Enable Us to See the Holy Week of Thy Passion

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

We have completed the forty days which profit our souls.
Now let us beg the lover of man; enable us to see the Holy Week
of Thy Passion,
That we may glorify Thy mighty work,
Thy wonderful plan for our salvation,
Singing with one heart and voice,
O Lord, glory to Thee! 
(Great Vespers of Lazarus Saturday)

Today is the fortieth and final day of Great Lent. We are now preparing for the twin feasts of Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday. The Church exults in proclaiming Christ the “Vanquisher of Death” and He that comes “in the Name of the Lord,” as a prelude to the sobriety and solemnity of Holy Week.

I am trying something a bit different today: I am simply re-sending the meditation I wrote on the first day of Great Lent, March 7. I can understand those who may not feel the need or have the desire of re-reading it. However, I thought that perhaps it could serve the purpose of allowing us to assess or evaluate the past forty days and the goals that we set ourselves for this Lenten season. As I wrote and asked forty days ago: Will we persevere or will we … wimp out?! And, as I wrote just last week, I believe: Have we finished with a “kick” or are we limping over the finish line? Of course, such assessments and evaluations can be spiritually dangerous: a “good Lent” can lead to self-righteousness or pride. But I trust that if that is happily the case, everyone has enough humility and maturity not to indulge in such foolish fantasies; rather any Orthodox Christian will thank God for His gracious presence in accompanying us through the course of the Fast.

Yet, regardless of how we assess the last forty days, we are now preparing to “go up to Jerusalem” and to accompany our Lord to the Cross and then stand in awe by the empty tomb. There is nothing quite like Holy Week, and it demands as much attention and focus as we are capable of giving it. If the Cross and Resurrection together reveal the love of God at its most intense; if, finally, what we claim through our worship and faith is actually true then it can be no other way. The liturgical services will take us on that journey. Even when we are not able to be present, it is not because “worldly pursuits” have enticed us away. May our homes truly become “little churches” during the course of Holy Week.

For whatever it is worth, here is the meditation from forty days ago:

An Orthodox Understanding of Acts of Mercy

Dear Parish Faithful,

An excellent piece that reminds us of one of the most important components of our Lenten efforts.

Fr. Steven
_________

AN ORTHODOX UNDERSTANDING
OF ACTS OF MERCY
Fr. Thomas Hopko

Christ commanded his disciples to give alms. To "give alms" means literally "to do" or "to make merciful deeds" or "acts of mercy." According to the Scriptures the Lord is compassionate and merciful, longsuffering, full of mercy, faithful and true. He is the one who does merciful deeds (see Psalm 103).

Acts of mercy are an "imitation of God" who ceaselessly executes mercy for all, without exception, condition or qualification. He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

To "do mercy" means to do good to others in concrete acts of charity. It does not mean, in the first instance, to forgive, or to "let off sinners." A merciful person is one who is kind, gracious, generous and giving; a helper and servant of the poor and needy. For example, St. John the Merciful of Alexandria was a bishop who helped the poor and needy; he was not a judge who let off criminals.

Mercy is a sign of love. God is Love. A deed of merciful love is the most Godlike act a human being can do. "Being perfect" in Matthew's Gospel corresponds to "being merciful" in Luke's Gospel. "Perfection" and "being merciful" are the same thing.

To love as Christ loves, with the love of God who is Love, is the chief commandment for human beings according to Christianity. It can only be accomplished by God's grace, by faith. It is not humanly possible. It is done by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. One can prove one's love for God only by love for one's neighbors, including one's worst enemies, without exception, qualification or condition. There is no other way.

To love God "with all one's strength" which is part of "the first and great commandment" means to love God with all one's money, resources, properties, possessions and powers.

Acts of mercy must be concrete, physical actions. They cannot be "in word and speech, but in deed and truth" (First letter of John and letter of James).

Jesus lists the acts of mercy on which human beings will be judged at the final judgment (Parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25). Acts of mercy are acts done to Christ himself who was hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, in prison and "sick" i.e. wounded for our transgressions on the Christ, taking up of our wounds, and dying our death.

Christian acts of mercy must be done silently, humbly, secretly, not for vanity or praise, not to be seen by men, "not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing", etc.

