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The greetings of the Virgin Mary - Akathistos Hymn. Read by Leonidas Tsoukalas. +++Press "SUBSCRIBE" on the channel to receive other Church audios+++ The Greetings include in poetic form, with beautiful words, all the basic teachings of Orthodoxy about Christ, his incarnation, the role of the Virgin Mary for man's salvation, Her purity and holiness, etc., but also for man's struggle for union with God and the help he asks from Christ and the Virgin Mary for this struggle. The poet of the Salutations is probably Saint Romanos Melodos, one of the greatest Greek-language poets of all time. The poem is set to music, it has music and belongs to the genre of Byzantine classical music called "kontakio". It has 24 stanzas "houses", which start, in order, from the 24 letters of the alphabet. Very beautiful Salutations have been written for many other saints as well, but the Salutations of the Virgin Mary are the main inspiration for all the others that have been written since. In the 7th century, when the people of Constantinople were saved from the attack of the Avars after the intervention of the Virgin Mary, everyone sang the Akathistos Hymn in Hagia Sophia standing up, hence its name. Then, probably, the well-known initial trope "The Mighty Stratego" was written. The Orthodox Church sings the Greetings every Friday night, during the first 5 weeks of Great Lent. To be precise, we cut the Greetings into 4 parts, they are called "4 stops" and we say one each Friday, while on the 5th Friday the whole is said. The priest recites their Greetings with their music. Before this, the chanters have sung another famous musical and poetic work, called the "canon of Salutations" (canons are another type of Byzantine classical music and what we hear in this video is called a "canon") and its creator is another leading poet and musician of Byzantium, Saint Joseph the Hymnographer. #Хαιρετισμοί_της_Panagias #Ακαθιστος_ήμνος #Leonidas_Tsoukalas.