AT VESPERS

Of what great blessings, wretch that I am, have I deprived myself! From what a kingship [5] in my misery have I fallen! I have wasted the wealth that I received, I have transgressed the commandment. Alas, unhappy soul ! You are henceforth condemned to the eternal fire. Therefore before the end cry out to Christ our God, ‘Receive me as the Profligate Son, O God, and have mercy on me’.

After the Opening Psalm and the usual reading from the Psalter, at Lord, I have cried , we insert ten stichera: six of the Resurrection in the Tone of the week from the Octoichos, and the following two Idiomels from the Triodion, doubling them.

Like the Profligate Son, having dissipated my whole livelihood in exile, I have squandered the wealth you gave me, Father. Accept me as I now repent, and save me.

Tone 1.

The mystery hidden from all eternity and unknown to Angels, has been re­vealed to those on earth through you, O Mother of God: God being made flesh in a union without confusion, and willingly accepting the Cross for us, through which he raised the first-formed man and saved our souls from death.

I was entrusted with a sinless and living country, but, having sown the ground [1] with sin, with a sickle I have reaped the ears of indifference and piled up the heaps of the sheaves of my actions, which I have not spread out on the threshing floor of repentance. [2] b ut I beg you, our God, husbandman before the ages, with the wind of your loving compassion winnow away [3] the chaff of my works, and provision [4] my soul with forgiveness; shut me in your heavenly storehouse and save me.      (Twice)

I have squandered the wealth of my Father’s gift, and have grazed [7] , poor wretch, with irrational beasts. Yearning for their food, I starved and was not filled. But now I return to the compassionate Father and cry out with tears, ‘Accept me as a hired servant, as I fall down before your loving‑kindness, and save me’.

Brethren, let us learn the power of the mystery. For when the Profligate Son ran back from sin to his Father’s hearth, the all-loving Father, coming out to meet him, kissed him and gave him back again the tokens of his own glory, and completed the mystical joy of those on high by sacrificing the fatted calf, so that we might live lives worthy of the loving Father, who offered the sacrifice, and of the glorious sacrificial victim, the Saviour of our souls.     (Twice)

My maker and redeemer, Christ the Lord, by coming from your womb, All-pure Lady, and clothing himself in me freed Adam from the former curse. Therefore, All-pure, as to her who is truly Mother of God and Virgin, we cry unceasingly the Angel’s ‘Hail’: Hail, Sovereign Lady, defence, protection and salvation of our souls!

Glory. Tone 2.

on Sunday morning

The 1st Theotokion in the Tone of the week from the Octoichos.

Entrance, O Joyful Light . Prokeimenon of the day. At the Liti [6] we sing the sticheron of the patron saint of the monastery.

Glory. Tone 4.

Both now. Theotokion.

Alphabetical Aposticha from the Octoichos.

Glory. Tone 6.

Both now . Theotokion.

Apolytikion, Virgin Mother of God , three times. And the rest of the office of the Vigil. [8]