Great Friday: The Richness of the Lamentations of the Epitaphios (Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Mani)

Great Friday: The Richness of the Lamentations of the Epitaphios

By Metropolitan Chrysostomos III of Mani

A holy and mournful day for the entire Orthodox Christian world. We participate spiritually in the august Passion of the Lord, we feel the Unnailing, and we venerate the All-Holy Tomb. During it, whatever may dominate our society, on this holy day it is not possible for our soul not to be shaken by the reality of the divine Passion — the Crucifixion and the Burial of the Lord.

The hymnography, above all, is unique. With shudders of deepest compunction and great reverence we chant the Lamentations. Among them also the wonderful hymn: “O my sweet springtime, my sweetest Child, where has Your beauty set?” The verse is found in the remarkable poetic composition of Great Friday, which is called the “Lamentations of the Epitaphios.”

These are marvelous antiphons in three stases. The first stasis begins: “The Life was laid in a tomb, O Christ, and the armies of angels were struck with amazement, glorifying Your condescension.” The second: “It is truly meet to magnify You, the Giver of Life, who stretched out Your hands upon the Cross and crushed the power of the enemy,” and the third: “All generations offer a hymn to Your burial, O my Christ.”

In these lamentations, of an unknown poet, angels, men, prophets, birds, animals, stars, and the rest of inanimate nature — everything — is mentioned and shaken by the death of Christ upon the Cross and His Burial. How is Life in a tomb! How does the Life-giving Lord, the Giver of Life, die and is buried!

Indeed, the sacred hymnographer, struck with amazement before this divine witness and mystery — of the incomprehensible by human measures, the burial of the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ — expresses his reflection with the following verses:

“How does Life die? How do You dwell in a tomb? Yet You dissolve the kingdom of death and raise the dead of Hades.”

“He who is beautiful in form beyond all mortals appears as a shapeless dead man, He who adorned the nature of all things.”

“O strange wonders! O new events! The Giver of breath is borne without breath, being buried by the hands of Joseph.”

These contrasts truly describe the mystery of the God-man: He who is Life dies.

However, since the poet cannot penetrate this divine mystery, he comes with awe and reverence to use images and representations from created nature in order to express himself.

He uses the sun that sets and says: “You were hidden beneath the earth as the sun now, and were covered by the night of death; but arise more radiant, O Savior.” Then he uses the eclipse of the sun and writes: “As the moon hides the disk of the sun, O Savior, so now the tomb has hidden You, as You bodily suffered eclipse in death.”

The inexhaustible poetic ability of the hymnographer proceeds further to another biblical image, which he presents in successive and most lyrical variations: the image of the stone, which symbolizes Christ. In the first variation, all-devouring Hades receives into its belly the stone of Life, but vomits up all the dead it had swallowed. In the second variation, addressing the Savior, the hymnographer says: “Even if, like a stone, O Savior, You accepted being cut, yet You poured forth living streams as a fountain, being the source of life.” And finally, the hymnographer not only vividly and originally depicts the condescension of the Lord’s burial, but also emphasizes the consequences of the three-day burial, from which sprang the new life of the radiant Resurrection.

But even more, the fertile pen of the sacred hymnographer reaches its height in an image of surpassing beauty and deepest longing, which has remained classic through the ages. It refers to that gentle bird, the pelican, which by its instinct pierces its own side, so that with the drops of its blood it may heal its young who were wounded by a poisonous serpent.

“Like a pelican, O Word, having been wounded in Your side, You gave life to Your dead children, pouring forth for them streams of life.”

Here the lyricism overflows. The poetry, like fragrant incense burning in the fire of the most sacred feelings, gives off the sweetest aroma. This is no longer simply poetry — it is worship, a mystical sacrifice, a reverent offering at the burial of Christ.

Therefore, on this day especially, let us stand “in sacred silence and compunction and prayer.”

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.