“Do you want to do something radical for the Lord Jesus… something that will seriously change your life?

Of course, you signed up for that when you became a Christian. The Christian life is by definition radical and it is by definition a lifelong quest to change our lives from loving ourselves to loving God.

The Lenten challenge I would like to present you… came from one of the most precious prayers that we pray during the holy days of Lent. It’s called the Prayer of Saint Ephraim the Syrian. We pray it constantly in Lent during the weekdays; Vespers, Compline, Orthros services. It goes like this:

Those 3 petitions – we make a full prostration with our head to the ground after each one and that’s followed by making the sign of the cross and saying God have mercy on me a sinner, repeating the full prayer and then a prostration at the end…

Think of some of the themes shared in these petitions: take from me sloth, faintheartedness, meddling, idle talk, give me the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love… grant that I might see my own sins and not to judge my brother…

This theme of maintaining our spiritual focus on our own hearts and using Lent as a quest to see ourselves truly, to be able to see our reflection in the spiritual mirror, so to speak. This is the theme of this prayer. In order to do that, it’s impossible to be looking at other people’s sins. Inasmuch as we look at other people’s sins, we are unable to look at our own sins.

So, here’s the challenge, and it is radical and it is lifechanging, and it is exceedingly difficult.  The challenge is… to go through all of the days of Lent without even a single time speaking about the sins of someone else, let alone judging. To go through the entire time of Lent refusing to speak of anyone else’s sin, and if you do, to repent of it immediately, get back up and get back at it. This is the quest, the challenge… it is proving to be in our lives exceedingly difficult which means it is exceedingly important. 

May God be our helper and may his grace prevail over our sins….”

Listen to the entire challenge here: Can You Accept My Lenten Challenge?

Adult/Family:

“…This prayer penetrates the heart like none other, mysteriously acts upon it, and you feel a special, exceptional divine power in it… It is short, but it nevertheless contains an enormous wealth of thoughts and feelings. Extraordinarily important is the very fact that St. Ephraim asks God to deliver him from everything unholy and repugnant to Him, and to vouchsafe him great virtues. Why does he ask for this?

There are people… who rely entirely upon themselves and think that everything is achievable through the powers of their minds and feelings. They do not understand that many things, in fact the most important, precious and cherished things, are not accessible to our minds and feelings. Whoever understands this understands what the apostle Paul said: For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I (Rom. 7:15). …He pined and suffered because he did not do the good that his soul desired, but did the evil that he did not want.

Deeply aware of this, St. Ephraim the Syrian prayed to God that He would deliver him from wickedness, that He would give him the strength to do good. The strength to do good works, like the strength to be freed from vices, is something we receive only from God. The soul of every Christian is vaguely aware of this, and that is why the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian so touches it.

Every man has his own spirit—in his soul are the traces left by those vices in which he sins, as well as by the good that he does. It is much easier to be freed from individual vices than from the spirit of these vices. The latter is possible only gradually, with God’s help.

Excerpted from An Explanation of the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian by St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea

Middle School:

Learn how to pray the Prayer of St Ephrem, with prostrations and bows demonstrated

“Every day of Great Lent, with the exception of Saturdays and Sundays, the prayer “O Lord and Master of my life” is read. According to tradition, this prayer was written in Syria in the fourth century by the ascetic Mar Afrem or, as we have grown accustomed to calling him, Ephraim the Syrian….”

High School:

A Spiritual Checklist