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LET US COMMEND OURSELVES AND ONE ANOTHER
“Commemorating our most holy, pure, blessed, and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, with all the saints, let us commend (παραθώμεθα, предадим) ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.” (Great Litany, Byzantine Liturgy)
Let me “commend” or hand myself, and my “others,” over to Christ today, if I am feeling frustrated by not being able to control “us.” It may sound ridiculous to people more sane than me, but I sometimes feel frustrated, or even fearful, about my powerlessness over “our” behaviour(s) and lives; my own, and that of my loved ones. In our self-help culture, we tend to concentrate more on the things we need to do, in order to “fix” this or that aspect of our lives. We might also approach our spiritual lives in this way, forgetting about the important capacity “not” to do, and to surrender to God, in certain moments and ways.
Today let me hand over or “commend” or surrender the complexities of my “whole life” and the lives of my “others” into the hands of God. Because He has all the power, where I do not. He can “handle” all our complexities and trials, and guide us through them, as He guided “all the saints” throughout all their very-different lives, throughout the centuries. So, let me not endeavor to carry the burdens of my whole life, and of the lives of my loved ones, on my own shoulders. But let me let my cross-carrying Lord carry them, as He has done for so many generations before us, and continues to do today. Let me let go and let God, as they say. “Let us commend ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God!”
