First prayer ever written by a woman!

This is perhaps one of the first prayers written by and for women. It is taken from an Anglo-Saxon source and found in the Nunnaminster Manuscript and written around AD 900 by a nun in a Winchester convent. I found it in my local convent. What an amazing monastic treasure!

On the Ears

O God, my Lord,

who,

in the moment of death,

was deaf to my wretchedness

but with ears open to the inward will

of your Father’s way.

I give you thanks,

and in so doing,

I ask forgiveness for these ears

whose hearing has been polluted

by the evil things that they have heard.

I pray

that never might I have to hear

in the day that will come,

the judge’s sentence

equal to the faults that I have heaped up,

from the fire of your love,

Lord Jesus Christ,

Amen.

(An Anglo-Saxon Passion – David Scott SPCK 1999)