Friday, November 24, 2006

Prayer of Thanksgiving

We give thanks to You! Every soul and heart is lifted up to You, undisturbed name, honored with the name 'God' and praised with the name 'Father', for to everyone and everything (comes) the fatherly kindness and affection and love, and any teaching there may be that is sweet and plain, giving us mind, speech, (and) knowledge:

mind, so that we may understand You, speech, so that we may expound You, knowledge, so that we may know You.

We rejoice, having been illuminated by Your knowledge. We rejoice because You have shown us Yourself. We rejoice because while we were in (the) body, You have made us divine through Your knowledge.

The thanksgiving of the man who attains to You is one thing: that we know You. We have known You, intellectual light. Life of life, we have known You. Womb of every creature, we have known You. Womb pregnant with the nature of the Father, we have known You. Eternal permanence of the begetting Father, thus have we worshiped Your goodness. There is one petition that we ask: we would be preserved in knowledge. And there is one protection that we desire: that we not stumble in this kind of life.

from Nag Hammadi text | Gnostic Society Library

2 comments:

Sadiq said...

lovely to the prayer reflected here as well. my appreciation for your viist.

God bless.

Unknown said...

And we should ne forget that in our thanksgiving from Above that there is also a thanksgiving to be recieved from Below. Those that are about us, whether in person or in thought. For Gnosis can be gleamed by the Gnostic in all manner of works...

"Many of the things written in publicly available books are found in the writings of God's church. For this shared matter is the utterances that come from the heart, the law that is written in the heart. This is the people of the beloved , which is beloved and which loves him."

- The Source of Common Wisdom (VFrG)