Tag Archives: prayers

All ye among the halls of heaven…

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O SAVIOUR, FOUNT OF HEAVENLY LIFE

O Saviour, Fount of heavenly life,
Assist us in our earthly strife;
Thou pitying Virgin, hear our cries,
And raise us from our miseries.

Angelic hosts our needs attend;
Ye holy patriarchs, defend;
Ye choirs of prophets, by your prayers,
Protect us from unholy snares.

Herald of Christ, we call on thee;
And thou that hold’st the golden key;
Apostles all, your voice we claim,
Dissolve the bonds of sin and shame.

Triumphant martyrs of the Lord;
Ye holy preachers of the word;
And virgins chaste; to you we pray;
Wash all our sinful stains away.

All ye among the halls of heaven,
To whom the light of love is given,
In pity hear our cries, — that we
The glory of God’s face may see.

All praise and honour, power and love
To God the Sire who rules above,
Unto the Son like glory be
And Holy Ghost eternally.

-Rabanus Maurus (780 – 856) Germany
Translated by Daniel Joseph Donahoe

Rembrandt – St. Jerome in Prayer

To the edge at last, in Donegal.

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Yesterday we commemorated St. Columba. It was the Sunday of the Blind Man in the Orthodox Church, and I was getting ready to chant-read the prayers of the 3rd and 6th Hours before Liturgy. Usually on Sundays there are two changeable parts of those readings called troparia, always one for the Resurrection, and often another for the feast or saint of the day. There was another sort of hymn, a kontakion, for the Blind Man, but there was not a troparian hymn in the lectionary for that event.

So our rector said I might read the troparion to St. Columba, which I did. I can’t find the text of it anywhere online now; I read it in the Horologion, or Book of the Hours, which is a big book of texts used, mostly by the reader or cantor, in liturgical services of the Orthodox Church, both the fixed and movable parts.

He also suggested that I take home a copy of that tome, to spend a while familiarizing myself with it. Occasionally over the years someone instructs me, in a very hit-and-miss fashion, on how to find what I need in the Horologion, but I seem to be dense when it comes to learning anything that I have to read standing, at a lectern, for example. So I’ll be glad to bring the book home and read at my leisure through the church calendar, with its treasures of saints and feasts.

Fr. Malcolm Guite was remembering St. Columba yesterday, too, and tells the story of how his mystical connection to the saint was renewed in his youth, “Columba and My Calling,” on his blog. An excerpt:

“One evening, St. John’s Eve it was, right at the end of my journey, I came round a headland at sunset into a beautiful little bay and inlet on the west coast in Donegal, just as the fires were being lit around the headlands for St. John’s Eve, and there was drinking and fiddle playing and dancing round the fires that evening. And I asked where I was, and they said Glencolmcille, and I felt a sudden quickening and sense of connection, as though a memory stirred. And they asked me my name and I said ‘Malcolm’, and they said, ‘Ah that is why you have come, because he has called you’, and I said ‘who?’ and they said ‘Colm has called you, Malcolm, for this is the place he fought his battle and gathered his disciples and from here he left for the white martyrdom and Scotland.” 

St Columba’s Church, Gartan, Donegal.

He has written a touching sonnet in honor of his saint and that “small epiphany,” from which I took the title of this blog post.  You can read “Columba,” and/or listen to him read it: here. It’s one of the poems in his book, The Singing Bowl.

Royal Hours of Theophany

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Ravenna, 6th Century

 

The service of Royal Hours of Theophany, which we prayed this evening as part of the forefeast of baptism of Christ, is so rich; it “brings the mind into the heart,” as we say. We read and sang several Old Testament readings, as many Epistle and Gospel Readings, and many Psalms chosen for the feast. When I came home afterward I found the liturgical texts online, hoping to hold on to the “afterglow” a little longer. Tomorrow we will continue our celebration of this major feast, on through the 7th.

 

Here are a very few portions of the service:

To the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
“Prepare the way of the Lord,”
Thou didst come, O Lord, taking the form of servant.
Thou didst ask to be baptized
though Thou hast no knowledge of sin.
The waters saw Thee and were afraid.
The Forerunner trembled and cried aloud:
“How will the Lamp illumine the Light?
How will a servant lay his hand on the Master?
Thou takest away the sin of the world, O Savior.
Sanctify both me and the waters!”

