When it is said
The Royal Hours are four short services read on the morning of Christmas Eve: the First, Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours. Each hour has three hymns of its own, and this is the first hymn of the First Hour.
It is sung twice, first on its own and then after a verse from the prophet Habakkuk. The Royal Hours are kept only three times a year: on the eves of Christmas and Theophany, and on Holy Friday.
Where it comes from
Author by tradition
Credited to St Sophronius
The Greek service book heads this hymn “a work of Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem”, and the OCA credits him too. Sophronius died in AD 644. In 1908 the Russian liturgist E. P. Diakovsky found that the headings of these hours usually name him, mostly over their hymns. Diakovsky thought Sophronius edited the hymns and wrote some of them, rather than writing the whole service.
The Greek service of the Royal Hours of the Nativity; E. P. Diakovsky, The Royal Hours of the Nativity and Theophany (1908), on Azbyka.ru
What the words mean
The truth and the shadow
Paul called the feasts and Sabbaths “a shadow of the things to come”, and said the reality belongs to Christ. The hymn uses the same picture. At Christ’s birth the shadow passes, because what it pointed to has come.
Colossians 2:16-17
What people get wrong
Why are they called “Royal”?
The usual story is that the emperors of Byzantium came to these services, and Hapgood repeated it in 1906. A Serbian diocese points out that the Greek books call them the Great Hours, not the Royal Hours, and that “royal” is a Russian name. It adds that the emperors’ own book of court ceremonies gives no proof of the story.
Isabel F. Hapgood, Service Book (1906), the Nativity of Christ; Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Timok, on the services of Christmas
The Scripture in it
And she gave birth to her firstborn, a Son. She wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Therefore let no one judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a feast, a New Moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ.
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests!”
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Greek
Βηθλεὲμ ἑτοιμάζου· εὐτρεπιζέσθω ἡ φάτνη· τὸ Σπήλαιον δεχέσθω,
ἡ ἀλήθεια ἦλθεν· ἡ σκιὰ παρέδραμε·
καὶ Θεὸς ἀνθρώποις, ἐκ Παρθένου πεφανέρωται,
μορφωθείς τὸ καθ' ἡμᾶς, καὶ θεώσας τὸ πρόσλημμα.
Διὸ Ἀδὰμ ἀνανεοῦται σὺν τῇ Εὔᾳ, κράζοντες·
Ἐπὶ γῆς εὐδοκία ἐπεφάνη, σῶσαι τὸ γένος ἡμῶν.