For more than a year � beginning in May 2020 � Pope Francis has offered an ongoing cycle of teaching on "prayer" during his weekly General Audience. On June 9, 2021, on his next to last catechesis on the subject, the Holy Father reflected on "perseverance in prayer," and what it means to "pray constantly" � the invitation and command of scripture, taken from St Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians. This invitation was the inspiration for the journey of the Russian pilgrim in the 19th-century ascetical work The Way of the Pilgrim. Pope Francis recalled that the pilgrim learned to say the Jesus prayer, "a prayer that, little by little, adapts itself to the rhythm of breath and extends throughout the day."