04 — The Nativity Kontakion

Romanos’s masterpiece and the one work by which most Orthodox Christians still know him: the First Kontakion on the Nativity, “Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One.” This section reads the hymn — its structure, its dialogue of the Theotokos and the Magi, its refrain “a little Child, God before the ages” — and the art of the poet-as-preacher that produced it.

If the legend of the gift is the door into Romanos, the Nativity kontakion is the room it opens onto. Its prooimion is sung in every Orthodox church at Christmas; its twenty-four strophes are a verse-sermon of extraordinary theological density and dramatic power. Here the hymn itself and the homiletic genius behind it are treated together.

Files

File	Description
today-the-virgin.md	“Today the Virgin gives birth…” — the structure, the Mary–Magi dialogue, the refrain, and the theology of the Incarnation
the-poet-as-preacher.md	The kontakion as homily — Romanos’s rhetorical and dramatic technique and the pastoral function of his preaching in verse

See Also

• The Legend of the Gift — the vision said to have produced this kontakion
• The Kontakion: The Genre — the form this hymn exemplifies
• Theology in Hymnody — the Christology and Mariology the Nativity kontakion sings
• The Surviving Fragments — how only the prooimion of this hymn survives in present use