The Syrian Penitential Spirit The Witness of Saints Ephraim and Isaac (Part 1)
Anyone newly Orthodox in this country is often enough shocked to discover the deeply countercultural meaning of Great Lent. Everything that Orthodox are given to do in Lent acts to separate them from the great tidal power of a vast consumerist culture: the extent and depth of the fasting; the length and variety of the liturgical services; above all, the quality and mode of the Lenten prayers. This shock is real and profound, and even in the monasteries, it is deeply felt. This shock is (if you will) spiritually seismic, for it is meant to reconfigure the whole of one’s life in the oceans of actual existence. The shock of Lent accomplishes this seismic configuration in two steps. First, it opens up an immediate gap: we turn off TVs and radios in our homes in order to stop the world’s ceaseless ongoingness. Then, in the silence that follows, we can in stillness begin to remember who and what we foundationally are in God: children of the light He has created—and not children of the darkness we create for ourselves. Central to the Orthodox experience of Lent is the brief prayer called “The Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian.” In every Lenten weekday service for almost seven weeks this prayer is chanted or spoken by the priest as the entire congregation follows him in the prescribed pattern of prostrations. In this way, the prayer may be said to knit together all the Lenten services and to focus each person on the central meaning of Lent. To comprehend this brief prayer is thus to understand the very heart and whole mind of Orthodox Lent. Here is the Greek text of the prayer, along with the translation commonly used today in the Orthodox Church in America:
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! Take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power and idle talk. (Prostration) But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to Thy servant. (Prostration) Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen. (Prostration)
But before we begin to reflect on this prayer, let me say a few words about St. Ephraim himself. He was born early in the fourth century ad in the ancient city of Nisibis (modern Nuseybin, in southeast Turkey), a city of some considerable significance for well over a thousand years prior to his birth. His parents were Orthodox Christians (he speaks of them very beautifully in his poems), and his Christian community had—a century earlier—suffered severe Roman persecution under the Emperor Diocletian (one of the Syriac martyrs of this period is the woman Saint Febronia). But now, in the early fourth century, the Orthodox community of Nisibis was free, prosperous, and thriving. The language spoken was Syriac, an east Aramaean dialect, and the ecclesiastical Syriac language that has come down is strong, assured, and very beautiful. Thus, fourth-century Syrian Christians of Nisibis had created a culture and a church that richly harmonized Semitic and Greek elements. And amidst this great and flourishing culture, Ephraim became one of the greatest of Christian poets the world has yet seen, leaving as his legacy some twenty-five volumes of extraordinarily accomplished poetry, a body of work only now beginning to find its modern English translators. From the wealth of St. Ephraim’s life and work, I shall here highlight only two facts so as to approach his Lenten prayer. First, despite how he is usually depicted on Orthodox icons, St. Ephraim was never a monk. He was an ordained deacon who remained celibate all his life. Partly, his not being a monk can be explained by noting that Egyptian monastic practice—the model for all Orthodox monasticism—had not, in Ephraim’s lifetime, yet reached southeast Turkey. But this only partly explains it, for evidence does exist that accurate knowledge of monasticism had reached Nisibis in the first quarter of the fourth century; and travel to established monasteries, while difficult by our standards, was assuredly possible to do then. In other words, Ephraim can be understood as having chosen to become a deacon rather than becoming a monk. Second, Syriac Orthodoxy of the fourth century was in active dialogue with Greek Orthodox culture. There is compelling evidence that some of Ephraim’s poetry and homilies were translated into Greek during his lifetime; and we know that within thirty years of his death a good deal of it was already in Greek. Ute Possekel, a scholar of St. Ephraim, puts it this way: “Hellenism was an integral part of fourth-century Syriac culture.” Thus, while retaining strong—indeed, definitive—ties to Semitic Christianity, Syriac Orthodoxy used with great skill the full range of Greek poetry and philosophy in its theological and artistic expressions.
Sheehan, Donald. The Grace of Incorruption: The Selected Essays of Donald Sheehan on Orthodox Faith and Poetics (pp. 12-14). Paraclete Press. Kindle Edition.