A Lenten Prayer

Ephrem1Today is Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent, the traditional forty-day period of preparation for Holy Week and Easter, a season for fasting and repentance.

In the near future, I hope to write more about the history of Lent and how Christians can benefit from Lenten practices. For now, I will share a traditional Lenten prayer that was composed in the fourth century A.D. by Saint Ephrem the Syrian.

O Lord and Master of my Life!

Take from me the spirit of sloth, faintheartedness, lust of power and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to your servant.

Yea, O Lord and King!

Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; for you are blessed from all ages to all ages. Amen.

In his excellent book titled Ancient-Future Time, the late Dr. Robert Webber described how this prayer may be incorporated into devotional life during the Lenten season.  On pp. 115-116, Webber writes:

Through this prayer, we encounter four negative concerns aimed at spiritual struggles common to us all:

  • Sloth — a laziness that prevents us from choosing a spiritual pilgrimage aimed at overcoming the powers of evil working against us.
  • Faintheartedness — despondency, a negative and pessimistic attitude toward life.
  • Lust of power — the assertion of self as lord of life expressed in the desire to subordinate other people under our power.
  • Idle talk — a negative power of speech that puts others down and uses words in a destructive rather than constructive way.

These four negative characteristics deny us the fullness of life intended by God. They are balanced by four positive characteristics that bring us into greater experience with the fullness of life God intends for us:

  • Chastity/wholeness — the word is most often used regarding sexuality. But its real meaning is the opposite of sloth and refers to wholeness. Broadly speaking it refers to the recovery of true values in every area of life.
  • Humility — the fruit of wholeness is humility, the victory of God’s truth taking hold in our entire life. The humble person lives by the truth of God and sees life as God made it and intended it to be.
  • Patience — patience sees the depth of life in all its complexity and does not demand instant change now, in this moment.
  • Love — the opposite of pride. When wholeness, humility and patience are worked in us, the result is a person characterized by love. This kind of person can sincerely pray, “Grant me to see my own errors and not judge my brother.”

I suggest that you memorize this prayer and repeat it frequently during the days of Lent. In the morning meditate on the four powers from which you seek to be delivered — sloth, faintheartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. At noon meditate on the four virtues you desire to experience in your life — chastity/wholeness, humility, patience and love. During each day determine to find a specific situation in which you can exercise one or more of both the negative and positive disciplines. Then in the evening when you pray the prayer again, review the events of the day and identify the way in which you have fulfilled one or another of these spiritual goals. To be most effective this prayer and the form it takes in your life should be coupled with fasting from food (ascetical fast) and the giving of alms (preferably to the poor).

13 comments

  1. Thanks, Joe. Just to reiterate what is most useful/helpful to me:

    * Lust of power — the assertion of self as lord of life expressed in the desire to subordinate other people under our power.

    * Idle talk — a negative power of speech that puts others down and uses words in a destructive rather than constructive way.

    * Patience — patience sees the depth of life in all its complexity and does not demand instant change now, in this moment.

    * Love — the opposite of pride. This kind of person can sincerely pray, “Grant me to see my own errors and not judge my brother.”

    • Joe Schafer

      I’m impressed by the depth of emotional maturity expressed in this prayer. St. Ephrem really understood the nature of sin, not as the violation of legal rules and requirements, but as dishonoring God and hurting other people through improper relationships.

  2. Thanks for reminding us of the fasting season. I think it’s one of those really useful traditions.

    Concerning the prayer, I think is a very good overall guideline most of the time, but must be used with caution. If I pray exclusively like that, I may start to believe it is better to never judge my brother or to never speak at all in order to not fall into sin. But sometimes, on rare occasions, speaking or judging is necessary, and being quiet (may caused by faintheartedness) would be sin. The real problem is that I often speak when I should be silent, and I am silent when I should speak up. What I need to learn and what I will pray for is discernment (see http://www.pfo.org/notjudge.htm), and speaking with a motivation of love instead of dogmatism or self-righteousness. I’ll definitely try to make such positive use of the fasting season this year.

    For me, “chastity/wholeness” can also be summed up in the word “integrity”. That’s something worth praying for. And love – sure, that should always have the first place. Probably it even includes everything else. Btw, does somebody understand why Webber thinks love is the opposite of pride? I would think love and hate, and pride and humility are antonyms?

    • Joe Schafer

      Love has many dimensions, so it’s hard to pinpoint just one thing that would be its opposite. Perhaps Webber reasoned that
      * love is having a positive orientation and generosity toward others, whereas
      * pride is having a positive orientation and generosity toward yourself.

  3. I’m learning to pay attention to the Christian calendar. It’s more rigorous than I expected, but not overwhelming.

    I didn’t realize there were 5 months of “Trinity” celebration!

    • Well ok the link I provided is not “the” Christian calendar, unless you’re Lutheran. But it seems all Christian churches have a very similar calendar. I find the Christian world to be fascinating.

    • Joe Schafer

      I think there is just one Sunday (just after Pentecost) dedicated to the Trinity. The 5+ months between Pentecost and the beginning of Advent are usually called “ordinary time.”

    • Hi Brian, I grew up in a Vineyard church, so liturgical things and church traditions were not mentioned very much. Then in UBF we also didn’t emphasize that at all either, except Easter and Christmas. But my current church is a Wesleyan church, and I’m beginning to have my eyes opened to the wider world of Christian history and church tradition. I agree with you; it is really meaningful and enriching.

    • I was surprised to read Scot McKnight talking about a dichotomy. But he writes at the end:

      “On this one, I don’t think “both/and” is an option. Unless God at times scares the living daylights out of us, we haven’t wandered into “the jealous God” territory.”

      The poem is awesome, but I felt at first we should sometimes choose “perfection”. I think I get his point though, God is a jealous God. If we are walking with Him we will be overcome by His Passion.

      I think this speaks to my own paradigm shift the past couple years. I’ve come to know the “God of Job” who says, with furious love: “The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” –Job 1:12

      God wants *me*. God loves *me*. And my soul is safe. Truly no harm can ever come to my soul, resting in the grace of God, though everything be taken from me.

  4. Great post, Sharon. Thanks. It seems that most traditional conservative churches clearly prefer Perfection. Those who do will NOT like those with Passion, because the latter are edgy, messy, “mocking,” out of the box, etc.

    It seems that the God of Perfection ALLOWS us to be messy and rough around the edges. But the churches that demand/expect perfection WILL NOT TOLERATE messiness and are always trying to smooth you out into THEIR own image of perfection/conformity.

    What a great clearly defined contrast:

    Perfection means clean and tidy. Passion is wild, ruthless, messy.

    Passion reverberates with danger. Perfection is safe. We like safe.

    Perfection has sharp corners, Right angles, clean lines. Passion gets sweaty and dirty Evoking decisions in the dust.

    Perfection likes the clear air, and Clean white pages with the rules. The God of passion wrestles us to the dirt and cripples us.

    • So the image that comes to mind of a Christ-follower is a person calming and peacefully holding onto a buoy in the ocean. The person is resting in the grace of God, but all around is a whirlwind with waves crashing. Always the buoy of God’s grace points back upward after each storm.

      These past 2 years have been the messiest, most confusing, most infuriating, most dynamic 2 years of my life– and I love it! Truly following after Christ is a great adventure into the unknown!

    • Thanks Ben and Brian. I love your analogy, Brian! I’m also being tossed around in a wild sea….and I wouldn’t change it either.