Almost two months ago, I was introduced to a Syriac Orthodox hymn, knowing nothing about the Syriac tradition other than that our faith is shared in common, from my participation in the Coptic Orthodox Church. We have 5 sister churches, including the Syrian and Indian Orthodox Churches. I wanted to know more about the tradition of my brothers and sisters in the faith, which is equally my inheritance as well as theirs. I found the Shehimo (linked below), meaning Common as in Book of Common Prayer. It’s the Syriac Orthodox Prayer Book of the Hours, equivalent to our Agpeya, the Coptic Orthodox Prayer Book of the Hours.
At first when I listened to it, it was simply beautiful, and it still mesmerizes me. I started off unfamiliar with its style, just getting a feel for the different liturgical tradition it contains. I love the hymns of my Church, and so I thoroughly enjoyed “figuring out” this very different yet similarly sweet set of melodies. But just as pretty as the melodies are the words set to them. I think the best word to describe it would be, refreshing. Some of these words are exactly what my spirit needs to hear, and I was glad to see them written down as the teaching of the Church. For example, from Compline of Wednesday (prayed before bed on Tuesday night, i.e. eve of Wednesday):
Ocean of mercy, You are—
Our sins are a drop of mud
And a drop of mud cannot
Make a vast ocean muddy
or from Thursday Compline:
He taught you to pray “Forgive me my debts and sins”
He desires to forgive and so He taught this prayer
If the face of God were not turned towards forgiveness
He would not have taught us to say, “Forgive us, Lord”
I can’t understate how valuable it is to write these words, reemphasizing them for the faithful in prayer. I may write my next post about this mindset which plagued me for a long time, that God is trying to weed me out or looking not to forgive. These prayers utterly demolish that kind of idea, giving gentleness and grace that I need. I almost felt “why don’t we have prayers saying this?” But of course that’s not really how this works: just as our prayers do say these things (and undoubtedly, part of why the Shehimo was so refreshing was that its unfamiliarity allowed me to see clearly what was there, not burdened by having heard it 1000 times before), the reason the Shehimo prayers say what they say is to provide healing to our souls and minds, allowing us to connect with God, through repentance, joy, petition, thanksgiving, praise, both with the scariest words (not to cause despair but to lead to repentance) and with the most gentle and tender ones (as above). The Agpeya and the Shehimo are toolkits given by the Church to trample the devil under our feet and give us the joy of being sons and daughters of God all day.
Speaking of the Agpeya, the Shehimo in some ways is very different. Very briefly, the Agpeya has 7 Hours of prayer (which don’t actually take one hour [unless you really want!]), each starting with the Introduction to Every Hour, the bulk of the Hour being a minimum of 12 psalms, followed by a gospel passage, litanies, an absolution based around the time of day, and the Conclusion of Every Hour. Other than the Introduction and Conclusion, these prayers vary based on the Hour of the day.
The first thing you’ll notice with the Shehimo (assuming you’re not still asking “what’s a Shehimo?") is that unlike our Prayer Book, the Shehimo not only has the 7 Hours for each day, but has 7 Hours for each of the 7 days of the week, each themed about something different: Sunday, the Resurrection; Monday and Tuesday, repentance; Wednesday and Thursday, St. Mary and the Apostles, martyrs, and saints; Friday, the Cross; and Saturday, the departed. It then has more variety than ours, but at the cost of more complexity. It’s also much more complex in terms of musicality: the Agpeya has a simple (but perfect for the job) tune for the psalms, another for the litanies, and if you really want, one for the Thanksgiving Prayer in the Introduction. That’s it! The rest is (so far as I understand) simply read. In the Shehimo, the parts which can be read also have a simple tune in which they can be chanted, like how we do with the psalms but for the entire Hour, to help you ponder each word rather than racing through. Additionally, instead of the bulk of the Hour being psalms, while there are of course still psalms, most of the Hour is Christian poetry and hymns attributed to various Church Fathers, using a wide array of beautiful tunes. Unlike in the Agpeya, where even the litanies are just prayers with a simple tune, which could be applied to any words, these prayers are most often versified specifically to fit with their tune. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love this, but it does make the learning curve much sharper having to learn different tunes for each of 7 Hours times 7 days.
Another fascinating difference is the length. In the recordings I am listening to (see below), the shortest of the Hours are around 3 minutes and the longest are around 30. This is completely unthinkable to a user of the Agpeya, where if you skip a lot of it, you can get it down to 10 minutes or so, and where each Hour not counting Midnight is roughly the same length. Despite the short length, the theologically dense hymns mean you gain a lot of teaching in just 3 or 5 or 15 minutes. This has made it very practical and rewarding to listen to the recordings while driving, or to listen to each of the 6 recordings per day (the Midnight Hour is only recorded for Sunday).
One little interesting similarity: the start of the Midnight Hour in the Shehimo draws on the EXACT same set of psalms as us! (Psalms 134, 119:169-176). At some point they also pray Psalms 148, 149, and 150…sound familiar??
I’m really grateful I discovered the Shehimo. It widened my appreciation for the tradition of another Church, with a very different style from what I’m used to, but with the same Orthodoxy shining through each prayer, which I’ve grown to know and love through my own tradition. I can’t recommend highly enough listening to and praying along yourself, and so I’ve made this Google Drive of each Hour. These were produced by the Liturgical Resource Development ministry who also make the LRD app containing the prayers. I hope these prayers will provide you with the rest they provided me:
Let not your body stand there
While your heart is distracted
May your body be a church
Your mind, a sanctuary
May your mouth be a censer,
Your lips like smoke of incense,
And your tongue a minister,
Which pleases the Trinity
–Bo’utho of Mor Ephrem, Monday Compline