Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian

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, δώρησαι μοι τοῦ ὁρᾶν τὰ ἐμὰ πταίσματα, καὶ μὴ κατακρίνειν τὸν ἀδελφόν μου, ὅτι εὐλογητὸς εἶ, εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.

O Lord and Master of my life, give me not the spirit of sloth, idle curiosity , lust for power and idle talk.

But grant unto me, Thy servant, a spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love.

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see mine own faults and not to judge my brother. For blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Here is the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian, who, some traditions claim, was born in Nisibis [modern Nusaybin, Turkey] within the first few years of the 4^th Century.

On October 5, 1920, Pope Benedict XV proclaimed St. Ephrem as a Doctor of the Church because of the richness of his hymn cycles and homilies, and most particularly for the depth of his insights into Scripture. There are approximately 400 poetic hymns attributable directly to St. Ephrem that have come down to us today.

St. Ephrem was a wild boy, lazy and recalcitrant, susceptible to temptations of the flesh, with a hot temper. A brief imprisonment reoriented his attention and while still a youth, he joined a group of ascetic men and women, called respectively, brothers and sisters of the covenant This group was a Syriac prototype of early Christian monasticism, that was also in its infancy in Egypt at the time of St. Ephrem's years in Nisibis. We can see now that there were many ascetic ideas and practices shared in these early monastic communities of the near and middle east. Some of the most important counsels concerning the ascetic life and life of unceasing prayer are contained in this Lenten supplication from the stylus of St. Ephrem. During this period St. Ephrem also became a highly revered and talented student in the exegetical tradition of his patron, James, Bishop of Nisibi. For his exegetical illumination, St. Ephrem earned the title of Doctor of the Syrians.

When Nisibi was overrun by the Persians in 363, St. Ephrem moved from his great house in Nisibi that had become a renowned center for the study of Scripture. He went to Edessa where he lived in solitude, only leaving his retreat to preach and teach, and during a great famine where he spent the waning energies of his old age in begging for the poor and working to help them though an otherwise impossible time of starvation and grinding poverty.

Tradition also tells us that he was ordained to the deaconate by St. Basil the Great, though he refused to be ordained to the priesthood, but rather taught hymnody and preached the gospel to ordinary people and nuns. Of Ephrem, St. John Chrysostom wrote: "The great Ephrem is scourge of the slothful, consoler of the afflicted, educator, instructor and exhorter of youth, mirror of monks, leader of penitents, goad and sting of heretics, reservoir of virtues, and the home and lodging of the Holy Spirit." [from PRINCIPI APOSTOLORUM PETRO (On St. Ephrem the Syrian), Benedict XV]

“Oh Lord and Master of my life, give to me not the spirit of sloth...” In this striking and powerful opening to the prayer above, St. Ephrem does two things:

He surrenders all of himself to Christ by calling on him as Lord and as Master, but not just as Lord and Master at a distance, but as Lord and Master of my life!! A Lord and Master intimately and personally engaged with each of us, from the very beginning of our life.

And then he implores of Him, this divine ruler and teacher, author of life, to protect him from all temptations of the spirit of sloth. He begs to be relieved from this one great debilitating weakness, from even the least temptation toward doubt, or lameness of spirit. He begs freedom from spiritual lassitude and apathy that deadens the heart and the intellect equally leaving one open to all the rest of what comes when we convince ourselves we cannot ever become truly holy, when we kill in ourselves all hope and thus all faith, and thereby all our capacity to truly love selflessly.

The Greek text here translates as acedia, or sloth prompted by spiritual despondency, which is the self-delusion of the impossibility of ever achieving sanctity. Acedia is the great scourge of the monastic, and of all lay men and women who choose to follow the royal way of contemplative prayer and ascetic living, and even of those who watch from a distance but still try to lead a life influenced by the gospels and by liturgy and liturgical prayer.

To pray this prayer aloud and with open heart, it cannot help but plunge us into the depths of humility. St. Ephrem declares emphatically, from the very first moment, that none but Christ is Master of Life, Master of each individual life, whether we offer ourselves to Him or not.

None of the rest of the prayer can be prayed without this initial surrender and the humble petition for the spiritual freedom, the graced freedom necessary to fulfill the rest of the prayer.

But there is another key to this prayer and that is in its simple-minded presumption that if one asks for the grace to be gracious and spiritually free that it will be there. For fallen man, who fell out of grace by choice, to say to the Christ “Give to me not...!!” is the height of great expectations.

Who are we to say “give to me not....”? Well not only did St. Ephrem learn some things about freedom while enslaved to the temptations of the world, but he also learned something about his Lord and Master in the meanwhile as well. He learned that if you ask of God any grace necessary to sanctity that which is profane, your petition would never be denied. We may or may not be granted earthly treasures but of the treasures of heaven, we will be given, pressed down and over flowing.

It would not be for another ten years or more after the death of St. Ephrem that St. John Cassian would cross over the land, where the teachings of St. Ephrem were widely known, to stay for a time in a monastery in Bethlehem. It was from the renown of the great teacher, St. Ephrem and another contemporary, Evagrius Ponticus of Egypt, that St. John would learn of the Greco-Roman list of evil temptations and thoughts. And so it was in that patrimonial line of eastern monastic fathers, and from the systematic stylus of St. John Cassian that the western catholic world would get what we now recognize as the list of the seven deadly sins. In the Greco-Roman tradition there were in fact eight evil thoughts whose definitions and cures comprised most of what we know as St. John Cassian's Institutes.

But it seems to me as I sit here writing that the most important message that both St. Ephrem and St. John teach us, is the lesson which makes all else possible and spiritually useful. It is this great and holy presumption that when it comes to our sanctity there is nothing too great to ask for, to nag for, to presume to expect, to dare to hope:

"For the Lord, Who wants to bestow what is eternal and heavenly. encourages us as it were to coerce Him by our persistence. He not only neither disdains nor refuses the persistent but He even welcomes and praises them, and He very graciously promises that He will give them whatever they have perseveringly hoped for when He says: 'Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who seeks finds, and to everyone who knocks it shall be opened.' And again: 'Everything whatever that you ask for in prayer you shall receive if you believe, and nothing shall be impossible for you.' "

St. John Cassian.

Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian