THE PRAYERS OF SAINT ISAAC THE SYRIAN

Translation by Sebastian Brock

Adaptation by Brotherhood of the Monastery of St. John

MONASTERY OF ST JOHN OF SAN FRANCISCO PO BOX 563, POINT REYES STATION, CA 94956

THE PRAYERS OF SAINT ISAAC THE SYRIAN

PREFACE St. Isaac drew up, arranged and composed the converse of hidden prayer with words of feeling and supplication, making out of limbs joined together a single body which will be useful for the meditation of hidden prayer. One can be occupied with these words while standing up or sitting down, while working or while walking inside ones cell, while going to sleep, until the point when sleep takes over, indoors or on a journey, secretly occupying oneself with them within ones heart. Likewise, one may pray them while kneeling on the ground or wherever one happens to be standing, even if is not in front of the cross. Thus one will mingle the humility of the body with the stirrings of prayer, for by these one will find benefit. One may add them to those which one has laid down as ones rule, and they will offer beneficial advantages in the face of ones changing state of mind in times of

peace and vexation which come. Thus, by making use of these prayers which have been appropriately composed so that one may find comfort, ones soul will receive sanctification and will be filled with the Grace of the Spirit.

AS MY SOUL bows down to the ground, I offer to Thee with all my bones and with all my heart the worship that befits Thee. O glorious God, Who dwellest in ineffable silence, Thou didst build for my renewal a tabernacle of love on earth where it is Thy good pleasure to rest, a temple made of flesh and fashioned with the most holy oil of the sanctuary. Then Thou didst fill it with Thy holy Presence so that all worship might be fulfilled in it, indicating the worship of the eternal persons of Thy Trinity, and revealing to the worlds which Thou hadst created in Thy grace an ineffable mystery, a power which cannot be felt or grasped by any part of Thy creation that has come into being. In wonder at it, angelic beings are submerged in silence, awed at the dark of this eternal mystery and at the flood of glory which issues from within this source of wonder, for it is worshipped in silence by every intelligence that has been sanctified and made worthy of Thee.