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  • Writer's pictureFr. Thomas Colyandro

Addition to the Second Kneeling Prayer


This is a vocal prayer, which is added in after the reading of the Second Kneeling Prayer on Pentecost. It, too, gives us much to meditate on (the bold type is added to assist you in choosing a meditation), particularly in the nexus of Catharsis and Theoria.

Notice that this prayer is dedicated to Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. Understand, too, that it functions as a prayer of deliverance, meaning that it is a pleading to God to release us from sin, cultural conditioning, and the evil one. It is clearly intended to build fear in the one who is praying it. At one level this puts us off because the prayer literally asks God to give us "anxiety" about "Judgment" and to "illuminate" us by visions of "Judgment." At another level it makes us expect more from ourselves and others. The good and beautiful news here is that, again, there is a recitation about how prayer - communicating with God - delivers us from our delusions and leads us into a deeper and more beautiful union with God.

"O Lord, Lord, who delivers us from all the arrows that fly by day, deliver us, also, from all things that infest the darkness. Accept our evening sacrifice, even the lifting-up of our hands. Grant that we may pass through the course of the night without sin, not tempted by evil things; and deliver us from every alarm and cowardice that comes to us from the devil.

"Grant unto our souls contrition, and unto our minds anxiety concerning that strict searching out of the thoughts which shall come in the dread and just Day of Judgment. Nail our flesh to the fear of You, and mortify our earthly bodies: that, in the quietness of sleep, we may be illuminated by the vision of your judgments. Remove from us, also, every unseemly imagination and hurtful carnal passion. Raise us up again at the hour of prayer, fortified in the faith, and advancing in your commandments."

- This prayer can be found in the Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church; compiled, translated, and arranged by Isabel Florence Hapgood; printed by the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, 6th ed., 1983, p. 253.

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