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| “The Unnailing,” egg tempera, 1932, Holy Church of Pantanassa, Monastiraki. |
The Hours of Great Friday
By Photios Kontoglou
By Photios Kontoglou
“It was astonishing to behold the Maker of heaven and earth hanging upon a Cross.”
Today, on Great Friday in the morning, they say the Hours in the church. In whatever church one may happen to be, it is good, but whoever happens to be in some monastery or in some deserted chapel, he can say that he truly felt compunction.
The Hours do not have much chanting; most of the texts are read. At the beginning they read from the Psalter three psalms: “Give ear to my words, O Lord; understand my cry,” “Why did the nations rage and the peoples meditate empty things?” “O God, my God, attend to me; why have You forsaken me?” Then they chant two or three troparia, beginning from this: “Today the veil of the temple is rent for a reproof of the lawless, and the sun hides its own rays, seeing the Master being crucified.” And after the priest says the Gospel, they begin again the reading. How well these readings are chosen — the psalms, the prophecies, and the other readings of Holy Scripture!
At the time when the chanters chant and the readers read, you see on the arches painted those things which they chant and those which they read. And you think that the words are one with the images, which are made from fasting hands. You hear the priests chanting the troparion:
“When the Arimathean took You down from the wood as dead, Who are the Life of all, with myrrh and fine linen he buried You, O Christ.”
And you see in the Unnailing the honorable Joseph having gone up on a ladder holding from the armpits the immaculate body of Christ, while the Panagia has Him embraced and rests her grief-stricken face upon His chest. His hands are stretched out — one is held by Saint John and he kisses it with tears, and the other by Magdalene. And Nicodemos with a pair of tongs removes the nails from the immaculate feet of the Lord. Beside this icon is painted the Lamentation of the Epitaphios:
“A four-sided and large stone, with a linen cloth spread out on it, and upon it Christ, lying on His back; and the Panagia above Him kneeling kisses His face, and Joseph kisses His feet, and the Theologian His right hand; and behind Joseph, Nicodemos leaning upon a ladder and looking toward Christ; and near the Panagia, Mary Magdalene, having her hands stretched out high, weeps; and the other Myrrhbearers pulling their hair; and behind, the cross with the inscription, and beneath the cross the basket of Nicodemos with the nails and the tongs and the hammer, and near these another vessel, like a small water-jar.”
When some notable man dies, they bury him with a great procession and they also deliver speeches. Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, they buried with five or six people in all. He was born in a manger, He lived going about here and there barefoot, without having where to lay His head, and when He died with a dishonorable death, nailed upon the cross, they buried Him secretly — two old men and two or three other attendants, and perhaps also some woman.
Let us rest our head and let us consider it well. And let us not say that we are Christians, as many as love the false grandeurs of this world. Christ Himself said: “A servant is not greater than his Lord.”
Source: From an article of Photios Kontoglou in Eleftheria, 4/30/1948. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
And you see in the Unnailing the honorable Joseph having gone up on a ladder holding from the armpits the immaculate body of Christ, while the Panagia has Him embraced and rests her grief-stricken face upon His chest. His hands are stretched out — one is held by Saint John and he kisses it with tears, and the other by Magdalene. And Nicodemos with a pair of tongs removes the nails from the immaculate feet of the Lord. Beside this icon is painted the Lamentation of the Epitaphios:
“A four-sided and large stone, with a linen cloth spread out on it, and upon it Christ, lying on His back; and the Panagia above Him kneeling kisses His face, and Joseph kisses His feet, and the Theologian His right hand; and behind Joseph, Nicodemos leaning upon a ladder and looking toward Christ; and near the Panagia, Mary Magdalene, having her hands stretched out high, weeps; and the other Myrrhbearers pulling their hair; and behind, the cross with the inscription, and beneath the cross the basket of Nicodemos with the nails and the tongs and the hammer, and near these another vessel, like a small water-jar.”
When some notable man dies, they bury him with a great procession and they also deliver speeches. Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, they buried with five or six people in all. He was born in a manger, He lived going about here and there barefoot, without having where to lay His head, and when He died with a dishonorable death, nailed upon the cross, they buried Him secretly — two old men and two or three other attendants, and perhaps also some woman.
Let us rest our head and let us consider it well. And let us not say that we are Christians, as many as love the false grandeurs of this world. Christ Himself said: “A servant is not greater than his Lord.”
Source: From an article of Photios Kontoglou in Eleftheria, 4/30/1948. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
