Saints & Church Fathers
St. Ephraim the Syrian
A deacon of Nisibis and then Edessa, in the Syriac-speaking Church at the eastern edge of the empire, who wrote his theology as hymns and gave them to choirs of women to sing, so that the faith was taught in the streets the way the heretics were teaching theirs. He is called the Harp of the Spirit. His poems on faith, Paradise, the Nativity and the Church refuse to define God and are full of the wonder that God has let Himself be named at all. When Nisibis was handed to Persia he went with the refugees to Edessa, and he died there in 373 organising relief in a famine. The Greek Church knows him through works translated under his name, and above all through the short prayer every Orthodox Christian says with prostrations at the services of Great Lent. Feast: January 28.
The text
The Prayer of St Ephraim
O Lord and Master of my life, give me not a spirit of sloth, of curiosity, of lust for power, and of idle talk.
But grant unto me, Thy servant, a spirit of chastity, of humility, of patience, and of love.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages. Amen.
Κύριε καὶ Δέσποτα τῆς ζωῆς μου, πνεῦμα ἀργίας, περιεργίας, φιλαρχίας καὶ ἀργολογίας μή μοι δῷς.
Πνεῦμα δὲ σωφροσύνης, ταπεινοφροσύνης, ὑπομονῆς καὶ ἀγάπης χάρισαί μοι τῷ σῷ δούλῳ.
Ναί, Κύριε Βασιλεῦ, δώρησαί μοι τοῦ ὁρᾶν τὰ ἐμὰ πταίσματα, καὶ μὴ κατακρίνειν τὸν ἀδελφόν μου, ὅτι εὐλογητὸς εἶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.
Said at every weekday service of Great Lent and in the Lenten rule at home, with a prostration after each of the three petitions. The Greek asks to be spared περιεργία, curiosity; the Slavonic asks to be spared уныние, despondency, and both have been prayed for centuries. The English here follows the Greek printed beside it.
Sources
- St. Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns on Faith NPNF, seven of them (The Pearl)
- St. Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise
- St. Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns on the Nativity NPNF
- The Horologion and the Triodion, the Prayer of St. Ephraim archive.org, to borrow
Connections
In the calendar: 28 January