Friday, May 1, 2009

The Sun of Righteousness

Shown above are the three verses from the Pentecostarion appointed for "Lord, I have cried" on Thursday of Thomas Week (yesterday), photographed from a beautiful pre-revolutionary Slavonic edition (click on it for a much larger view). Here are these same verses in English, as found in the Boston translation:
Being resplendently clothed in a garb of righteousness whose whiteness far transcendeth the resplendence of pure snow, let us all exult in this Pascha, whereon Christ, the bright Sun of Righteousness, brilliantly dawned forth and rose from among the dead, bright'ning all with incorruption's light.

This day is lady and queen; yea, it is the feast of feasts; this is the day the Lord made in all truth, O ye peoples. Herein, therefore, let us rejoice mystically, as the Prophet David doth chant. For while the doors were shut, Christ entered and vouchsafed the disciples His transcendent peace.

When with his probing right hand Thomas felt the Word's wounded limbs, his unbelief established the world-saving Arising, for the world's assuarance; for the God-man, in His great love for all mankind, arose from Hades' abysses and thus destroyed all it strength as the Almighty One.

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