Prayer of St Ephrem — O Lord and Master of my life

The history of this prayer

In the Churches of the Byzantine rite, Orthodox and Eastern Catholic, this is the Lenten prayer par excellence. It is said at every weekday service of Great Lent, Monday to Friday, up to Holy Wednesday, and not on Saturdays and Sundays, which keep a festal character even during the fast. In a few lines it sums up the whole programme of repentance: to ask God to keep from us the vices that shut us up in ourselves, to give us the opposite virtues, and to make us see our own sins instead of judging those of others.

Saint Ephrem

Tradition ascribes it to Saint Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306-373), deacon of Nisibis and Edessa, a hymn-writer called the “harp of the Holy Spirit”, declared a Doctor of the Church by Benedict XV in 1920. The prayer, however, is known only in Greek, and no Syriac original has been found; so the attribution should be taken as traditional, without firm proof that it came from the saint's own pen. Whoever wrote it, the Christian East has prayed it for many centuries.

How to pray it

In Byzantine practice the prayer is divided into three parts, with a prostration (bowing down until the forehead touches the ground) after each. In many places twelve bows from the waist follow, with the words “O God, cleanse me a sinner” at each, and then the whole prayer is said once more, with a prostration at the end. Latin Catholics can pray it in the same way, or simply kneeling, every day of Lent.

One word in the second line deserves attention: σωφροσύνη (sophrosyne), often rendered “chastity”, means more broadly sober-mindedness, integrity, a sound and whole spirit. Here it is translated “sober-mindedness”. The English translation was made here from the Greek.