From Monday to Thursday this week, the service consists of the Great Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete.
Saint Andrew was born in Damascus around AD 650, and died at an uncertain date in the first half of the 8th Century, at Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos. He is associated with the island of Crete, where he was Metropolitan Bishop of Gortyna, but also with Jerusalem, where he began his ecclesiastical ministry, and with Constantinople where he was for a time Archdeacon in the great church of Hagia Sophia. As a hymnographer, Saint Andrew had a profound impact on eastern liturgies, and is credited with inventing or introducing to Christian hymnody the canon form, which became a feature of the daily office prayers. The canon form is composed of odes, each of which establishes a theme, based on a Biblical canticle, and then develops and expands on that theme in a way that reveals its relevance to the particular day or season.
Great Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete (day 2)