When it is said
It is a prayer for home, said by a godparent for the child they sponsored at baptism. Say your godchild’s name where the prayer asks for it.
Russian prayer books print it among the prayers for children and godchildren.
Where it comes from
No author known
What a godparent does
At an Orthodox baptism, the godparent speaks for a child too young to speak. Three times they renounce Satan, and three times they join Christ. Then they say the Creed aloud. After the baptism they go around the font with the priest and the child, and the Church prays for them by name.
G. V. Shann, Book of Needs of the Holy Orthodox Church (1894): Holy Baptism
Who wrote it?
No author is named, and its date is not known. It is printed in the Russian prayer books, in Church Slavonic with some Russian word forms. Its title calls the godparent “vospriemnik”, “the one who receives”. The prayer uses the same word for the child: “received by me from the font”.
Azbyka.ru prayer book, Prayers for children and godchildren (in Slavonic and Russian)
Candles and one godparent
Isabel Hapgood’s service book of 1906 says the godparents hold lit candles at the baptism, to show their faith in the light it brings. It also says one godparent is required, a man for a boy and a woman for a girl, though more are allowed.
Isabel F. Hapgood, Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church (1906)
What the words mean
A tree from a mustard seed
The prayer borrows one of Jesus’s parables. The mustard seed is the smallest of seeds. Yet it grows into the largest plant in the garden, and the birds nest in its shade. So the prayer asks that the kingdom of heaven, small in a child’s soul today, grow great, give shade and bear fruit.
Mark 4:31-32
The Scripture in it
At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John.
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
“It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds sown upon the earth. But after it is planted, it grows to be the largest of all garden plants and puts forth great branches, so that the birds of the air nest in its shade.”
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Church Slavonic
Господи Иисусе Христе, Боже наш, во Иордане от Иоанна волею креститися изволивый и заповедавый нам крещатися во оставление грехов, помилуй и спаси чадо (имярек), мною от купели восприятое.
Даруй ему веру несумненную, любовь к Тебе, Спасителю нашему и ближнему своему. Сам путеводствуй его путем спасения, да преходя в возраст совершенный, духовных даров сподобится, телесное здравие добре сохранит и Царство Небесное в душе (имярек) да произрастет из зерна горушнаго в древо благосеннолиственное и добрый плод принесет во славу Отца и Сына и Святаго Духа. Аминь.