'Open your mouth and I will fill it'
See, Lord, your servant's mouth and his mind are open to you!
Fill it, O Lord, with your gift,
That I may sing your praise according to your will.
Make me worthy to approach your Gift with awe!
Though your nature is one, its expressions are many;
They find three levels, high, middle, and lowly.
Make me worthy of the lowly part,
Of picking up crumbs from the table of your wisdom.
Make me worthy to approach your Gift with awe!
Your highest expression is hidden with your Father,
Your middle riches are the wonder of the Watchers [i.e. angels]
A tiny stream from your teaching, Lord,
For us below makes a flood of interpretations.
Make me worthy to approach your Gift with awe!
In your Bread is hidden a Spirit not to be eaten,
In your Wine dwells a Fire not to be drunk.
Spirit in your Bread, Fire in your Wine,
A wonder set apart, [yet] received by our lips!
Make me worthy to approach your Gift with awe!
See, Fire and Spirit in the womb that bore you!
See, Fire and Spirit in the river where you were baptized!
Fire and Spirit in our Baptism;
In the Bread and the Cup, Fire and Holy Spirit!
Make me worthy to approach your Gift with awe!
Your Bread kills the Devourer [death] who had made us his bread,
Your Cup destroys death which was swallowing us up.
We have eaten you, Lord, we have drunk you,
Not to exhaust you, but to live by you.
Make me worthy to approach your Gift with awe!
See, Lord, my arms are filled with the crumbs from your table;
There is not room left in my lap.
As I kneel before you, hold back your Gift;
Keep it in your storehouse to give us again!
(a prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns on the Faith 10 To Christ on the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit, and the Sacraments, translation by R Murray, Eastern Churches Review 3 (1970), copied from T.M.Finn, "Early Christian Baptism and the Catechumenate: West and East Syria", The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1992)
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