By Fr. Michael Psaromatis
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia
During the first fourteen days of August, the Small and Great Paraklesis are heard repeatedly in Orthodox churches. People bring names for commemoration. Someone is ill. Grief has not eased. A family is under strain. There may be a fear that has been spoken nowhere else. No one has to arrive inwardly composed. Some cannot even gather their thoughts. The Canons speak from there, naming bodily weakness, troubled thoughts, sin, despondency and uncertainty. Memory, relationships, failure and hope enter the prayer as well.
The Greek word paraklesis means supplication, though it also carries the sense of consolation. We come asking for help, and the Church gives our need words before any answer has come. Scripture has already taught the Church how to speak in distress, repentance, fear and trust. A sick person is remembered by name. A private grief is heard in the nave. Someone who entered feeling alone finds himself praying with the psalmist, the prophets, the saints and the Mother of Christ.
The late Archbishop Stylianos of Australia distinguished the triumphant praise of the Akathist Hymn from the more sorrowful voice of the Paraklesis. The Theotokos is still magnified, but here the praise comes amid illness, fear and tears, from people asking to be consoled because life has become difficult (Archbishop Stylianos of Australia, article on Theodore II Doukas Laskaris and the Great Paraklesis).
Each Paraklesis is built around a Supplicatory Canon of eight odes. Psalms 142 and 50 are read, hymns of repentance and intercession are sung, and the names of the living are remembered in the litanies. A Gospel reading follows the Sixth Ode. Then come the megalynaria and the concluding hymns to the Theotokos. The Canon is the central body of eight odes; the Paraklesis is the wider service. The Small Paraklesis may be offered throughout the year in times of illness, danger and sorrow. During the Dormition Fast, the Small and Great Canons are heard according to the order received by the Church.
The Two Canons
The two Supplicatory Canons share the same sequence of eight odes, the same biblical canticles beneath them and much of the same surrounding service. Their voices differ. The Small Canon is usually restrained. Its petitions are concise and speak of bodily illness, despondency, temptation and the disturbance of the passions. The Great Canon, written by Theodore II Doukas Laskaris, gives sorrow more room to speak. Threats are named. Questions return. Gratitude appears while fear is still present, and the poet repeatedly asks where he can turn. Small and Great describe breadth and tone; they do not rank the two Canons spiritually.
After the Supplicatory Canon at Saint John’s College in Melbourne in August 2025, His Eminence Archbishop Makarios of Australia encouraged the students to speak openly to the Theotokos about their anxieties. Just as a loving mother does not grow tired of hearing her child ask for help, he told them, the Virgin Mary “never tires of hearing your prayers.” He also drew their attention to her trust at the Annunciation. She received the will of God freely, with faith and love, and gave birth to Christ (Archbishop Makarios of Australia, address following the Supplicatory Canon, St John’s College, Melbourne, 11 August 2025).
The traditional heading of the Small Canon reads, “By the Monk Theosterictos; some say Theophanes.” The liturgical book preserves the uncertainty. Later theories should not be made to sound firmer than the received text. The names place the Canon within the Middle Byzantine hymnographic world, though the identity of the poet cannot be established beyond question (Horologion, Small Paraklesis, traditional heading).
The history of the Great Canon is clearer. Theodore II Doukas Laskaris ruled the Empire of Nicaea from 1254 until 1258, while Constantinople remained outside Byzantine control after the Fourth Crusade. He was a learned emperor and theological writer who knew serious illness and political danger. His Supplicatory Canon to the Theotokos was eventually received into the prayer of the Church (Dimiter Angelov, The Byzantine Hellene: The Life of Emperor Theodore Laskaris and Byzantium in the Thirteenth Century).
Theodore’s precise illness has been debated. The hymn itself tells us what entered his prayer. He knew physical weakness, agitation, hostility and the fear of being overwhelmed. He does not recount the affairs of the court one by one. The Psalms have already taught him how to speak. His opponents resemble the enemies of the psalmist; his darkness joins Jonah’s descent; his storms are heard through the waters of Exodus and Galilee. His suffering is personal, but its language is scriptural.
Archbishop Stylianos of blessed memory described these hymns as cries “from life itself.” They came from the illness, responsibility and danger of a particular man. Once the Church received them, others could pray that first-person cry when fear, weakness or loneliness made the words their own (Archbishop Stylianos of Australia, article on Theodore II Doukas Laskaris and the Great Paraklesis).
