This is our daily prayer, after “O Heavenly King” and before “Our Father who art in heaven.” We begin with it every individual prayer and every ritual service. After the small entrance, the angels and humans recite the Trisagion: “Holy God, Holy the Powerful, Holy the Immortal, have mercy on us.”
Saint German interprets this hymn as follows: “Holy God, directed especially to the Father. Holy is the Strong, addressed specifically to the Son. It is taken from the Book of Isaiah, which heralds the birth of the Savior, saying, “For the Son has been born to us as a child and has been given to us... a mighty and authoritative God, the Prince of Peace” (9:5). death . He gave us life, strength, and authority to trample Him. Holy who does not die, directed specifically to the Holy Spirit, about whom we say in the Constitution of Faith, “the Lord, the Life-Giver,” who provides the entire creation with life, and through Him it is chanted, saying: Have mercy on us... and it is said three times, because this three-fold cry befits each of the three hypostases of one divinity. Sanctifications. Each of the three hypostases is holy, powerful, and immortal.”
Saint Nicholas Kabasilas says: “The Trisagion was spoken by angels and mentioned in the noble Book of Psalms by David the Prophet. So the church used it and designated it to the Holy Trinity. Because the word “Holy,” which is said three times, is the song of the angels, while the words “God,” “the Powerful,” and “the Immortal.” It is for David, who says: “My soul thirsts for God, for the strong and living God.” Our holy Church combined the psalm and the angelic praise and added her request: “Have mercy on us”... so that the compatibility of the Old and New Testaments on the one hand, and the compatibility of angels and humans on the other hand, would appear within the one church, and in one place.
We also brought it from the singing of the angels that the Prophet Isaiah heard (eighth century BC): “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:3). More than 700 years after Isaiah, in the Book of Revelation, John the Apostle saw the throne of God and the angels around it “ceased day and night saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come’” (Revelation 4:8).
During the Divine Liturgy, “we are one choir with the angels, we participate with the archangels, and we praise with the seraphim.” Saint Chrysostom urges us, saying: “Think of those with whom you have formed one choir, and this alone is enough to lead you to asceticism, when you remember that while you are wearing a body and skin, you have been made worthy to praise the one Lord of all, with the heavenly powers.”
With the angelic forces, we, sinful and weak humans, lift up the three-fold praise of sanctification. “How great are the gifts of Christ! Up in heaven, the angelic ranks glorify him. And below, in the holy churches, humans sing like angels. In the sky, the seraphim chant this praise. On the ground, the crowd of believers inside the churches sings the same anthem. A joint celebration has taken place, a celebration of the heavenly and the earthly, one thanksgiving, one joy, one joyful service. This assembly was brought together by the indescribable condescension of Christ, and was controlled by the Holy Spirit. Homogeneity of words reached its perfection by the will of the Father. The harmony of the hymns of this assembly is heavenly, moving as if by the touch of the Holy Trinity, and the joyful, joyful tone chants, the angelic hymn, the uninterrupted harmony.”
We find in the prayers of the Feast of Pentecost an explanation of this prayer, as we chant at the end of the Vespers prayer (recording to the Apostochian): “Come, ye peoples, let us worship God who has three Persons, Son in a Father with a Holy Spirit, for the Father begot a Son who was immortal and equal to Him in eternity, the throne, and the Holy Spirit.” He was in the Father glorified with the Son, one power, one essence, one divinity. Let us all prostrate to Him, saying: Holy is God, who created all things through the Son and the support of the Holy Spirit. Holy is the Powerful One, through whom we know the Father and the Holy Spirit has come into the world. Holy is the Immortal Spirit, the Comforter who proceeds from the Father and who resides in the Son. O Holy Trinity, glory be to you. From this prayer, we understand the relationships of the people of the Trinity and that the Son was “born of the Father before all ages” and is with the Father and the Holy Spirit in creating the world.
We repeat this prayer three times because it is directed to the Trinity, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. After we ask for mercy, “Have mercy on us,” we send “Glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,” and then we turn to the Trinity, saying: “O Holy Trinity, have mercy on us.” We note here that “have mercy on us” in the singular, not the plural, because God is one.
Then we return to address each of the persons of the Trinity, asking the Father, “Lord, forgive our sins,” and by that we mean forgive them through the work of redemption carried out by the Son. We ask the Son: “Lord, forgive our transgressions,” “For the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins” (Luke 5:24, Matthew 9:6, Mark 2:10). We beg the Holy Spirit: “O Holy One, come and heal our diseases for your name’s sake.” We ask this because the Holy Spirit is the Comforter who gives us all the gifts of the Son.
When we say, “Lord, have mercy,” three times, we ask for mercy from the Father, from the Son, and from the Holy Spirit.
“Holy God” is the prayer that actually brings us into the divine mystery of the Trinitarian life. It is par excellence the prayer of Orthodox Christians. It is the first prayer that we teach our children, while teaching them to make the sign of the cross by joining the three fingers: one God in three persons.
From the bulletin of the Diocese of Latakia
19-2-2006
And my parish bulletin 1995
