When it is said
In the prayer book it is a bishop’s prayer, said in church as the people knelt, among the prayers that prepare them for the Eucharist.
In its first half the bishop speaks for his people. Anyone can pray the second half printed here, kneeling or not.
Where it comes from
Author by tradition
Who was Serapion?
Serapion was bishop of Thmuis, a town in the Nile Delta of Egypt, in the middle of the 300s. He was a close friend of St Athanasius of Alexandria and of the hermit St Anthony. The Church remembers him on 21 March.
John Wordsworth, Bishop Sarapion’s Prayer-Book (1923), introduction
One old copy
His prayer book survives in a single manuscript, copied in the 11th century and kept at the Lavra monastery on Mount Athos. Its 30 prayers carry Serapion’s name only twice, over the first and the fifteenth, so the rest are credited to him by tradition. Its English translator John Wordsworth dated it to about AD 350 to 356.
John Wordsworth, Bishop Sarapion’s Prayer-Book (1923), title page and introduction
What the words mean
What is the “record of debt”?
The phrase comes from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. God forgave us all our trespasses, Paul writes, and cancelled the debt that stood against us, nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:13-14). The prayer asks God to wipe that record away.
F. X. Funk, Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum II (1905), page 170, note on line 25
The Scripture in it
When you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our trespasses, having canceled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross!
Yes, and I ask you, my true yokefellow, to help these women who have contended at my side for the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the Book of Life.
… which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Greek
δὸς ἡμῖν χεῖρα, δέσποτα, καὶ ἀνάστησον ἡμᾶς· ἀνάστησον, ὁ θεὸς τῶν οἰκτιρμῶν, ποίησον ἀναβλέπειν·
ἀνακάλυψον ἡμῶν τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς, παρρησίαν ἡμῖν χάρισαι, μὴ ἐπιτρέψῃς ἡμᾶς αἰσχύνεσθαι, μηδὲ δυσωπεῖσθαι μηδὲ καταγινώσκειν ἑαυτῶν·
ἐξάλειψον τὸ καθ' ἡμῶν χειρόγραφον, γράψον ἡμῶν τὰ ὀνόματα ἐν βίβλῳ ζωῆς, συναρίθμησον ἡμᾶς τοῖς ἁγίοις σου προφήταις καὶ ἀποστόλοις διὰ τοῦ μονογενοῦς σου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ,
δι' οὗ σοὶ ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος ἐν ἁγίῳ πνεύματι καὶ νῦν καὶ εἰς τοὺς σύμπαντας αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων, ἀμήν.