Peter the Studite
To Thee, O Most Pure Mother of God, I fall down and pray: Behold, O Queen, for I am constantly sinning and angering Thy Son and my God, and many times when I repent, I find myself lying before God, and I repent in trembling: will the Lord strike me, and hour by hour I do the same again: knowing this, my Lady Lady Theotokos, I pray, have mercy, strengthen, and grant me good works. Behold, my Lady Theotokos, for the Imam is by no means in hatred of my evil deeds, and with all my thoughts I love the law of my God; But we don’t know, Most Pure Lady, why even when I hate, I love, but I transgress what is good. Do not, O Most Pure One, allow my will to be fulfilled, for it is not pleasing, but let the will of Thy Son and my God be done: may He save me, and enlighten me, and give me the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that I may cease from this place of depravity, and so on, may I live in the commandment of Thy Son; to Him belongs all glory, honor and power, with His Beginning Father, and His Most Holy and Good and Life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Vesi - You know. And many times when I repent, I find myself lying before God - and although I repent many times, I turn out to be unfaithful to God (I deceive God). I do the same thing again - I do the same thing again. These leaders know this. Do good things and give them to me - do good things and give them to me. It’s as if the imam is by no means hated – which I absolutely hate. My evil - my evil. We don’t know - I don’t know. From where I hate, I love - why what I hate is what I love (literally: from where [those things] that I hate are the same things I love). Good - good. May I stop from now on my evil deeds - so that from now on I will stop evil deeds. Other things - in the future. If only I had lived, I would have lived.
+ This prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos is the cry of a man who has learned how little his will to good can resist sin. And repentance, completely sincere, and love with all one’s thoughts for the law of God, and hatred of evil deeds in themselves are not capable of saving a person from slavery to sin. The words of this prayer are close to the words of the Apostle Paul: ... I am carnal, sold under sin. For I don’t understand what I’m doing: because I don’t do what I want, but what I hate, I do. If I do what I do not want, then... it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that lives in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh; because the desire for good is in me, but I don’t find it to do it. I don’t do the good that I want, but I do the evil that I don’t want. If I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin living in me. And so I find the law that when I want to do good, evil belongs to me.
For according to the inner man I delight in the law of God; But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members (Rom. 7:14-23). It is possible to overcome and defeat the law of sin only with God's help, with the power of God's grace, for which we cry out in our prayers.