14. Prayer to St Nicholas

Sinful little man, in such great need,

you have grieved God very much.

Stir up your mind,

look inwards at what really matters for you,

and call down pity upon your pitiable state.

My soul, be watchful; my wretchedness, rouse yourself;

my wickedness, call upon the God you have angered,

that he may by chance soften his regard towards you.

But he is Most High, and I am weak;

how can my voice reach up to him?

I will lift up my soul above myself,

that it may come before him who is above it,

perhaps he will hear me when I call.

But then he is Most Just, and I have greatly sinned;

how should he hear my cry?

I will enter into my inmost being,

exclude everything except him and myself,

and before him I will pour out my soul and all that is in me.

I will stir up my mind to grieve,

and with grieving love

I will spread out my hardship before him

and perhaps his great goodness may move him.

But my sins are without bounds or limits,

my prayer will not be heard,

all this is not enough without an intercessor.

I will pray to one of the great friends of God

and perhaps God will hear him on my behalf.

I will call upon Nicholas, that great confessor,

whose name is honoured throughout the world.

Nicholas!

If only he will hear me!

Great Nicholas!

But if God looks down on me, who will look up to me?

If God turns his face from me, who will look towards me?

If God hates me, who will dare speak on my behalf?

O God, ‘merciful and pitiful’,

do you indeed ward off one who would return to you,

so that you cannot bear to have mercy

upon one who cleaves to you?

Will you curse one who has grieved you so much

that you will not hear any of your friends on his behalf?

You are called ‘kind and merciful’

and ‘set above all malice’;

are you so inflamed against a penitent sinner

that you forget your own nature?

Either hear me yourself, or let someone else hear me

whom you will listen to on my behalf.

Lord, if it is my sins that hold you back from hearing me

you are within your rights,

but do not forbid another to hear a miserable suppliant,

because you are also good.

Kind Lord, your mercy goes beyond any understanding;

I feel this no less than I presume to hope it.

Your servant, created and re-created by your goodness,

has such confidence in you, Lord,

that when you accuse him

he dares to ask you for an intercessor.

For no one will pay attention to me, unless you order it,

nothing helps me without you,

and so I have a good hope that what you refuse me

on account of my sins,

you will grant me because of the merits of your friend.

Good Lord, do not show yourself to be an avenger

when I ask you for an intercessor,

for you do not give stones for bread,

a serpent for a fish, or for an egg a scorpion.

Give me then, Lord, Nicholas as my intercessor,

your great confessor whom you have glorified

with the name of blessed throughout the world.

St Nicholas, I pray to you through him

who has made your name venerated throughout the world;

do not refuse to help a needy suppliant.

Why, sir, are you called upon by all men in all the world

unless you are to be the advocate of all who pray to you?

Why does this sound in all ears,

‘My lord, St Nicholas’, ‘My lord, St Nicholas’,

unless it means,

‘My advocate, St Nicholas’, ‘My advocate, St Nicholas’?

Why is your name poured forth everywhere

except that the world may have

some great good poured into it?

Your fame calls to me,

your miracles send me to your intercession,

your works draw me to seek your help.

But why do I speak about your miracles,

when your power now is greater than them all?

Why do I recount what you have done,

when before God you now have supreme grace?

Why recount the help that you gave to many

when you are able to give spiritual help

now that you live in heaven,

of more value than the corporal help

that you gave during your pilgrimage upon earth?

For it is not as if you were able to do those things then

and can no longer do them.

No, I say, you could not have power only in those things

that come to nothing,

and be powerless in those that go on into eternity.

Indeed, you did not only accomplish the former,

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you did not ascend merely that you might grant them.

Bestow upon us the spiritual things in which you glory,

the joys of eternity in which you rejoice,

pour upon us the heavenly things to which you have turned.

Through you we needy ones come to know that abundance

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which you receive fully in a perpetual stream.

O your plenitude of goodness,

and my abundance of badness!

How far they are from each other!

How vehemently the first makes you happy,

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how greatly does the latter make me unhappy.

The first comes down from the plenitude of God,

the latter goes up from the need of myself;

the first flows from the abundance of God,

the latter surges up from my poverty.

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O if only that super-abundance would overflow

and flood into my abundant ills!

O if only that full plenitude would fill

the emptiness of my need!

I do not doubt, sir, that you can do this for me,

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if you are willing to ask that much for me of my judge

who is your beloved friend.

