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.
Father James, as one who has the grace
of your Lord Jesus, you heal the passions of body and soul of those who seek
out your support.
Your hand healed really and wondrously
the eyes of the sick in Cyprus, having trampled underfoot the arrogance of the
adversary, divinely graced Father James.
Father, by your prayers you brought an
end to the bleeding of the head of the shepherd Nikaia, having made the divine
sign of the life-giving Cross.
As you bore the Savior of mortals, be the
pilot and defender of my life, all-pure Maiden and Mother of God, and disperse
all my vile passions.
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.
Your holy monastery, having your
coffin as a treasure, Father James, leaps and rejoices, for you furnish grace to
those who suffer and healing to those who greet you faithfully, O holy one.
The oil hanging over your divine
coffin has truly become the wonder-working healing of all kinds of diseases,
holy one, for it has saved many from bodily pains, just as in your monastery it
saved the reverend monk.
Having been consumed in the heart with
a noble love for your divinely wise Master, you renounced every passionate
attachment completely, and you joyfully entered upon the way of the monks, holy
James.
The enemy ever tempts me with
passionate thoughts of despair, Virgin; but by your intercessions, scatter the
clouds of the sorrows of my life, for you have become, all-pure one, the cause
of our joy.
Irmos. I
have heard, O Lord, the mystery of your dispensation; I have meditated on your
works and glorified your divinity.
You made the divinely woven tunic of
your soul white with your tears, O James, in order to acquire the height of
blessings, the merciful Christ.
As your friends, we remember your many
virtues—fasting and temperance and prayer—and hymn you, O Saint.
Now your tomb has become the place of
healing of the possessed, procuring relief for all souls, Father James.
Your icon, all-immaculate
Virgin, which shows the life-giver Christ, brings peace to those who with faith
greet you, ever-virgin Mother of God.
Ode V
You endured various diseases of the
body, seeking out healing from David, your father, most holy James.
Wholly ascetic, you prayed every day to
David, the servant of God, and you seek out, Father, the offerings of tears.
Moaning and crying, you bore David’s
head on your breast, revered James, seeking out his healing, glorious Saint.
Direct my mind to things above, O bride
of God, so that the swarm of fears which torment my soul and heart may cease.
You fed people wondrously, James, having
increased the grain by your prayers for the sake of the workers of Livanates; truly,
you have performed anew a greater miracle than the five loaves, Father, by the
divine grace of Christ.
Having served as a priest in your
divine monastery, O blessed one, and having been worthily clad in the vestment
of grace, you heal difficult diseases of soul and body, and you drive off the
attack of demons.
Satan became your adversary, daily
marching out against you—as a misshapen hag, Father, or as a veritably
ill-omened dog, but by the power of the Cross you restrain his activity even
now.
We boast on account of you, all-pure
Virgin, and we hymn your pure birth-giving, for you protected us by your Son
from the arms of the demonic destroyer, and you have freely given us mortals
free life and forgiveness.
Kontakion. To the champion.
Let us praise the very best defender of the church, glorified
by the fellowship of the giver of life, and the adornment of Euboea; and
rightly so, for he shines as a treasury of sympathy, bestowing the glories of
healings to those who cry, “Rejoice, Father James.”
You were recognized, O divinely wise Saint,
as a speaker of dogmas and as an expounder of the salvific teachings of Christ,
the creator of all things, and as the herald of repentance, James, in the
monastery of David in the last times.
O divinely wise Saint, you were the
speedy physician of the most seriously ill and most variously suffering, the
pillar of endurance amid many and terrible diseases and a wondrous ascetic in
your life.
You endured the passions of men,
reproaches and lies, holy one; you crushed the audacity of the adversary,
Father, God-bearing James, wherefore we honor your memory now with hymns.
The tongue cannot worthily describe
your all-honorable grace, your august childbearing and the multitude of
miracles, all-immaculate Mother of God, for you were the august vessel of the
Comforter.
Irmos. The king of Heaven whom the hosts of
angels hymn, hymn and exalt him above all forever.
When you were an abbott, you had a
chalice filled full of blessings, O pious Saint, for the poor and unfortunate,
for you furnished them with grain.
In an unadorned cell you dwelt,
Father, fleeing the luxuriousness of life, by which also you imitated the
fathers of old.
