Lord, Have Mercy!

All the Divine services of the Orthodox Church are filled with the cry: "Kirie eleison- Lord, have mercy!"

This is a very ancient human prayer. Ancient tradition relates that our forefathers who were expelled from paradise, sitting near paradise, began their appeal to God, precisely with this repentful cry of the soul: "Lord, have mercy!" "Merciful one, have mercy on me, a fallen one!"

The most sacred Old Testament writings, psalms and prophecies, ceaselessly repeat this word: "Lord, have mercy!"

Have mercy upon me, o God, according to Thy great mercy" (Ps. 50). "Pray to God that He will be merciful to you", said the prophet Malachi (1:9).

The first prayer that was heard in the newly-constructed temple in Jerusalem was: "O Lord God, hear and have mercy!" (1Kings 8:30)

This is the first prayer that is learned by an Orthodox child, and it is also the last prayer repeated, on the deathbed, by the dying person's fading consciousness.

And if on peaceful days, in the hubbub of everyday commotion it, "Lord, have mercy!", is often said with indifference as a usual learned by rote refrain, then at the moment when danger or suffering or the burning knowledge of the depth of one's falling shakes the soul, then this short prayerful cry suddenly becomes imbued with great strength and meaning. And as one convicted to death before a judge, in whose eyes he wishes to find the last hope for mercy, as a seriously ill in his pleading to the doctor, who can save him, a person's soul begins to cry out to the All-Mighty: "Lord, have mercy!".

And when above all hope it turns out that this cry was heard, when the Merciful Hand deflects what seemed a fateful deadly danger or leads the soul out of a dead-end with no exits, then the saved soul becomes attached with great love to this very simple prayer and then calmly and enlightened repeats it during all light and dark, sorrowful and happy minutes of its life.

That is why Orthodox Divine services are permeated through with the refrain "Lord, have mercy!". If Orthodoxy, as Metropolitan Anthony teaches, is primarily a faith of repentance, if by the teachings of the same hierarch it is the light of all mankind and all that is truly kind, valuable and proper in the universe, wherever it may be, then by nature it belongs to the Orthodox Church. Therefore, certainly, here in an Orthodox church, in an Orthodox prayer, in the proper place of services with rich content, one finds the fundamental prayer-words of mankind: "Lord, have mercy!".

Separate individuals and peoples and all mankind have stood on the edge of destruction many times and many times were saved by God's merciful hand. Why then not cry out: "Lord, have mercy!"?

We, without a doubt, guess that this first prayer of mankind was first uttered by the lips of our forefathers in the bitter hour of their expulsion from paradise. It will also be the last prayer from peoples' mouths when, amid fire and tempest, human history will end with the sounding of the archangel's trumpet; when fearfully approaching the throne of the Righteous Judge, peoples souls will not find the strength nor the time for other prayers except this one - the shortest and the deepest in meaning: "Lord, have mercy! Lord, spare (us) and have mercy!".

Archbishop Nathaniel (Lvov)Talks on the Faith