"Pray continually," Scripture exhorts. "Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus." Striving to obey, christian monks of the East joined adoration and compunction in unceasing prayer. In the course of fourteen centuries, they developed what some have called 'the only perfect way of prayer,' the Jesus Prayer: Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me (a sinner).

Irénée Hausherr, SJ, (1881-1978) was a Jesuit of Alsatian origin and specialist in Greek patristic and monastic spirituality.