My soul, why are you rich in sins, why do you do the will of the devil, why do you place your hope in this? Stop from this and turn to God with tears, calling: Merciful Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.
In what way?
+ The Greek word kontakion literally means “peg”, “roller” is a wooden roller on which a scroll is wound; this meaning easily transferred to the scroll itself. The original kontakion is a genre of Byzantine hymnography created by the Venerable Roman the Sweet Singer (the first kontakion was the kontakion of the Nativity of Christ - the Virgin today gives birth to the Most Essential...) and gained enormous popularity until it was forced out of the service by the canon. It was a hymn consisting of a large number of stanzas - ikos, identical in the number of verses and their rhythmic organization. The current kontakion and ikos, performed after the 6th song of the canon, are all that remains from the ancient canon.