Orthodixie
Praised are you O Christ our Teacher, for you enrich with absolutely everything those who cleave to you. Lord, if someone gives his possessions to the state, then he receives in return great honour; how much more will you, Lord, magnify and praise that person who offers his whole self to you, possessing nothing besides you!
Make our souls grow by your grace, Lord, so that we may grow in you and give praise to you, for no one can grow except in you, and no one
can excel except in you.
Praise to you, without whom everything is empty; praise to you, for apart from the praise of you, all praise is but idle. Praise to you, the One who magnifies, but it is you who are thereby praised, for you are the object of praise of everything. Praise to you, Perfecter of everything, O Christ. By your divine teaching you gave wisdom to all who are instructed by you to deprive themselves of everything that belongs to this world — then they shall be attached to you. Otherwise, as they traveled after you while still cleaving to the world, they might be drawn back by the world into it. Praise to you who bade us release ourselves and then cleave to you, seeing that, when we are not bound up with anything, nothing will separate us from you.
— John of Apamea, in, “The Syriac Fathers On Prayer And The Spiritual Life,” translated from the original Syriac-Aramaic by Sebastian Brock, Cistercian Publications.
Taken from a Yahoo group on Christian Mysticism.
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