Theodore asks, “Where else shall I find…?” and later says, “I shall not conceal” the mercy already shown to him (Great Paraklesis, Odes 4 and 6). The Small Canon speaks more briefly. In a familiar English rendering, one troparion begins, “Ailing am I in body and in soul” (Small Paraklesis, Ode 1). The illness is simply named.
How the alternating use of the two Canons reached its present form is not entirely clear. What the Church now gives us during the Dormition Fast is the older Small Canon beside Theodore’s thirteenth-century prayer. Whatever their first setting, both are now prayed by the faithful.
The Canons depend upon the confession that the child born of Mary is the eternal Word made flesh. Saint Cyril of Alexandria defended the title Theotokos because Emmanuel is not a separate human person later joined to the divine Word. The one born from Mary is the Word Himself. She is Mother of God because the child whom she bore is truly God and truly man, one Christ (St Cyril of Alexandria, Third Letter to Nestorius, Anathema I).
The Marian titles of the Paraklesis begin with Christ. She is Mother of the Light because Christ is the Light. She is called a living throne because the King dwelt within her, a lampstand because she bore the Light of the world, and a vessel of manna because she carried the Bread of Life. The language tells us who her Son is and what humanity He received from her.
The Biblical Canticles
Before the first ode begins, Psalm 142 is read. The psalm belongs to someone pursued, humbled to the ground and made to dwell in darkness. He remembers the works of God, stretches out his hands like thirsty earth and asks to be shown the way in which he should walk (Psalm 142). Psalm numbering here follows the Septuagint.
Psalm 50 follows with its plea for mercy, cleansing, a pure heart and a renewed spirit. Affliction and repentance are heard together without making one explain the other. A person may suffer through no fault of his own and still ask God to reveal bitterness, vanity or fear within him. The presence of sin does not make every illness, bereavement or hardship a punishment from God. Both suffering and repentance can be brought before Him (Psalms 50 and 142).
“Create in me a clean heart, O God” belongs to someone who still believes that the heart can be renewed (Psalm 50). Resentment, jealousy, the need for approval and the desire to control everything need not become permanent features of the character. The person asks for cleansing because the mercy of God still makes repentance possible.
The litanies bring actual people into the service. Bishops and clergy, civil authorities, the city, the sick, travellers, the afflicted, the absent and all Orthodox Christians are remembered. Saint Cyprian of Carthage noted that Christ did not teach each person to say “My Father” or to ask only for “my daily bread.” Christian prayer is common even when it is spoken alone: our Father, our bread, our sins and our deliverance (St Cyprian of Carthage, On the Lord’s Prayer, 8).
Names keep the poetry close to life. The sea may belong to someone awaiting test results; the darkness to someone who has not slept; the furnace to a family living under pressure. Prayer for another person may later require a visit, a meal, an apology or patience beside suffering that cannot be quickly resolved. Once a name has been remembered before God, it should be harder to overlook the person outside the church.
Body, soul and mind are intertwined throughout the Canons. Pain burdens attention. Anxiety enters the body. Sin damages relationships. Exhaustion makes patience harder. Shame can disturb prayer. Saint Gregory the Theologian expressed the Christological basis of healing in a sentence which became central to Orthodox teaching: what Christ has not assumed has not been healed. The Word received the fullness of our humanity so that human nature might be saved as a whole (St Gregory the Theologian, Letter 101 to Cledonius).
The Great Paraklesis gives this a direct human voice: “Behold my body’s grievous infirmity, and heal the cause of my soul’s sorrow.” The body suffers and the soul grieves. Both are brought into the same prayer without being confused (Great Paraklesis; Archbishop Stylianos of Australia, article on Theodore II Doukas Laskaris and the Great Paraklesis).
There is room here for medical care and rest, confession and spiritual counsel, the prayers of the Church and the Holy Mysteries. Bodily weakness is no spiritual disgrace. Nor can every disorder of the heart be blamed upon physical strain. We seek medical help without shame and confess without defending ourselves. Ascetic effort has no place for cruelty towards ourselves or others.
Beneath the Canons are the ancient biblical canticles. The sequence begins with the two songs of Moses and continues with the prayers or songs of Hannah, Habakkuk, Isaiah, Jonah and the Three Holy Children. The Eighth Canticle summons the whole creation to bless the Lord. The Ninth joins the Magnificat of the Theotokos to the Benedictus of Zacharias.
