This Akathist of Thanksgiving was written in the late 1940s by Archpriest Gregory Petrov, shortly before his death in a Siberian prison camp. He took as his inspiration the dying words of the martyr St John Chrysostom "Glory to God for everything", and created within the traditional set patterns of Kontakion and Ikos a soaring hymn of radiant faith, an ikon in words which at once illustrates the mortality of mankind and the fundamental Orthodox belief that all creation, great and small, stems from God. The Akathist Hymn is an Eastern Catholic or Orthodox Christian hymn dedicated to a saint, holy event, or one of the persons of the Holy Trinity. The name derives from the fact that during the chanting of the hymn, or sometimes the whole service, the congregation is expected to remain standing in reverence, not being allowed to sit down. The Akathist in the Orthodox church is a hymn of thanksgiving or supplication used on special occasions, and has a standard form comprising 13 sections, each one made up of a Kontakion and an Ikos.