Prayer to the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius, teachers of the Slavs

O glorious teachers and enlighteners of the Slavic tongue, holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius!

To you, as children to a father, enlightened by the light of your teaching and instructed by your writing in the faith of Christ, we come today sincerely and with love, and pray from the heart. If, like unwise children, we do not fulfill your precepts, and do not think, as you taught, of pleasing God, and fall away from the unity and love which you well commanded to all Slavs as brothers in faith and in flesh, then, as of old, in your lifetime, you did not reject the ungrateful and unworthy, so today do not disdain the prayers of your sinful and unworthy children, but, having great love, pray to the Lord that He may teach and direct us on the path of salvation. Put an end to wars and quarrels among brothers of the same faith, and bring back into unity of mind those who have separated, and unite us all in unity of spirit and love in the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

We believe, we truly believe, in what the prayer of the venerable ones is capable of before the mercy of the Master, when it is offered even for sinful people. Do not abandon us, your guilty and unworthy children, for sin is now overcoming the flock you gathered, because it is divided by enmity and enticed by the temptations of those of other faiths, has diminished, and its sheep, scattered, suffer harm from wolves. Therefore grant us, through your prayers, zeal for Orthodoxy, that, kindled by it, we may well keep the precepts of the fathers, strictly observe the statutes and customs of the Church, reject every false teaching, and so, living a godly life on earth, may be found worthy of the life of paradise in the heavens, and there, together with you, may glorify the Master of all, the One God in Trinity, unto ages of ages.

AMEN