PRAYERS BY THE LAKE - SAINT NIKOLAI VELIMIROVICH I, II, III

 

P R A Y E R S   B Y    T H E    L  A K E

SAINT NIKOLAI VELIMIROVICH

I

Who is that staring at me through all the stars in heaven and all the creatures on earth?

 

Cover your eyes, stars and creatures; do not look upon my nakedness. Shame torments me enough through my own eyes. What is there for you to see? A tree of life that has been reduced to a thorn on the road, that pricks both itself and others. What else-except a heavenly flame immersed in mud, a flame that neither gives light nor goes out?

Plowmen, it is not your plowing that matters but the Lord who watches.

Singers, it is not your singing that matters but the Lord who listens.

Sleepers, it is not your sleeping that matters but the Lord who wakens.

It is not the pools of water in the rocks around the lake that matter but the lake itself. 

What is all human time but a wave that moistens the burning sand on the shore, and then regrets that it left the lake, because it has dried up? O stars and creatures, do not look at me with your eyes but at the Lord. He alone sees. Look at Him and you will see yourselves in your homeland. 

What do you see when you look at me? A picture of your exile? A mirror of your fleeting transitoriness? 

O Lord, my beautiful veil, embroidered with golden seraphim, drape over my face like a veil over the face of a widow, and collect my tears, in which the sorrow of all Your creatures seethes. 

O Lord, my beauty, come and visit me, lest I be ashamed of my nakedness—lest the many thirsty glances that are falling upon me return home thirsty.

Troparion of the Resurrection. Seventh Tone.

Thou didst destroy death by Thy Cross, Thou didst open Paradise to the thief. Thou didst change the lamentation of the Myrrh-bearers, and Thou didst command Thine Apostles to proclaim that Thou didst arise, O Christ God, and grantest to the world great mercy.

II 

Who put me in this bed of worms? 

Who buried me in the dust, to become a neighbor of snakes and a banquet for worms? Who pushed me off the high mountain, to become a companion of bloodthirsty and godless men?  My sin and Your justice, O Lord. My sin stretches from the creation of the world, and it is swifter than Your justice. I count my sins throughout my entire life, throughout the life of my father and all the way back to the beginning of the world, and I say: Truly, the name of the Lord's justice is mercy. I bear the wounds of my fathers on myself-wounds that I myself was preparing while I was still in my fathers— and now they have all appeared on my soul, like a spotted hide on a giraffe, like a cloak of vicious scorpions that sting me. Have mercy on me, O Lord, open the floodgate of the heavenly river of Your grace, and cleanse me of leprous evil, so that without this leprosy I may dare to proclaim Your name before the other lepers without them ridiculing me.

At least raise me up by a head above the rotten stench of this bed of worms, to inhale the incense of heaven and return to Life. At least raise me up as high as a palm tree so I can laugh at the serpents chasing my heels.  O Lord, if there has been even one good deed in the course of my earthly journey, for the sake of that one deed deliver me from the companionship of bloodthirsty and godless men. O Lord, my hope in despair.

O Lord, my strength in weakness.

O Lord, my light in darkness.  Place just one finger on my forehead and I shall be raised. Or, if I am too unclean for Your finger, let a single ray of light from Your kingdom shine upon me and raise me-raise me, from this bed of worms, O my beloved Lord.

III

Are there days gone by, O man, to which you would wish to return?

They all attracted you like silk, and now remain behind you like a cobweb. Like honey they greeted you, like stench you bade them farewell. All were totally filled with illusion and sin. See how all the pools of water in the moonlight resemble mirrors; and how all the days that were lit up with your levity resemble mirrors. But as you stepped from one day to the next, the false mirrors cracked like thin ice, and you waded through the water and mud. Can a day that has a morning and an evening as doorways be a day?

O luminous Lord, my soul is burdened with illusions and longs for one day—for the day without doorways, the day from which my soul has departed and sunk into the shifting shadows—for Your day, which I used to call my day, when I was one with You. Is there any happiness gone by, O man, to which you would wish to return? Of two morsels of the same sweetness the second is the more trite. You would turn your head away in boredom from yesterday's happiness, if it were set out on today's table. Moments of happiness are given to you only in order to leave you longing for tme happiness in the bosom of the everhappy Lord; and ages of unhappiness are given to you, to waken you out of the drowsy dream of illusions. O Lord, Lord, my only happiness, will You provide shelter for Your injured pilgrim? 

O Lord, my ageless youth, my eyes shall bathe in You and shine more radiantly than the sun.
You carefully collect the tears of the righteous, and with them You rejuvenate worlds.