The Second Ode comes from the severe song of Moses in Deuteronomy and has a strongly penitential character. It is normally omitted from ordinary canons. The Small and Great Paraklesis therefore contain the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Odes (Exodus 15:1–19; Deuteronomy 32:1–43; 1 Samuel 2:1–10; Habakkuk 3:1–19; Isaiah 26:9–20; Jonah 2:1–10; Daniel 3:26–88 LXX; Luke 1:46–55, 68–79).
This is why the numbering passes directly from the First Ode to the Third. The older sequence remains even where the Second Canticle is no longer ordinarily used.
Each ode begins with a heirmos, the model hymn which joins the troparia to the biblical canticle beneath them. Sometimes the connection is almost a quotation. Elsewhere it comes through an image or through the Church’s reading of the Old Testament in the light of Christ. Israel’s sea gives words to someone who sees no way through. Hannah speaks for the heart which has waited and wept. Jonah lends his cry to the person whose own words have run out. The furnace belongs to the Three Children, and the Church continues to pray it in trial.
The refrain “Most Holy Theotokos, save us” belongs within this scriptural and Christological setting. Christ is the Saviour in the full sense. Through His Incarnation, Cross and Resurrection He forgives sin, reconciles humanity to the Father and breaks the dominion of death. Scripture can also use the verb save for help given through another person. Saint Paul speaks of saving some through his ministry; Timothy is told that perseverance will save both himself and those who hear him; Saint James says that the one who turns a sinner from error saves a soul from death (1 Corinthians 9:22; 1 Timothy 4:16; James 5:20).
When the Church asks the Theotokos to save us, it asks her to rescue, protect and intercede. The hymns themselves keep the order clear. Christ is the Redeemer, the eternal Light, the Physician, the Helmsman and the One who has freed human nature from corruption. His Mother prays before the Son whom she bore.
The First Ode begins at the Red Sea. Israel has left Egypt, Pharaoh’s army approaches from behind and the waters block the way ahead. There is nowhere to go. God divides the sea, and what appeared to mean death becomes the way of deliverance (Exodus 14:10–31; 15:1–19).
The Small Canon remembers Israel passing through the waters as though upon dry land and singing to the Redeemer. Its troparia then speak from another place of danger. Temptations surround the soul, the passions disturb the thoughts, bodily strength has diminished and despondency threatens to darken the mind (Small Paraklesis, Ode 1).
The Exodus remains first the historical deliverance of Israel. Its pattern can also be recognised when a person reaches an impasse. An illness arrives. A relationship begins to fracture. Someone dies. A long struggle continues until the sufferer no longer knows what to ask. Israel could not open the sea. The prayer turns to the God who could.
The Great Canon reads the same event through the Cross. Its heirmos sees the rod of Moses striking the waters in a cruciform act. Pharaoh’s chariots sink while Israel passes safely through. The tyranny which held Israel becomes an image of the deeper bondage overcome through the Cross (Great Paraklesis, Ode 1; 1 Corinthians 10:1–4).
Theodore speaks from within his own storm. The cares of life surround him, sorrow darkens his heart and help seems distant. Yet he remembers earlier deliverances. Archbishop Stylianos observed that Theodore’s sorrow remains turned towards God. He is wounded and still expects mercy (Archbishop Stylianos of Australia, article on Theodore II Doukas Laskaris and the Great Paraklesis).
Saint John Chrysostom urged thanksgiving during affliction because suffering can close around the soul until nothing else remains visible. Gratitude keeps the mercies already received within memory. It does not ask us to pretend that pain is absent (St John Chrysostom, Homily I on the Statues; Psalm 102).
Egypt also survives within us. Anger we continue to justify, the hunger for approval, hidden addiction, possessiveness, unforgiveness and the need to arrange other people’s lives can become forms of servitude. What has enslaved us may still feel familiar. Freedom can be frightening when it leads somewhere we did not choose.
The obedience of the Theotokos belongs to this exodus. At the Annunciation she is given no account of everything that will follow. She hears the word of God and answers freely: “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Saint Irenaeus places her faith beside Eve’s unbelief. What had been bound through disobedience begins to be loosened through Mary’s obedience (St Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, III.22.4).
Most Christians will not be asked to answer an Archangel. The same obedience appears in quieter places: an apology long postponed, a temptation refused again, work done honestly, prayer offered without consolation, illness and responsibilities which have changed the life once expected. Mary receives the word without knowing everything that will follow.
The storm on Galilee also enters the Canons. The disciples are surrounded by waves while Christ is already with them in the boat. Their fear is understandable, but the storm has filled their sight. Christ rises and rebukes the wind and the sea (Matthew 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41).
