Lord God, our Savior!
We fall to You with a contrite heart and confess our sins and iniquities, with which we have angered Your mercy and hindered Your mercy. For we have departed from You, O Master, and have not kept Your commandments, and have not done the works that You commanded us. That is why You struck us with disorder, and gave us over to be trampled upon by our enemies, and we were humbled more than all nations, and became a byword and a reproach among our neighbors. Great and wondrous God, who laments the sins of men, who raises up the downtrodden and strengthens those who fall! Send down Your heavenly power from heaven, heal the ulcers of our souls and raise us up from the bed of sickness, for our loins are weakened, we are stricken with unrighteousness and give birth to iniquity. Satisfy the vacillation and strife in our land, drive away from us envy and strife, murder and drunkenness, strife and temptation, all uncleanness, enmity and malice have entered our hearts, so that we all love each other again and remain united in You, the Lord and Master ours, as You commanded and commanded us. Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us, for we are filled with humiliation and are unworthy to lift our eyes to Heaven. Remember the mercies that You showed to our fathers, change Your anger to mercy and give us help in sorrow. Your Church prays to You and intercedes through the mouth of Your friends, our reverend and God-bearing fathers Sergius of Radonezh and Seraphim of Sarov, Peter, Alexy, Jonah, Job, Philip, the saints of Moscow, the Hieromartyr Hermogenes and all the saints who have shone in our land, and especially the All-Holy Mother of God and The Ever-Virgin Mary, who from the first years protected our country with Her protection. Give understanding to all those in power and place in their hearts a good disposition towards Your Church and all Your people. By the power of Your Cross, strengthen our army and deliver it from all the snares of enemies. Raise up among us men of strength and intelligence and give us all the spirit of wisdom and fear of God, the spirit of strength and piety.
Lord, we resort to You, teach us to do Your will, for You are our God, and the source of Life is with You, in Your light we will see light. Extend Your mercy to those who know You forever and ever. Amen.
6. Prayer for the salvation of the Orthodox Church by priest Nikolai Silvinsky
Lord God, our Savior, we fall before You with a contrite heart and confess our sins and iniquities, with which we have irritated Your mercy and blocked Your mercies. Therefore, Your righteous judgment has befallen us, Lord, strife and disorder have seized us, enmity and malice have multiplied beyond measure. A fierce persecution has also been raised against Your holy Church, in order to destroy its statutes, trample upon the teaching of Your law, desecrate the good deeds of Your house, and insult and drive out the ministers and evangelists of Your Word.
But, most merciful Lord, look down from Thy holy heights on the tearful prayers of Thy poor and sorrowful people, change Thy anger to mercy and give us help from sorrow. As in the days of old, in the time of temptation, our country was saved from destruction only by the faith of Christ, and only by prayer and tears of repentance was it delivered from executions and the judges of the enemy. Therefore, with the tenderness of our hearts we cry out to You: save now our fatherland, kindle in our hearts the love for Your holy Church and teach us to stand firmly, even to death, for Your holy faith and for the glory of Your holy name. And with this strengthen and glorify Your Church, by Your omnipotent strength, deliver her from all evil circumstances.
For those who crucify You, O merciful, merciful Lord, and for Your enemies, You command Your servants to pray: so forgive those who hate and offend us; do not repay them, O Lord, according to their deeds and the wickedness of their undertakings, for they do not know what they are doing, but to brotherly and Instruct them in a virtuous life, so that they may turn to You, their Master, and together with the sons of the Church glorify You, the One God glorified in the Trinity, forever and ever!
Amen.
7. Prayer of the priest Afanasy (Sakharov) from the Prayer singing for the Fatherland
(kneeling, read this prayer with contrition)
We have sinned, committed lawlessness, lived unrighteously before You, O Lord our God; We have not kept Your commandments, we have not kept Your commandments, but we have desired to walk according to the will of our hearts. We have not preserved our first love for You, the Bridegroom of our souls, our Lord and Benefactor, for our Mother the Orthodox Church and Her statutes, for our Fatherland, Holy Rus', and its shrines, for the memory of our fathers and the pious customs and covenants of our ancestors. Not to You, the Bright East, but to the dark West with lust we directed our gaze. And what we sinned in became our punishment. In Your righteous anger against those who did not remain faithful, against those who limped on both knees, You brought foreigners from the West to our Fatherland. The fierce war, and then internal unrest, unrest and church discord caused innumerable disasters and suffering to the Russian people. Because of our iniquities the heavens were closed and the earth did not bear fruit; You struck us with hunger, thirst and pestilence; Finally, he again allowed foreigners to come to our Fatherland, insane and of an animal nature, who came with evil plans - to enslave and exterminate the Russian people, to destroy the Russian state. But long-suffering and in anger, loving mankind and in punishment, You did not allow their evil intentions to be fulfilled and did not give up the earth, gathered together and organized by prayers, tears and sweat, by the labors and deeds of our pious ancestors and holy men and wives from our kind. Having penetrated deep into our country, our enemies turned back in shame and themselves died, struck by punishment from God. But many of the Russian people still suffer from unhealed military wounds to this day. The incessant saber-rattling all over the world and the anticipation of new military horrors leaves everyone in awe. Those who oppress us are