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Summary
- Short prayers cover a game or race, a contest or audition, an exam, a team, a loss, a long struggle, temptation, illness, favor at work and thanks after a win.
- The 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s Litany asks God “to strengthen such as do stand” and “to beat down Satan under our feet,” and calls God “the only giver of all victory.”
- The Orthodox hymn of the Cross, “O Lord, save thy people, and bless thine inheritance,” once asked victory for the emperor; the Orthodox Church in America now applies it to spiritual adversaries.
- St. George, called “the Victorious” in Orthodox services, is documented only as a martyr at Lydda; the dragon story dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century.
- Jehoshaphat was told “the battle is not yours, but God’s” (2 Chronicles 20:15), and Paul calls believers “more than conquerors” in the middle of tribulation (Romans 8:37).
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Genesis 39:21; Exodus 17:11–12; Joshua 1:9; 1 Samuel 17:47; 2 Chronicles 20:12, 15; Psalm 20:7; 28:9; 60:12; 118:14; Proverbs 21:31; Ecclesiastes 9:11; John 16:33; Romans 8:35–37; 12:21; 1 Corinthians 9:24–25; 15:57; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Ephesians 6:13; Colossians 3:23; 2 Timothy 4:7; James 4:3; 1 John 5:4). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. Prayers, “In Time of War and Tumults,” p. 41; The Litany, p. 56. PDF facsimile: https://www.artisticdailyprayers.org/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/bcp1928std.pdf
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. Matins, p. 17; The Lesser Blessing of Water, p. 476. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- Orthodox Church in America. “Elevation of the Cross.” The Orthodox Faith, vol. 2, Worship. https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-church-year/elevation-of-the-cross
- Thurston, Herbert. “St. George.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06453a.htm
