Prayers of St Isaak the Syrian

"O name of Jesus, key to all gifts, open up for me the great door of your treasure-house so that I may enter and praise you with the praise that comes from the heart in return for your mercies which I have experienced in latter days; for you came and renewed me with an awareness of the New World". O mystery exalted beyond every word and beyond silence, who became human in order to renew us by means of voluntary union with the flesh, reveal to me the path by which I may be raised up to your mysteries, traveling along a course that is tranquil, free from concerns of this world. Gather my mind into the silence of prayer, so that all my wandering thoughts may be silenced within me during that luminous converse of supplication and mystery-filled wonder".

"Sanctify me by your Mysteries, illumine my mind with knowledge of you, make your hope to shine out in my heart, hold me worthy to supplicate for it, O God my Father and Lord of my life; illumine your lamp within me, place in me what belongs to you so that I may forget what belongs to myself. Cast upon me the constraint of wonder of you, so that the constraint of nature may be overpowered by it. Stir up within me the vision of your mysteries so that I may become aware of what was placed in me at holy baptism. You placed within me a Guide: may He show me Your Glory at all times". "Hold me worthy, O Lord, to behold your mercy in my soul before I depart from this world; may I be aware in myself at that hour of your comfort, along with those who have gone forth from this world in good hope. Open my heart, O my God, by your Grace and purify me from any association with sin. Tread out in my heart the path of repentance, my God and my Lord, my hope and my boast, my strong refuge, by whom may my eyes be illumined, and may I have understanding of your truth, Lord. Hold me worthy, Lord, to taste the joy of the gift of repentance, by which the soul is separated from co-operating with sin and the will of flesh and blood. Hold me worthy, O Lord, to taste this state, wherein lies the gift of pure prayer. O my Saviour, may I attain to this wondrous transition at which the soul abandons this visible world, and at which new stirrings arise on our entering into the spiritual world and the experience of new perceptions".