On the evening of Friday, 27 February 2026, at the Katholikon of the Church of the Resurrection, the First Stasis of the Salutations of the Akathist Hymn was read during the Service of the Small Compline and the Canon to the Theotokos.
The Service was presided over by Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem with the Holy Sepulchre Fathers participating in prayer: the Elder Kamarasis, Archimandrite Nektarios; Archdeacon Mark; and the Hierodeacons Evlogios, Gerasimos, and Prodromos.
The chanting was led by the chief cantor of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Deacon Efstathios, together with the students of the Patriarchal School of Zion.
Also present were the Consul General of Greece in Jerusalem, Dimitrios Angelosopoulos, Anna Mantika, and devout Christians, to whom His Beatitude delivered the following sermon at the conclusion of the Service:
“An Archangel was sent from heaven to say ‘Rejoice’ to the Theotokos; and with his bodiless voice, beholding Thee, O Lord, taking bodily form, he stood in awe and cried out to her such words as these: Rejoice, height unattainable to human thoughts; rejoice, depth unsearchable even to the eyes of angels.”
Beloved brethren in Christ,
Pious Christians and pilgrims,
“Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2): the Fast of the Holy Forty Days. Therefore, our Holy Church exhorts us all to receive the Fast with joy and to guard it diligently, so that what Adam failed to attain—deification—we, through fasting, may attain our deification (theosis).
This deification, that is, our union with Christ, namely, the restoration of the vision of the glory of God which we lost through Adam’s exile from Paradise, was granted to us by God the Father through the Incarnation of His Son and Word, by the power of the Holy Spirit, from the pure blood of the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary.
The contribution and participation of the Most Blessed Theotokos in the Incarnation of God the Word, according to which, as the divine Paul says, “God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory” (1 Timothy 3:16)—is a great and ineffable mystery. “The mystery does not admit of inquiry; by faith alone do we all glorify it,” the hymnographer cries. “We have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith” (Romans 1:5), the wise Paul proclaims.
Through her profound humility and obedience, the All-Holy Theotokos became the fountain from which the Gospel of man’s salvation sprang forth. This very salvation of our souls is proclaimed to us through the holy Fast of the Forty Days by today’s Service of the Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos and Mother of God, as we prepare to venerate the Passion and the holy Resurrection of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
“And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (1 John 4:14), the Evangelist John says. Interpreting this word, Saint Cyril of Alexandria teaches: “For it belongs by nature to God alone to be able to save men from the devil, from sin, and from corruption.” In other words, the purpose of the Father’s sending of the Son into the world was that He might restore communion and relationship with God—that is, theosis—from which mankind had fallen.
Today, my beloved brethren, the Holy Church of Christ calls us through the voice of her hymnographer, Saint Theodore the Studite, saying:
“The arena of the virtues has been opened; let all who desire to contend enter in, girded for the noble contest of the Fast. For those who strive lawfully are justly crowned. Taking up the full armour of the Cross, let us fight against the enemy, holding Faith as an unbreakable wall, prayer as a breastplate, almsgiving as a helmet, and fasting as a sword, which cuts away every evil from the heart. Whoever does these things receives the true crown from Christ the King of all, on the Day of Judgment.”
Let us also hear the inspired Paul saying: “Brethren, now our salvation is nearer… therefore let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light” (Rom. 13:10–12). Interpreting these words, Saint John Chrysostom says: “Let us strip off vain imaginations, free ourselves from the dreams of this present life, cast off deep sleep, and instead of garments clothe ourselves with virtue.”
It is precisely to this that the holy Fast of Pascha directs us: on the one hand, to restore in us the lost beauty and nobility of our original creation; and on the other, to prepare us to confront the many temptations, in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who “was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil, and ate nothing in those days… And the devil said to Him: If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, saying: It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Luke 4:1–4).
Interpreting this passage, Saint Cyril of Alexandria says: “‘Man shall not live by bread alone’—that is, if God grants strength to a man, he can live even without food, as Moses and Elijah, who lived forty days without eating by the word of God. By eating, we were defeated in Adam; by self-control, we have conquered in Christ. Earthly foods nourish the body, which is akin to the earth, but those from above and from heaven strengthen the spirit. The word that comes from God is food for the mind and spiritual bread, strengthening the heart of man, according to the Psalmist (cf. Ps. 103:15). Such, we say, is also the food of the holy angels.”
The soul of man, my beloved brethren, is the God-formed tabernacle, according to Saint Andrew of Crete, that is, the image and likeness of God impressed and fashioned by Him (cf. Gen. 1:26), as declared by the Prophet and God-seer Moses. Therefore, Christ proclaims: “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet loses his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matt. 16:26).
Therefore, let us magnify the Theotokos, who gave birth to God and our Saviour Christ, who united the divided natures, divine and human. And with the hymnographer let us say: “Moses, in the time of self-restraint, received the Law and drew the people to God; Elijah, through fasting, shut up the heavens; the three Children of Abraham overcame the lawless tyrant through fasting. Through it, O Saviour, make us also worthy to attain the Resurrection, as we cry out: Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.”
Amen. May the course of the Holy Forty Days be peaceful, and blessed be the great Pascha.”
