When it is said
It is said near the end of Compline, the Church’s service before sleep. It stands in both forms of that service, Small Compline and Great Compline, in the Greek and the Slavonic books.
Anyone may say it at home before sleep, or in the night when sleep will not come.
Where it comes from
Author by tradition
Who was Antiochus?
Antiochus was a monk of Mar Saba, a famous monastery near Jerusalem, in the 600s. He saw the Persians invade the Holy Land in AD 614. Five years later they took the city of Ancyra, today’s Ankara, and the monks of a monastery near it had to flee with few books. Their abbot asked Antiochus for a digest of Scripture. He wrote the Pandect: 130 chapters of sayings from the Bible and early Church writers.
Wikipedia, Antiochus of Palestine (from the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907)
His name over the prayer
The Greek and the Slavonic books of hours both print his name over this prayer: “of Antiochus, monk of the Pandect”, after his book. Isabel Hapgood’s English service book of 1906 calls him “a Monk of the Monastery of the Pandect”. The heading calls it a prayer to our Lord Jesus Christ, though it ends by praising the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The Greek Horologion, Great Compline (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America); The Slavonic Horologion (Azbyka.ru); Isabel F. Hapgood, Service Book (1906)
What the words mean
“Lull our thoughts to sleep”
The Greek asks Christ to put to sleep every earthly and material way of thinking in us. G. V. Shann kept that picture in his English service book of 1891: “lull our earthly and sinful thoughts to sleep”. Isabel Hapgood, in 1906, wrote “Still our every earthly and material anxiety”.
G. V. Shann, Euchology (1891), Great Compline; Isabel F. Hapgood, Service Book (1906)
The Scripture in it
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Be sober-minded and alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
At midnight I rise to give You thanks for Your righteous judgments.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Greek
Καὶ δὸς ἡμῖν, Δέσποτα, πρὸς ὕπνον ἀπιοῦσιν, ἀνάπαυσιν σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς, καὶ διαφύλαξον ἡμᾶς ἀπό τοῦ ζοφεροῦ ὕπνου τῆς ἁμαρτίας καὶ ἀπὸ πάσης σκοτεινῆς καὶ νυκτερινῆς ἡδυπαθείας.
Παῦσον τὰς ὁρμὰς τῶν παθῶν, σβέσον τὰ πεπυρωμένα βέλη τοῦ πονηροῦ τὰ καθ' ἡμῶν δολίως κινούμενα. Τὰς τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν ἐπαναστάσεις κατάστειλον καὶ πᾶν γεῶδες καὶ ὑλικὸν ἡμῶν φρόνημα κοίμισον.
Καὶ δώρησαι ἡμῖν, ὁ Θεός, γρήγορον νοῦν, σώφρονα λογισμόν, καρδίαν νήφουσαν, ὕπνον ἐλαφρὸν καὶ πάσης σατανικῆς φαντασίας ἀπηλλαγμένον.
Διανάστησον δὲ ἡμᾶς ἐν τῷ καιρῷ τῆς προσευχῆς ἐστηριγμένους ἐν ταῖς ἐντολαῖς Σου καὶ τὴν μνήμην τῶν Σῶν κριμάτων ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἀπαράθραυστον ἔχοντας.
Παννύχιον ἡμῖν τὴν Σὴν δοξολογίαν χάρισαι εἰς τὸ ὑμνεῖν καὶ εὐλογεῖν καὶ δοξάζειν τὸ πάντιμον καὶ μεγαλοπρεπὲς ὄνομα Σου, τοῦ Πατρὸς καί τοῦ Υἱοῦ καί τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος, νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.