My people, what have I done to you? Or how have I grieved you? Answer me! Because I led you out of the land of Egypt, you have prepared a Cross for your Savior. Holy is God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal One, have mercy on us.

Performed by Arthur Akhuba, German Miniotas, Nikita Kolesnikov, Olga Beezyukova and me.

In the Christian Church of the first centuries, the Trisagion hymn was dedicated to Christ. An old legend tells us the story of Joseph of Arimathea, who contemplated the crucified and dying Christ and prayed to Him with the Trisagion hymn. He was the first man uttered the words of Trisagion. He named dying Christ God, Mighty and Immortal. The same understanding of Trisagion remains in Coptic, Syrian Maronite and Roman Catholic church. Unfortunately, John of Damascus brought a different interpretation of the Trisagion to the Orthodox Church. Under his influence, the Orthodox Church began to venerate the Holy Trinity with the words of the Trisagion. John of Damascus called the original understanding of the Trisagion eretic and Monophysite. Instead, he proposed the following: “we mean the words Holy God about the Father, (however) not only separating the name of the Divinity from Him alone, but confessing as God both the Son and the Holy Spirit. And we refer the words Holy Mighty to the Son, without depriving the strength of the Father and the Spirit Saint. And we apply the words Holy Immortal to the Holy Spirit, but we do not place it outside the immortality of the Father and the Son, but we simply and unconditionally understand all divine names about each hypostasis.

In this video you can see "Agios o Theos" written on the sacred vestments of Christ. Hans Memling depicted Christ as a God and high priest surrounded by angels.

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