The Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, soaring with their wings, singing the victory hymn, proclaiming, crying out, and saying:

…I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet, and with two they hovered aloft. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts!” they cried one to the other. “All the earth is filled with his glory!” At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke.”

This vision, perceived by the holy prophet Isaiah, give us a wonderfully vivid description of the throne of God and how those who are before this throne act. The Seraphim, one of the classes of Angels, cover their faces at the sight of the glory of God, humbling themselves before the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. In their modesty they also cover their bodies, knowing that no one, not even they, are worthy to stand in the sight of God. But even so, they also hover before God, eager to be in that presence and to study the might and wisdom of Him. They continually glorify God, calling out to each other and any who will hear that God is holy, God is set apart from every created thing, God is over and above wholly different from anything that has, does, and will exist.

How often do we today act like this? How often do we show the reverence and respect to the Almighty? Instead we speak casually about God, we refer to God incarnate as “JC” or as merely a “friend” whom we have a relationship with. We speak about what God has done for us, how he has helped us, what we hope he will do for us. This is a backwards way of thinking! We should instead be thinking about what we can do for Him, we should talk about His glory, and every sentence we utter about Him should be worshipful. Let us take a cue from the Angels and ceaslessly sing of His glory!

 

The best way to earn forgiveness:

How often does someone do something to you that gets you all riled up? As human beings without control over our passions it doesn’t take much for us to feel slighted, to feel like someone has done us wrong. And often times when we feel this way we hang on to it. “I can’t believe that that driver this morning cut me off like that… and then drove five miles per hour UNDER the speed limit!” “I’m so mad at Brian! I can’t believe that he had the nerve to question my work competance!” and so forth and so on.

And then, even though we hold on to these small offences and wallow in them, we expect other people to forgive us should we make a mistake, or accidentally offend someone. And even more, we expect God to forgive us when we commit an offence against Him. St. John Climacus, the author of the well known Ladder of Divine Ascent has this to say:

Some labor and struggle hard to earn forgiveness, but better than these is the man who forgets the wrongs done to him. Forgive quickly and you will be abundantly forgiven. To forget wrongs is to prove oneself truly repentant, but to brood on them and at the same time to imagine one is practicing repetance is to act like the man who is convinced he is running when in fact he is fast asleep. (emphasis mine)

I think that this is a lesson that every single one of us should take to heart. If we expect forgiveness then we should first forgive, and not just in certain situations, but in every situation. I often tell people that I think that the Lord’s Prayer (Our Father) is the most dangerous prayer that we can pray, and mostly because of the line “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In this prayer we are asking God to show mercy on us only to the same extent that we show mercy to others!

Anyways, I don’t really have much else to add to this thought, I just wanted to present it and let anyone who might read this think about it.

IC | XC
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NI | KA

 

Against “Sola Fide”

Reject those who say we need only our own free will and not prayer to help us keep from sin. Even the Pharisee wasn’t blinded by such darkness. For, although he mistakenly thought he only needed his own righteousness (and believed he was saturated with it), nevertheless, he thanked God that he wasn’t “like other men, unjust, extortioners, adulterers…” Yet it isn’t a question of prayers alone, as if we don’t need to include our willful efforts. For although God is “our Helper,” we cannot be helped if we don’t make some effort of our own. God doesn’t work out salvation in us as if we are dull stones or creatures without reason or will.

-St. Augustine of Hippo (emphasis mine)

Sola Fide, or “faith alone” is a protestant doctrine that human beings need only have faith in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. Those who ascribe to this view see man’s relationship with God as very judicial; we human beings are “criminals” by virtue of our fallen nature and soley by believing in Christ, God gives us a judicial pardon (justification) and decides to save us. We play absolutely no part in this salvation outside of merely believing in God. I (as well as both branches of ancient historical Christianity) have a problem with this, and my personal reasons are three fold: (1) It is irreconcilable with normal human behavior and is essentially a “get out of hell free” card, (2) the idea of a judicial pardon is irreconcilable with the idea of an all powerful God, and (3) it is demeaning to the creations of God and ignores the gifts which He has given us.

