Ode 4. The prophet heard .

Rejoice with gladness, O Church, and every city, town and village; let the monasteries be opened and the nunneries adorned. Let then fittingly worship the relics and icons of the Martyrs.

Both now. Theotokion.

Christ invites you! Now godly Fathers assemble with eagerness and recount, like the Apostles, the spectacle of his Incarnation, his miracles and his sufferings, as the Sacred Gospel writes.

Assemble rejoicing with boldness, you multitudes of monks, for though they were evilly strong, the cowards have again been worsted, and whatever counsel such men counselled, the Lord will scatter.

The stripes of the Fathers, the blood shed by their blows have truly ceased; continuous exiles are no more, and peace is being established for all. No longer does the work of magic have force; for ‘God is with us’.

The vine of evil spread out its branches of impiety and flowered with the bitter grape cluster, and their wine was the rag of the dragon, from which they truly gave the Lord’s people the evil-minded drink.

They defiled your Temple with unlawful ordinations for money, and they have been canonically cast out and are fallen from divine glory: Simon Magus, and with him John and Antony.

Against the wild beasts and enemies of God, foul Antony, the traitor, John, of satanic mind and enemy of the Church, assembled like fierce wolves, let us believers shout out three times, ‘Anathema!’.

O uncreated Monarchy, Father, Son and Spirit, we worship you, whose praise the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim sing, as they cry, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy are you, O Highest and Almighty!’

Holier than the holies, higher than all creatures you were named, O Virgin Mother, who bore your own Creator; therefore we offer worship to your holy form, O Birth-giver of God.