An outward trial can awaken another storm within the person. Both are brought before Christ. We ask for deliverance from danger and for the passions to be quietened. His peace may be present while questions remain unanswered. Grief, fatigue and tears may remain with it (John 14:27; Philippians 4:6–7).
Hannah’s voice enters the Third Ode. She had endured barrenness, humiliation and years of grief. When her prayer opens into thanksgiving, she says that her heart has been strengthened in the Lord and that there is no rock like our God. Her canticle praises the Lord who remembers the lowly, raises the poor and overturns the judgements by which people measure one another (1 Samuel 2:1–10).
The heirmos used by both Canons asks Christ, the Creator of the heavens and Founder of the Church, to establish the faithful in love for Him. Suffering scatters the thoughts. Conversations are repeated inwardly, outcomes imagined, strength spent trying to arrange what lies outside our power. Hannah’s heart has become steady in God.
In the Small Canon, the Theotokos is called a shelter and calm harbour. She bore Christ, the source of peace, and is asked to pray that despondency be dispersed and the inward storm quietened. Bodily ailments and dark passions are named together because both are brought before the One who heals soul and body (Small Paraklesis, Ode 3).
Theodore keeps the images of harbour and waves, though his prayer is more urgent. He speaks of being plunged into the depths and asks for immediate help. Then he remembers the grace already shown to him. The ode ends with Christ, the Source of Life through whom death has been overthrown (Great Paraklesis, Ode 3).
Hannah also prepares the way for the Magnificat. She knows the God who sees the one whom others overlook, brings down pride and raises the lowly. Centuries later, Mary speaks the same scriptural language: God has regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden, scattered the proud and exalted the humble (Luke 1:46–55).
Habakkuk lends the Fourth Ode its language. The prophet has heard of the works of God and trembles before them. He remembers the Lord coming forth for the salvation of His people and ends by confessing joy even if the fig tree does not blossom and the fields yield no food (Habakkuk 3:1–19).
The Small Canon hears Habakkuk through the Incarnation. The eternal Son enters human history. The One whom the heavens cannot contain accepts the narrowness of the Virgin’s womb. According to the humanity He received from her, He knows infancy, hunger, weariness, rejection, sorrow and death.
Christ is called the Helmsman, and His Mother is asked to entreat Him to calm the surging of the passions. The disciples saw the waves and feared for their lives, although Christ had never left the vessel. Anxiety can make the problem fill the whole field of vision.
The heirmos of the Great Canon addresses the Son who remains eternally with the Father while visiting human poverty. He enters time without ceasing to be what He is. His nearness to us does not separate Him from the Father’s glory (Great Paraklesis, Ode 4; John 1:18; Philippians 2:6–8).
Theodore asks where else he can turn. His soul has been shaken by the turbulence of life, and no refuge seems visible. The compassion of the Theotokos is described as a river cooling someone surrounded by a furnace of misfortune. She is called the hope of the despairing and the helper of the sick because she bore the Son who entered our poverty (Great Paraklesis, Ode 4).
Isaiah gives the Fifth Ode its language of night, illumination and peace. The prophet seeks God through the darkness, learns righteousness through His judgements and awaits the day when the dead shall rise. He longs for the peace which comes from God and for the light in which creation will be restored (Isaiah 26:9–20).
The Small Canon asks the Lord to enlighten His people through His commandments and grant them peace. The Theotokos is called Mother of the Light because she bore Christ, who declares, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). The ode asks that the darkness of sin and ignorance be dispersed and that the heart troubled by the passions receive the peace which surpasses understanding (Small Paraklesis, Ode 5; Philippians 4:7).
Her radiance is received from her Son. Mary welcomes the Word into her womb and keeps His words within her heart (Luke 2:19, 51). She remains near Him when His glory is hidden beneath the humiliation of the Cross. Mother of the Light first tells us who Christ is. It also tells us something about a life lived in communion with Him.
The Great Canon begins the same ode from a place deprived of light. Its heirmos speaks of outer darkness and asks to be led again towards the light of the divine commandments. Theodore draws upon the vocabulary of the persecuted psalmist: enemies prepare weapons, dig pits and seek his harm. The arrow, the sword, the pit and the unjust enemy belong to Israel’s prayer (Psalms 7, 34 and 56; Great Paraklesis, Ode 5).
Biblical light is joined to truth, repentance and the commandments. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 118). To ask for illumination is to allow the word of God to uncover what our preferences have concealed.
