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Prayer-Book (Euchologion)
St Sarapion of Thmuis, tr. Wordsworth, 1899
Chapter 19
VI. (19—30) Pro-Anaphoral Prayers.
[Opening collect.]
19. First Prayer of the Lord’s Day (κυριακῆς).1
We beseech thee the Father of the only-begotten, the Lord of the universe (τοῦ παντός), the artificer of the creatures, the maker of things that have been made; clean hands do we stretch out, and our thoughts do we unfold (ἀναπετάννυμεν) to thee, O Lord. We pray thee, have compassion, spare, benefit, improve, multiply (us) in virtue and faith and knowledge. Visit us (Ps. cxv. 4), O Lord; to thee we display (ἀναπέμπομεν) our own weaknesses. Be propitious and have pity on us all in common. Have pity, benefit this people. Make it gentle (ἐπιεικῆ) and sober-minded and clean; and send angelic powers, in order that all this thy people may be holy and reverend (σεμνός). I beseech thee send holy Spirit into our mind and give us grace to learn the divine scriptures from (the) holy Spirit, and to interpret,2 cleanly and worthily, that all the lay-people (λαοί) present may be helped, through thy only-begotten Jesus Christ in holy Spirit, through whom to thee (is) the glory and the strength both now and to all the ages of the ages. Amen.
Notes
- This rubric is one which specially connects this collection with Egypt: cp. “the first prayer of the morning” in the Lit. of the Coptic Jacobites, Brightman, p. 147.
- This may be simply a prayer for capacity to explain the Scriptures, or it may refer to the special gift of interpretation from one language to another: see below, Prayer 25 note.