Lent: What are the Greetings That Start Today?

Greetings, or Insatiable Hymn is a great and great poem, written in the 6th century AD, which speaks to the Virgin and tells her praises, thanks and prayers. The greetings of Our Lady are singing through which every believer is especially pleased to read the great Fortyth are read every Friday and for five consecutive weeks. Greetings include in poetic form, in beautiful words, all the basic teachings of Orthodoxy for Christ, his embodyment, the role of Our Lady for the salvation of man, the purity and holiness of etc., but also for the struggle of man for union with God and the help he asks of Christ and Our Lady for this struggle. Poet of Greetings is probably Saint Roman the Melodos, one of the greatest Greek-language poets of all time. The poem is mellized, has music and belongs to the genre classical music of Byzantium called “contakio”. It has 24 turns of “houses”, which begin, in turn, from the 24 letters of the alphabet. Very beautiful Greetings have also been written for many other saints, but the Greetings of Our Lady is the basic inspiration for all others who have been written after. In the 7th century, when the people of Constantinople were saved from the attack of the Avars after the intervention of the Virgin Mary, everyone sang in Agia Sophia the Sitting Hymnos standing, hence his name. Then, rather, the well-known original trophy was written “I Extend It as a Soldier”. The Orthodox Church sings the Greetings every Friday night, in the first 5 weeks of the Great Lent. In fact, we cut the greetings into 4 pieces, they are called “4 stops” and we say from one every Friday, while on 5th Friday the whole project is called. The priest recites their greetings with their music. Before that, the chanters have sung another famous musical and poetic work, called “the rule of Greetings” (the rules are another kind of Byzantine classical music) and its creator is another leading poet and musician of Byzantium, St Joseph the Hymnographer.