Ode I.
Irmos. After
crossing the sea as if it were dry ground and escaping the wickedness of Egypt,
the Israelite cried out: “Let us sing to our redeemer and God.”
Having borne in the likeness of the
flesh the myrrh of life, O myrrh-streaming Mary, deliver me from the stench of
the passions by the myrrh of your divine icon.
Your icon, which abundantly produces
myrrh with your assent in Maleví, O Mother of God, gladdens and cheers every
day those who approach it with faith.
Look graciously on those who stand
by your icon most reverently and give to us, O Mother of God, the
fulfilment of all our requests.
We praise in song the multitude of your
miracles and we cry with faith, “Myrrh-streaming Mary, rescue us from every
harmful misfortune out of your motherly kindness.”
Ode III
Irmos. You covered the vault of the sky with a roof, O Lord,
and built the church; confirm me in your love, O summit of desires, support of
the faithful and only compassionate Lord.
Deliver from the deceit of invisible
enemies and from manifold infirmities and misfortunes, O myrrh-streaming Mother
of God, those who reverently receive your divine myrrh and glorify you.
As you stopped the grievous disease of
cancer by the anointing of your holy myrrh, pure Virgin, so heal even me, for I
am terribly sick, myrrh-streaming Maiden, so that I may honor you.
Your icon in Maleví is wonderfully seen
as a fountain of myrrh, astounding all men and healing diseases of souls and
bodies, for which we proclaim your generous grace.
As you have truly been revealed to be a
temple of holiness, O Virgin, you therefore sanctify by your divine myrrh
those who take refuge in you in the Maleví monastery and glorify your miracles,
O Maiden.
Prayers following Ode III.
O myrrh-streaming Maiden and Mother of
God, preserve those who are anointed with your holy myrrh from every
harmful attack of the serpent.
Kathisma. Tone 2. Fervent Intercession.
O pure Virgin! Our fountain of compassions and divine kindness! You
have caused a fountain of myrrh to pour forth from your divine icon, from
which, O Maiden, those who partake with faith are filled with a mystical
fragrance and joy, proclaiming your divine miracles.
Ode IV
Irmos. I have heard, O Lord,
the mystery of your dispensation; I have meditated on your works and glorified
your divinity.
With the anointing of your myrrh, O
Maiden, purify us who have been defiled by the adversary, for you poured forth
the myrrh of life for the world.
Truly wondrous has your icon in Maleví proven
to be, O Maiden that is honored by all, for it ever gushes forth divine myrrh
by the divine Spirit.
Those who with faith receive your myrrh,
O Queen, are healed of every injury and affliction, and your miracles are
proclaimed.
O myrrh-streaming Queen of all, deliver
those who take refuge in your icon from diseases and all kinds of suffering of
soul and body.
Ode V
Irmos. Illumine us with your
commandments, O Lord, and by your lofty arm grant us your peace, O
compassionate God.
Look upon us who run faithfully to your
protection, O Mother of God of Maleví, and grant joy to our souls.
Be our sure protection, myrrh-streaming
Mother of God, and in all things defend and rescue those who ask for your swift
help.
As you healed the diseases of
eyes, I entreat you to also open the eyes of my
heart, myrrh-streaming Mother of God.
Performing many miracles, your divine
myrrh gladdens the faithful, O Mother of God, and drives away the attack of the
demons.
Ode VI
Irmos. I will pour out my
supplication to the Lord and to him will I declare my afflictions, for my soul
has been filled with troubles and my life has approached Hades, so like Jonah I
pray: Raise me up from death, O God.
As you rescued from the bonds of
barrenness women who faithfully approached you, O myrrh-streaming Maiden, so
deliver even me from the bonds of malice, and bind me tightly to the bond of
love of my Creator.
Behold, from every side throngs of
Christians with reverence flock together to you in your holy monastery, O
Maiden, and receiving your divine myrrh, they cry to you with all their heart,
“Fill us with your joy, O Lady.”
