By Mother Siluana

Lord Jesus Christ, my God, have mercy on me, forgive me, give me the gift of repentance.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on all my relatives, on my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, on all my ancestors.

I thank all of them, Lord, for the gift of life, and I accept all that their life put into their blood, and through them put into my blood.

I receive this legacy from them and from those who wronged us and became part of our lineage.

Have mercy also on those whom we wronged because they also became part of our lineage.

Forgive us, Lord, forgive us for our misdeeds, betrayals, lies, rapes, incest, and for all the other grievous sins that I myself and my ancestors committed, I and all those whose life is in my blood, in my life.

I thank them, Lord, because they brought life to me as well as they could.

I receive all that has flown or is flowing through their blood and that has reached me. Now it belongs to me. This ailing nature belongs to me, this disease belongs to me. What doesn’t belong to me is the behavior that these diseases and traumas provoke in me when I am without You.

Give me repentance, Lord, so that I don’t deny my ancestors and the inheritance I received from them, but so that I deny their attitudes, their behaviors by which, trying to run away from pain, from shame, from fear, they chose to hide and to lie instead of running towards Your mercy so that you can heal them and heal us too.

Lord, I ask you that nothing I ever received may separate me from You. Lord, I want this, I desire this with all my heart. You know that I want this with all my heart, but I lack strength. I beseech you, Lord: give me strength whenever I cry out to You so that I don’t follow the patterns and the automated programming that I received together with the sickness from my ancestors.

I thank them, Lord. Help me to love and to honor them. And I believe that there is no more suitable honor than taking on all that they bestowed on me, without judgment, without resistance, without blame. In this way I honor them as persons because they did what they could, and most of all because they trusted in You, in Your mercy, and they trusted me – their descendant – that I will work on healing this sickness.

Yes, Lord, I want to heal, I want to do in everything Your will. My life has also been hard, unhappy, sinful, and not only because of this inheritance, and not even because of the influence of this world which I have loved and in which I have tried to integrate. Forgive me, Lord, for all of this. I have been praying, repenting and rejecting the influence of this world for many years, and still my life continues to be full of behaviors which are not mine.

With the help of Your saints, Lord, and of our Fathers who obtained the Holy Spirit and the gift of discernment, I discovered that the works of the enemy brought me to this standstill. Lord Jesus Christ, I have lived and behaved as if the enemy were an impersonal reality, somewhere outside of us. Now, Lord, with the help of our Fathers and of Your Saints, my eyes have been opened and I realize that every time these inherited patterns act in me and force me into a behavior for survival, they (the enemies) bring to me temptations which I do not hear, and I do not reject. They tell me that this is how life is, that my parents, grandparents and ancestors are responsible for this. They tell me that I am not able to get out of this trap unless those who surround me were different than what they are.

Lord, I see in all this the works of our enemy the devil, and I want to keep the promise from Baptism: to reject Satan and to become one with You. I don’t know, Lord, how to reject the enemy but I know how to become one with You: by calling You, by praying to You, by confessing in detail, by assuming my part, and by paying attention to everything that separates me from calling Your name, that separates me from You. Sometimes it’s a trifle, a pair of mislaid slippers, sometimes it’s a more painful situation, but all, all are works of the enemy who wants me to stay trapped in the bondage of my ancestral patterns, and who wants me most of all to not fulfil the commandment of love for my neighbor. And if I don’t love my neighbor, Lord, then imagining that I love You is just an illusion and a lie.

I want to love you, Lord. For the prayers of St. Silouan and of all the Saints and of the Theotokos, help me to pay attention to myself, like St. Basil the Great says, and not to pay attention to the voice of the enemy, in all situations, and most of all in the small things (because in the big things we realize it’s the work of the enemy, but in the small things it seems that there is nobody there, when in fact there is a whole legion of demons who mock our soul and threaten us and put our salvation in danger).

Have mercy on Me, Lord, and on all who surround me, on all I see and hear, on all who ask me questions, on all of whom I ask questions, on my spiritual Father, on my brothers and sisters and on all the people in the world. Lord, have mercy on all, and give me the strength to reject Satan and his yoke, and to become one with You now and to stay one with You in the ages of ages. Amen.