(1) Get out of hell free: I say that the doctrine of sola fide is likened to the Monopoly game’s get out of jail free card because if all that is needed for salvation is belief, then it ignores how we act. Now, I will agree that faith is the jumping off point, the essential beginning step for salvation, but it is not enough to retain that salvation. If all I need to get to heaven is to believe in Christ (and what exactly is it that we’re supposed to ‘believe’ in order to gain the salvation?) then as long as I have that faith, can I go out and do anything I want? Can I continue to live in the world, valueing money, gratifying my body and the desires of my passions etc. and still get to heaven as long as I “believe” in Christ? This just doesn’t make sense!

In Orthodox Christianity (as well as Roman Catholicism) salvation is a dynamic process. We do not say that we “are saved,” rather we say that “we have been saved, are being saved, and will be saved.” You have to work to keep your salvation! This isn’t to say that salvation comes about by human effort, not at all! Salvation can only be granted by God. But if we truley believe that Jesus Christ was God. If we truley believe that the Kingdom of Heaven is near, if we truley believe in everything that God has revealed to the world from the time of Noah down to the time of Christ, then we will be active in our faith. We will strive to conquer our will, we will fight to overcome our passions, we will learn the tacticts of the demons and the subversive logismoi and learn to fight against them, trying as hard as we can to live like Christ and how God wants us to. It is not enough to say “I love you Jesus!” and then think that we are automatically granted entry into the Kingdom.

(2) We must be reconciled, not God: This reason I have against the idea of sola fide actually has its roots in the whole western conception of original sin and salvation. Western Christianity (Roman Catholicism and Protestantism) tends to view original sin as some sort of stain on the soul which each of us inherits at birth. Because of this view, the Western idea of salvation tends to be that we must appease the wrath of God and ask for forgiveness for this sin on our souls. It is seen much like a court process: God is the stern judge, and we are the defendants. We must plead our case before God and then hope that he chooses to forgive us. But let me ask this, if God is truley just, then why does He hold us responsible for a sin which we did not commit?

Eastern Christianity has never seen salvation like this. We are only responsible for the sins which we ourselves commit. We do not inherit some stain on the soul. Rather, what we inherit are the results of the original sin; death and subjugation to the passions. If you view salvation in the manner that the Western Churches do then in effect what you say is that we have to reconcile God to us; we have to make God change His mind and they way that He views us. Again, this view is mistaken! It is us who would be changing, not God. It is us who should change the way that we live and us who have to work to live how God wants us. If you believe in sola fide then you unequivocally buy into this idea that God must change to justify us, rathern we changing in orther that we be justified.

(3) We are not cattle: My last major objection to sola fide comes from the complete helplessness that it leaves the human race. Sola fide assumes that human beings are completely depraved and absolutely helpless to do anything to change the situation. How demeaning is this! We are told that we are made in the image and likeness of God. To say that we are such base creatures as to not be able to do anything under our own power but wallow in sin rejects this truth. No, we human beings, while not having the power to actually achieve salvation on our own, do have the ability to work towards it, to prove to God that we are trying to live how He wants. We are not dumb animals, walking around in the dark praying for someone to turn the lights on for us. We are icons of God.

The truth that the Eastern Orthodox Church has proclaimed for nearly 2,0oo years—since the time of the Apostles—is this: Adam and Eve, acting as representatives of all of humanity, were created in the image and the likeness of God. At the time of creation our will was perfectly in tune with God and because of this there was no corruption in our bodies, we could see and talk to God easily. The fall from this state of grace was the result of going against the will of God. The result of this was that it because increasingly harder to do the will of God and so we left the state of grace which we lived in. No longer partakers of the divine grace corruption entered our bodies, meaning that we don’t have easy control over our will and passions, and eventually the material body corrupts tot he point to where it cannot sustain life or the soul (death). God didn’t abandon us though, and chose the Israelites to teach how to enter back into that state of grace. To make it easier for us to overcome our will and to realign it with God’s, He gave the Israelites commandments and laws. These served as a way to deny the things that we want, and to eventually overcome those wants.

Over time however the Israelites looked to those rules and laws and ends in themselves. They saw them as the way of achieving salvation, rather than as a jumping point. So, God became incarnate in the flesh and came down Himself to teach us a new way. He became a rolemodel for us, showing us how to live, how to love, and teaching still that we must deny ourselves and look to God on how to live. By dying on the Cross, the immortal destroyed the power of death, and opened up the gates of Heaven so that now when the body fails, the soul has the opportunity to go straight to Heaven and be with its Creator.

