A Prayer by Saint Symeon The New Theologian

Come, O true light! Come, O eternal life! Come, O hidden mystery! Come, O indescribable treasure! Come, O ineffable thing! Come, O inconceivable person! Come, O endless delight! Come, O unsetting light! Come, O true and fervent expectation of all those who will be saved! Come, O rising of those who lie down! Come, O resurrection of the dead!


Come, O powerful one, who always creates and re-creates and transforms by your will alone! Come, O invisible and totally intangible and untouchable! Come, O you who always remain immobile and at each moment move all, and come to us, who lie in hades, you who are above all heavens. Come, O desirable and legendary name, which is completely impossible for us to express what you are or to know your nature. Come, O eternal joy! Come, O unwithering wreath! Come, O purple of the great king our God! Come, O crystalline cincture, studded with precious stones! Come, O inaccessible sandal! Come, O royal robe and truly imperial right hand!

Come, you whom my wretched soul has desired and does desire! Come, you who alone go to the lonely for as you see I am lonely! Come, you who have separated me from everything and made me solitary in this world! Come, you who have become yourself desire in me, who have made me desire you, the absolutely inaccessible one! Come, O my breath and life! Come, O consolation of my humble soul! Come, O my joy, my glory, and my endless delight! I thank you that you have become one spirit with me, without confusion, without mutation, without transformation, you the God of all; and that you have become everything for me, inexpressible and perfectly gratuitous nourishment, which ever flows to the lips of my soul and gushes out into the fountain of my heart, dazzling garment which burns the demons, purification which bathes me with these imperishable and holy tears, that your presence brings to those whom you visit.


I give you thanks that for me you have become unsetting light and non-declining sun; for you who fill the universe with your glory have nowhere to hide yourself. No, you have never hidden yourself from anyone but we are the ones who always hide from you, by refusing to go to you; but then, where would you hide, you who nowhere find the place of your repose? Why would you hide, you who do not turn away from a single creature, who do not reject a single one? Today, then, O Master, come pitch your tent with me; until the end, make your home and live continually, inseparably within me, your slave, O most-kind one, that I also may find myself again in you, at my departure from this world and after my departure may I reign with you, O God who are above everything. O Master, stay and do not leave me alone, so that my enemies, arriving unexpectedly, they who are always seeking to devour my soul, may find you living within me and that they may take flight, in defeat, powerless against me, seeing you, O more powerful than everything, installed interiorly in the home of my poor soul. Yea, O Master, just as you remembered me, when I was in the world and, in the midst of my ignorance, you chose me and separated me from this world and set me before your glorious face, so now keep me interiorly, by your dwelling within me, forever upright, resolute; that by perpetually seeing you, I, the corpse, may live; that by possessing you, I, the beggar, may always be rich, richer than kings; that by eating you and by drinking you, by putting you on at each moment, I go from delight to delight in inexpressible blessings; for it is You, who are all good and all glory and all delight and it is to you, holy, consubstantial, and life-creating Trinity that the glory belongs, you whom all faithful venerate, confess, adore, and serve in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.