Ioane Minchkhi, Poezia

The Hymns for the Saturday of the Flesh-Fare. Vespers. To "Lord, I have cried." Minchkhi. Tone 1. The Word, the unoriginate Word, who was born unutterably with the high Father, co-essential and co-equal with the Father and the Spirit, the invisible and indescribable God, through love of mankind descended from heaven to earth in humility and put on the likeness of Adam in the womb of the Virgin, the form of the body with the two natures, and from her was born God and man, and saved his likeness by his own likeness. The wonder-working rod of Moses, which terrified Pharaoh and his people, was a type of the life-giving wood of the Cross, which terrified the devil and hell, for on it the Jews crucified our Saviour, who appeared in flesh on earth and honored the race of the Gentiles with the first honor of Adam. This was envied by those lawless ones, and they themselves were estranged from his mercies. They attacked, like bees, the multitude of the unbelieving people against the Saviour of the world, and with wrath they bowed their heads together with the chief priests; also the scribes raged with folly and added evil to their evil, and led him away to Golgotha, and among the evildoers they crucified him on the cross; but for the sake of our life he endured all this, while they were consumed like thorns by fire, and Christ is alive forever.

The God who never left the heavens, like a dead man, was confined today in the narrowness of the tomb; that human nature was changed by him through the flesh, but the all-containing nature of the Godhead utterly changed Hades and cut down its power, and with wrath shattered its treasuries and freed all those condemned by it; and when he had accomplished all, he rose from the tomb, did not shame the assembly of the Pharisees, but glorified his own glorifiers. Truly the days of heaven and the orders of the angels of God, the seven pillars of the world among those seven thousand, like the seven mountains of those seven universes, shining like the sun, filled with divine fruit—these days have come, enlightening our souls and bodies. Let us repent of the multitude of our faults and henceforth withdraw from evil; let us take up fasting and prayer with purity and abhor gluttony. Through love of fasting, Moses was deemed worthy to see with his eyes the face of the invisible God and received the ten commandments through that mighty fasting on that mountain of Sinai during those forty days. Now let us understand the power of fasting, O Christ-loving peoples, and with joy let us welcome these days, and ever shun surfeiting, and let us not behave according to the bestial order, but according to the angelic order, and may Christ raise us up together with them.

When we recall the errors of the first mother, Eve, we are filled with sorrow; but when we look upon you, holy Queen, we are filled with ineffable joy. She first brought death upon us, whereas from you the same first honor and immortality were granted to us, for from your womb shone forth our Redeemer and Savior, and you are the cause of our salvation and the eternal life of our souls.