Christian acts of mercy must be sacrificial. By this, we understand that we must not simply give to others what is left over. We have to be sharing our possessions with others in ways that limit ourselves in some way (The Widow's Mite).

Acts of mercy should be done without qualification or condition to everyone, no matter who, what or how they are (Parable of the Good Samaritan).

Christians, when possible, should do acts of mercy in an organized manner, through organizations and communities formed to do merciful deeds. Throughout its history the Christian people have had many forms of eleemosynary institutions and activities.

Being the poor Christians are not only to help the poor; they are themselves to be the poor, in and with Jesus Christ their Lord. Christians are to have no more than they actually need for themselves, their children and their dependents.

How much is enough? How much is necessary? What do we really need? How may we use our money and possessions for ourselves, our families, our children and our churches?

These are the hardest questions for Christians to answer.

*Fr. Thomas Hopko is Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary and currently serves at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania.

Source

Inapproprite Material for Church?

Dear Parish Faithful,

I have an amusing anecdote to share with everyone from yesterday (some would even say “cute,” but as you may have surmised by now, such a description is not quite my style). Be that as it may, it was related to me yesterday that following the homily on St. Mary of Egypt – some of which touched on her struggles with the passion of lust – one of our church school age students was heard to say: “That was inappropriate!” Well, glad to hear that someone was listening. My aim, however, was “realism” and finally edification; to deal with the story of St. Mary’s life as it presented itself in its pre-conversion and post-conversion aspects. However, once you start talking about sex in Church …

What is quite amazing, is the level of “inappropriate” discourse in the actual narrative of The Life of St. Mary of Egypt, written by St. Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem. When the monk Zosimas begs St. Mary to openly reveal to him her life as it has unfolded – including its sinful beginning, we hear the following confession from the saint:

Already during the lifetime of my parents, when I was twelve years old, I renounced their love and went to Alexandria. I am ashamed to recall, how, while there, I at first ruined by maidenhood and then unrestrainedly and insatiably gave myself up to sensuality. It is more becoming to speak of this briefly, so that you may just know my passion and my lechery; for about seventeen years, forgive me, I lived like that. I was like a fire of public debauch. And it was not for the sake of gain – here I speak the pure truth. Often when they wished to pay me, I refused the money. I acted in this way so as to make as many men as possible to try to obtain me, doing free of charge what gave me pleasure. Do not think that I was rich and that was the reason why I did not take money. I lived by begging, often by spinning flax, but I had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth. This was life to me. Every kind of abuse of nature I regarded as life.

After boarding a ship that was sailing to Jerusalem, carrying on board some pilgrims going to the holy city for the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross (one of many fascinating pieces of liturgical history embedded in the Life), St. Mary continues her dreary history of a “life of a great sinner,” further embellished by some fine rhetorical flourishes:

How shall I relate to you what happened after this? Whose tongue can tell, whose ear can take in all that took place on the boat during that voyage? And to all this I frequently forced those miserable youths even against their own will. There is no mentionable or unmentionable depravity of which I was not their teacher. I am amazed, Abba, how the sea stood our licentiousness, how the earth did not open its jaws, and how it was that hell did not swallow me alive, when I had entangled in my net so many souls. But I think God was seeking my repentance. For He does not desire the death of a sinner but magnanimously awaits His return to Him. … I was not content with the youths I had seduced at sea and who had helped me get to Jerusalem; many others – citizens of the town and foreigners – I also seduced.

Considering that this Life is prescribed to be read aloud in its entirety in church on the fifth Thursday in Great Lent, this is fairly “racy” material! Perhaps an eyebrow was raised when we read this last week in church, especially for those who may have heard the actual text for the first time. Obviously, the listener is to be struck by the self-destructiveness of such behavior, rather than allowing his or her imagination to run wild with “filling in the details.”

However, if you want to avoid “inappropriate” material for the future, then you have to stop reading … the Bible! Or, at least certain episodes, which would include, but not be limited to: Ham “seeing the nakedness” of his father (Noah), an expression that some biblical scholars understand as a euphemism for copulation or possibly castration; Sodom and Gomorrah (GEN. 18); and David and Bathsheba (II SAM. 11). Yet, these unseemly episodes are so woven into the fabric of certain stories; or flesh out the full character of key biblical figures, that ignoring “sexually explicit material” only serves in truncating the text and losing its all-too-human quality, including the human propensity to sin.

