Prayer of St. Ephraim

The Orthodox pray the Prayer of St. Ephraim during Great Lent is normally added to either morning or evening prayers. The prayer is punctuated with prostrations.

Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

prostrate

But give rather the spirit of soberness, humility, patience, and love to Your servant.

prostrate

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for You are blessed, unto ages of ages.

prostrate

Glory to You, O Christ our God and our Hope, glory to You.

sign the cross and bow

More Orthodox Prayers

Blog

The Wedding Garment: Making the Most of What Christ Offers

Sdn Tim Grace

September 6, 2026 10:00 AM

Preaching on Father's Day, Sub Dn. Timothy Grace takes up the parable of the wedding feast and the guest without a garment. In the ancient world the host supplied the garments, so to arrive without one was not poverty but insult — and Christ, the great host, has supplied us with everything we need. Drawing on St. Symeon the New Theologian's call to run to the light while it still shines, he asks what excuse any of us will offer for not becoming holy. He closes with a word to fathers on steering between indifference and control, and on St. Paul as a model of invested, un-domineering fatherhood.

Tenants in the Vineyard: Saved by Grace, Made to Love

Fr. Geoff Harvey

August 30, 2026 10:00 AM

Preaching on the parable of the wicked tenants, Fr. Geoff Harvey holds together two truths that can seem to pull against each other: we are saved by grace and not by works, yet a faith that bears no love has no life in it. The tenants' great failure did not begin with murder but with forgetting whose vineyard it was. Fr. Geoff offers three simple charges — stand firm in the faith, serve one another in love, and show love to the Lord — and points us to the stone the builders rejected, who has become the cornerstone of our salvation.

More...