Ode 9. Irmos.

Then the 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 unfeeling and ungrateful to Christ, insulting by their disdain the long-suffering of his forbearance; but let us serve with fear and joy as we sing to him, ‘Spare our souls, Christ God, and save us’.

The Forerunner says to the peoples of the disobedient, \`Who has showed you to flee the wrath that is coming, broods of vipers? Demonstrate fruits worthy of repentance then, by crying out, “Spare our souls, Christ God, and save us”.

O rashness of blind ingratitude! For Christ, whom foreigners worshipped as Redeemer, honouring him with gifts, his own folk in their madness sought to slay when he appeared. Spare our souls, Christ God, and save us.

A new Adam has now appeared, setting right Adam’s destructive fall, granting wondrously through Baptism the freedom of rebirth.

Accomplishing Law and Prophets, and fulfilling justice, the Saviour now has hands laid on him by the palm of a slave, as he snatches mankind from the slavery of the foe.

A great light has shone for the Nations; a divine ray has risen for the darkened; Christ the Sun of glory has dawned for those who sat of old in the darkness of death.

The hosts of Angels encircled the Redeemer as he was being baptized in Jordan, and with trembling they hymned the great Mystery of his ineffable condescension.

‘Greater in honour than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, without corruption you gave birth to God the Word; truly the Mother of God we magnify you’.