Christ is risen! Truly He is risen!
Christ healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda (Icon courtesy of www.eikonografos.com used with permission)
Selected Hymns from the Fourth Sunday of Pascha: the Sunday of the Paralytic
Two Idiomel Stichera of the Paralytic. Tone 1.
Compassionate Christ, who fashioned humankind with your immaculate hand, you came to heal the sick. You raised the Paralytic at the Sheep Pool through your word; you cured the pain of the woman with the issue of blood; you had pity on the possessed daughter of the woman of Canaan; and you did not despise the request of the Centurion. Therefore we cry: All-powerful Lord, glory to you! (Twice)
An unburied corpse, the Paralytic, when he saw you, cried out, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, for my bed has become for me a tomb. What does life hold for me? I cannot crave the Sheep Pool, for I have no one to put me in when the waters are stirred up. But I come to you, the source of healing, that I may cry with all: All-powerful Lord, glory to you!’
Doxastikon of the Stichera
Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Tone 5.
Jesus went up to Jerusalem, to the Sheep Pool, called by the Jews Bethesda, having five porches. For in these lay a great multitude of the sick. For an Angel of God would come at from time to time, stir it up and grant strength to those who approached with faith. And the Lord, seeing a man who had been sick for many years, said to him, ‘Do you want to be made whole?’ The sick man answered, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. I have spent all my livelihood on physicians, and it has not been granted me to find mercy’. But the physician of souls and bodies said to him, ‘Take up your bed and walk, while proclaiming my power and my great mercy in the ends of the earth.’
Doxastikon of the Liti
Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Tone 5. Composition of Koumoulas.
A man was lying in sickness at the Sheep Pool, and seeing you, Lord, he cried out, ‘I have no one when the water is stirred up to put me in it. While I am moving forward another gets there before me and receives the healing, while I lie sick’. And at once the Saviour, moved with compassion, says to him, ‘For your sake I have become man, for your sake I have clothed myself in flesh, yet you say ‘I have no one’? Take up your bed, and walk!’ All things are possible for you, all things obey you, all things are subject to you; remember us all and have mercy, O Holy One, as you love humankind.
Kontakion. Tone 3. Today the Virgin.
By your divine presence, O Lord, raise my soul, grievously paralysed by sins of every kind and by unnatural deeds, as you also raised the Paralysed Man of old, that saved I may cry to you: O merciful Christ, glory to your might.
The Ikos.
You grasp the ends of the earth in the hollow of your hand, Jesu, God without beginning with the Father, Master of all things with the Holy Spirit; you appeared in flesh, healing diseases and banishing sufferings, giving light to the blind, and with a divine word you raised up the Paralysed Man, ordering him to walk quickly and to take up on his shoulders the bed which had borne him; therefore with him we all sing praises and cry out: O merciful Christ, glory to your might.
Doxastikon of the Praises
Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Tone 8.
O Lord, the pool did not cure the Paralysed Man, but your word renewed him, nor did his sickness of so many years hinder it, for the force of your voice was shown to be sharper; and he cast off the weight so hard to carry and carried the burden of his bed as a witness to the multitude of your mercies; glory to you.
All texts and translations are copyright to Archimandrite Ephrem © (http://www.anastasis.org.uk/ParVesp.htm and http://www.anastasis.org.uk/ParMat.htm)
Christ is risen from the dead, by death, trampling down upon death, and to those in the tombs, bestowing life!
Truly the Lord is risen!
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