Life can get messy and murky. Often enough, that murkiness is never better expressed than through human sexuality and its misuse and/or abuse. The Bible respects this aspect of human life, and thus it remains realistic, rather than project the unreality of a perfectly-formed philosophical system or structure onto life’s inherent messiness in a fallen world. Then, “we call it as we see it,” and hope that the ending is as powerful and inspiring as the repentance of St. Mary of Egypt, whose great sin was covered by a great repentance; one that to this day deeply moves our minds and hearts when we hear it yet again.

For the future, I am going to try and stick with more appropriate material!

Fr. Steven

How Much of This Has Been Made Ours?

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

St. Andrew of Crete’s Canon of Repentance is chanted on the first four evenings of Great Lent. That is the “perfect” beginning, in that Great Lent is a “school of repentance.” But the Canon is prescribed to be chanted in its entirety on the Thursday of the fifth week of Great Lent – almost at the very end. What is the purpose of repeating the Canon well into the Lenten season? An excellent answer is provided by Fr. Alexander Schmemann in his celebrated book Great Lent:

If at the beginning of Lent this Canon was like a door leading us into repentance, now at the end of Lent it sounds like a “summary” of repentance and its fulfillment. If at the beginning we merely listened to it, now hopefully its words have become our words, our lamentation, our hope and repentance, and also an evaluation of our Lenten effort: how much of all this has truly been made ours? How far have we come along the path of repentance? (Great Lent, p. 78)

Great Lent has a way of “getting away from us,” as the season wears on. Often, our well-intentioned good beginning – together with all of the goals we set for ourselves during these “all-revered days” - are undermined for a variety of reasons, including the “fatigue factor” (see the Monday Morning Meditation from earlier in the week). This is clearly behind Fr. Alexander’s analysis. Perhaps the re-intensification of that initial zeal for Great Lent as we draw near to its completion; and then its carry-over into Great and Holy Week will be the “reward” for those who were present at the service yesterday evening (more, by the way, then we have had in the past for this particular service).

In addition to St. Andrew’s Canon of Repentance (which, if done in its entirety, would include about one hundred eighty troparia with the attendant bows!), the Life of St. Mary of Egypt, written by St. Sophronios Patriarch of Jerusalem, is also prescribed to be read in its entirety together with the Canon at the same service. This we did yesterday evening. As Archbishop Kallistos comments about the place of St. Mary of Egypt in the life of the Church:

Just as the fourth Sunday is dedicated to St. John Climacus, the model of ascetics, so the fifth celebrates St. Mary of Egypt, the model of penitents. Her life … sets before us a true verbal icon of the essence of repentance. (The Lenten Triodion, p. 56)

Concerning the reading of this Life within the context of a liturgical service of the Church, Panayiotis Nellas writes the following:

Furthermore, St. Mary of Egypt is likewise present. The reading of her life does not have as its aim simply to move the faithful. It plays in the service an organic part which is at once deeper and more real. The Orthodox faithful know very well that the feast day of a saint is not a simple honoring of a holy person or a recollection of her life for didactic reasons. Rather, it is a real participation in her life, her struggles, her victory and her glory. The reading of her place takes place in order to bring the saint amongst us in a true and real manner with her whole life and all her struggles.

… Thus the liturgical reading of the life of St. Mary makes the saint present in the assembly of the faithful in a sacramental manner, so that she can accompany them and struggle with them in the contest of repentance and prayer. For this reason, at the end of each ode of the Great Canon there are two troparia in which the faithful address themselves to her:

"God Whom you loved and for Whom you longed, Whose path you Followed, O Mother, found you and granted you repentance in His Compassion. Pray, therefore, that we may be freed from sin and Adversity." (Ode Seven)

As the Canon exhorts us to repentance, the Life of St. Mary of Egypt places before our gaze a spectacular instance of repentance as embodied in one of the great saints of the Church. In an historical person of flesh and blood, we encounter the real fruits of repentance. And we discover the great “cost” of repentance, that only through “blood, sweat and tears” is the movement back toward God even possible. St. Mary of Egypt’s life can prove to be very jarring – perhaps even offensive – to our middle-class standards of Christian behavior and moral rectitude; but it is precisely in the radicalness of her repentance that we can witness the depths of the Gospel promise of salvation for any and all sinners who sincerely repent. No sin is too great for the mercy of God; for it was St. Gregory the Theologian who said somewhere that our sins are like drops of water in the ocean of the divine mercy. Hers was the life of a great sinner, and it resulted in a great repentance. We are convinced that we are not great sinners, but what is the corresponding depth of our repentance?

