Prayer of the First Kneeling
Priest: Bending our knees in humility.
Deacon: Let us pray to the Lord. Response: Lord, have mercy.
Immaculate, undefiled, without beginning, invisible, incomprehensible, unsearchable, unchangeable, unsurpassable, immeasurable, long-suffering Lord, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light; who made the heaven, the earth and the sea and all that was created in them; who grants to all their requests before they ask; we pray and beseech you, Master who loves mankind, the Father of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, who for our sake and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and Mary, the ever-virgin and glorious Mother of God; teaching us first by words and later also showing us by deeds, when he underwent the saving Passion, he granted us, your humble, sinful, and unworthy servants, an example to offer supplications by the bending of neck and knees for our sins and those committed in ignorance by the people; do you then, who are full of mercy and love for mankind, hear us on whatever day we call upon you, but especially on this day of Pentecost, on which, after our Lord Jesus Christ had been taken up and been enthroned at your right hand, God and Father, he sent down on his disciples and Apostles the Holy Spirit, who settled on each one of them, and they were all filled with his inexhaustible grace and spoke in strange tongues of your mighty works and prophesied.
Now therefore hear us as we pray; remember us, humble and condemned, and turn back the captivity of our souls. Receive us as we fall before you and cry out, “We have sinned!” On you we have been cast from the womb; from our mother’s womb you are our God. Because our days have wasted away in vanity, we have been stripped of your help; we have been deprived of all defense. But confident of your compassion we cry, “Do not remember the sins of our youth, and cleanse us of our secret faults.” Do not cast us aside in the time of old age. When our strength fails, do not abandon us. Before we return to the earth, count us worthy to turn back to you and give heed to us with kindness and grace. Measure our iniquities by your acts of compassion. Set against the multitude of our offences the depth of your compassion. Look from your holy height, Lord, upon your people here present who await from you rich mercy. Visit us in your goodness; deliver us from the oppression of the devil; make our lives safe with your holy and sacred laws. Entrust your people to a faithful angel guardian; gather us all into your kingdom; give pardon to all who hope in you; forgive their sins and ours; purify us by the operation of your Holy Spirit; destroy all the wiles of the foe against us.
Blessed are you Lord, Master almighty, who made the day light with the light of the sun and the night radiant with the rays of fire; who has granted us to pass through the length of the day and to draw near the beginnings of the night. Hear our supplication and that of all your people, and pardoning all of us our offences, voluntary and involuntary, accept our evening entreaties and send down the multitude of your rich mercy and acts of compassion on your inheritance. Wall us about with your holy angels; arm us with the arms of justice; fence us with the rampart of your truth; guard us by your power; deliver us from every misfortune and from every trick of the adversary. Grant us also that both the present day with the coming night and all the days of our life may be perfect, holy, peaceful, sinless, without stumbling, without dreams, at the prayers of the Holy Mother of God and of all the saints who have been well-pleasing to you since time began.
Response: Amen.
Prayer of the Second Kneeling
Deacon: Let us pray to the Lord. Response: Lord, have mercy.
Lord Jesus Christ our God, who, while still present with us in this life, gave your peace to humankind and ever grants the gift of the All-Holy Spirit to the faithful as an inheritance which cannot be taken away, you sent down this grace in a manifest form to your disciples and apostles and gave eloquence to their lips with tongues of fire, through which we, every race of humankind, having received the knowledge of God in our own language by the hearing of the ear have been enlightened by the light of the Spirit, delivered from the darkness of error, and by the distribution and supernatural force of the perceptible tongues of fire have been taught faith in you and have been illumined to speak of you as God with the Father and the Holy Spirit in one Godhead, power and authority.
Do you then, the radiance of the Father, the unchangeable and unalterable stamp of his essence and nature, the source of salvation and grace, open also the lips of me, a sinner, and teach me how I should and for whom I ought to pray, for you know the multitude of my sins, but your compassion will overcome their measureless number. For see, with fear I stand before you, having cast away the despair of my soul into the sea of your mercy. Govern my life by the ineffable power of your wisdom, you who govern all creation by a word, who are the fair haven of the storm-tossed, and make known to me the way in which I should walk.
Grant to my thoughts the spirit of your wisdom; to my folly, the spirit of understanding; with the spirit of fear overshadow my deeds. Renew a right spirit within my inward parts, and make firm the instability of my mind with the sovereign spirit so that guided each day by your good spirit to what is profitable I may be found worthy to keep your commandments and always keep in mind your second coming, which will search out all that we have done. Do not neglect me so that I become deceived by the corrupted pleasures of the world, but give me strength to yearn for the enjoyment of the treasures which are to come. For you said, Master, that whatever someone asks in your name they receive without restraint from your co-eternal God and Father. And so I, a sinner, at the coming of your Holy Spirit implore your goodness: “The things that I have prayed for, grant me for my salvation.” Yes, Lord, the loving and most generous giver of every benefaction, it is you who gives superabundantly more than we ask. It is you who are compassionate and merciful; who without sin became a partaker in our flesh, and who in loving compassion bends down to those who bend the knee to you and became the atonement for our sins. Give your people, Lord, your acts of pity; hear us from your holy heaven; sanctify us by the power of your saving right hand; protect us in the shelter of your wings; do not despise the works of your hands. Against you alone we have sinned, but it is you alone that we adore. We do not know how to worship a strange god, nor to spread out our hands, Master, to another god. Forgive us our offences, and accepting our supplications on our bended knees, stretch out to us all a helping hand. Accept the prayer of all as acceptable incense rising up to your blessed kingdom.
Lord, Lord, who has delivered us from every arrow that flies by day, deliver us also from every deed that walks in darkness. Accept as an evening sacrifice the lifting up of our hands. Count us worthy also to pass through the stadium of the night untried by evils, and rescue us from every disturbance and fear which come to us from the devil. Grant our souls the grace of compunction and our thoughts concern for the examination at your dread and just judgment. Nail down our flesh with fear of you, and deaden our members that are on earth, so that in the calm of sleep we may be made radiant with joy by the contemplations of your judgments. Remove from us every unseemly imaging and harmful desire. Raise us up at the time for prayer strengthened in the faith and advancing in your commandments.
Response: Amen.