You overcome the power of the demons,
all-blessed one, furnishing abundant freedom to those possessed who have come
to you.
Virgin, give to me, your worthless
supplicant, your hand to lead me to the path of salvation, so that I may keep
the commandments of your son.
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.
Behold, O blessed one! Every year, a multitude of fathers and a
company of Orthodox laymen, Father, celebrate in song your ever-venerable
memory.
O, Saint! Do not cease to entreat Christ your Lord on
behalf of your flock, for you are its protector, James.
We praise your life sweetly, Father,
recounting all your miracles and holy words, venerable James.
Peoples, tribes and tongues bless you,
the Mother of God, as you foretold and they piously praise your divine Son.
ENDNOTES FOR THE CIRCUMSPECT
Source: This canon is found on
several sites on the Internet, including https://www.pemptousia.gr/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/akolouthia-isidoras-Ioil.pdf,
where we read that the service from which the canon comes is described as the
(poetical) work (ποίημα)
of Isidore, monk of the holy monastery of St. John the Forerunner (in Makrinou,
Greece), “with additions from other services made by Joel, metropolitan of
Edessa.” This reminds us that these
hymns are not intended to be original works written as “a trial of
. . . poetic
powers of imagination and . . . invention” (Keats). The title of this akathist in Greek reads is “Salutations of St. Nektarios of Pentapolis,
the Wonderworker[:] twenty-four ikoi to our father among the
saints, Nektarios.” I went with Anglophone convention. The reader not able to get hold of the biography of the saint may improve himself by referring to John Sanidopoulos's wonderful Saint Iakovos Tsalikes Resource Page.
I
thank Zoilus for proofing the Greek and I thank Aeteia, my lawfully wedded, for
proofing the English. Any errors surviving their ministrations are purely
my own.
Ode I
“God-pleasing” (θεοχαρίτωτε). So Pape (Gott angenehm). Stephanos agrees (Deo gratus). Lampe has “full of divine grace,” which I
prefer to reserve for the Mother of God.
In the third troparion, I
omitted “holy James.”
Here is the troparion intact: “Father,
by your prayers you brought an end to the bleeding of the head of the shepherd
Nikaia, having made the divine sign of the life-giving Cross, holy James.” English simply struggles with such repetition. The hymnographers are constantly adding extraneous
words (“now” is popular, titles of various sorts are more common) to the
troparion in order to make them fit the Greek tones to which they are
chanted. The theotokion directly following
contains another example. The first
troparion of Ode III contains still another example, which, however, sounds
better in English.
Ode III
“You have become” (ὤφθης). In an epinician
vein, Joel of Edessa avoids the substantive verb. Most translators are not aware of the
influence of epinician poetry on modern hymnographers—indeed, one of the
learned become angry when I mentioned this to him—and so would render literally
as “you were seen to be.”
Ode VI.
Livanates is a seaside
town in Greece.
“For the sake of” (χάριν ) is my conjecture for χορείαν (dance). This
kind of corruption is frequent in the church hymns, blotting even vesperal
texts in our language. One can never
accept garbled Greek at face value. If
we want to be dogmatic about the text, we have to chant such nonsense as “having
increased the grain by your prayers the dance of the workers of Livanates.”
καταστέλλεις is in the present tense, which is jarring after the
perfect tense verb in the first clause.
I think that the intent of the hymnographer was to indicate that St.
James’ power against Satan is still active, so I added “even now.”
Ode VII
“Arms” (ἀγκαλῶν). This noun is usually used to refer to arms
bent to hold someone, like an infant. The
hymnographer achieves a chilling note by applying this word to the devil, who
wishes to hold us for very different reasons.
Ode VIII
“You
furnished them with grain” is literally “as a grain-supplier” (σιτοδότης). Montanari notes
that this word was the equivalent of the Latin praefectus annonae, who
(according to Smith’s Dictionary) temporarily took charge of ensuring the grain
supply during a food crisis in Rome. To
get some idea of the importance of this office, we may recall that it has been
estimated that the average Roman male consumed two pounds of bread per
day. In the Great and Holy Monday
services, St. Joseph the All-comely is dubbed σιτοδότης (cf. Gen. 41). My
guess is that our hymnographer was much more conversant with the services of
Great and Holy Week than with the periodic nominations of the Roman grain-czar.
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