Prayer for light reaches our conduct. Resentment cannot be deliberately fed while peace is sought. Discernment requires a willingness to hear counsel. The commandments reach speech, forgiveness, possessions, desire and the treatment of those who are vulnerable.
Jonah prays from a place where no ordinary escape remains. He is surrounded by water, enclosed in darkness and brought close to death. His supplication begins when his own resources have ended (Jonah 2:1–10).
The heirmos speaks of a life drawing near to Hades and asks to be raised from corruption. Faith may remain even when illness, grief or anxiety have exhausted a person’s strength and left him with very few words. Jonah lends his prayer to those who can no longer construct one for themselves.
The Small Canon reads Jonah in the light of Pascha. One troparion confesses that Christ freely gave Himself to death and rescued human nature from mortality and corruption. Another speaks of lying upon a bed of infirmity and finding no physician apart from Christ, whom the Virgin bore (Small Paraklesis, Ode 6).
Christ Himself gives Jonah this Paschal meaning: as Jonah remained within the sea creature, so the Son of Man would remain in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40). Jonah’s depth leads towards the tomb, and the tomb towards the Resurrection. An illness may continue, but it no longer stands outside Pascha.
The Great Canon surrounds the same prayer with clouds, darkness and the fear of being overwhelmed. Against this darkness it confesses the Virgin as Mother of the unapproachable Light and asks for the cooling breath of her intercession. She is called a fountain of life because she bore the One who destroyed death. Jonah cries from below, and Theodore still remembers mercy (Great Paraklesis, Ode 6).
The sorrow of the Theotokos belongs here as well. Symeon had told her that a sword would pierce her soul, and she remained near the Cross when that prophecy reached its fulfilment (Luke 2:35; John 19:25–27). When the Paraklesis brings tears before her, it approaches a Mother who knew grief and the Son whose Resurrection changed the meaning of death.
The Gospel Readings
After the Sixth Ode, the two services read different Gospels. The Small Paraklesis gives us Mary going in haste to Elizabeth. The Great places Mary of Bethany at the feet of Christ.
At the Visitation, the unborn Forerunner leaps and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, calls Mary blessed among women and “the Mother of my Lord.” She also blesses her because she believed that the word spoken by God would be fulfilled. The reading then begins the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour” (Luke 1:39–49, 56).
The title Theotokos is already present in substance when Elizabeth calls Mary the Mother of her Lord. Her physical motherhood and her faith belong together: “Blessed is she who believed” (Luke 1:45). She receives Christ in the body after welcoming the word of God.
Having conceived Christ, Mary goes in haste to Elizabeth. Saint Ambrose of Milan sees her haste as the movement of active faith. The grace of the Holy Spirit admits no delay, and the joy given by God does not leave her idle (St Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Gospel of Luke, II.19–23).
Mary receives Christ and goes to Elizabeth. Prayer cannot remain sealed off from the sick, the forgotten or the person waiting to be heard. Sometimes what is required is simply to go.
The Gospel of the Great Paraklesis places Martha and Mary before us. Martha is distracted by much serving, while Mary sits at Christ’s feet and listens. The Lord tells Martha that she is anxious about many things and that one thing is needful. The reading continues with the woman who blesses the womb which bore Him and the breasts which nursed Him. Christ responds by blessing those who hear the word of God and keep it (Luke 10:38–42; 11:27–28; Great Paraklesis, Gospel reading).
Christ’s reply tells us why the Theotokos is blessed. She heard, believed and kept the word of God. At the Annunciation she listened and consented; Elizabeth praised her faith; Saint Luke twice tells us that she kept the events and words concerning Christ within her heart (Luke 1:38, 45; 2:19, 51).
This Gospel is read in the middle of Theodore’s agitation. His Canon is full of cares, dangers, weakness and urgent questions about where he can turn. Mary of Bethany sits at the feet of Christ. She does not solve Theodore’s dangers. She listens.
Christ does not condemn Martha’s service. Her service has become troubled, and she begins to judge the person seated nearby. Parish work, family responsibility and ministry can take on the same strain. We begin to act as though everything depends upon us and to measure others by how visibly useful they appear.
The life of the Theotokos joins listening to service. Her stillness before the mystery of God does not prevent her from going in haste to Elizabeth. Her care for Elizabeth does not draw her away from the Word.
One of the petitions following the Gospel asks the Theotokos to do what will truly profit us. We often come before God with the answer already prepared and seek approval for our plan. The petition admits that we may not yet know what would help us most.
Saint Paul says that the Holy Spirit assists us because “we do not know what we should pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). In Gethsemane, Christ speaks truthfully about the cup before Him and entrusts Himself to the Father: “Not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).
