At the Aposticha, prosomia.

Verse: Yours are the heavens and yours is the earth; you have founded the inhabited world and its fullness. [2]

Tone 2. House of Ephratha.

Verse: Thabor and Hermon will rejoice in your name. [3]

Shining with the light of the virtues, let us go to the holy mountain to see the divine Transfiguration of the Lord

Glory. Both now . Tone 2.

Before the Cross, Christ shows an inspired sign of his Godhead to his initiates, shining out to-day on the mountain like the sun.

Apolytikion. Tone 4. Speedily anticipate.

Wishing to better the nature he took from Adam, Christ now ascends Thabor, baring his Godhead to his initiates.

Verse: Mercy and truth have met; justice and peace have kissed. [16]

Christ our God, transfigured on mount Thabor in glory, and showing your Disciples the glory of your Godhead, illumine us also with the light of your knowledge, and guide us in the path of your commandments, [4] as you alone are good and love humankind.

Verse: Lord, they will walk in the light of your face. [17]

Let us believers, as we radiantly celebrate the forefeast, go out to meet the Transfiguration of Christ, and let us cry, ‘The day of joy inspired is near; the Master ascends mount Thabor to make the beauty of his Godhead blaze forth’.

Glory. Both now. Tone 5.

Tone 1. Joy of the heavenly hosts.

And Dismissal.

As we go beforehand to meet the all-holy, glorious Transfiguration, on this present day we glorify Christ who refigured our nature with the fire of the Godhead and made it blaze with incorruption as at first.

Come, let us ascend the holy mountain and let us look upon the all-shining Transfiguration of the Lord, as we faithfully worship him and say: You alone are our God, who became incarnate and made the human divine.

This is the day of the forefeast, after which Christ is transfigured in the presence of Moses and Elias and his Disciples on mount Thabor; while the divine voice speaks: This is truly my chosen Son.

Seeing you in the cloud, O Christ, Moses, who saw God, and Elias, the fiery charioteer and traveller to heaven unconsumed by fire, bore witness at your Transfiguration to you as maker and fulfiller of Law and Prophets. With them, Master, count us also worthy of your illumination, to sing your praise to the ages.

[1] Cf. Psalm 35:10. Some editions of the Menaion have a subjunctive, ‘let us/may we see’. The Psalter has the indicative. The subjunctive in the third sticheron suggests that the original text may have had a subjunctive here also.

[2] Psalm 88:12.

[3] Psalm 88:13.

[4] Psalm 118:35.

[5] Cf. Exodus 33:11.

[6] Phil. 2:7.

[7] Luke 1:79.

[8] Jos. 10:12-13.

[9] In the Gospel this comparison is used of the Angels at the resurrection, Matthew 28:3, not of the Transfiguration.

[10] Psalm 103:2.

[11] Moses died before entering the Promised Land; Elias was taken up alive into heaven on a fiery chariot.

[12] An allusion to the tradition that fire appeared in the Jordan at the moment of Christ’s baptism.

[13] Cf. 1 Timothy 6:16.

[14] Psalm 88:7-8

[15] Cf. Hebrews 1:3.

[16] Psalm 84:11.

[17] Psalm 88:16.