I suppose, therefore, I can be attentive to him. I can stand before him, as it were. And that seems to be the point of the Christian life, hey? And so then I had this thought, I was sitting on a porch with my beautiful dog, Pushkin, who's hopefully gone onto his reward, depending on whose sides you're on. And he'd sit there with me as I'd have my smoke, but he'd get up and he'd wander off, you know. And so long as he's with an eyesight, I'm all right, but sometimes he'd go off and I don't know where he is,

and I'll say, Pushkin, and he'll come back, you know. And so to me, it's like the heart, it's like me calling back the heart, right? So it's like my heart is prone to wander away from the good God to not stand attentive in the temple that I am. And it goes off looking for something and can't find it because it won't be found anywhere else. And the Jesus prayer is like the heart, come back, come back. And so that kind of like reliance on the Jesus prayer for me has been, you know, a lot of the time it's boring and mundane and I don't experience much, but that's what I thought. I like that. I think I would alter it a little bit. I don't know why I like this better, but it feels more right to me, that the Holy Spirit is dwelling within us, within our heart.

And so it's not a, our heart wandering away. It's, it's a, um, us wandering away from our heart. Yeah, okay. Um, and so the Jesus prayer is like, when we pray the prayer from the heart, it's the heart calling us back to it. Because I think it's, you know, we talked about this in, in one of our longer episodes, but, um, it's like the, the concept of when we sin, when we're distracted, when we, whatever. It's a, we're being less us. we're being pulled away from who we actually are. So I think it's almost like a disintegration that happens of we're not one with ourselves.

That's good. I kind of like it more that way. Thank you. I'll think about that. I'll think about that more. Okay, this quote comes from Elder Joseph the Hesercast, who I've already told you, I need to look like one day. He's also great.

I feel like I could pull that beard off. He's a good man. He's rough to read. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I told someone one time that I was reading my elder. my elder Joseph the Hesekast, because that's what the book is called, my elder Joseph the Hesekast, and they were very confused and thought I had an elder name

Joseph. Yes, yes. All right, well, he says, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Let all thine attention and training be in this, walking, sitting, doing, and standing in church before the divine service coming in and going out, keep this unceasingly on thy lips and in thy heart. Before you say something much more profound, I want to say, as I often say, that these practices, I mean, I'm sure maybe you disagree and maybe these much more saintly men than me would disagree, are not required, strictly speaking, for us to live the Christian life or to be saved.

sometimes I think we can fall into this trap of finding something that's incredibly useful and then talking about it because it's blessed us so much as if it were indispensable thereby heaping up burdens on people who are like, okay, what are we going to do? I've got to add this thing to my list, you know? So don't hear that, you know, to our dear listeners who are like, okay, I've already doing the rosary. I'm already, now I've got to do this thing. Don't, if you feel that, that's not my intention at least.

It's just here's another beautiful aid to help. you and it's something you could choose to do if you wanted. Yeah, you know, I, and I don't even have anything really to add to this quote because I feel like it's just what we've already been saying. But I would agree with you. I think, I mean, we are all called to pray without ceasing. That's been made clear. But I don't think that this is the only way to do that. And I do think that we need to be attentive to, again, the Holy Spirit is dwelling within us and we need to be attentive to his movement within us. to what we are being called to enact in our own lives. Because it might even be that, sure, this is something that the Lord wants you to receive and focus on, but maybe not right now.

And when we become so fixated on this is the thing I want to do, this is the thing that I think I need to do to be holy. And we're so fixated on that, even if it's not working, that we're totally missing what the Lord wants to do. So do be attentive to what's happening within. You know, like, the disciples on the way to Amas recognized the Lord and said, we're not our hearts burning within us. So, like, if you're listening to this, you're listening to this about the Jesus prayer,

and your heart is burning within you. And you're like, I want this, then listen to that. But if it's not, then listen to that. Hey, brothers, we live in a strange time. We've never been more connected and yet so many men feel deeply alone. It's easy to fill our days with work, noise, even good things and still not be truly known by anyone. And it's in that kind of isolation that we become vulnerable, drifting, discouraged, and more easily pulled away from who God is calling us to be. I meet men all around the world.

