Greetings from the Virgin Mary – Mount Athos

Description The Salutations of the Virgin Mary are said in honor of the Most Holy Theotokos and can be read at any time of the day and especially before going to bed at night. The Hail Mary must be said every day because with this prayer we save our soul. They were chanted for the first time in 626 AD. by the inhabitants of Constantinople led by the Patriarch Sergius, in the Church of Panagia of Blacherna, when the Avars had besieged Constantinople, while the emperor Heraclius, with all his army, was fighting in Persia. The city was in danger of falling into the hands of the enemies, but was finally saved, with the courageous counterattack of the people against the besiegers, which took place after the litany of the image of the Virgin, around the walls. Since then, the Akathistos hymn was established in our Church and was always sung on similar occasions, after, that is, after the victorious resistance of the army and the people to the attacks of the raiders. The Salutations of Panagia, or otherwise the Akathistos Hymn, is a poem of 24 stanzas, called “houses”. Each “house” begins in sequence with a letter of the alphabet from A to Z and ends again in sequence with the word “Rejoice, Nymphi animfeute” one and “Hallelujah” the other. The whole poem is divided into 4 equal parts, the “stops”, each of which has 6 stanzas (stanzas). The Immaculate Hymn is sung during Great Lent. Every Friday evening, for the first 4 weeks, a “stanza” of the hymn is sung in sequence and on Friday of the 5th week, the whole. On Mount Athos there is information from the Mother of God, that ”Whoever reads her Greetings every day, the Virgin undertakes to save him before her Son.