An explanation of the morning prayers and the prayers before sleep
“When a person says some prayer and does not understand its meaning well, that prayer will be of no profit to them” St Bishop Gabriel (Kikodze)
By the explanation of the holy fathers, prayer is the converse of the mind with God. Its rightness is of great importance. Therefore the holy Church appointed the reading of certain prayers during the day. Among them the most necessary for an Orthodox Christian are the morning and evening prayers.
We should pray without haste and with understanding. Bishop Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894) advises us to think in our free time about what is written in the morning and evening prayers. Reading them attentively will make us partakers of the spirituality of those ascetics out of whose hearts they came.
If we go deeply into every word of the morning and evening prayers, we shall become convinced (sometimes unexpectedly) that addressing God with the words of these prayers obliges us to order our spiritual world in accordance with the commandments of the Gospel. When in the evening we say, “deliver me, O Lord… from evil desires,” and the next day do the opposite, our prayer becomes a mechanical repetition of another's words.
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen” — with these words we confirm our faith in the one God in three Persons.
The prayer of the publican — “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:9–14) — disposes us to grieve over our own sins and shortcomings. We come to know our sins and turn for help to those whose prayers rise to God like a bright ray. This is precisely what the beginning prayer means, in which we ask God for mercy through the intercession of the holy fathers.
St Basil the Great (330–379) distinguishes four kinds of prayer: glorification, thanksgiving, repentance and petition. After the example of the saints we begin our prayer rule with the glorification of the Holy Trinity and at once offer a prayer to the Holy Spirit, that He may help us with His grace and bless our prayer. “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26), says the Apostle Paul.
In reading the Trisagion too we ask mercy of the Holy Trinity. This prayer has the following history: in Greece, in the first half of the 5th century, a great earthquake took place. The people entreated God for deliverance. A certain boy, during a vision, heard the singing of the angels: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal.” He told the people what he had heard. Together with the boy everyone began to repeat the singing of the angels, and they added to it the words: “have mercy on us.” The earthquake ceased.
The short hymn of praise to the Holy Trinity — “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages, amen” — was composed by the patriarchs of Antioch Meletius and Flavian (4th century), to confirm the dogma of the equality of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity.
The prayer to the Holy Trinity sets forth the part of each Person of the Holy Trinity in the work of man's salvation. With the words “O Lord, cleanse us from our sins” they address God the Father, Who cleanses us from sins by the blood of the Son; “O Master, pardon our iniquities” — God the Son, Who has the power to free our souls from sins; “O Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities” — God the Holy Spirit, Who comes to us and heals us of our spiritual and bodily sicknesses.
In the name of the Holy Trinity we say three times the short prayer: “Lord, have mercy.”
Among the other prayers a special place is held by the Lord's Prayer, “Our Father.” It was given us as a model of prayer by our Saviour Jesus Christ (Matt. 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4). The fathers and teachers of the Church saw in this prayer “the whole Gospel in brief” and were amazed at its simplicity and depth.
St Maximus the Confessor (6th–7th centuries) defines this prayer in the most condensed form as “theology” (Matt. 6:9–10); as the adoption of men as God's children by the Lord's mercy (v. 9); as being in a state of honour equal to the angels (v. 10); as communion with eternal life (v. 11); as the restoration of human nature to its first sinless state (v. 12); as the condemnation of sin (vv. 12–13) and of evil (v. 13).
The troparia to the Holy Trinity, which are read after the “Our Father,” seem to point to this “being in the honour of the angels”: in them we glorify the Lord with the singing of the angels. Of this song the prophet Isaiah says: “I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, and the house was full of his glory. And seraphs stood round about him: six wings to one and six wings to another; and with two they covered their face, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one cried to the other, and they said: Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:1–3).
These words entered the eucharistic canon too and are read at the divine Liturgy before the changing of the holy Gifts.
We make bold to say the song of the angels, but at the same time we are aware of our unworthiness, and therefore we ask again and again for mercy through the intercession of the advocate of the human race, the Mother of God.
With the prayer “Lord, have mercy” we prepare our spiritual and bodily powers, our whole mind, heart and will, for the worship of God, and we ask the Lord Jesus Christ to reign over us.
In the following prayer we thank the Holy Trinity, Who has granted us one more day of our life, and ask that by His mercy we may do everything on this day to the glory of His name.
“O come, let us worship…” — this falling down before the Lord God and our Saviour Jesus Christ we perform with prostrations.
The 50th psalm was written by the king and prophet David after his fall into sin (see 2 Kings 11, 12). In this psalm he expresses deep, sincere repentance.
From this psalm the Church has singled out two verses: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.” These words are said by the priest at the divine Liturgy before the changing of the holy Gifts. These prayers are said by the faithful during Great Lent in the troparion of the third Hour, asking for the forgiveness of sins and purity of soul. These words form the basis of the canon for holy Communion. They may be said at any time of the day.
The symbol of faith, the “mrtsamsi,” is not a prayer, but it has been included in the morning prayers so that the Orthodox consciousness may be kept pure, and for the confession of a Christian's personal faith as a truth, which is called a dogma. The Creed was composed by the first (325) and the second (381) Ecumenical Councils.
The next two prayers to the Lord belong to the Egyptian ascetic, the venerable Macarius the Great (4th century). If we enter even a little into his divine wisdom, we shall pray and ask the man-loving Saviour to “make the true light shine in our hearts” and to make us worthy of the heavenly Kingdom.
The following prayer was composed by the greatest ascetic of the Christian Church, Basil the Great. This prayer reminds us of the greatness of the almighty Lord, Who knows our voluntary and involuntary sins. It calls us to repentance. We ask the Lord to free us from sloth — that constant inner enemy — and to save our souls.
