When it is said
It is the sixth of the morning prayers in the Russian prayer book, the second of two under St Basil’s name.
In church it belongs to the Midnight Office, the Church’s service of prayer in the night. On weekdays from 22 September until Palm Sunday, the priest raises his hands and says it. The book counts by the Church’s old calendar, so 22 September is 5 October on ours.
A Greek-English prayer book, An Orthodox Prayer Book (Oxford, 1999), has it among its morning prayers, to be said every day but Saturday.
Where it comes from
Author by tradition
Two prayers of St Basil
St Basil the Great, a bishop, died in AD 379. The Church Slavonic book of hours puts his name over two prayers of its weekday Midnight Office: this one, and the one just before it.
The Church Slavonic Horologion, on Azbyka.ru; Azbyka.ru, the morning prayers (in Russian)
From church to home
The prayer moved from church into prayer at home. A Russian prayer book copied by hand in the mid-1500s has it among the prayers said alone after the Midnight Office. Today’s morning prayers still share Psalm 51, the Creed and both of St Basil’s prayers with that service, as a study of their history notes.
Priest Pyotr Pchelintsev, on the history of the morning and evening prayers (in Russian)
What the words mean
“As we lay in despair”
The old word means lying without hope. A Russian note on the prayer reads it as sleep itself: we lay as if unconscious, and God raised us and woke us. So the prayer gives thanks for waking, and for the sleep before it, which rested a weak and weary body.
The Scripture in it
… the One Who does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Church Slavonic
Тя благословим, вышний Боже и Господи милости, творящаго присно с нами великая же и неизследованная, славная же и ужасная, ихже несть числа, подавшаго нам сон во упокоение немощи нашея, и ослабление трудов многотрудныя плоти.
Благодарим Тя, яко не погубил еси нас со беззаконьми нашими, но человеколюбствовал еси обычно, и в нечаянии лежащия ны воздвигл еси, во еже славословити державу Твою.
Темже молим безмерную Твою благость, просвети наша мысли, очеса, и ум наш от тяжкаго сна лености возстави: отверзи наша уста, и исполни я Твоего хваления, яко да возможем непоколеблемо пети же и исповедатися Тебе, во всех, и от всех славимому Богу, Безначальному Отцу, со Единородным Твоим Сыном, и Всесвятым и Благим и Животворящим Твоим Духом, ныне и присно и во веки веков, аминь.