You bore the myrrh of life, being
yourself a vessel of myrrh of heavenly graces. Deliver those who
worship with complete faith before your myrrh-streaming icon, O Maiden, from
the hard-to-bear stench of diseases and afflictions.
Approaching your monastery of Maleví and being filled with heavenly fragrance from your holy myrrh, O
Virgin, we proclaim your wondrous works to all and cry out, “Deliver us from
the stench of the passions.”
Prayers following Ode VI.
The Kontakion. Tone
2. To those of your blood.
O myrrh-streaming Mother of God and pure Virgin, as you are full of kindness,
unceasingly beseech your Son to grant forgiveness of sins to those who
faithfully run to you.
Prosomoion. Tone 2. Having laid all hope.
Pure Virgin, since you bore Christ, the inexhaustible myrrh and
the Savior of all, you have made the world fragrant with divine
grace. And now, O Lady, you gladden our souls with the holy myrrh
which gushes forth abundantly from your icon at the visitation of your glory,
and you always drive away the soul-destroying stench of the passions and
diseases and all grievous despondency from our hearts.
Ode VII
Irmos. The youths from Judea,
having come to Babylon of old, by their faith in the Trinity trampled down the
flame of the furnace, chanting, O God of our fathers, blessed are you.
Above all spices, O Virgin, as the Scriptures
say, the fragrance of your myrrh gladdens with its sweet smell the hearts and
perceptions of all who always proclaim, “Blessed are you, O God of our
fathers.”
With the invisible sprinkling of your
divine myrrh, myrrh-streaming Maiden, wash away the filth of my fetid soul and
brighten me, for I proclaim, “Blessed are you, O God of our fathers.”
As a wholly fragrant meadow, your Maleví
monastery is set before all, in which, O Mother of God, your holy icon, as a
wholly sweet-smelling flower, makes us fragrant and pours out myrrh there.
Make known to me the path of life, O
Virgin, for I fall before your icon. Rescue me from every deadly
trackless sojourn, so that I may cry out faithfully to you, “Hail, joy of the
faithful, most highly favored Virgin.”
Ode VIII
Irmos. The king of Heaven
whom the hosts of angels hymn, hymn and exalt him above all forever.
The grace of your holy myrrh has gone
out into all the world, O Mother of God, and the throngs of the faithful
celebrate in hymns your glory.
Rescue, O Virgin, from painful symptoms
those who fall before your divine icon and are anointed with your holy myrrh.
Everyone who approaches your monastery
in Maleví is hallowed by your holy myrrh and proclaims your miracles, O Mother
of God.
O myrrh-streaming Virgin,
deliver those who supremely exalt your incomprehensible Son from
diseases of body and sufferings of soul.
Ode IX
Irmos. O Mother of God, we
who have been saved through you fittingly confess you, and with the incorporeal
choirs magnify you, O pure Virgin.
Your myrrh, O Maiden, distributes
healings to all, and your all-holy icon pours it forth always on all who
receive it with faith.
As a fragrant lily, your myrrh-streaming
icon breathes forth a divine fragrance on those who faithfully hasten to your
temple, O all-pure Virgin.
You, who groan wretchedly because of your
calamities and diseases, approach the myrrh of the Mother of God in order to
receive healing.
Render my mind victorious, O Mother of
God, over every kind of wickedness of the passions by the wondrous
fragrance of your myrrh.
ENDNOTES FOR THE CIRCUMSPECT
This Ποίημα is by St. Gerasimos of Little Anne
Skete and is available
online at (among other sites) https://www.proseyxi.com. I thank Zoilus for his invaluable vetting of the Greek and
thank my eagle-eyed Aeteia, my lawfully wedded, for proofing the English with
her incisive insights. Maleví is pronounced roughly
mah-leh-VEE. The reader is directed to John Sanidopoulos' Mystagogy
Resource Center for a quick background on this amazing icon. The
very fortunate may refer to Mother
Nectaria's book, Evlogeite: A Pilgrim's Guide to Greece for
her discussion of the same.
