Lenten Meditation -- St. Mary of Egypt

Source: uocofusa.org

In describing His coming Passion, Christ uses words which allude to the basis of our life in the Church right now: the cup which He is to drink and the baptism with which He is to be baptized.

Jesus promises that His disciples will also drink of His cup and be baptized with His baptism, showing us the full significance of accepting baptism and participating in communion. These are not merely things we do when we come to Church. They should be the basic fabric of our lives, making our whole life a continual martyria—a witness to Christ in the service of others.

As an example of this, we have before us today St. Mary of Egypt, who, through her encounter with the Cross, totally changed her way of life by living in total repentance and penitence, until she also partook of the cup of salvation.

Let us pray that we also have the strength to respond to Christ, not to try and avoid His Cross, aspiring after whatever we hold to be glorious, but rather recognize it as the source of our life in Him.

—Archpriest John Behr, excerpt from sermon for the Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt in The Cross Stands While the World Turns

Lenten Meditation -- Saturday of the Akathist to the Most-holy Theotokos

 

Source: legacyicons.com

Death is far closer to us than we imagine—not just a distant event at the conclusion of our earthly existence, but a present reality that is going on continually around us and within us. … All living is a kind of dying: we are dying all the time. But in this daily experience of dying, each death is followed by a new birth: all dying is also a kind of living. Life and death are not opposites, mutually exclusive, but they are intertwined. The whole of our human existence is a mixture of mortality and resurrection: dying, and behold we live (1 Cor. 6:9). …

Yet if at any point we decline to accept the need for a dying, we cannot develop into real persons. … It is precisely the death of the old that makes possible the emergence of fresh growth within ourselves, and without the death there would be no new life.

—Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, “Go Joyfully: The Mystery of Death and Resurrection,” as found in The Inner Kingdom, Vol. 1.

Coffee With Sister Vassa -- REMEMBERING DEATH

My soul, my soul, arise! Why are you sleeping? The end is drawing near, and you will be confounded. Awake, then, and be watchful, that Christ our God may spare you, Who is everywhere present and fills all things.” (Kontakion-hymn, Great Canon of St. Andrew)

Whether we like it or not, our mortality, or the fact that we will all, indeed, die a physical death, is something with which we are confronted more and more as we age. This fact really begins to “ hit home” for many of us when we lose a parent, or notice our parents ageing. Psychologists observe that such reminders of our own mortality often cause depression, existential angst, and various unhealthy behaviors in middle- aged people.

But there is nothing morbid or dark in “ remembering death,” as we are taught to do regularly in our beautiful Tradition. Here’s the paradoxical thing about remembering death, in the light of our faith in the risen Lord: It makes me more “watchful” and “awake” to life, as I’m called to do in the above-quoted hymn. I learn to pay attention more, to the presence of God in my here and now; in the people, places, and situations I am given today from Him, “ Who is everywhere present and fills all things.” I learn not to miss out on what I am called to do in the today, in usefulness to myself and others, rather than let life pass by and just “happen,” as John Lennon said, “ when you’re not paying attention.”

Let me “ awake, then, and be watchful,” on this sunny Friday. “ I shall not die, but live, and I shall tell of the works of the Lord.” (Ps 117/118: 17)

Lenten Meditation -- Fifth Thursday of Great Lent

 

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

Do not define the good derived from fasting only in terms of abstaining from food. For true fasting is being a stranger to vice. Loose every bond of wickedness. Let your neighbor grieve you; forgive him his debts. Do not fast only to quarrel and fight. You do not devour meat, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine, but you have not mastered your arrogance. You wait until evening to partake of food, but you spend your day judging others. Woe to those who are drunk, but not with wine! Anger is a drunken state of the soul because, like wine, it robs the soul of sense. Sadness, too, is a drunken state because it drowns the mind. Fear is another drunken state, when things happen that should not happen. For it says: deliver my soul from fear of the enemy. Generally speaking, since each of the passions disturbs the mind, each can rightly be called a drunken state of the mind. …

Drunkenness leads to licentiousness, sobriety to fasting. The athlete prepares by training, the one who fasts by practicing self-control.

