Dear C of S and all others:
This prayer is in my Romanian "Prayers for Orthodox Christians" that is out of print as far as I know. It also appears in a collection of Orthodox prayers printed in England some years before. Both prayer books I have had for over thirty years and don't know where you would get one. This prayer might be in the Jordanville prayer book.
I believe that it is attributed to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow who also wrote a beautiful "morning offering" prayer. The last sentence is his signature, because both prayers contain it at the end.
What I posted was a replacement of the "thee" with "you" with the exception of the last sentence. It poses a particular problem that more modern English cannot capture.
After many years of reciting this prayer and asking God to reveal to me the underlying meaning contained in the grammar and syntax, I have come up with the following explanation. The phrase asks that our prayer become one and the same with the constant perfect prayer of Christ to the Father. The believer asks that his prayer of utter and total offering of self to the Father be simply no less than that of Christ breathing in and through him so that the two—Christ and the believer and their two prayers--are “at one”: and that the believer's prayer be united to that perfect prayer to the Father that the Father so desires. This type of conclusion is the ultimate, to me, of what it means to be a Catholic or Orthodox Christian: to so unite oneself to the Father's Will in my life that I am a living icon—or reflection—of Christ Whom I love, worship, adore, and follow.
BOB
