First 3rd Hour Translated

So I recently translated the 3rd Hour of Sunday to add to the Shhimto-in-progress. However, I've run into a small issue of logistics since I no longer have my computer is format the document as I please or add Syriac for the melody notation. I will be most likely adding a temporary text, which I will replace at a later time.

Anyway, the 3rd Hour is, structurally, the same as the 9th Hour but this office in particular presents something very interesting about Eastern theology in general.

The particular bit of this office that I'm referring to is its very Trinitarian focus. To attempt to grasp the mystery of salvation that God has put forth from His sea of mercy is to understand how He made Himself manifest. And since He was "was made known in the Trinity" He is "thrice worshipped, in Trinity exalted." The revealed truths about God are not things just revealed in the abstract for a short period of time, but eternal facts made manifest to man at very specific times because God had willed they be made known at the time they did - hence why the Father was known, in a sense, even in His Hiddenness from the beginning but the Son and Spirit were not (although clearly there in typology in retrospect).

While the imagery and Trinitarian references of the office are pretty extensive, the last quote I will pull is from the bo'oto: "The Father is the Mind, the Son, then, is the Word and the Spirit is the Voice." I think this is pretty illustrative of how the Trinity should be understood. Although it emphasizes several times that the Trinity is "undivided" (i.e. without any separation, unitary, singular)  and "incomprehensible" (i.e. cannot be understood), it is important that we accept through faith the implications of the three Persons of God - otherwise we cannot even worship God properly. Furthermore, what the excerpt reveals is that God actively chose to be made manifest in three Persons because of meaningful purpose as opposed to picking a random number. The Father - the mind - is unseen but the motivation for all things, and the Son - the Word - is the enactment of what that mind thinks. "The Father is the Maker who made the worlds from nothing" but it was the "Son [who] is the Creator" and through the Son, the Father created everything. Lastly, the "Holy Spirit is the Paraclete and Concluder, who completes all things that were, will be and are." It is difficult, as is with any aspect of God to describe the Trinity, to articulate about the Holy Spirit but this is because He is the heard Voice that is unseen. The Holy Spirit is the perfecter and agency of the Trinity that acts in the world. Analogous to this is how Mor Ephrem described the Trinity: the Father is the sun, the Spirit is the heat and the Son is the rays. One cannot look upon the Father, but He is revealed through the Son who is visible; and the Spirit, while unseen, is visible through other senses.

Our Lord, accept our service, our prayers, come to our aid and have mercy on us!