Ode 9. Irmos.

‘With pure souls, and unpolluted lips, come, let us magnify the undefiled and most holy Mother of Emmanuel, through her offering our prayer to the One born of her: Spare our souls, Christ God, and save us’.

Let none be ungrateful, none full of evil jealousy of those who now bring gifts acceptable to God instead of myrrh, gold and incense, the myrrh of virtues, as they sing to Christ who is brought to birth: Spare our souls, Christ God, and save us.

Cunning Herod, hard of heart, says to the wise Magi: Go, seek the King who has now been born, and having found him, tell me, as he meditated murder in his murderous heart. Spare our souls, Christ God, and save us.

O the audacity of blind murder! therefore you forgot: that no one takes God into their power and destroys him; for boiling over with rage, Herod, you savagely slaughter the babes. Spare our souls, Christ God, and save us.