Sign Up My Profile
Prayers

The prayer for the mother on the 40th day

In this second prayer of the 40-day blessing, the priest asks Christ to bring the mother into His church and make her ready for Communion.

Picture: Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Presentation in the Temple, 1342

The words of the prayer

Plain English

O Lord our God,You came to save the human race.Come also to Your servant (name),and through Your honoured priesthoodmake her worthy to enter the temple of Your glory.

Wash away the impurity of her body and the stain of her soul,now that the forty days are fulfilled,and make her worthy alsoto receive Your precious Body and Blood.

For Your most honoured name is hallowed and glorified,with the Father and the Holy Spirit,now and ever and for ever and ever. Amen.

Traditional wording, 1906

O Lord our God, Who didst come for the redemption of the human race,come Thou also upon Thy servant, N.,and grant unto her, through the prayers of Thine honourable Priest,entrance into the temple of Thy glory.Wash away her bodily uncleanness, and the stains of her soul,in the fulfilling of the forty days.Make her worthy of the communion of Thy holy Body and of Thy Blood.

For sanctified and glorified is Thine all-honourable and majestic Name,of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Plain English by Wiser Walk, from the Church Slavonic, checked against the Greek, with Isabel Hapgood’s 1906 translation beside it. How the wording is made. Traditional wording: Isabel F. Hapgood, Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, 1906.

Hapgood follows the Greek, “through the prayers of the honoured priesthood”. The plain wording follows the Slavonic, “through Your honoured priesthood”.

When it is said

The priest says it on the 40th day after a birth, after the first prayer over the mother and her baby.

Of the prayers on that day, it is the one for the mother alone.

Where it comes from

No author known

Where it comes from

It belongs to the prayers for a mother 40 days after a birth in the Book of Needs, the priest’s book of services for life’s big moments. No writer is named, and Jacques Goar printed it in his Greek edition in Paris in 1647. The Greek form runs a little longer and also asks that she may glorify God’s name with the people in church.

J. Goar, Euchologion sive Rituale Graecorum (Paris, 1647); The Slavonic Book of Needs on Azbyka.ru, with the Greek ending in a note

Why after 40 days

Metropolitan Saba of the Antiochian Archdiocese explains that in the past the 40 days gave the mother time to recover from the birth and were kept for the good of the baby. The number follows the Law of Moses, which Mary and Joseph kept when they brought the infant Jesus to the Temple (Luke 2:22).

Metropolitan Saba (Isper), Service of Entering the Newborn into the Church after Forty Days

What the words mean

Why it speaks of washing

The prayer asks Christ to wash the mother in body and soul before she receives Communion. The priest asks the same for himself. At every baptism he prays silently, “wash me from the defilement of my body and from the stain of my soul,” and in the Greek the two prayers use the very same words.

G. V. Shann, Book of Needs (1894), the Office of Holy Baptism; Euchologion to Mega (Venice, 1862)

The Scripture in it

This is a trustworthy saying, worthy of full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.

1 Timothy 1:15 Echoed Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

And when the time of purification according to the Law of Moses was complete, His parents brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord

Luke 2:22 Echoed The days of purification were complete before Jesus was brought to the Temple.

Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.

In Church Slavonic

Господи Боже наш, пришедый на спасение рода человеческаго,

прииди и на рабу Твою, имярек,

и сподоби ю честным Твоим пресвитерством, входа храма славы Твоея:

омый ея скверну телесную и скверну душевную

во исполнении четыредесяти дний:

творяй ю достойну и причащения честнаго Тела и Крове Твоея.

Яко освятися и прославися пречестное имя Твое,

со Отцем и Святым Духом,

ныне и присно, и во веки веков, аминь.

From the Slavonic Book of Needs (Trebnik), Prayer for the mother of the child, on Azbyka.ru.

Close to this

All prayers

Suggest a correction

Berean Standard Bible