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Prayer 44 by Saint Gregory of Narek 🇦🇲 (c. 951 – c. 1011)
Translated from the Armenian by & Thomas J. Samuelian
Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart:
I.
Boundless God, genuine son of God, inexplicable,
creator of everything, Christ King,
light for the darkened hearts of the unknowing,
light who took human form like us,
but are in essence like him who sent you,
whose form is miraculously revealed through ours.
Blessed by your heavenly Father,
who sent you and with whom
you share glory for creation.
You care enough for my salvation, an exiled slave,
that you delivered yourself to evil men
and without resorting to your divinity
drank from the cup of death for me, a sinner,
according to the plan of your divine economy,
with true humanity and perfect divinity.
And the Holy Ghost is also of the same essence as you
and the Father,
equal in honor with the Son and the Father,
one perfect trinity in three persons indivisible,
without beginning or time,
benefactor to all, life giver of all, peacemaker of all,
creator of existence and shaper of all things,
glorified with one indivisible nature.
II.
For the sake of my transgressions for which
I am condemned to death,
the merciful Father, heavenly, almighty, one of
the divine essence,
has offered the only son of his bosom.
His beloved son, his equal in honor he did not spare,
but willingly gave him to death by the arms of
his tormentors,
as foretold by the prophet Zechariah:
“For raise the sword upon the shepherd,
and strike down the keeper of the flock,
and the flock shall disperse.”
The Old Testament also gives another example
of vows at the altar and the blood of the offering in
the story of Abraham’s sacrifice,
which described to me how you wished
to save the wretched.
So now, why do you grieve, my soul?
You are not destroyed by God
but by your own doing.
And why am I upset,
my mind reeling with satanic despair?
I should trust in God, confess to him
and he will care for me,
as David wrote in the Psalms,
and the Prophet counseled.
III.
The ways of the creator surpass
the understanding of angels and mortals.
If I were to try ten thousand times, my words
could not capture it,
for his good works are beyond comprehension
and description.
One of the blessed trinity
sent another of the trinity
and to please the will of the sender,
he died. And the third, according to
the wishes of the other two
worked together for the same good
with the same will.
As the soul is for the living beings and
thought for the rational beings,
as radiance is for glory, and form for substance,
as caring for life, and mindfulness for mercy,
as giving in charity, and resolve in salvation,
as abundance in generosity, flow in continuity,
as fullness for perfection, richness in inexhaustibility,
as long in forbearance, exalted in unreachableness,
they are one perfect trinity, of three persons,
blessed forever.
Amen.