multiplying greatly, many are rebelling against us, many are saying: “There is no salvation for Holy Rus', there is no salvation for the Russian Orthodox people in their God.” But, O Most Merciful One, do not be completely angry with us! Have mercy on the Russian land, have mercy on the Russian people! Call him to repentance, like the Ninevites of old. With the disasters and sorrows that have occurred, wash us from our iniquities, cleanse us from our sins, kindle our hearts with faith in You, inspire them with hope for You, inflame them with love for You. Increase our faith, help our unbelief. Hasten to precede us with Thy compassion, O Lord, for we are very weary. Help us, O God, our Savior, for the sake of the glory of Your name, so that the pagans will not say: “Where is their God?”, and may the shed blood of Your servants be avenged before our eyes, and it will become known among the nations. When punishing, punish us, Lord, and do not put us to death, so that we do not die, but may we live and proclaim Your deeds. Do not disdain to be, as in the days of our fathers, our Lord and Master, our Helper, our Intercessor, our Savior, a Refuge in days of sorrow, Joy in days of joy, our Glory, lifting up our heads. Bow down, O Most Gracious One, to the intercession of the All-Immaculate Mother of God, day and night, as the Holy Church boldly confesses, praying for us and establishing the power of sovereigns with Her prayers. Heed Her intercession for us and do not prevent Her from being our ardent Intercessor and Helper in the future, driving away the invasion of opponents from our Fatherland and instructing us all to the salvation - do not prevent Her in the future from being the Queen of the Heavenly Russian land, the Lady of the Sovereign and Undefeated Voivode of the Orthodox Russian people. Accept, O Holy of Holies, the prayers of our holy relatives, the Russian wonderworkers, who, as we firmly believe, incessantly pray for the earthly Fatherland and for us, even though we are unworthy, their lesser brothers. Through the prayers of the saints, Lord, cleanse the Russian land from wickedness, atheism, and debauchery. Through the prayers of the saints, Lord, cleanse the Russian people from all the evil habits they acquired during the days of their apostasy from the faith, and may they be adorned with faith, piety, humility, patience and other Christian virtues in which our fathers abounded. Through the prayers of the saints, Lord, make us wise, our archpastors and shepherds to correctly teach the word of Your truth, boldly, everywhere and before everyone, to confess Your name, fearlessly, regardless of faces, proclaim Your truth, not deviating either to the right or to the left, and lead to salvation the flock entrusted to them by You. Through the prayers of the saints, may sinners and lawless people disappear from the face of the Russian land, so that they will not be on it. Remember, God of our fathers, King above kings and Lord above lords, the works and exploits of the ascetics of piety, builders and rulers of Holy Rus' and all our pious ancestors. Preserve and restore what they collected and created. Save our Fatherland as great, powerful and glorious Rus'. Preserve the true faith in our Fatherland until the end of time, establish the Orthodox Church in it, so that the Russian people led by them, striving in the Christian dispensation of the earthly Fatherland, will think more about the life of the future century. Preserve our Fatherland as a beacon of Orthodoxy, not only for the peoples living in it, but also for the whole world, especially for our fellow Slavic peoples. Preserve the great reigning city of Moscow as the heart of Holy Rus', as the center of our shrines and church and state life. Preserve the sacred Moscow Kremlin and in it the mother of Russian churches - the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady and all the surviving temples, monasteries and shrines. Return them to the faithful people and help restore them to their former splendor, so that they continue to adorn the Holy Russian land, so that those who fall to them receive grace, sanctification, multiplication of joys, relief of sorrows. Hear, O Lamb, slain for the world, the cry of the blood of Your children shed for You, and have mercy on the land that has been watered with this blood, have mercy on the land that in its depths has hidden the bodies of those who suffered for Your name, for the faith and the Fatherland, and for the brothers who laid down their lives. Look, faithful to Your promises, at the zealots of the faith, who boldly confessed Your name before the sons of this age in our days of militant atheism, and at Your hidden children in the midst of the world, in our evil time of serving the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of the worldly knees before the modern Baals who have not bowed down or desecrated their garments (Rev. 3-4). For the sake of these Thy chosen ones, according to Thy promise, shorten the days of our sorrow, the days of troubles and suffering from which we are exhausted, from which our hearts melt away and we are close to despair. Do not reject, O Immeasurable One in mercy, the prayers of us, Thy sinful and unworthy servants. Although we have sinned, we have not departed from You. We know You alone as our Lord, we resort to You alone at all times and in every situation, from You alone we expect help, to You alone we always raise our eyes. Do not turn Your Face away from us. Be merciful to us sinners. Save Your people and bless Your inheritance and feed us forever and exalt us. Hear, O Lord of all the ends of the earth, all tribes and peoples, in every nation living in our Fatherland, those who fear You, who, according to the laws of their faith, do good and pray to You. Accept their prayers for the salvation of the earthly Fatherland; moreover, bring them and their fellow tribesmen into the fence of Your Holy Church, so that all the peoples living in all corners of the Russian land may be a single church herd and have different languages, but glorify You with one heart, preserving their originality and the good customs of their ancestors and friendly together together with the entire Russian people, they cared about the organization of the