I sing Thy grace, O Lady, I pray to Thee, my mind is filled with grace. Go right and teach me the path of Christ’s commandments. Strengthen your children to song, driving away despondency and sleep. Bound by the captivity of the Falls, allow me through Your prayers, Bride of God. Preserve me in the night and in the day, delivering me to those who fight against the enemy. Who gave birth to God, the life-giver, was killed by my passions and revived. Even as you gave birth to the non-evening Light, enlighten my blind soul. O wondrous Lady of the Palace, create for me the house of the Divine Spirit. You who gave birth to a doctor, heal my soul of many years of passion. Worried by the storm of life, guide me towards the path of repentance. Deliver me from eternal fire, and from evil worms, and from tartar. Do not show me to be a demon of joy, who is guilty of many sins. Create me again, having promised to be insensible, Immaculate, without sin. Show me the strangeness of all kinds of torment, and implore the Lord to all. Heavenly grant me joy, with all the saints, grant me joy. Most Holy Virgin, hear the voice of Your indecent servant. Give me a stream of tears, Most Pure One, cleansing the filth of my soul. I bring lamentations from my heart to You continually, be zealous, Lady.
Accept my prayer service and bring it to the blessed God. Highest Angel, create me above the fusion of the world. Light-bearing heavenly Seine, direct spiritual grace in me. I lift up my hand and my lips to praise, defiled by filth, O All-Immaculate One. Deliver me from the dirty tricks that are strangling me, diligently begging Christ; To Him is due honor and worship, now and ever, and unto ages of ages, Amen.
Captive - chain. Allow - release (release from bonds). Worried - worried, worried (that is: “me, worried..”; see below: guide me towards the path of repentance). Path - path, road. Tartarus is a hellish abyss. He who is guilty of many sins is the culprit of many sins. Dilapidated - exhausted, contrite, aged. Strange - alien, left aside. Make it worthy - make it worthy. Obscene - worthless (literally - look at the word!). Compassionate – merciful (literally: having a good heart). Create me above the merging of the world - deliver me from clinging to earthly concerns, from the power of this world (merging-mixing, joining). Sene – canopy, shadow (vocal case).
+ Newly create me, worn out and insensible, Most Immaculate, from sin. Prayer points to an important side in the action of sin: it makes a person more and more insensitive to the spiritual, becomes less and less noticeable to the sinner, who at the same time loses freshness and strength, deteriorates, weakens, moving further and further from the Source of true grace-filled life.
Exceeding the Angel, create me beyond the fusion of the world. This is a petition to the Highest Heavenly Powers of the Mother of God (the Most Honest Cherub and the Most Glorious Seraphim) for otherworldliness, a necessary property of a Christian. In a secret conversation with his disciples at the Last Supper, the Lord repeatedly repeats to them that they are not of the world: If you were of the world, then the world would love its own; But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you (John 15:19). Let us also recall the words of the apostle: For everything that is in the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but from this world (1 John 2:16); It is impossible to cleave to this lust of the flesh, the lust of hair and the pride of life, to merge with it, to let it into oneself, but such worldly merging can only be avoided with the help of God’s grace.
Light-bearing heavenly Seine, direct spiritual grace in me. A canopy is a shadow (remember the Russian word canopy - an extension to a house that provides shade, or shade - canopy, in hot weather). The expression Luminous Seine, heavenly, is so deeply and theologically significant that a simple translation would not explain anything. It is based on the idea of the luminous darkness of the Divine, the inconceivable, unrepresentable, impregnable God. A cloud covers Mount Sinai when God descends on it in fire to talk with Moses. The mountain burned with fire to the very heavens, [and there was] darkness, clouds and gloom (Deut. 4:11). And the people stood afar off, and Moses entered into the darkness where God is (Ex. 20:21). During the exodus from Egypt, the Lord walked before them [the children of Israel] by day in a pillar of cloud... and by night in a pillar of fire, giving light to them (Ex. 13:21) and entered into the middle between the camp of Egypt and between the camp of Israel, and was a cloud and darkness [for some] and illuminated the night [for others] (Ex. 14:20). About the appearance of the Lord, David sings: He bowed down the heavens and came down; darkness was under His feet. And he mounted the Cherubim and flew and was carried on the wings of the wind.
And he made darkness His covering, the darkness of the waters and the clouds of the air hanging around Him (Ps. 17:10-12); the same - 2 Samuel 22:10-12; the translation is slightly different: and He covered Himself with darkness like a canopy, thickening the waters of the clouds of heaven).
The first chapter of the “Mystical Theology” of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite is called: “What is Divine Darkness.” At the pinnacle of knowledge, “in the complete absence of light, in the complete absence of sensations and visibility, our mind, impervious to spiritual enlightenment, is illuminated by the brightest light, filled with the most pure radiance!” God is absolute light - the true Light, which enlightens every person who comes into the world: In Him was life, and life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it (John 1:4-5, 9); but this Light is unapproachable: the One and having immortality, which dwells in the unapproachable light, which no man has seen or can see (1 Tim. 6:16). You cannot see My face, because man cannot see Me and live (Ex. 33:20). The impossibility of knowing God and approaching Him is resolved only by the fact that God became incarnate and became human.
That is why the Most Holy Theotokos is for us not only the Burning Bush, which is not burned by the fire of the Divine, but also the Luminous Shadow of the Divine “Darkness”, similar to Mount Sinai: in Her God appears in the darkness of His light.