By Protopresbyter George Dorbarakis
Lord and Master of my life,
give me not a spirit of idleness,
curiosity, lust for power, and idle talking.
Bestow on Your servant instead
a spirit of temperance,
humility, patience, and love.
Yes, Lord King, grant me to see my own offenses,
and not to condemn my brethren,
for You are blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen.
give me not a spirit of idleness,
curiosity, lust for power, and idle talking.
Bestow on Your servant instead
a spirit of temperance,
humility, patience, and love.
Yes, Lord King, grant me to see my own offenses,
and not to condemn my brethren,
for You are blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen.
This short prayer of the great Father and ascetic Teacher, Saint Ephraim the Syrian, is the most well-known prayer of Great Lent and seals its entire course. For it very succinctly places the faithful Christian before the Lord Jesus Christ in order to beg Him, on the one hand, not to allow his heart to take the direction and inclination towards the sinful mindset expressed in the passions of idleness, curiosity, lust for power and idle talk, but on the contrary to turn towards Him, something that will be manifested charismatically with the concrete fruits of temperance, humility, patience and love. The basis of this positive path towards the Lord is, the Saint’s prayer emphasizes, the gift from Him again of self-knowledge as the fixation of the eyes of the soul on the reality of ourselves: the sin and the faults we commit daily, a fact that frees us from the impassioned fixation on the sins of our neighbor and therefore their condemnation.