From the Psalter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, c. 1185

The Father bore witness to Thee,
and the Divine Spirit in the form of a dove
descended to Thee,
as Thou camest in flesh to the Jordan, O Lord.
Thou didst desire to be baptized in human form,
that in Thy compassion
Thou mightest enlighten us who have gone astray,
and deliver us from all the snares and wiles of the Dragon.
Make Thy home in our souls, O Thou Who lovest mankind.


Therefore with joy shall ye draw water
out of the wells of salvation.

And in that day shall ye say, Praise the Lord,
call upon his name, declare his doings among the people,
make mention that his name is exalted.

Sing unto the Lord; for he hath done excellent things:
this is known in all the earth.

Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion:
for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee.

Isaiah 12:3-6

Ethiopia

Titus 3

4 But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
6 Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
7 That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Prayers rise like incense from funerals.

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Last week, I returned from Washington and my grandson’s wedding. On that travel day, before I left my Airbnb for the airport, I learned that a beloved sister in Christ, C., only 40 years old, had passed from this life after many years of suffering. It was arranged via texts while I was going through security at Sea-Tac that a friend of hers named Tia, who was coming from New York for the funeral, would stay at my house.

I’d left my place fairly disorderly, but as soon as I got in the house I changed the sheets on the guest bed, and made sure that a table was cleared, where we might sit to eat. I remembered to restore the setting on the water heater to normal. A brief glance out at the garden gave me hope that it could wait to be tended to. Soon came bedtime and I was very glad.

Tia and I met for the first time at the funeral the next morning. It was a typically lengthy Orthodox funeral, but it didn’t feel long, maybe because all the many and repetitive prayers seemed necessary to satisfy our hearts, and to proclaim the conquering light of the Resurrection in the face of death. Friends from three different parishes met that morning to pray at C.’s funeral, and it was comforting to be with so many people with whom we shared a love for this dear woman. If more time had been given, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see some of them pulling up chairs near the casket, just to sit a while with her sweet spirit. But that’s not the tradition. Instead, we will pray especially for her for 40 days, and be with her that way…

“For Thou art the Resurrection, the Life, and the Repose of Thy servants who have fallen asleep, O Christ our God, and unto Thee we ascribe glory, together with Thy Father, who is from everlasting, and Thine all-holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, now and ever unto ages of ages. Amen.” -From the Prayer for the Departed

The evening of her funeral happened to be the beginning of our celebration of the Feast of the Cross. Tia and I attended the Vigil for the feast, after a busy afternoon visiting with church friends. She was suffering jet lag, and I a more general travel fatigue, but we lasted till the end of the beautiful service. I still hadn’t been out to water the garden when we came home and crashed; I finally got to that after she departed the next morning.

The repose of such a young wife and mother, who had been a bright light in the world, was hard to feel easy about, even though we were glad that her suffering was ended. Not a month before, we’d said good-bye to a man in his 80’s who also had been ill for a while, and who no doubt is happy to have finished his race; but he had found the Church and a wife late in life, and it wasn’t comfortable in his case, either, for her or for any of us to let go of him. Is any human death insignificant, that we who are left behind can be left unchanged?

The day after the feast, another death in the parish. Lord, have mercy! Stephen’s passing has affected me the most, I think, of any since I became a part of this parish, because the total time the two of us were worshiping together in church far exceeds that of anyone else who has died. I heard early in the morning that he had died, and the whole day my mind and heart were so full of him, I could not attend to anything else. He was a good example of a living icon of Christ, always ready, “instant in season and out of season,” (II Timothy) to sing, to pray, to help anyone in need. And he loved my late husband, which means a lot. “He had love in his veins,” our rector said.

Last night the church was filled, for the singing of the first panikhida service for this brother. The gathering in God’s temple of our communal love, grief and Blessed Hope was a powerful experience for me, in a way I hadn’t known in the hundred other panikhidas I’ve sung in the past.

I realized that I was joining my heart – and my tears – with my late husband too, by my prayers, and with every soul whom God loves, no matter which side of death they are on. It made me oh so thankful for the Church and her traditions that impart these vital realities to us. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom expresses it very well:

“The life of each one of us does not end at death on this earth and birth into heaven. We place a seal on everyone we meet. This responsibility continues after death, and the living are related to the dead for whom they pray. In the dead we no longer belong completely to the world; in us the dead still belong to history. Prayer for the dead is vital; it expresses the totality of our common life.”

My grief is being changed into joy.