Confessional Lutheranism and the Western Catholic Practice of Ceaseless Prayer

How can we, as Confessional Lutherans, understand the acceptability of the practice of ceaseless prayer as famously taught in the Eastern churches? 

As long as it is not confused with the false construct of late Byzantine EO Palamite soteriology, but is understood properly in the light of the Gospel, then such prayer is fine, and can even be helpful, whether as "ceaseless prayer" (1 Thessalonians 5:17, cf. Luke 18:1, 18:7, 21:36; Romans 12:12; Ephesians 6:18; Colossians 4:2) or as a continual meditation on (cf. Psalms 1:2; 119:15, 97, 98, 99) and recollection of God, or both.

Interestingly enough, St. John Cassian wrote of this practice of ceaseless prayer/meditation in the early 5th Century, in his book, The Conferences, having been taught it even earlier while younger and travelling to Egypt in the late 4th, where he was instructed by an old desert father, Abba Isaac, who had himself known Anthony the Great. Abba Isaac, already old at the time of the conversation with John Cassian, testifies that he had learned this practice of ceaseless prayer and meditation, in this case upon a Psalm verse (O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me), from even older desert fathers. This pushes the date of this practice to at least the generation of the Council of Nicaea.

More specifically, as regards the West, John Cassian had founded a monastery in Marseille, in what is today southern France. So here we see this practice from Egypt finding a home in the West. But it was even more influentially established by St. Benedict, whose 6th Century rule instructed that John Cassian's Conferences be read communally. Of course, pope St. Gregory the Great wrote St. Benedict's biography, so we find Cassian's contributions (despite his misunderstanding of St. Augustine) to be a fairly mainstream part of orthopraxy and personal piety in the West, less so it seems of theology per se.

That is all to say that such forms of prayer are a deep part of Western Christianity, with deep roots at the very latest in the 4th Century, if not earlier. As such, it is perfectly acceptable, and not in any way an artificial import, for Confessional Lutherans to practice ceaseless prayer - again, as long as we understand it in light of the proper distinction between the Law and the Gospel.




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