Such prayer still seeks treatment, counsel and practical help. Decisions have to be made. Something may need to be said. What can be changed should be changed. Yet the person continues to ask for what will truly profit him. Grace may remove the difficulty. It may also free him from the fear, pride or resentment which has begun to govern the way he faces it.
The Final Odes and the Dormition
The Seventh Ode returns to the furnace of Babylon. The Three Holy Children have been taken from their homeland and commanded to worship the golden image erected by the king. Their refusal leads them into the flames, where their confession continues: “Blessed are You, O Lord God of our fathers” (Daniel 3:26–56 LXX).
The Children enter the fire. A fourth figure appears beside them, and Christian tradition recognises in this mysterious presence a manifestation of the divine Word. The flames remain real. God is there with them.
The traditional attributions place the Small Canon in or near the period of the Iconoclast controversies, when the Church was speaking with particular precision about the Incarnation. The eternal Word had truly become flesh. The Son of God received a human body and face, could be seen and touched, suffered in the flesh and rose bodily from the dead.
The Three Children refused an image which demanded the worship due to God alone. The defenders of the holy icons distinguished this adoration from the honour shown to a sacred image. The golden statue of Babylon claims divine worship for a creature. The icon of Christ confesses that the Creator became visible in human flesh.
Saint John of Damascus argued that God is not depicted according to His invisible and incomprehensible divinity. Once the Son had become visible in human flesh, He could be depicted according to the humanity He freely assumed. The human face of the Word made flesh can be shown because He was truly seen among us (St John of Damascus, On the Divine Images, I.16; John 1:14).
The Small Canon moves from the furnace to the saving economy accomplished within the womb of the Virgin. Christ chose to dwell within her for the salvation of the world. She is asked to pray that the faithful be released from sin, cleansed of the passions and healed in body and soul (Small Paraklesis, Ode 7).
Theodore calls her the vessel of the Light and the hope of those who feel stripped of ordinary assistance. He asks for shelter, strength and protection. She is the vessel because Christ is the Light (Great Paraklesis, Ode 7).
The song of the Three Children continues in the Eighth Ode until the whole creation is summoned to praise. Angels and heavens, waters, sun and moon, stars, rain and wind, fire and cold, mountains and seas, animals and humanity are called to bless the Lord (Daniel 3:57–88 LXX).
Suffering can narrow the world to the wound. The Eighth Ode sets the sufferer again among heaven and earth in praise. Someone praying beside a hospital bed, returning to an empty house after a funeral, or carrying a struggle known only to God still belongs to the hymn.
The Small Canon keeps this praise close to immediate need. The Theotokos is asked to attend to those who seek her help, repel temptation, heal sickness of body and soul and quiet the assaults of the passions (Small Paraklesis, Ode 8).
The Great Canon turns to the burning bush seen by Moses. The bush burns and is not consumed, becoming a figure of the Ever-Virgin who received the divine fire without her virginity being destroyed (Exodus 3:2; Great Paraklesis, Ode 8).
The hymn then enters the sanctuary of Israel. Mary is praised as a fiery throne, a vessel which held manna, a golden lampstand and an unextinguished lamp. Elsewhere Orthodox hymnography adds the ark, the tabernacle, the gate and the Holy of Holies. These images come from the scriptural history of God dwelling among His people.
The manna was bread given by God in the wilderness and preserved before Him as a memorial (Exodus 16:32–34; Hebrews 9:4). Christ identifies Himself as the true Bread from heaven (John 6:32–35). The Virgin is called the vessel of manna because the Bread of Life dwelt within her.
The lampstand held the lights of the sanctuary, and Christ is the Light of the world (Exodus 25:31–40; John 8:12). The throne belongs to the King, while the ark marked the place of the divine presence among Israel. The eternal King dwelt bodily within her.
She is not the Bread, the Light or the divine glory by nature. She is the human person in whom the Bread of Life, the Light of the world and the Lord of glory chose to dwell. The Old Testament sanctuary gives the Church words for the Incarnation.
The Ninth Ode brings both Canons into the opening chapter of Saint Luke. Its biblical foundation joins the Magnificat of the Theotokos to the Benedictus of Zacharias. Mary magnifies the God who has regarded her lowliness, remembered His mercy and exalted the humble. Zacharias blesses the God who has visited and redeemed His people, sending the Dayspring from on high to illumine those who sit in darkness and guide them into the way of peace (Luke 1:46–55, 68–79).