earthly Fatherland, and most of all they strove for the Mountain Fatherland. Do not be angry to the end, Creator and Creator of all, who does not desire the death of sinners, but awaits their conversion and repentance, and against our brothers who, out of ignorance, instigation or malice, are hostile to You, blaspheme Your great name, and turn the most holy objects into blasphemy faith. For they too are Your creation. Therefore, do not despise them, as the work of Your hands, but some with sorrows and punishments, others with mercies and good deeds, and call others to Yourself with miraculous signs and show them to be skillful workers of Your commandments. O Heavenly King, Humane-loving Lord, Long-suffering and Much-Merciful! Again and again we fall to You and cry: having heeded the intercession of the Mother of God and the saints, not rejecting the prayers of the living and the dead, and the greatest sufferings of all Your creations and dumb animals and remembering the mother of the earth herself, have mercy, have mercy; Have mercy on our Fatherland, the Russian land and all our people, lovingly and without delay. For the days in which You struck us, for the years in which we saw disasters, look upon Your servants, the Orthodox Russian people, and grant us consolation. Grant us the consolation of always seeing our Fatherland in all its glory, strength and greatness. Grant us the consolation to always see the Orthodox Church exalted and glorified in our Fatherland, as in the days of our fathers. Grant us the consolation of always freely and unhindered to go to Your churches to worship our shrines, to enjoy the beauty of the Church, to be strengthened by the sacraments of faith, to satisfy our spiritual hunger. Grant us the consolation to soon see our brothers, who have fallen from the faith, return again to You and, together with us in Your courts, glorify You. Grant us the consolation to soon see the cessation of not only wars, but also rumors of wars, so that the peoples of the world, who have reforged their swords and spears into tools of peaceful labor, will not turn all the abilities of their god-like mind, led by You, and not by dark forces, into inventing misanthropic ways extermination of each other, but to facilitate and reduce human labor, so that the freed time and energy will be used to please God, to perform good deeds, to prepare for the life of the next century. Grant us the consolation to soon see peaceful days and years filled with spiritual and physical blessings, so that we may always, having every abundance in spiritual and physical, also abound in good deeds. And so in our Fatherland and throughout the whole world, let the All-Holy and Glorified Name of the God of our fathers, glorified and worshiped in the Holy Trinity until the end of time, be glorified by everyone. Amen.
8. Prayer for Russia by Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
The role of Saint Cyril in Christianity
Saint Cyril (in the world Constantine) lived with his brother Methodius in the 9th century in Thessaloniki - a city in which two cultures lived simultaneously - Slavic and Byzantine. Subsequently, the brothers became one of the most famous and significant figures in the history of Russia, because they were the first to compile the Slavic alphabet and translate the Bible into the Slavic language.
Icon of Saints Equal to the Apostles Cyril and Methodius
The mission of both brothers was to bring Christianity to people through the translation of sacred texts into the Slavic language . They had to travel a lot and endure many hardships, as a result of which Cyril (then Constantine) became seriously ill and took the schema just before his death.
Which churches have an icon of the saint?
The icon of St. Cyril is kept in churches in countries such as the Czech Republic, Macedonia and Bulgaria. All of these iconographic images date back to the 19th century, with the oldest of them being painted in 1893. This icon is located in the Church of St. Basil the Great, which is located in Talitsa.
Also, the image of St. Cyril is presented on the southern aisle of the Church of the Apostles Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg. Some churches in Moscow also have icons of this saint.
The icon of St. Cyril was painted several times and on each of the icons he is represented differently. On earlier icons, Saint Cyril is depicted in the clothes of a monk with a scroll in his hands; according to some sources, this is the Holy Scripture, according to others, the alphabet. Earlier icons represent the image of St. Cyril differently - with his right hand he blesses the believers, and in his left he holds a scroll.
How an icon protects
We often hear that people seek protection from some “strong” icons. This formulation is incorrect, because help and strength come not from the icon itself, but from the Lord God. We pray before the image, but not to the image itself. The icon that was not consecrated in the church is more of an interior item. When talking about the help of an icon in any matter, you need to understand that what helps, first of all, is sincere faith in what you are praying for.
Icon of Saint Cyril Equal to the Apostles
This means that if there is no faith in the heart for help from above, then no appeal to the holy image will help. Here it is appropriate to mention the well-known idea that it seems to a person that God is watching his external actions, but the Lord sees, first of all, a person’s heart.
Read about icons of other Orthodox saints:
- Icon of Saint Stylian of Paphlagonia
- Icon of Saint Daniel of Moscow
- Icon of Saint Demetrius of Thessalonica
What is asked for in prayer by agreement?
Prayer by agreement is required in difficult cases, when a person needs a special prayer of a petitionary nature, when he is not able to cope with trouble on his own one on one.
The request should not be abstract (for example, world peace), but specific and precise. There are no small things for God. But the essence of the petition should not be in the request itself and the benefits received, but in how these benefits will be used in the future. A person striving for God, with a spiritually meaningful life, opens his heart and thoughts to the Lord, trusts his situation to His will.
