Catholics only: Anyone else use the chotki or lestovka?

Anhelyna said:

Riley - I was Eastern Catholic and now am Orthodox , so I hope you will accept my response as it comes from personal knowledge.

Eastern Catholics , on the whole, do not pray using a rosary - a chotki/prayer rope is used for the practice of the Jesus Prayer. Your Priest/Spiritual Father guides you in your use of it.

A Lestovka is similar but is rather different - there are websites - frequently Old Believer - which tell you how to use it. This is not the place for that.

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seashale76 said:

Lestovkas have generally only been popularized recently online among people who, and I really do think this, like the aesthetic. That's it. Personally, I feel that if one isn't an Old Believer they need to leave it alone. Otherwise it's a bougie orthobro kind of thing (aka LARPing).

Prayer ropes are not usually an issue because I really don't think most people are reading the Philokalia and then trying to implement breathing exercises, et cetera. However, I'm just speaking for myself and most normal lay persons I've known. However, I have had more than enough interactions with the worst of the orthobros elsewhere (not here at CF) to tell me that there really are way too many who would try to LARP the Mt. Athos life whilst sipping their Starbucks from behind their computer screens with breathing techniques and the Philokalia in hand with nary a priest in site to guide them.

I'll just say, my last priest heavily promoted praying the Jesus Prayer to everyone. He had classes about it. I was personally told to add the Jesus Prayer to my morning prayers for ten minutes every day. I was told years ago by my priest to not read the Philokalia. As I hadn't planned on it anyway, that was never an issue for me.

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