Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.
This is an ancient prayer which started among the desert monks. They use this as some sort of a mantra wherein they calm themselves achieve peacefulness and one-ness with the Triune God. The idea is to be able to gently and softly empty the mind and the heart of all things ...when a person has arrived into nothingness then we meet the One who necessarily exists...the One...Who has always longed to be with us mortals
Contemporary Catholic practice teaches meditation that is more on thinking and considering scenes in the life of Christ and Mary especially in the gospels (the positive way) but the via negativa (the negative way) is more on detachment and emptiness, a kind of desert experience when a person forsakes all in order to look for God. The eastern mystics of different religions and faiths have been practicing this for centuries and even our very own Catholic religion is not an exception. One should look into the writings of St. John of the Cross as well as The Cloud of the Unknowing in order to see the richness of this orientation and spirituality.