In order to this we must acknowledge God as the only true God, and Christ as God Himself. We must acknowledge that we often live for ourselves, gratifying our passions and seeking after our own will. Futher, we must deny this and work to conquer this will and instead do the will of God. We must have faith that by doing this we can reach the state of Adam and Eve before the fall, and then once in that state we can strive to grow in God, and to learn more and more about Him. We cannot reach God through our own power, but neither are we powerless in our struggle. Salvation is a two way process: God has set up the right conditions and waits for us with open arms, while it is up to us to see those conditions and to run willingly into those arms.

May God bless you during this period while we eagerly await the celebration of His ressurection!

IC | XC
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NI | KA

 

God will take away your gifts…

So here we are, ending the third day of the Great Fast. This is the time of the year when we are to really strive to live lives pleasing to God, to purify ourselves of harmful passions, and to fill our lives with spiritual thing things. I’ve been reading a wholly edifying book known as the Unseen Warfare which was written by a Roman Catholic priest in the 1600s, and over time made its way to Mt. Athos, and then to Russia where two Eastern Orthodox monks, St. Nikodemus and St. Theophan translated, edited, and made some changes to it.

In chapter 20, How to overcome negligence, it states:

Let the conviction never leave your thought that a single raising of your mind to God, and a single humble genuflexion to His glory and in His honour has infinitely more value than all the treasures of the world; that every time we banish negligence and force ourselves  to do the work we should with diligence, Angles in heaven prepare for us the crown of a glorious victory; and that, on the contrary, not only has God no crowns for the negligent, but that little by little He takes back from them the gifts He bestowed upon them for their former diligence in His service, and will finally deprive them of His kingdom if they continue to be negligent, as He said in the parable of guests bidden to supper, who were too lazy to come: ‘For I say unto you, that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper’ (Luke xiv. 24).

This is a very power statement, and one that I believe we should really think over during this lenten period.  It is only be continuing to progress on the spiritual path, by continuing to subdue and conquer our harmful passions and striving to align our will with the will of God that we can be assured of the Kingdom of God. If we are negligent in this task, and focus instead of gratifying our own base instincts and working to please our selves, or even if we just stop in a neutral position, God won’t punish us right away, but the longer we wait to restart our work, the more of His grace God removes from us until we have fallen so far from Him that we lose our salvation.

I pray that God will keep us all strong over the next 46 days until Easter, that we will have the strength, courage, and conviction to run the entire course of the fast, and that we can use this time of “concentrated Christianity” to regain what Grace we’ve lost, and refocus our energies into worshiping the Most Holy Trinity. May God bless you all!

IC | XC
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NI | KA

 

Lent is a useless tradition…

Lent is a useless tradition. It is nothing more than acting like the Pharisee in the temple; standing before the crowd where everyone can see how ‘holy’ you are, and praying to God saying that you are thankful that you are not like the rest of those dirty sinners. Lent is a pointless, prideful tradition which was created by man, is not found in the Bible, and so not something we should do.

At least… this is what many Protestants and those not familiar with a liturgical Church calendar would have you think. And this might understandably be the view given the popular Roman Catholic conception of the season; eating fish on Fridays instead of meat and giving up chocolate for 40 days but giving in and then up halfway through. Now, I mean no offense to my Roman Catholic cousins, but you have to admit, the popular conception of Lent does seem a little shallow.

I once heard the Orthodox Church described as the “Marine Corp of Christianity” and I think that this is a very apt description, especially when it comes to Lent. The Orthodox Church prescribes the strictest fasting requirements of the whole year during the 40 day lenten period and while I won’t go into the specifices, the general rule is no meat, eggs, dairy, wine, or oil for the entire 40 days. But why? What is the point? What good does it do?

In order to understand the purpose if Great Lent (and I’m going to give it from an Orthodox viewpoint) you have to understand the way that the Orthodox Church sees the issue of original sin and how that differs from the Roman Catholic Church (and by extention Protestant churches)  view, and how it influences the idea of salvation.

The Western conception of original sin is that it is some blight, some stain on the soul of every human being. The Christian then must ask God to forgive her for carrying around this burden, and ask that God would remove it from her. Because of this view the Western view of Christianity tends to run very legal: When we commit a sin it is as if we broke a law that God has. Once we break this law we must approach God as if standing before a judge in a courtroom and plead our case, asking God to forgive us. If we do not ask for forgiveness then we will be punished for breaking that law.  Because of this legalistic Western worldview, Christ’s death on the cross came to be seen as an atonement for our sins. A lot of people see it like I recently read on another blog (which prompted me to write this post); that Christ’s death was a sacrifice which had to be made to God in order for God to forgive our sins, and that Christ was the only creature worthy of acting as this sacrificial lamb.