—St. Basil the Great, First Homily on Fasting, as found in On Fasting and Feasts

Midweek Morning Meditation -- The Announcement of the Incarnation

Source: annunciationsac.org

"Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to your will." (Lk. 1:38)

Today, March 25, is the Feast of the Annunciation to the Most Holy Theotokos. This great feast always falls during Great Lent, and when it falls on a weekday, it is the only instance of having the full eucharistic Liturgy served for its commemoration (the Vesperal Liturgy will be served this evening at 6:00 p.m). Clearly a sign of the feast’s significance. Thus, the Annunciation is something of a festal interlude that punctuates the eucharistic austerity of the lenten season. Yet, because it does occur during Great Lent, this magnificent feast appears and disappears rather abruptly. It seems as if we have just changed the lenten colors in church to the blue characteristic of feasts dedicated to the Theotokos, when they are immediately changed back again! This is so because the Leavetaking of the Annunciation is on March 26. If we are not alert, it can pass swiftly by undetected by our “spiritual radar” which needs to be operative on a daily basis.

This Feast has its roots in the biblical passage in St. Luke’s Gospel, wherein the evangelist narrates that incredibly refined dialogue between the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary (LK. 1:26-38). The angel Gabriel will “announce” the joyful news of the impending birth of the Messiah, and hence our English name of “Annunciation” for the Feast. However, the Greek title of Evangelismos is even richer in that it captures the truth that the Gospel – evangelion – is being “announced” in the encounter between God’s messenger and the young maiden destined to be the Mother of God. Her “overshadowing” by the Holy Spirit is “Good News” for her and for the entire world! Even though the Feast of the Lord’s Nativity in the flesh dominates our ecclesial and cultural consciousness, it is this Feast of the Annunciation that reveals the Incarnation, or the “becoming flesh” of the eternal Word of God. It is the Word’s conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary that is the “moment” of the Word’s enfleshment. Hence, the Church’s insistence that a new human being begins to exist at the moment of conception. The Word made flesh – our Lord Jesus Christ – will be born nine months later on December 25 according to our liturgical calendar; but again, His very conception is the beginning of His human life as God-made-man. The troparion of the Feast captures this well:

Today is the beginning of our salvation; the revelation of the eternal Mystery! 
The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin as Gabriel announces the coming of Grace.
Together with him let us cry to the Theotokos: Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with you.

Was the Virgin Mary randomly chosen for this awesome role? Was she compelled to fulfill the will of God regardless of her spiritual relationship with God? Was she a mere instrument overwhelmed or even “used” by God for the sake of God’s eternal purpose? That the Virgin Mary was “hailed” as one “highly favored” or “full of grace” (Gk. kecharitōmenē) when the angel Gabriel first descended to her, points us well beyond any such utilitarian role for her. On the contrary, the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary is understood and presented by the Church as the supreme example of synergy in the Holy Scriptures. The word synergy denotes the harmonious combination and balance between divine grace and human freedom that can occur between God and human beings. God does not compel, but seeks our free cooperation to be a “co-worker” with God in the process of salvation and deification. In this way, God respects our human self-determination, or what we refer to as our freedom or “free will.” It is the Virgin Mary’s free assent to accept the unique vocation that was chosen for her from all eternity that allows her to become the Theotokos, or God-bearer. This is, of course, found in her response to the angel Gabriel’s announcement, and following her own perplexity:  “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” This teaching on synergy finds its classical expression in a justifiably famous passage from St. Nicholas Cabasilas’ Homily on the Annunciation. The passage itself is often cited as an excellent and eloquent expression of the Orthodox understanding of synergy: 

The incarnation of the Word was not only the work of the Father, Son and Spirit – the first consenting, the second descending, and third overshadowing – but it was also the work of the will and faith of the Virgin. Without the three divine persons this design could not have been set in motion; but likewise the plan could not have been carried into effect without the consent and faith of the all-pure Virgin. Only after teaching and persuading her does God make her his Mother and receive from her the flesh which she consciously wills to offer him. Just as he was conceived by his own free choice, so in the same way she became his Mother voluntarily and with her free consent.

We praise the Virgin Mary as representing our longing for God and for fulfilling her destiny so that we may receive the gift of salvation from our Lord who “came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man” (Nicene Creed):

Hail, thou who art full of grace: the Lord is with thee.

Hail, O pure Virgin;

Hail, O Bride unwedded

Hail, Mother of life: blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

(Dogmatikon, Vespers of the Annunciation)

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We have a remarkably rich resource page for this Feast on our parish website. It is a veritable feast in itself of homilies - from the Fathers or contemporary Orthodox theologians - that bring to mind the riches of the Annunciation. As we are home most of the time, please avail yourselves of some of this rich material.

https://www.christthesavioroca.org/annunciation