The Book of Lamentations — the Narek.
Grigor Narekatsi wrote ninety-five prayers around 1002, each headed Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart, and each one an unsparing accusation of himself. Armenians have used the book as medicine for a thousand years — read aloud at a sickbed, kept under a pillow, given at a funeral. Francis named him a Doctor of the Church in 2015.
Narekatsi was a monk at Narekavank, a monastery on the southern shore of Lake Van in what is now eastern Turkey; the monastery was destroyed after 1915. His book is not a systematic theology but ninety-five sustained addresses to God in which he accuses himself of everything he can name. Armenians call the book simply Narek and have used it as a physical remedy for illness for centuries, which the church has periodically tried to discourage without success. Pope Francis declared him a Doctor of the Church in April 2015, days before the canonisation of the genocide martyrs — a sequence Armenians noticed.
The same ground, other faiths
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