While the Eastern Church does agree that Christ’s death was a sacrifice on our behalf, She does not teach that it was a sacrifice of atonement in the same way as the West. Instead original sin being a stain on the soul, and us having to ask forgiveness for a sin which we did not commit, the Eastern Church teaches that when Adam and Eve commit the first sin, by disobeying the will of God they broke a certain harmony that existed between us and God. We were made in the image and likeness of God, but when we followed our own will over and above God’s, we ‘blurred’ the image, and the effect of this was that we became subject to our passionate will (it became harder to overcome the longer we gave it attention), and material corruption (i.e. aging and eventually the breakdown of the body to such a point that it is unable to sustain life and contain the soul).

When God decided to send His Pre-Existent Word to us, and by the Word became incarnate and God in a sense marrying the Divine with the material, He re-sanctified the image in us that had been corrupted by sin. He made it possible for us to once again, with His help, conquer our passionate will and realign it with His will, thus fulfilling the purpose we were created for and worshipping Him.

When Christ died on the cross his divine nature decended with his human nature into the land of the dead. Being He-Who-Cannot-Be-Contained, the land of the dead could not hold Him and its fatalistic hold over humanity was broken; it is no longer a necessary consequence of life that we die and go, all of us, sinner and saint, to a land of seperation from God. To prove that he had destroyed death, Christ came back to life.

What does this have to do with Great Lent? Everything! Great Lent is a 40 day period of purification, reflection, and anticipation. It is intimately married with the Holy Day of Pascha (Easter), and infact Pascha is the entire reason for Great Lent. During this 40 day period preceeding the celebration of Christ’s ressurection we work to, even though we know we will never be to fully, make ourselves worthy of this glorious ’second chance’ that God has given us. We practice the ascetic practices as a way of training ourselves to sublimate our will when it does not conform to God’s. We study the scriptures with an enhanced fervor, we attend church more often, we struggle to keep God before us in heart and mind constantly. We reflect on what God has done for us and we praise Him for his long-suffering and patience when dealing with us. We strive to set our selves on a path that will take full advantage of this opportunity which God gives to everyone.

Lent is is a holiday in the fullest sense of the word as being a holy time, set apart from normal life for a specific purpose. It’s when we change our lives, instead of changing things to suit our lives. It is a time when we change our mode of thinking and remember that we are Christians, that we are not of this world, and that we have an opportunity that, sadly, the proud or ignorant might never take advantage of, and opportunity with eternal ramifications.

And perhaps most importantly, it is a time of eager anticipation when we await the glorious celebration of our victory over death and sin, and when we welcome (liturgically) Christ back to the world.

It might be a time of sorrow for our offenses, but it is a joyful sorrow; the sorrow of a Bride who is seperated from her Bridegroom, though she knows the reason is so that she can get ready for the wedding.

 

Return to me…with fasting, and weeping, and mourning…

Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment. Perhaps He will again relent and leave behind Him a blessing, offereings and libations for the LORD, your God. Blow the trumpet in Zion! Proclaim a fast, call an assembly; gather the people, notify the congregation; assemble the elders, gather the children and the infants at the breast; let the bridgroom quit his room, and the brider her chamber.  Between the porch and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep, and say “Spare, O LORD, your people, and make not your heritage a reproach, with the nations ruling over them! Why should they say amon the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

With that, one of the daily readings for today as specified by the Chruch calendar, the Eastern Orthodox Church calls her faithful to begin preparing for Great Lent. This is a 40 day period of purification and prepation for the faithful as we eagerly await Pascha–the celebration of Christ’s ressurection from the dead, the single most important moment in all of Christianity and without which the entire religion would not exist.

This 40 day period is also the strictest when it comes the Church’s proscribed fasting rule.  Officially from the morning of the firstday of Great Lent, a Monday, until evening three days later on Wednesday, no food is eaten. After that for the remaining time we do not eat meat, eggs, dairy, fish, wine, oil, or anything with those ingredients in them or are animal byproducts, with the exception being Saturdays and Sundays when wine and oil are permitted.

This more than the just “I’m going to give up chocolate for Lent” mentality that seems so pervasive. This is mortifying our bodies in an effort to overcome our own passionate will and to recognize that we rely on our God to provide for us and ensure our continued existence.

