How prayer begins
Almost every Orthodox service, and almost every rule of private prayer, opens with the same short sequence. It is worth learning first, because once you know it you can begin anything.
- The Trisagion PrayersThe usual beginning
- O come, let us worship
Through the day
The Jesus Prayer, the Creed, and the prayer said through Lent with prostrations.
- The Jesus Prayer
- The Symbol of FaithThe Nicene Creed
- The Prayer of St Ephrem the Syrian
- More honourable than the CherubimAxion estin
Before and after Communion
The Church appoints a long preparation before Communion — a canon and a rule of prayer, kept with fasting and confession. These are the prayers said closest to the chalice itself.
In sickness, and for the dead
Two of the places where people reach for prayer first, and where the Church's own answer is a sacrament and a service rather than a private prayer.
- For the sick
- For the deadThe prayer of the Panikhida
For particular occasions
A journey, a house being built, a house being moved into, the first of a harvest, children starting school. The old service books are full of these, and they are the least known part of them.
Where these come from, and what is missing
Three books, all of them long out of copyright and all of them free to read in full:
- Isabel Hapgood's Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church (1906) — the standard English service book in North America for a century, made with the blessing of the future Patriarch Tikhon. Read it.
- G. V. Shann's Euchology (1891) — the daily cycle, and the source of the Creed here. Read it.
- Shann's Book of Needs (1894) — the occasional prayers, for a journey, a house, a harvest. Read it.
The Psalms quoted in these prayers are Brenton's Septuagint, which is already on this site.
Why the English is old
Because the alternative would be to take someone else's work. Every modern English Orthodox prayer book — Jordanville's, Holy Transfiguration's, St Tikhon's, the Antiochian and Greek Archdiocese editions — is in copyright, and so is the English on most Orthodox websites. The ancient Greek and Slavonic are free to anyone; the English renderings of them are not, because a translation is a work in its own right. In 2012 a monastery sued a bishop for reposting its translations of ancient liturgical texts and won, with the court rejecting a fair-use defence outright. This site would rather sound like 1906 than take what is not ours.
What is not here
Three real gaps, worth stating rather than hiding:
- A morning and evening rule. There is no public-domain English one. Hapgood and Shann are service books — Vespers, Compline, Matins, the Hours — which is the Church's prayer, not a rule for beside your own bed. The printed prayer books that carry a morning and evening rule are all modern. Ask your parish for one; most have them to give.
- Akathists. Every English akathist in circulation is a modern translation under copyright.
- Grace at meals. Both books bless food at Pascha and the Transfiguration, which is a different thing. The traditional grace is the Our Father, which is here.
A word about who says what
Several of these are the priest's prayers, and Hapgood marks some of them secretly — said at the altar, under the singing, not by the congregation. Each page says which. A prayer for the sick is not a substitute for asking for Holy Unction, and the prayer at a memorial is not something to say instead of having one served. Where the Church's answer is a sacrament, the page points at the sacrament.
Found an error in a transcription? The sources are linked above, so anything here can be checked against the printed page. Corrections are welcome and acted on.