Prayer XI- St. Nikolai Velimirovic

Once I bound myself to You, my love, all other bonds broke.

I see a swallow distraught over its demolished nest, and I say: “I am not bound to my nest.”

I see a son mourning for his father, and I say: “I am not bound to my parents.”

I see a fish expiring as soon as it is taken out of the water, and I say: “That is me! If they take me out of Your embrace, I shall die in seconds-like a fish tossed onto the sand.”

Yet how could I have plunged so far into You, with no way back, and lived, if I had not been in You before? Truly, I was in You from Your first awakening, because I sense that You are my home.

Eternity exists in eternity just as duration exists in time. In one eternity, O Lord, You were in ineffable sameness and Your vesperal blessedness. At that time Your hypostases were the truth within You, for it was impossible for them not to be in You. But they did not recognize one another, for they were unconscious of their diversity. In a second eternity You were in Your matinal blessedness, and the three hypostases recognized themselves as such.

The Father was not before the Son, nor was the Son before the Father, nor was the All-Holy Spirit before or after the Father and the Son. As a man while waking suddenly opens both eyes at the same time, so did the three hypostases within You suddenly open at the same time. There is no Father without the Son and no Son without the Holy Spirit.

When I lie beside my lake and sleep unconsciously, neither the power of consciousness, nor desire, nor action, die within me – rather they all flow into one blessed, nirvana-like, indistinguishable unity.

When the sun pours out its gold over the lake, I awaken not as a nirvana-like unity but as a triunity of consciousness, desire, and action.

This is Your history in my soul, O Lord, interpreter of my life. Is not the history of my soul the interpreter of the history of everything created, everything divided and everything united? And of You as well, my Homeland, my soul is-forgive me, O Lord – the interpreter of You.

O my Homeland, save me from the assaults of foreigners upon me.

O my Light, chase the darkness out of my blood.

O my Life, burn up all the larvae of death in my soul and my body.