In Honor and Remembrance of the Pure and Holy Virgin Mother of God

To those who pray the Shhimtho or have read any Syriac prayers or homilies it is very obvious that Mary is venerated very highly. Thank God our tradition was never touched by the heresies of the reformers. In honor of the Mary I am translating the Safro for the Assumption, which I hope to post sometime next week.
So far all the offices and prayers I have posted come from the Shhimtho - which means the Ordinary - since the objective of this blog is to produce an English translation of the Syriac breviary. The Shhimtho contains 49 regular offices that do not commemorate particular feasts. For festal commemoration in the Syriac tradition one must turn to the Fenqitho, which means "volume" derived from the Greek word πινακίδιον (writing-tablet) according to Payne-Smith. The Fenqitho provides major offices (Ramsho, Sootoro, Lilyo and Safro) for feasts. The Maronite Fenqitho is comparatively short comparative to other Syriac Churches' at about 1800 pages and contains offices for 28 feasts (random fact: Holy Week is not commemorated in the Fenqitho because its found in a completely separate book solely for itself called the Hasho, or Passion).

Like the Shhimtho, the Fenqitho sadly does not have an English translation. While the Eparchy of Brooklyn published a Fenqitho in 1980 under Archbishop Zayek it is only 173 pages long and has the same issue as the Prayer of the Faithful with its abundance of creative adaptations. For instance, the section for the Assumption is four pages and does not mention the death of Mary once whereas in the Syriac Fenqitho the section is 80 pages longer and is not afraid to admit our belief that Mary physically died before her Assumption. I would love to do a complete translation of the Fenqitho along side the Shhimtho but I simply do not have time - however, to the honor of the Holy Virgin I will be translating the Safro for her Assumption. From time to time I might do a few other offices (I would have liked to translate the offices for the feast of Mort Shmooni and her seven sons since I have a strong devotion to her but her feast is just around the corner).

This post is a lot of information, so the last thing I will post is just a small excerpt from a qolo of the Assumption Safro:

When the departure of the Blessed One from this transient world to the world that does not pass away arrived she sought from her Son that the apostles come and she see them before she tasted the cup of death. Blessed is the Good One who did the will of His Birth-Giver and granted her requests on the day of her Assumption. Come, let us cry out, “To You be glory, Lord.”

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