Words Unto God from the Depths of My Heart
I
And now, O thou the only heavenly God
Most High and merciful,
Thine are the power and forgiveness;
Thine, the cure, the plenty, and the gifts;
Thine only are the free favours;
Thine are atonement and protection;
Thine, the inconceivable inventions,
The unattainable arts, the immeasurable measures:
Thou art the beginning and the ending.
For never doth the darkness of thine indignation
Darken the light of thy compassion;
And, surpassing all reason,
Never art thou enslaved by vices,
Thou art an image of immeasurable magnitude;
A glory of boundless breadth;
A penetrative power of limitless expanse;
A compassion of inexhaustible munificence;
The absolute of unrestricted superiority.
Thou turnest the shadow of death
Into the morning, according to the prophet.
Thou voluntarily descendedst
Unto the captives’ nether prison of Tartarus,
Where the very door of prayer was barred,
And, seizing therefrom the amassed booty of banished souls,
Thou severedst the destructive bond of death,
With the commanding sword of thy victorious word,
And dissipatedst the anguish of sin.
Turn thou unto me who tremble, chained with sins,
In the muddy pit of mine unfathomable dungeon,
Wherein wounded I lie,
Pierced by the shafts of the accuser’s arrows.
Grigor Narekatsi (Lamentations of Narek)