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on how one might begin to pray the Jesus prayer without overdoing it. and then thinking they've failed and giving up or something. But so I, and just during this interview, I've become painfully aware that I may have been misproncing Theophan theocluse this entire time, because you say Theophan or something. I've heard both ways. Good. Theophan, Thiefen, yeah. Well, here's another excellent quote from him.

Zellous Christians have a certain technique that they apply to secure the continual remembrance of God more firmly. I love that so much because I think sin is the forgetting of God. Like turning away from the warmth of the hearth, going out into the frigid cold, looking for life and finding nothing there but barrenness and death. It's the constant repetition of a short prayer ordinarily either Lord have mercy or, and this is important too, right? Like we're not saying, no one is saying this is a magical mantra. You have to get the words right. And we see this here, Lord have mercy. You can do that. Or, and this is preferable because we're using the name of our

Savior, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner. If you haven't heard this, then listen now. If you have never done this, begin now. So with that in mind, what would be some practical suggestions on how someone might begin to pray the Jesus prayer? Yeah, I'll give a few different options. One is you could say, I'm just going to pray, I would say maybe a certain number instead of a certain amount of time, because otherwise if it's time, I feel like you're constantly like checking your watch or you're listening for an alarm or there's, but that's why typically Chotiki, the prayer ropes are broken into certain sections. So it might have 33 or 50 or 100, but it's typically so that if you're assigned a certain number of Jesus prayers as a penance,

then you can track that easily. So anyways, I would say maybe you get a 33 knot Chotky and you you're going to sit in silence and pray around the whole thing one time. And then it's just you'll feel when you reach the end and you don't have to keep your mind on it. Or if you don't want to buy something new and you have a rosary and you want to do it on the rosary beads, that's fine too. Byzantine Jesus is not going to strike you down for praying the Jesus prayer on a rosary. And because Byzantine Jesus and Roman Jesus are the same person. To be very clear. Excruciated.

So that's an option is just say, like, I'm going to pray this once around once a day. You could also link it in with a practice that you already have, like something you do every day. So maybe as I drive to work every day, I'm going to recite the Jesus prayer aloud as I drive to work. And then on the way home, I'll listen to my podcast or do whatever. I like to pray the Jesus prayer as I fall asleep at night. That's had a bit of a Pavlov's dog effect, unfortunately. Like, any time I pray to Jesus prayer in the chapel, I just kind of conk out. But that's also an option is to pray it as you fall to sleep.

Yeah, beautiful. Yeah. We never want to kind of rob spiritual activity of their spiritual power by appealing to their sort of, what would you say, like natural benefits. And yet, you know, there's something really nice, actually, about breathing deep. Yeah. And, you know, we're body-soul composites. We're not ghosts in a machine. And so what we do with our body matters. And I don't know about you, but so often throughout the day, I might notice, why are my shoulders like so crunched up? Okay, just relax here. And just to breathe. See, I read Way of a Pilgrim. That's how I found out about this. So I pray that way, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. And I'll say that with one breath and out. Can I give one other piece of advice is the Psalms are so beautiful and express so many movements of the heart that we sometimes don't even realize our movements of our heart until we read them? And so I also like to sometimes pray the Jesus prayer for, I don't know, for this day or for this week or whatever, incorporating the Psalms.

So, for instance, one of my favorites is to pray Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, my soul waits for you inside. silence. And so if there's a particular scripture in general, but I think particularly the Psalms that strikes you, you can also incorporate that into the Jesus prayer. How would you incorporate and put you on the spot like the Lord as my shepherd? Suppose somebody really enjoys that imagery. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, I rely on you as my shepherd. Yeah. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, guide me as my shepherd, something like that. Lead me beside running waters. Is that how that goes? Still waters.

Still waters. But running would be good too. Literally the opposite of what I said. Thank you for being with us. Where can people learn more about you, your podcast, your monastery? Our monastery website is Christ the bridegroom.org. The podcast that I have with my spiritual father is called What God is Not, and it's on all over the platforms. All right.

Thanks for being on the show. And for those who are watching, go check out our long-form discussion because it was really enjoyable. Yeah, good to be with you. Thank you.