In a further note by Archbishop Kallistos, this may prove to be of some interest to those familiar with St. Mary’s extraordinary life, and the seemingly impossible nature of her life in the desert:

Some modern writers have questioned the historical accuracy of St. Sophronios’ narrative, but there is in itself nothing impossible about such a story. In the year 1890 the Greek priest Joachim Spetsieris found a woman hermit in the desert beyond the Jordan, living almost exactly as St. Mary must have done. (The Lenten Triodion, p. 56)

We will again turn our attention to St. Mary of Egypt as we commemorate her on the upcoming Fifth Sunday of Great Lent. That commemoration will begin on Saturday evening and the celebration of Great Vespers, the service that inaugurates a new liturgical day. Many of the stichera of that service are in honor of St. Mary of Egypt.

This evening we will chant the Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God in its entirety, a long structured hymn called “one of the great marvels of Greek religious poetry” by Archbishop Ware.

Fr Steven

Limping Down the Stretch? Or Finishing with a Kick?

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

The grace of abstinence, radiant with the light of God, shines this day upon us more brightly than the sun; illumining our souls, it drives away the clouds of sinful passions. Embracing it with joy, let us all run with good courage, and finish its course rejoicing; and filled with gladness let us cry to Christ: Sanctify those who complete the Fast with faith, O loving Lord. (Monday Vespers in the Fifth Week).

Leaving aside Holy Week for a moment, we now have less than two weeks remaining in Great Lent. That means that we are two-thirds of the way through the Lenten season. These last two weeks, therefore, can be likened to something of a “stretch run” leading us to the “finish line.” In a race, the good runner will never be content with merely finishing, especially if that means limping over the finish line and collapsing in a state of total exhaustion. The good runner will finish with a “kick” that brings him to the finish line with a final burst of energy that will arise out of a mysterious inner reserve that will surprise his opponents and perhaps even himself. This would be a medal or a crown fully deserved.

We could apply such an image to ourselves as we struggle to “complete the course of the Fast” (Prayer before the Ambo in the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts). We too struggle to complete the “stretch run” of the last third of Great Lent, strengthened by a sense of perseverance and commitment to the Lord and His Church that draws upon a mysterious inner reserve that is, in turn, nourished by the grace of God, and not only the strength of our autonomous selves. I am sure that no one wants to crawl toward the end of Great Lent, or turn Great Lent into an endurance test that we force ourselves to complete with a grim smile and clenched teeth. We further hope to experience a sense of gladness rather than the expected exhaustion, or at least the mingling of the two. This image of the race has its scriptural foundations: “let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” And, as in the arena, we too are surrounded by a large throng, but in this case it is a “great cloud of witnesses.” As runners, of course, will not compete burdened by any weight, so we too are exhorted to “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely.” (For the entire passage, see HEB. 12:1-2)

The Apostle Paul transforms the “games” of the ancient world, with some of its events into a further image of perseverance and ascetical effort, so as to encourage all Christians to “fight the good fight:”

Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (I COR. 9:25-27)

We have other images taken from the world in order to describe what we like to call today – somewhat artificially - our “spiritual lives:”

Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to satisfy the one who enlists him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to take the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will grant you understanding in everything. (II TIM. 2:3-7)

Why do athletes, or soldiers, or farmers – as in the images employed by the Apostle Paul from his immediate environment – work so much harder and with such great dedication for their goals; while Christians are often lukewarm, indifferent, or only mildly interested in the pursuit of their goal which is communion and fellowship with God?! Is it because the goal seems less immediate or, to state that question another way, more abstract? Is it because we believe that God “loves” us whether we are committed to the Christian life or not?

Those types of questions are never easy to answer. However, what we can do is expend the effort needed to be genuine “co-workers” with God in the pursuit of “taking Lent seriously” (Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s phrase) as we enter its “stretch run” and try and live up to that exalted title of “Orthodox Christian.”