"Most Holy Theotokos, save us"

gzt said:

Yes, but here the point is that the Greek service books don't say to sing "Most Holy Theotokos save us" at that point of the litanies, do they?

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No, but if they’re omitting certain hymns from the Horologion, the Octoechos and/or the Menaion which are widely omitted, the restatement of intercessions fo the Theotokos is highly warranted even if done out of sequence.

I don't quite get your point. What is being omitted in typical Greek practice that would mean explicitly saying "most holy Theotokos save us" during litanies is somehow making up for some lack? Which Slavic practice isn't missing?

gzt said:

I don't quite get your point. What is being omitted in typical Greek practice that would mean explicitly saying "most holy Theotokos save us" during litanies is somehow making up for some lack? Which Slavic practice isn't missing?

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Basically, in Greek parishes, and indeed in almost all parishes, the Divine Office is extremely abbreviated; very seldom does anyone sing all of the appointed odes in their entirety at Matins, or do everything specified at Vespers and so on; All Night Vigils without interruption is known to take ten hours, and was last done in a non-Old Rite parish by some Russian seminarians in 1910 (only the Old Rite Orthodox and among our Oriental Orthodox friends, the Ethiopians and Eritreans, do full unabbreviated services of that length as a matter of course; indeed the average length of a Sunday service in an Ethiopian church is six hours if one arrives for the start of the morning prayers).

What is abbreviated varies from rite to rite, but there are canons to the Theotokos included in the Octoechos that are supposed to be used alongside Resurrectional canons and canons from the Menion, and these contain Theotokia, so where abbreviation is occurring, it is very likely abbreviating some Marian material.

Also the Third and Sixth hour almost never happen in the Violakis Typikon used by the Greeks.

gzt said:

I don't quite get your point. What is being omitted in typical Greek practice that would mean explicitly saying "most holy Theotokos save us" during litanies is somehow making up for some lack? Which Slavic practice isn't missing?

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By the way, to be clear, I do understand where you are coming from and I do respect your position, in that I gather that you would not be a fan of parishes randomly improvising, and neither would I (although conversely monasteries, dioceses and individual parishes have historically been allowed to have some diversity in their implementation of the typikon in Orthodoxy, which is why you see subtle differences in the style of worship from place to place, and in some cases, less subtle differences, for example, New Skete Monastery got a blessing for a fairly radical liturgical implementation).

I could provide a litany of liturgical improvements I’d like to see in Greek parishes, but deleting Marian intercessions wouldn’t be on it; indeed I actually object to most modifications of the liturgy at existing parishes, because of the disruptions they cause.

I mean yes I'm familiar with both Greek and Russian ways of doing things. I'm just having trouble drawing the line from the common abbreviations the Greeks do that differ from the ones the Russians do that imply perhaps adding this in is somehow appropriate. Again this would not be a deletion, it's not in the service books in the first place.