The Church Fathers have recognized for two millenium the value of hunger when fighting against the passions.  The Desert Father Abba Evagnus has said:

Lust is extinguished by hunger.

The great Russian Saint, St. Seraphim of Sarov said:

The passions are exiterminated by sorrow and suffereing, either voluntary or sent by Providence.

And these are just two of many examples.

Great Lent begins on March 2nd according to the New Calendar this year. For all of my Orthodox brothers and sisters, both here and worldwide, I humbly pray to God that this Lenten season will be edifying and profitable to you all. Let us struggle together to carry the weight of a self-inflicted cross, to fight against our passionate wills, and reflect upon what it is that our Great and Glorious King and God has done for us: He has set us from the snares of everlasting death and has corrected the Ancient Error so that we might have the means and the opportunity to recapture the Divine Image and Likeness and live in love in His presence.

To my Roman Catholic cousins who begin their Lenten period today, I pray that you will humble your hearts before God during this period, that you might treat it as not ‘Ordinary Time,’ but as extra-ordinary, other-worldly, sanctified time. Treat it as such, change your life to conform to this holy period and I am sure that it will be beneficial  to your souls as well.

Lastly, for the Protestants who do not follow a liturgical Church calendar, I pray that you might find your way back to this ancient observance and set it apart as a time of repentance and anticipation as well.

We are preparing for the second and more glorious Advent of Christ our God, greater than even Christmas. The only event that will ever be more important than this one to Christians will the third one! May God bless you all!

IC | XC
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NI | KA

 

…for your heart has become a throne of God.

Something I believe that we Christians raised in the West (and especially those raised in the Protestant West) are not taught to be aware of value to be found in having a 2,000 year old history behind our faith.  If we were to pay more attention to this history then we would find that everything we struggle with has already been struggled over, every question we have has already been answered, and the narrow path we are trying to walk has been walked by numerous holy men and woman before us, some who’s names have been lost to history but some who the Church has recognized as exemplifying the holy life and dedication to God. We can learn so much from these holy saints if only we listen. One piece of advice comes from a recent saint who died in the early 1900s:

Seek God daily. But seek Him in your heart, not outside it. And when you find Him, stand with fear and trembling, like the Cherubim and Seraphim, for your heart has become a throne of God. But in order to find God, become humble as dust before the Lord, for the Lord abhors the broud; whereas He vists those that are humble in heart, wherefore He says: ‘To whom will I look, but to the one who is meek and humble in heart?’

Eastern Orthodoxy is not an intellectual faith, though the Orthodox Church has nurtured some of the greatest theologians that Christianity has ever known; Orthodoxy is an experiential faith, a faith that you <i>live</i>.  You have to actively seek God out yourself; He’s not going to come to you, but waits eagerly for you to find Him. The Saints, like St. Nektarios, show us <i>how</i> to find God. St. Nektarios is telling us here that the most important step to take when seeking out God is to humble ourselves. To recognize that even though here on earth we have (God given) dominion over all the plants and animals, before God we are as specks of dust.

When we restrict our pride, when we push it out of our heart, we make room to receive the grace of God. As Christians we claim to have faith that Christ made right the Ancient Curse and that God exists and loves us. Instead of merely saying that though, if we really truley believe it, then we change our selves and how we live. We will change ourselves to conform to the will of God. We will get rid of our evil desires and learn to control our passions so that when God chooses to make Himself known to us He will find us undistracted and able to feel His touch and hear His voice. When you feel the touch of God and receive the Holy Spirit and are filled with Grace, then you will know you have found God and just like the Cherubim and the Seraphim, six-winged and many eyed, you can stand before the throne of God, singing the victory hymn, crying out and saying: Holy, holy, holy are you our God!

IC | XC
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NI | KA

 

How to treat a sinner…

The authors of Unseen Warfare give some very sage advise when it comes to witnessing someone else sin, and I think that it is some advice that has largely been neglected today. People tend to have this image of Christians that we should be perfect, and that if we aren’t perfect then we aren’t true Christians. The reality of the fact though is that the only difference between a true Christian and a non-Christian is that we as Christians recognize, acknowledge, and attempt to cut off our sin. We still sin. It is part of our fallen nature. With that in mind, Unseen Warfare states:

Never allow yourself boldly to judge your neighbour; judge and condemn no one, especially for the particular bodily sin of which we are speaking [lust]. If someone has manifestly fallen into it, rather have compassion and pity for him. Do not be indignant with him or laugh at him, but let his example be a lesson in humilty to you; realising that you too are extremely weak and as easily moved to sin as dust on the road, say to yourlf: ‘He fell today, but tomorrow I shall fall.’

