Protopresbyter Georgios Dorbarakis
‘Make haste to deliver us from the multitude of our sins’. Writing in an inspired state of mind, the hymnographer- who represents all the faithful- recognizes the vast number of his sins and transgressions. He’s well aware of the condition of this world which has fallen into sin. And the more the grace of God increases within him, the more profound is the sense of the inner hell in which he’s being tossed about. God gives him eyes to allow him to see what the blindness of sin prevents him from seeing. This is similar to what the great apostle Paul says when he writes, in the Spirit: ‘Christ came to save sinners of whom I am first’. This is the supreme example of the grace he’d been given: not only to feel that he was a sinner, but that he was first on the scale of sinners. God gave him the chance to ‘touch’ the virtue of virtues, humility itself. It’s no coincidence that, as Saint Sophrony in Essex relates, the Lord himself…