The Small Canon confesses Mary as truly Theotokos and speaks of salvation coming through her. Saint Paul gives the scriptural key: when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, so that humanity might receive adoption (Galatians 4:4–5). Through the free obedience of the Virgin, Christ assumes the humanity in which He suffers, dies and rises.
The ode then turns to the tears of the person praying and asks the Virgin not to disregard them, because she bore Christ, the One who wipes away every tear (Small Paraklesis, Ode 9). Isaiah had promised that God would destroy death and wipe away tears from every face. The same promise appears near the end of Scripture, when death, sorrow and crying finally pass away (Isaiah 25:8; Revelation 21:4).
Mary knew tears beneath the Cross. The Church brings grief before her without asking the sufferer to make it appear noble or spiritually composed. He prays before the Mother who wept and before the Son whose Resurrection has changed death.
The remaining troparia ask that the heart be filled with joy, inner darkness dispersed, those in danger given refuge and the sick raised from weakness. Sometimes health is restored. At other times grace changes the way an illness is borne.
The Great Ninth Ode begins with wonder before the Incarnation. God has appeared bodily among humanity, and the womb of the Virgin is called more spacious than the heavens. Solomon had confessed that even the heaven of heavens could not contain God (1 Kings 8:27). The hymn marvels that the Son whom creation cannot contain chose to dwell within her womb (Great Paraklesis, Ode 9).
Theodore soon returns to his immediate distress. He sees no secure retreat and no ordinary assistance upon which he can rely, yet he remembers mercies too numerous to hide. The final troparion offers tears, sighs and poverty of spirit. By the end of the ode, the emperor speaks as another sick and frightened man before God. Rank, learning and political authority give no exemption from human weakness.
After the Ninth Ode come the megalynaria, short hymns of magnification in which the two services share the same language of praise and supplication.
The opening megalynarion fulfils Mary’s own prophecy that all generations will call her blessed (Luke 1:48). She is praised as more honourable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim because the One worshipped by the angelic hosts received human flesh from her. The hymn addresses Mary, but Christ remains at its centre.
Another megalynarion speaks of release from the ancestral curse through her. Christ is the Redeemer who releases humanity from the curse of sin and death (Galatians 3:13). His Mother is praised because the Redeemer came from her and because her obedient “Let it be” belongs within the healing of human disobedience (St Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, III.22.4).
Then the language returns to the condition of the person praying. The body is ill and the soul is wounded. Nothing has to be hidden behind respectable religious language.
Another hymn calls Mary the “Mother of Him who saves.” She is the Mother of the Saviour, and her intercession is directed towards the One whom she bore (Small and Great Paraklesis, Megalynaria).
Cana gives the clearest Gospel image. Mary notices the need of the household and tells Christ that the wine has failed. She then turns to the servants and speaks the final words attributed to her in Saint John’s Gospel: “Whatever He says to you, do it” (John 2:3–5).
She sees the need, speaks of it to Christ and directs the servants towards obedience to Him. Affectionate words addressed to the Theotokos cannot be separated from whether we forgive, speak truthfully, restrain cruelty and listen to her Son.
The megalynaria also call upon the Forerunner, the Apostles, the angels and all the saints to pray with her. The suffering of one person is heard within the communion of the Church. The faithful on earth pray in the company of the heavenly powers and of the righteous who have completed their course (Hebrews 12:22–24; Revelation 5:8).
One megalynarion honours the icon known as the Hodegetria, the Directress. Its traditional association with Saint Luke belongs to ecclesial memory rather than the text of Scripture. The icon itself is plain in what it shows. The Mother points towards Christ.
The hymns surrounding the Canons name the Theotokos as the joy of those who sorrow, the defence of the wronged, nourishment of the poor, consolation of strangers, support of the blind, visitation of the sick and help of orphans. These titles belong to the mercy known in Christ and seen in the life of His Mother.
Saint John of Damascus speaks plainly in his homily for the Dormition. The Theotokos is honoured through purity, fasting, psalmody, peace, gentleness, humility and mercy towards the poor. Pride, quarrelling, harshness and an unforgiving heart are alien to the life she lived (St John of Damascus, Homily II on the Dormition, 16).
The names we sing have consequences. A grieving person may need someone able to remain beside them without filling every silence. The sick need to be remembered after other people have returned to ordinary life. Calling the Panagia the consolation of strangers should make us notice the newly arrived, displaced or lonely. If we call her nourishment of the poor, what God has given us cannot end entirely at our own table.
