When Joseph saw that the sun had hidden its rays, and the veil of the temple was rent at the death of the Savior, he went to Pilate and besought him: “Give me this stranger, who from infancy has been as a stranger, a sojourner in the world. Give me this stranger, whom His own race has hated and delivered unto death as a stranger. Give me this stranger, whose death I am astonished to behold. Give me this stranger, who knew how received the poor and the strangers. Give me this stranger, whom the Hebrews from envy estranged from the world. Give me this stranger, that I may hide him in a tomb, who as a stranger hath no place to lay His head. Give me this stranger, whose Mother seeing Him put to death cried out, ‘O my Son and my God, though I am sorely wounded within me and my heart is rent, seeing Thee as one dead, I do yet take courage in Thy Resurrection and magnify Thee.’ And entreating Pilate with these words, the noble Joseph receives the body of the Savior, which with fear he wrapped in a shroud with myrrh, and laid in a tomb, even Him Who bestows upon all eternal life and great mercy.” (A Byzantine hymn for Holy Saturday.)
An embroidered cloth icon of the Burial of Christ, known as an “ἐπιτάφιος (epitafios)” in Greek, an adjective meaning “above the tomb”; in Church Slavonic, it is called “плащаница (plashchanitsa) – the shroud.” At Vespers of Good Friday, this is laid on the altar, and at the end of the ceremony, brought down into the nave and set on a special table, which becomes the focal point of much of the liturgy until Easter night, when it is brought back to the altar, and covered with a white cloth, remaining there until the Easter season is over. Around the inner border are written the tropars of the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing woman. (1682, from the Benaki Museum in Athens. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)
Sung by the monks of the Vatopedia monastery on Mt Athos
This extraordinary hymn is based on a homily on the burial of Christ traditionally attributed to the Church Father St Epiphanius of Salamis (ca. 310/20 - 403), but now recognized to be from at least 150 years later. In the classic style of later Byzantine rhetoric, the homily itself has eight more sentences which begin with the words “Give me this stranger”, for a total of fifteen. Most of the modern liturgical books that I consult, both Greek and Slavonic, do not include it at all. Among the Slavs, however, it is often sung in a different and much shorter recension, after Vespers of Good Friday and Matins of Holy Saturday, as people come up to the epitaphios table to venerate the shroud. The setting by the Ukrainian composer Dmitry Bortniansky (1751-1825) is deservedly the most famous.
Come, let us bless Joseph of eternal memory, who came by night to Pilate and begged for the life of all: “Give me this stranger, Who has no place to lay His head. Give me this stranger Whom an evil disciple betrayed to death. Give me this stranger Whom His mother saw hanging upon the cross, and with a mother’s sorrow cried, weeping: Woe is me, O my child, light of my eyes and beloved of my bosom! For what Simeon foretold in the temple now has come to pass: A sword has pierced my heart, but change my grief to gladness by Your Resurrection!” We worship Your Passion, O Christ! We worship Your Passion, O Christ! We worship Your Passion, O Christ and Your holy Resurrection!