Do not wait, sir, to hear my importunities,

because you know my weakness

when praying for a long time.

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I fall away quickly, but do you be more swift to help.

Certainly if my heart was contrite,

if my heart was moved within me,

if my soul was turned to water,

if rivers of tears flowed from my eyes,

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then I might hope that Nicholas would hear my prayers.

Therefore, my lord, St Nicholas, stir up my spirit,

excite my heart,

move my mind to love according to my need,

so that I may feel the effect of your compassion

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according to your power.

But, alas, how long my tepid soul languishes,

how hardened is my heart with stupor,

how buried in torpor is my spirit.

Holy Nicholas, what is it that thus holds me back?

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What is it that seems to be constricting my neck?

Whence is it that my gaze is darkened?

Whence comes it that my horizon is thus closed in?

My soul wants, sir, to turn towards God and to you,

and it is weighed down in a curve by a heavy weight.

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It desires to direct its gaze towards you,

and it is obscured by dark shadows.

It makes efforts to release itself,

but it is held in bonds of iron.

It tries to come out,

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and it is held in a metal prison.

What are these things, O God, what are these things

which thus darken my soul, weigh it down,

enclose and bind it?

Perhaps these are my sins?

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Yes, indeed they are my sins; certainly they are.

Fleshly love weakens the sap of the spirit within me;

attention to earthly things

bends my soul away from knowledge of things above;

earthly love extinguishes in me delight in heavenly things.

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The habit of vice has wiped away in me

the knowledge of true good.

I am far away from good, I am absorbed in evil.

I am excluded from those, I am included in these.

From those I have devolved, in these I am involved.

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Here are darkness and chains,

there are shadows and weights.

My sins, for what end do you keep me in these chains,

in this prison, under this shadow and this weight?

For whom, unless for the strict judge,

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and for your tortures and torments in eternity?

For what, if not for the prison of hell and eternal chains?

For what, if not for the darkness of perpetual night

and the weight of unending death?

Certainly these are the evils you keep me for,

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this is the evil you are dragging me towards.

Certainly in these I will be involved

if before then I am not absolved.

Truly at that hour I will be their bond slave

if I am not set free from them earlier.

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At any rate, the day is near, near I say, and yet unknown.

It comes suddenly and it may be today.

My sins, how can you be such an evil in the future,

when here and now you make my soul

drunk with your sweetness,

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when you anoint my heart with your pleasures?

Why did you hide these things from me?

Why have you betrayed me?

In fact you have not betrayed me,

but I have betrayed myself by believing in you.

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You did not deceive me, but I have deceived myself

because I have received you into myself.

O unheard-of insanity!

I knew there was no faith in you,

and yet I had faith in you.

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Indeed I had no faith and I did not believe you,

but how horrible the way in which I saw this:

like a blind man I committed myself to you.

I saw, because I recognized you,

and I understood what evils come after you.

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Yet I was blind,

because I did not guard against what I knew.

Alas! – sin; a name to be shuddered at,

a thing to be detested, no misfortune can be compared to it.

The blind man did not see the trench into which he fell,

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the fool thought he ought to do what he did.

But he who sins willingly, seeing and knowing,

throws himself over a precipice.

Death and torments, however great such torments may be,

in them is no dishonour, because they are ordained.

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But sin has in itself its own dishonour,

and brings with it eternal unhappiness.

For it were better to choose eternal torment,

which in itself does not bring eternal dishonour,

than sin, which joins dishonour to eternal sorrow.

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And certainly, unhappy man,

you ought to avoid the dishonour of sin in itself,

more than whatever torments there are in eternity.

For in sinning, by a most dishonourable perversity,

you prefer yourself to God your Creator,

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than which nothing is more unjust;

whereas in bearing torments,

according to a most perfect pattern,

the creature submits himself to the one who created him,

than which nothing is more just.

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O man, where has your humanity vanished to?

You have been taught

that ‘whoever sins is the servant of sin’;

of what great evil are you the slave in committing sins?

Did you know

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that ‘the spirit goes forth and does not return’?

You have thrown yourself into the abyss of sin,

which is irredeemable and bottomless.

Truly my sins are an abyss,

because their weight and depth cannot be understood,

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and their number cannot be gauged or bounded.

That abyss cannot be redeemed

because out of its depths nothing returns

unless drawn out by grace,

and it is bottomless, because whoever sins willingly

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merits to fall infinitely, if he is not held back by mercy.