Ode I.
“Gladdens and cheers up” (εὐφραίνει καὶ τέρπει). An example one of the favorite rhetorical devices of the hymnographers, synonymia, or the piling up of synonyms. One of the difficulties of translating
Greek hymns is making them sound natural in English. English, like
French, does not bear up well in long sentences. Even if we eliminated the synonymia by dropping, say, "cheers up," this sentence is fatally long by one extra adverb ("every day"). We have to suppose that
these hymns are not understood by most of the monks singing or hearing
them. The monks who do understand them appreciate them in the way that Pindar
may be appreciated--as a pleasant or even stirring medley of images and concepts.
Finally, we have to remember that the hymnographers, like Homer, are constantly
looking for ways to pad their hymns to suit the demanding requirements of
meter. When a hymnographer uses synonyms side-by-side or lists seriatim
the titles of the Mother of God, one may reasonably suspect such metrical
padding. (For Aristophanes' indirect but amusing comments on the dangers
of meter to a poet, see his The
Frogs. Search the PDF cited for "Found his oil-can
gone." This play is also the source of the famous Brekekekex
koax koax. A dual language edition may be found here.)
“Misfortune” (ἀνάγκη), but it may also mean physical need, fate in
philosophy, necessity in logic, physical suffering or agony. Muraoka
defines it distinctively as “plight with little scope for manoeuvring,” which
allows him to translate it according to context as dire straits, shackles, constraint etc. I
decided to treat ἀνάγκης τε καὶ βλάβης as hendiadys, since the best translation of βλάβη in
English is the potentially trivial mischief, while harm is
a little tricky to work out in non-legal and hymnographical
contexts. “Rescue us from every misfortune and harm” seems to my ear
to fall flat.
Ode III.
"So . . . so" seems repetitive
in English, but in Greek the first so (οὕτω) is
correlative and the second (ἵνα) is a purpose marker.
Ode IV.
"Injury" (βλάβης). A favorite word of the
hymnographers. It can mean anything from harm (the most
common translation) to damage, corruption, loss,
mischief, disgrace, calamity, hardship, woe, affliction, distress, injury.
Modern Greek lexica favor injury. I have a notion that disgrace--an
important feature of Mediterranean ethos from Homer on--is meant, especially
since it is conspicuously absent from our hymns.
“The myrrh of life,” i.e., Christ.
“Divine myrrh by the divine Spirit” (θείῳ Πνεύματι
. . . μύρον θεῖον). I am guessing that metrical considerations forced
St. Gerasimos to repeat “divine” twice in so short a space, but the
hymnographers as a class are inclined towards fullness of expression.
Ode VII.
“Above all spices” (ὑπὲρ
πάντα Παρθένε, γραφικώς τὰ ἀρώματα ἢ τοῦ μύρου σου) has to be a reminiscence of καὶ ὀσμὴ μύρων σου ὑπὲρ πάντα τὰ ἀρώματα· μῦρον ἐκκενωθὲν ὄνομά σου (Song of Songs 1:2). The puzzling
adverb, γραφικώς, is explained once we know that modern Greek γραφικὸς
means “scriptural.” The odd ἢ is
supposed to be the def. art.
“Proclaim” (βοώντων). I am
reconsidering βοάω. It
seems to me that the other definitions are appropriate—proclaim, sing
at the top of one’s lungs, invoke etc.
I have always been puzzled by the amount of hollering in the hymns.
“Aspersions” (ῥαντισμοῖς). On the plus side, aspersion refers to
sprinkling in a ceremonial context, which makes it appropriate for this
hymn. On the negative side, we nowadays cast
aspersions. Sprinkling is
out, since it has only the wrong connotations—rain showers and lawns—even
though it refers to roughly the same physical act as aspersion. Also, sprinkling resists pluralization
in English.
Ode IX.
“Kind” (σχέσεως) could also mean “occurrence.”
