The Death of Metropolitan Benjamin
This is a hymn from the Triodion that was used this past thursday on the feast of the Annunciation. I found it particularly striking:
"Breathing one purpose and looking to a single hope, vying with each other in their end, the victorious martyrs looked upon death for Christ as the only entry into life. O strange wonder! Though the torture might have been postponed, they seized hold of it as men seize hold of treasure, and they said to one another: 'Even if we do not die today, yet some day we shall surely die, obeying as we must the laws of human birth. Let us turn necessity into an act of generous love; willingly let us make our own what is the common fate of all, and let us purchase life with death' At their intercessions, O God, have mercy upon us" (The Lenten Triodion, Supplementary Texts, p. 206).
