“Lord, have mercy” – A Psalmic Paradigm for the Prayer of the Heart

In this study, I aim to emphasize that the psalmic prayer חָנֵּנִי יהוה (Lord have mercy) is the early form and the foundation of the Prayer of the Heart. It has been generally accepted that Jesus' prayer, in its established form – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner – originates in the Holy Scripture, particularly in the gospels. In this research, I will prove that the New Testament contains an echo of psalmic spirituality. Those who first invoked God’s name and asked for divine mercy to be poured out on them were the authors of psalms. To demonstrate this reality, I will resort to the Eastern Orthodox interpretation method without excluding the interpretation rigors of the critical school. I will use the latter, especially when I tackle terminological delimitations and identify the occurrences of the imperativeחָנֵּנִי / ἐλέησόν. In this study, I will capture, in a few chapters, how the psalmic Prayer of the Heart (Lord, have mercy) became the prayer of the heart.