Christ identifies Himself with the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the imprisoned (Matthew 25:35–40). Saint James places care for widows and orphans within pure religion (James 1:27). The person named in the litany may still need a visit, a meal or someone prepared to listen without haste after the chanting has ended.
During the Dormition Fast, fasting and supplication remain close to actual people. Night after night, names are heard. Illnesses, family troubles, grief and fear are remembered before God. Fasting restrains the body. Prayer gathers thoughts which have become scattered. Repentance uncovers what has hardened within us. The Church approaches the falling asleep of the Theotokos already knowing that death has been altered by the Resurrection of her Son.
According to local liturgical custom, the exapostilaria, the familiar concluding hymns of the Dormition, are heard during the August Paraklesis services or especially as the feast draws near. They take us to Gethsemane, the departure of the Theotokos and the hope of life in Christ.
The first summons the Apostles from the ends of the earth and places upon the lips of the Theotokos the plea: “My Son and my God, receive my spirit” (Exapostilarion of the Dormition).
The gathering of the Apostles at her Dormition belongs to the received liturgical tradition of the Church rather than to the narrative of the New Testament. The language of the hymn is immediately scriptural. It recalls the prayer of the psalmist, “Into Your hands I commit my spirit,” and the final words of Christ upon the Cross: “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Psalm 30:5; Luke 23:46).
Throughout the Paraklesis, we have asked the Mother of God to attend to our prayers, illnesses, families and tears. Here we hear her own entrustment. She gives herself into the hands of Christ.
The following exapostilaria call her the delight of the angels and the consolation of those in affliction. They also speak of judgement and eternal life. Illness, family trouble and the fear which brought someone to the service remain part of life, but they are not the whole of it. Repentance, our final meeting with Christ and the hope of the Kingdom remain before us.
The final exapostilarion gathers several scriptural images around her: a golden tower, a city surrounded by twelve walls, a radiant throne and the royal seat of the King. The city recalls the heavenly Jerusalem with its twelve gates and foundations (Revelation 21:12–14). The throne presents the Virgin once more as the living dwelling of the incarnate King.
The hymn ends with an intimate image, the Mother who nursed the Master of all. The child at her breast is the Lord whom Elizabeth called “my Lord,” the Word made flesh and the Son born of a woman (Luke 1:43; John 1:14; Galatians 4:4). His humanity was complete, even to the dependence of infancy. The Creator who nourishes the world accepted nourishment from His Mother.
The Gospel of the Great Paraklesis comes back into view. The woman in the crowd blesses the womb which bore Christ and the breasts which nursed Him; Christ blesses those who hear the word of God and keep it (Luke 11:27–28). Both are true of the Theotokos. She bore and nursed the incarnate Son, and she heard the divine word, believed it and kept it.
At the first Supplicatory Canon of the 2026 Dormition Fast in Sydney, Archbishop Makarios spoke of this free surrender. He presented the Theotokos’ “yes” at the Annunciation as a calling for every Christian and urged the faithful to entrust their lives to Christ with trust, freedom and joy. With Christ, he said, “even death becomes a gateway to eternal life” (Archbishop Makarios of Australia, First Supplicatory Canon of the Dormition Fast, Cathedral of the Annunciation, Sydney, 2 August 2026).
The Canons place death within the life we are already living. We repent while there is still time to change, seek forgiveness where relationships have been damaged, receive the Holy Mysteries, remember those who have departed and learn not to cling so tightly to what we possess or to the plans we have made. Saint John of Damascus speaks of the death of the saints as sleep because Christ has turned death towards resurrection (St John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, IV.15). Separation still hurts. The Church does not pretend otherwise. But it is heard beside the words of Christ: “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).
When the Paraklesis ends, much may be exactly as it was before. These things however have now been brought into prayer. Illness, fear and the names we carry have been spoken before God with words drawn from the Psalms, the prophets and the Gospel. Even the person who arrived unable to gather his thoughts has found words within the prayer of the Church.
At the Annunciation she says, “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). At the Dormition: “My Son and my God, receive my spirit” (Exapostilarion of the Dormition).
Between those words is her life. She receives the word of God, goes to Elizabeth, keeps what she has heard in her heart and remains beside her Son beneath the Cross. At the end, she gives herself into His hands.
The person who has prayed the Paraklesis may still be asking for healing, still waiting for an answer, still living with what cannot yet be resolved. The illness, the uncertainty and the unanswered questions have now been spoken before Christ in prayer.
“To you I commit my every hope” (Small and Great Paraklesis, concluding hymn).