Rather than seeing someone sinning, or who has sinned, and thinking like the Publican “At least I am not like them” we should be moved to feel compassion for them since we, like them, are just as vulnerable, and indeed if we get into a habit of judging others and feeling ourselves better than them then we will fall into the worst sin of all, <b>pride</b>.

Imagine it like this: You are in the middle of a ferocious war. It is you and the rest of humanity against an evil pervading force. Do you laugh at or scorn a member of your own army when they fall? No! You realize what it was that made them fall so that you are not attacked the same way, and then you mourn for your fallen comrade.

As the saying goes, we are not an island. Each and every single human being on this earth is a creation of the Lord God Almighty, and so it is a sad thing when any single one of them falls away from the way which God would have us.

IC | XC
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NI |KA

 

Orthodox Morning Prayers: to the Theotokos, and the Conclusion

*This is the sixth and final in a series of posts of Eastern Orthodox morning prayers. I say the prayers in the order that they will be posted, but feel free to rearrange and single out the prayers as you see fit! All Glory and Honor to the Holy Trinity!

To the Theotokos

O my most holy Lady, the Theotokos, by your holy and all-powerful prayers to the Lord our God, remove fro me, your humble and burdened servant, despair, forgetfulness, lack of understanding, and negligence, and take away all unclean, crafty and blameworthy thoughts from my smitten heart, and from my darkened mind; quench the flame of my passion, for I am poor and lost; deliver me from my cruel recollections and undertakings, and set me free from all evil actions; for you are blessed of all generations, and your most honorable name is glorifed unto the ages of ages. Amen.

It is truley right to call you blessed…

It is truley right to call you blessed, O Theotokos, ever blessed and most pure and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim, who without corruption did bear God the Word, you, O Theotokos, we laud and magnify.

Glory be to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

O Lord Jesus Chris, the Son of God, for the sake of the prayers of your most pure Mother, of Saint (name of patron saint), of Saint (name of saint commemorated on this day), and of all your Saints, have mercy upon us, and save us, for you alone are a merciful God and loves all mankind. Amen.

 

Orthodox Morning Prayers: St. Basil, and to the Angel

*This is the fifth in a series of posts of Eastern Orthodox morning prayers. I say the prayers in the order that they will be posted, but feel free to rearrange and single out the prayers as you see fit! All Glory and Honor to the Holy Trinity!

A prayer by St. Basil

O Lord Almighty, God of Angelic hosts and of all flesh, that dwells in the highest, and cares for the humble, that searches the reins and the heart, and clearly discerns the hidden things of men, Light from eternity and ever-existent, with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning: O King Immortal receive our prayers which we, trusting in the multitude of your mercies, offer to you at this present time from our soiled lips; forgive us our transgressions which we have  committed knowingly  or unknowingly in thought or word or deed; and cleanse us from all stain of body or soul. Grant us to pass throu all the night of this present life with vigilant heart and sober thought, in expectancy of the coming of the bright and manifest day of your Only-begotten Son, our Lord God and Savior, Jesus Christ, in which shall with glory the Judgement of all men, when to each shall be given the reward of his works: may we not fall away into sloth, but take courage and, being roused to action, be found ready and enter intot he joy and the divine bride-chamber of his glory, where the voice of those that feast is never silent, and the delight of those that behold the inexpressible beauty of your countenance passes all telling; for you are the true Light that enlightens and sanctifies every manner of thing, and of you does every creatures sing. Amen.

Prayer to the Guardian Angel

O Holy Angel, that keeps guard over my despondent soul and passionate life, leave me not, a sinner, nor depart from me to my undoing; grant not a place to the crafty enemy to overcome me by the force of this mortal body; strengthen my weak and feeble hand, and set me on the path of salvation. Yes, holy Angel of God, guardian and protector of my hopeless body and soul, forgive me everything wherein I have offended you every day of my life, and what I have done amiss this past night; protect me during the present day, and preserve me from every attempt of the enemy. May I not anger God by any sin. Pray for me the Lord, that he may establish me in his fear and prove me a servent worthy of His kindness. Amen.