AT SMALL VESPERS

O Joyful Light **and the Prokeimenon** The Lord is King **with its verses. After** Grant, Lord **etc., we sing the first Resurrection Sticheron of the Aposticha of Great Vespers, and the following Prosomia of the Mother of God.**

Glory, Both now.

Lord, I have cried **we insert 4 Stichera, and sing the 3 Resurrection Stichera from the Octoichos, and 1 by Anatolios, as at Great Vespers.**

**Theotokion, the Dogmatic. Tone 3.**

Jesus went up to Jerusalem

**Theotokion. Tone 3***.*

**, as at Great Vespers.**

Greatest wonder: a Virgin gives birth, and that which was born is God before the ages. Manifest the giving birth, that which was accomplished was beyond nature. O fearsome Mystery! What was apprehended remains ineffable, and that which was contemplated is not understood. Blessed are you, most pure Maiden, daughter of Adam the earthborn, and manifested as Mother of God Most High. Implore him that our souls may be saved.

Tone 3.

Listen, daughter, and see, and incline your ear; and forget your people and your father’s house.

Through the great boon you brought us, O Immaculate, along with the Angels we glorify your Offspring, who deigned to be born of your womb through his deep compassion and to refashion the human race.

I shall remember your name in every generation and generation.

We sinners have all gained you, pure Virgin, as refuge and divine protection in life. Therefore we all implore your compassion. Do not turn from us, we beg, but take pity and save us.

The rich among the people of the land will entreat your favour.

Mother of God, Ever-Virgin, we your servants made from earth, with Gabriel the chief captain, fittingly offer your our ‘Hail!’ For you became cause of joy and exultation for the world.

**Tone 8*.***

In Solomon’s porch

**as at Great Vespers.**

**, Trisagion etc. and the Resurrection Apolytikion.**

And the Dismissal.

Christ has risen**, at Lord I have cried we insert 10 Stichera, and we sing 7 of the Resurrection from the Octoichos.**

Tone 3.

By your Cross, Christ Saviour, death’s might has been abolished, the devil’s deception destroyed, while the human race, saved by faith, each evening offers you its hymn.

By your Resurrection, Lord, the universe has been filled with light and Paradise has been opened again, while all creation as it sings your praise, each evening offers you its hymn.

I glorify the power of the Father and the Son, and I praise the authority of the Holy Spirit, undivided, uncreated Godhead, consubstantial Trinity, that reigns from age to age.

Other Stichera, by Anatolios.

We worship your precious Cross, O Christ, and we praise and glorify your Resurrection, for by your stripes we have all been healed.

We praise the Saviour who took flesh from the Virgin; for he was crucified for us and rose on the third day, granting us his great mercy.

Going down to those in Hades, Christ proclaimed the good tidings, saying, ‘Be of good courage; now have I conquered! I am the Resurrection; I will bring you up, abolishing the gates of death’.

We who stand unworthily in your most pure house sing an evening hymn, as we cry out of the depths, ‘Christ God, who enlightened the world by your Resurrection on the third day, deliver your people from the hand of your foes, O Lover of mankind’.

Two Idiomel Stichera of the Paralytic. Tone 1.

Compassionate Christ, who fashioned humankind with your immaculate hand, you came to heal the sick. You raised the Paralytic at the Sheep Pool through your word; you cured the pain of the woman with the issue of blood; you had pity on the possessed daughter of the woman of Canaan; and you did not despise the request of the Centurion. Therefore we cry: All-powerful Lord, glory to you!

An unburied corpse, the Paralytic, when he saw you, cried out, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, for my bed has become for me a tomb. What does life hold for me? I cannot crave the Sheep Pool, for I have no one to put me in when the waters are stirred up. But I come to you, the source of healing, that I may cry with all: All-powerful Lord, glory to you!’

Jesus went up to Jerusalem, to the Sheep Pool, called by the Jews Bethesda, having five porches. For in these lay a great multitude of the sick. For an Angel of God would come at from time to time, stir it up and grant strength to those who approached with faith. And the Lord, seeing a man who had been sick for many years, said to him, ‘Do you want to be made whole?’ The sick man answered, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. I have spent all my livelihood on physicians, and it has not been granted me to find mercy’. But the physician of souls and bodies said to him, ‘Take up your bed and walk, while proclaiming my power and my great mercy in the ends of the earth.’

How should we not marvel at your Offspring, who is both God and man, all-honoured one? For without knowing man, O all-blameless, you gave birth in the flesh to a Son without father, begotten from the Father before the ages without mother, in no way undergoing change, or mixture or separation, but preserving intact the identity of either nature. Therefore, Sovereign Lady, Virgin Mother, implore him that the souls may be saved of those who with right belief acknowledge you as Mother of God.

At the Liti.

The Sticheron of the Saint of the Monastery.

**Tone 5. Composition of Koumoulas.**

A man was lying in sickness at the Sheep Pool, and seeing you, Lord, he cried out, ‘I have no one when the water is stirred up to put me in it. While I am moving forward another gets there before me and receives the healing, while I lie sick’. And at once the Saviour, moved with compassion, says to him, ‘For your sake I have become man, for your sake I have clothed myself in flesh, yet you say ‘I have no one’? Take up your bed, and walk!’ All things are possible for you, all things obey you, all things are subject to you; remember us all and have mercy, O Holy One, as you love humankind.

**The same tone.**

You are the temple, the gate, the palace and the throne of the King, all-honoured Virgin; through you my Redeemer, Christ the Lord, has appeared to those who sleep in darkness, for he is the Sun of justice, who wishes to enlighten all those whom he fashioned according to his own image, by his own hand. Therefore, all-praised One, as you have a mother’s boldness towards him, intercede with him unceasingly that our souls may be saved.