Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia of Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the Bridegroom

monastery and this is Pines with Aquinas. Our community is friends with a coptic orthodox community of nuns who live pretty close to us.

And one time when we were spending an afternoon with them,

one of the nuns shared with us that she has this practice of in order to more fully

pray the Psalms and make the Psalms more a part of her day, she'll sometimes

incorporate the Psalms into the Jesus prayer. So the Jesus prayer

is this very ancient prayer that many of the fathers have used and it's more or less there are different

variations but it's more or less Lord Jesus Christ son of God have mercy on me

a sinner.

So what this particular none will do

is she'll take a verse from the Psalm

and incorporate it into that prayer

and pray it kind of on repeat to let the words sink into her heart.

And I kind of adopted this practice and have found it to be really fruitful in my own life.

One of my favorite verses from the Psalms is from Psalms 61 in the Septuigent,

62 in the Hebrew numbering.

And it's in both verses 1 and 5.

For God alone, my soul waits in silence. For God alone, my soul waits in silence.

For God alone, my soul waits in silence.

So I will often, just during the day, maybe while I'm doing dishes, or if I go for a walk or something like that,

I'll incorporate this Psalm into the Jesus prayer and say Lord Jesus Christ, Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, my soul waits for you in silence.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, my soul waits for you in silence.

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