‘Abyss calls to abyss.’

My sins, whatever torments you reserve for me are an abyss,

for they are infinite and incomprehensible.

Alas, prisons and chains,

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darkness and the weight of sin, terrify me,

but I am made a slave to an evil

to which no other is comparable

and so I am drowned in an abyss,

and with this sorrowful servitude

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I am buried in one abyss after another.

Woe upon woe; fear upon fear; sorrow upon sorrow.

Lo, there is a third abyss and that is yet more terrible.

‘The justice of God is very deep,’

and at the voice of the cataracts

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my abyss calls to that abyss.

The cataracts are dark, the justice of God is dark.

Therefore abyss calls to abyss

in the voice of the cataracts of God,

where the abyss of sin meets the abyss of torment,

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and they proclaim the justice of God.

If my sins were not an abyss, I would still fear greatly

the abyss of the great judgements of God,

for that is dark beyond human understanding.

Truly there is the abyss of the judgements of God,

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the abyss of my sins,

and the abyss of torments that are my due.

The abyss of judgements above me,

the abyss of hell below me,

the abyss of the sin in which I am, and which is in me.

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I fear that which threatens me from above,

lest it fall upon me,

so that I may be thrown into myself

and buried with my abyss in that which is revealed below,

where the torment of sin never ceases,

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and sin is always torment.

Unhappy man that I am, against whom have I sinned,

to whom shall I reach out?

Whither shall I flee from God,

where can I be lost to him?

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Who will seek me in the abyss of abysses?

Or who will look for the lost of God?

Who, outside the abyss of sin,

will hear the cry out of the deep?

But you, Lord, behold the depths.

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Whither shall I go then from your spirit,

or where shall I flee from your presence?

Certainly, where I now am, you are not absent,

for when I descend into hell you are there.

And therefore if in my wickedness I flee from you

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and hide myself in my abyss as one who is damned,

even there you behold me.

For who, except you, can move my soul to penitence,

and how could you move it,

if in the abyss you could not see it?

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Good Lord,

you have roused and stirred me from the abyss of my sin

like one sleeping in a bed.

You have stirred up my torpor,

you have had a care to rouse my negligence,

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you have made me repent of that which I rejoiced in,

and sorrow for that by which I was delighted.

You gave me counsel to ask for an intercessor,

you have shown me who he is to be.

Good God, you have done all this while I was in the abyss,

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and do you not hear my cry out of the deep?

In all this you have gone before him who fled from you,

and will you not take him back when he wants to return

to perfect what you have begun?

Good Lord, thank you.

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Truly you have sought out your lost one in the abyss,

and brought out him

whom you had driven there in fear because of his sin.

By the merits of St Nicholas, your beloved,

lead out from the abyss of sin

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your lost one whom you have sought and found.

Do not lose your servant whom you have sought and found

in the abyss of hell, where no one is found.

I hear, Lord, that you order me to come forth,

but I cannot get out,

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miserably bound and weighed down with so great a weight.

But, St Nicholas, why do I pray to God by your merits,

when you are in his presence and can do this better?

I pray you, sir, through his name,

do not turn away from one

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whom he has already looked upon,

however much his accused slave he may be.

I ask you to plead for me in the presence of God,

I do not ask you to defend me, but to pray for me.

Before his face I cannot defend my sins;

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I show them, not to excuse but to accuse.

I am the accused; I am under him,

and before him I am myself my accuser.

He who made me does not accuse me.

Alone I was sufficient for sinning,

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alone I will be sufficient for accusing.

If he is Judge to pass sentence on his accused,

he is also Lord, to protect his servant,

Creator to watch over his handiwork,

and God, to save him who believes in him

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and is his baptized.

For how will he judge that sinner to deserve condemnation,

who knows his wretched sins and is penitent?

Or how can he damn a sinner as an adversary,

when he grieves over his sin,

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and flees to his friend as an intercessor?

God, in you have I trusted,

St Nicholas, to you I entrust my prayers,

upon you both I cast my care,

even on you I throw my soul.

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This is what you exact from me,

you by your commands, you by your counsels.

Receive him who throws himself upon you both,

have him who is prostrate before you.

Keep me when I sleep, help me in whatever I do,

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inspire me in whatever I think,

you, Lord, by your grace,

you, Nicholas, by your intercession;

you for the merits of your so loved confessor,

you according to the name of your and my Creator,

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‘who is blessed for evermore’. Amen.

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