When it is said
It is said at the end of the services of Great Lent, the fast before Easter, from Monday to Friday, and on the first three days of Holy Week. Saturdays and Sundays leave it out, except the Sunday evening service, which already belongs to Monday.
In Russian use it is said twice. The first time, a bow to the ground follows each of its three parts. Then come 12 bows from the waist, each with “O God, cleanse me, a sinner”. Then the whole prayer is said again, with one last bow to the ground.
The Greek book is much the same, with two changes. Its 12 bows are made with the tax collector’s plea from Jesus’s parable: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And the second time, only the prayer’s last part is said. Greek parishes follow a shorter rule, with just three bows.
Many Orthodox also say it in their prayers at home on the same days.
Where it comes from
Author doubtful
Did St Ephrem write it?
Almost certainly not. It is not among St Ephrem’s Syriac writings, and every known form is later than his lifetime. Two Orthodox scholars, Bishop Irenei and Fr Ephrem Lash, doubt it is his. Yet Irenei finds its old Slavonic form close to Ephrem’s own writings, and sees in that support for the Church keeping his name on it.
Bishop Irenei (Steenberg), The Lenten Prayer: “of St Ephrem”? (2017); Archimandrite Ephrem Lash
A quarrel over bows
In Lent of 1653 Patriarch Nikon, head of the Russian Church, ordered that 12 of this prayer’s 16 bows to the ground become bows from the waist. That order and another, to cross oneself with three fingers, not two, began a split in the Russian Church. Those who kept the old ways became the Old Believers.
Pushkin’s poem
The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin turned the prayer into verse in 1836, half a year before he died, in his poem “Hermit fathers and immaculate women”.
Orthodox Encyclopedia (Pravoslavnaya Entsiklopediya); Russian Wikipedia, the Prayer of Ephrem the Syrian
What the words mean
Why ask God to “give me not”?
God would never give anyone a spirit of idleness or despondency. Bishop Irenei (Steenberg) compares these words with the Our Father’s “lead us not into temptation”. Both ask God to keep us from the wrong we would freely choose, and to deliver us from it.
Bishop Irenei (Steenberg), The Lenten Prayer: “of St Ephrem”? (2017)
“Chastity” means more than it sounds
Fr Alexander Schmemann, an Orthodox priest, wrote in his book Great Lent that the word “chastity” should not be shrunk to its sexual sense. The Greek and Slavonic words mean a whole, undivided mind. He put it as “whole-mindedness”: the opposite of the idleness that scatters us.
Despondency or curiosity
The prayer’s Greek and Slavonic texts differ by one word. The Slavonic asks to be spared despondency. The Greek asks to be spared idle curiosity, or meddling. This page follows the Slavonic, as the English prayer books of Shann, Hapgood and the Orthodox Church in America do.
Bishop Irenei (Steenberg), The Lenten Prayer: “of St Ephrem”? (2017); Orthodox Church in America, the Lenten Prayer of St Ephrem
What people get wrong
“Take from me” is not in the prayer
Many English versions begin “take from me the spirit of sloth”. Neither the Greek nor the Slavonic said today has those words: both say “give me not”. Only the older Slavonic text, from before the new books of 1656, says “drive away from me”. The Old Believers, who refused the new books, still pray it so.
Bishop Irenei (Steenberg), The Lenten Prayer: “of St Ephrem”? (2017)
The Scripture in it
Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?
But I tell you that men will give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.
But the tax collector stood at a distance, unwilling even to lift up his eyes to heaven. Instead, he beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Church Slavonic
Господи и Владыко живота моего, дух праздности, уныния, любоначалия и празднословия не даждь ми.
Дух же целомудрия, смиренномудрия, терпения и любве даруй ми рабу Твоему.
Ей, Господи Царю, даруй ми зрети моя прегрешения, и не осуждати брата моего, яко благословен еси во веки веков. Аминь.
From the Church Slavonic book of hours (the Horologion), on Azbyka.ru, a Russian Orthodox website.
In Greek
Κύριε καὶ Δέσποτα τῆς ζωῆς μου, πνεῦμα ἀργίας, περιεργίας, φιλαρχίας, καὶ ἀργολογίας μή μοι δῷς.
Πνεῦμα δὲ σωφροσύνης, ταπεινοφροσύνης, ὑπομονῆς καὶ ἀγάπης, χάρισαί μοι τῷ Σῷ δούλῳ.
Ναί, Κύριε Βασιλεῦ, δώρησαί μοι τοῦ ὁρᾶν τὰ ἐμὰ πταίσματα, καὶ μὴ κατακρίνειν τὸν ἀδελφόν μου, ὅτι εὐλογητὸς εἶ, εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.
In Latin letters, to say it
Kyrie ke Despota tis zois mou, pnevma argias, periergias, filarchias, ke argologias mi mi dos.
Pnevma de sofrosynis, tapinofrosynis, ypomonis ke agapis, charise mi to So doulo.
Ne, Kyrie Vasilef, dorise mi tou oran ta ema ptesmata, ke mi katakrinin ton adelfon mou, oti evlogitos i, is tous eonas ton eonon. Amin.