The prayer to the guardian angel, the guardian of our soul and body, tells us that we receive the revelation of God's will from our guardian angel, who awakens in us holy and good thoughts pleasing to God. He is the witness before God of how a person received God's revelation and how far they opened their heart to the Lord's call to fulfil God's commandments, those unshakeable laws of the spiritual life. A Christian should remember their guardian angel, should ask his intercession before God in prayer, so as to receive and keep the strength and grace needed to do good works, and should ask forgiveness for all the sins by which they have offended him.
The greeting of the most holy Mother of God by the archangel (Luke 1:28) fills us daily with joy and tells us that this day — the Annunciation — is “the beginning of our salvation.”
Besides our guardian angel, we are “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) — the saints, who have boldness to pray for us before God. The closest of them to us is the saint whose name has been given us from the day of our baptism. We should read his troparion at least once a day and, of course, know it by heart.
The troparion to the Cross reminds us of our redemption by the Saviour through His nailing to the cross, and gives us strength and grace to bear our own cross. The words of the troparion plant in the hearts of the faithful the hope of God's mercy, which God, at our prayers, will bestow on our homeland and on Orthodox Christians.
A Christian prays for the holy universal, catholic, apostolic Church; for the Orthodox Church of Georgia; for the Most Holy and Most Blessed Patriarch; for the homeland, its government and its army; for their spiritual father; for their parents, relatives and friends; for their spiritual brothers and sisters; for those in misfortune; for those who hate and wrong them — and asks God to help them and to protect them.
We also pray for the hierarchs, servants of God, monks and lay people who have departed from us, asking for them the forgiveness of sins and a place in the Kingdom.
By these prayers Christians strengthen their mutual love and their spiritual bond and help one another in the salvation of the soul.
Before sleep Orthodox Christians prepare themselves by prayer for the coming night and for the day to come. They sum up the results of the day that has passed and, so as not to repeat their mistakes and sins again, ask the Lord to strengthen them to live by God's commandments.
After the usual beginning of the prayers before sleep, God's mercy is asked with the reading of the penitential troparia: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us…”
After “Lord, have mercy” has been said twelve times (saying this prayer twelve times in the morning and as many times in the evening means the blessing of every hour of the day and night), three evening prayers are read, addressed to each Person of the Holy Trinity.
In the prayer addressed to God the Father, St Macarius teaches us to ask for the forgiveness of the sins committed during the day that has passed, that God may make us worthy to pass the night in peace and to meet the next day.
In the prayer to God the Son we ask to be delivered from “unseemly” thoughts and to be shown mercy.
We sincerely wish to receive spiritual gifts, and so we turn for help to the Holy Spirit, the giver of life, the heavenly King. I spent the whole past day in sins and in spiritually imperfect deeds, we say to God in this prayer; this has bred sorrow in me, I have lost the peace of my soul; have mercy on me, that my conscience may be calmed and that I may glorify Thy name.
In the following prayer we ask God for the forgiveness of sins and for mercy, that we may please God, fall asleep in peace, be freed from evil thoughts and in the morning offer up a prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord.
In the prayer to the guardian angel we ask protection for our soul and body and defence from the assault of our enemy, the devil. It is by his advocacy that we may become worthy of God's mercy.
Sorrow gradually departs from the heart of the one praying; they rise to another spiritual height when, after the prayers of repentance, they begin the prayer of thanksgiving. A hymn of thanksgiving indeed is the kontakion dedicated to the heavenly Queen — “To thee, the Champion Leader… and invincible Defender.” It was composed by Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, in 626, after the miraculous deliverance of the Greek state from the assault of the Persians and the Avars. This exalted hymn to the “invincible Defender” was inserted into the akathist to the Mother of God, which already existed at that time. With this kontakion Matins in church ends.
Then two short prayers to the Mother of God are read. In these prayers we place all our hope in the most holy Virgin. We ask her for protection and for intercession before God.
The prayers to the Mother of God are followed by a prayer composed by the venerable Ioannicius the Great († 846, commemorated on 4 November). Of his almost hundred years of life he spent seventy in monastic labour; he knew the “Psalter” by heart and joined to every verse of every psalm this small but wonderful prayer: “My hope is the Father…”.
Then comes “It is truly meet”… and three short troparia, in which we ask God that our natural sleep may not pass into bodily death and that we may not die without repentance (unrepentant).
The last of these three troparia is dedicated to the Mother of God, who prays unceasingly for our salvation.
After this we sign ourselves with the cross and say the prayer to the precious Cross. In it we express our firm faith that by the power of the cross, by the making of the sign of the cross, demons are driven away. We call the Saviour's Cross life-giving, that is, granting life, because it is an unapproachable and invincible power. On it the Saviour Himself was nailed as a sacrifice, though He Himself was sinless, for the forgiveness of our sins, and by this He delivered us from eternal death.
In the short prayer of petition “Deliver us, have mercy on us…” we, as children, express our faithfulness to the heavenly Father, “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). Calling upon the Saviour and His saints, we begin the prayer “for those who hate us and wrong us.”
Before sleep a Christian thinks of the day of Judgement, of the fact that they must give an answer before the Almighty, and expresses repentance for their sins. Going over in detail the whole day that has passed, from morning to that moment, they ask the Lord for the forgiveness of the sins of that day and of their whole life. The holy fathers teach us in their writings that it is better to weep every day all our life and to ask God for mercy than to go out of this life burdened with grievous sins.
As they go to sleep, a Christian signs the bed with the cross and says a short prayer in which they commit their soul to God, and so they fall asleep as in a parent's arms. “Into Thy hands I commit my spirit, Lord Jesus Christ my God; bless me, have mercy on me and grant me eternal life, amen.”
