Great and Holy Wednesday

The Hymn of Kassiane:

Lord, the woman caught up in a multitude of sins, sensing Your divinity,
assumes the perfumer's role; lamenting, she provides myrrh in anticipation
of Your burial. "Alas!" she cries, "for me night is a frenzy of excess, dark
and moonless, a love affair with sin. You draw from the clouds the waters of
the sea; will You accept the fountainhead of my tears? In Your inexpressible
condescension You made the heavens incline; incline now to the groaning of
my heart. I will cover your spotless feet with kisses, then dry them with my
tresses. Eve heard those footfalls in the twilight in Paradise, and hid
herself in fear. Who can fathom the magnitude of my transgressions or the
depths of Your judgments, my soul's Savior? In Your boundless mercy do not
reject me Your handmaid."


Tonight, we will have the Sacrament of Holy Unction, the prayer of Annointing:



Prayer of Anointing

O Holy Father, Physician of souls and bodies, Who didst send Thine only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to heal every infirmity and deliver from death: Heal Thou, also, Thy servants from the ills of the body and soul which do hinder them, and quicken them, by the Grace of Thy Christ; through the prayers of our most Holy Lady, the Birth-Giver of God and Ever Virgin Mary; through the intercession of the honorable bodiless Powers of Heaven; through the power of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross; through the protection of the honorable, glorious, Prophet and Forerunner John the Baptist; of the holy, glorious and righteous Martyrs; of our righteous and Godbearing Fathers; of the holy and healing unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian, Cyrus and John, Thaleleus and Tryfon, Panteleimon and Hermolaus, Samson and Diomidis, Mokius and Aniketos; of the holy and righteous ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna; and of all the Saints. For Thou art the Fountain of healing, O God, our God, and unto Thee do we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.


Icon of St. Kassiane from The Convent of St. Elizabeth