Asking Mary's Prayers - Compassion

Next chapter in The Gospel of Mary!

Compassion

This section covers a prayer that was 'discovered' in 1917. I say 'discovered' because, as we will see later, the prayer has actually been in use in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches all along. What was found and purchased was the oldest extant copy of said prayer. It was found in Egypt and sold to the John Rylands University, Manchester, England in 1917.

The piece of parchment is tattered, worn, about the size of an index card. It contains only ten lines, and they are ragged, misspelled. Like someone jotted it down, not for posterity, but making notes for themselves.

Bits were missing, but it was clear that the prayer was addressed to the Theotokos, the Birthgiver of God. The fourth line of the prayer reads, 'Theotoke', the 'e' on the end of the word being the form used when speaking to someone.