Of all the lenten prayers, the Prayer of St. Ephrem stands all alone.

This beautiful prayer presents all the negative and positive elements of repentance and is a "check list" for our lenten effort. Its aim is to free us from some fundamental spiritual diseases which control our life and make it impossible for us even to turn our lives in God's direction.

SLOTH is the basic problem. It is a disease that renders us lazy and which convinces us that no change is possible . It is the root of all sin because "it poisons the spiritual energy at its source."

FAINT-HEARTEDNESS is the result of sloth. It is a despondecy that makes it impossible for man to see anything good or positive. It reduces everything to negativism and pessimism.

LUST OF POWER The previous vices of sloth and faint-heartedness cause our lives to be motivated with a lust of power. When life is seen as of no value but meaningless and empty we are forced "to seek compensation in a radically wrong attitude towards other persons." If my life is not directed to God and his will, then it becomes selfish and looks for selfsatisfaction, self-gratification. "If God is not the Lord and Master of my life, then I become my own Lord and master—the absolute center of my own world." I then live to fulfill my needs, my desires, and my ideas. This lust of power is seen as "a fundamental depravity in my relationship to other beings, a search for their subordination to me.... It may certainly result in indifference, contempt, lack of interest, consideration, and respect.

IDLE TALK Words have a certain power all their own. Words can uplift and save but also kill. When the word is removed "from its divine origin and purpose,the word becomes idle. It becomes the very agent of sin.

The above four are the obstacles to repentance and need to be removed. However, only God can remove them. The remaining parts of the prayer consider the positive aims of repentance.

CHASTITY. This does not refer to sexual purity. The Greek word sofrosini may be translated whole-mindedness. It means to possess the gift of wholeness as opposed to the brokeness which the above vices cause. Christ alone can restore wholeness in us by "restoring in us the true scale of values leading us back to God."

HUMILITY. The first fruit of this wholeness is humility. Humility alone "is capable of truth, of seeing and accepting things as they are and therefore of seeing God's majesty and goodness and love in everything."

PATIENCE. This virtue is the fruit of the other two. The "fallen" man is impatient and ready to judge and condemn others. This leads him to have a broken, incomplete and distorted knowledge of everything. "Being indifferent to everyone except himself, he wants life to be successful right here and now." The closer we come to God the more patient we become and the "more we reflect that infinite respect for all things which is the proper quality of God."

LOVE. This divine gift is the crown of all the virtues . Love is the sum total of all our quests. Who truly loves as God wants us to love, will be given in full measure this ultimate gift of all virtues.

The prayer summarizes all of the above and offers the concluding petition: "to see my own errors and not to judge my brother." We are called to be very careful of pride. Often times even virtues can be turned into pride. The Fathers constantly warn us of the grave dangers of pride and of the subtle forms of false piety. But when we see "our own errors " and "do not judge our brothers" then pride will be destroyed in us.