Authors – St John’s Adult Education

The Grace Of Our Powerlessness – 2026 Lenten Book Club Reflection

A key theme in Lecture 2 of our 2026 Lenten book ‘The Suffering Of The Soul In Relationships’ is the on-ramp of powerlessness to an authentic dependence on God and communion with Him. Here’s a quote from the book that captures this:

Our most important task is to look at our powerlessness, accept it, and call God and receive Him in this very powerlessness. If we understand that we cannot be good without God, then this will suddenly take the weight off of our shoulders. We don’t have to be different. We are how we are, we are just not ready. This filth within me is the place where God comes to heal me, to sanctify me. As Fr. Nicolae Steinhardt from Rohia used to say: God makes saints with “the customer’s material”. And if I don’t give Him my material, what will He do? He will let me keep my sick mind. He came to lift up the sin of the world, which means all our psychological filth. By giving Him my sin, I give Him myself. I turn myself into “prosphora” and I offer it to Him, I ask Him to make me into the human being He meant me to be. This is the permanent Liturgy where we put our offering on the altar of our heart. In the beginning, this offering is our sin. As monks say, and it is not a metaphor: “I didn’t bring anything to God except my sins”. But I give them to God. And God lifts them up, and heals me.

Another thing that hampers our growth is that we have a wrong vision of sin. First of all, we look at sin juridically, and not as an illness. Then we are mistaken, considering that our sins are our thoughts, our words, our actions. We confess that “we sinned by word, deed, or thought” – which means that the word, the deed, the thought are the “flesh” of the sin, its “raw materials”, its symptoms. When we have a physical illness, we don’t say that we are sick of a headache….Sin is an illness, and this illness is within me, in my heart. If I treat the symptoms, I can die, because the illness remains unhealed. …Now I see clearly that without God, I wouldn’t be able to abandon sin. And so I feel in myself all human powerlessness, and I pray that everyone receives God’s mercy, as I received it. This is how love for enemies starts.’’

Saint Sophrony of Essex (†1993) taught that “the way down is the way up” by emphasizing humility and spiritual struggle. He understood and experienced the wisdom of St. Silouan direction “Keep your mind in hell and despair not”. This means that acknowledging our brokenness and descending into humility (going down) leads to finding God’s grace and resurrection (going up), a path patterned after Christ’s own descent.

St. Mary of Egypt described in this post by Father Stephen Freeman also describes accepting our powerlessness as the first step in repentance. The remainder of this article includes some supplemental materials that may be helpful to further explore this important topic.

Powerlessness; We Learn By Doing It Wrong March 23rd 2023 Daily Meditation By Richard Rohr

Richard describes the futility of trying to “fix” ourselves:

The genius of Twelve Step programs is that they situate powerlessness and surrender right where they belong—at the beginning. They teach how sin or addiction are overcome not through willpower or by control, but much more by recognizing that we are powerless to overcome them.

For example, we don’t become charitable by willpower, by saying to ourselves, “Be charitable!” Rather, we recognize the moments when we were totally uncharitable, and we weep over them. That doesn’t feel like power at all, does it? No one wants to go there.

Any talk of growth, achievement, climbing, improving, and progress highly appeals to the ego. But the only way we stay on the path with any authenticity is to constantly experience our incapacity to do it, our failure at doing it. That’s what makes us, to use my language, fall upward. Otherwise, we’re really not climbing; we’re just thinking we’re climbing by saying to ourselves, “Look, I’m better today. Look, I’m holier than I was last week. Look, my prayer is improving.” That really doesn’t teach us anything or lead us anywhere new.

In contrast, it is recognizing, “Richard, you don’t know how to love at all” that keeps me on the path of love. Constant failure at loving is ironically and paradoxically what keeps us learning how to love. When we think we’re there, there’s nothing to learn.

This is the genius of what Paul calls “the folly of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1:18), the folly of failure: that it doesn’t give us the satisfaction that our egos want. I don’t know if I am growing. I don’t know if I am “deepening my relationship with God,” as Christians love to say. I hope I am, but any smug satisfaction in that is not going to do me any good. But every day, knowing that I have not yet begun to love? That constant experience of littleness is the Franciscan way.

It’s also the way of one of my other favorite saints, Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897). She called it her “Little Way.” She makes it very clear in small examples how it was failing to love every day that kept her on the path of love. She taught that remaining close to God requires “bearing in peace the trial of not pleasing yourself.” [1] Who would have thought that? That is so counterintuitive! Yet what it reveals is that a lot of us have sought—without knowing it—a certain self-satisfaction, a certain smugness.

..I congratulate Bill Wilson and Twelve-Step spirituality, because just like Thérèse of Lisieux, they named it. They said powerlessness is the beginning of the spiritual journey.

Regardless of the conditions we find ourselves in, we learn to navigate in the midst of our lack of control.

References:

[1] Thérèse to Sister Geneviève, December 24, 1896, in Thérèse of Lisieux: General Correspondence, vol. 2, 1890–1897, trans. John Clarke (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1988), 1038.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Breathing under Water (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation), online course.

The Grace of Powerlessness – Richard Rohr Daily Meditation July 15th 2024

I cannot understand my own behavior. I fail to carry out the very things I want to do and find myself doing the very things I hate … for although the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not. —Romans 7:15, 18

Admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
—Step 1 of the Twelve Steps

Richard affirms the essential and difficult task of admitting our own powerlessness:

As many teachers of the Twelve Steps have said, the first Step is probably the hardest, most denied, and most avoided. Letting go isn’t in anybody’s program for happiness, and yet all mature spirituality is about letting go and unlearning.

Jesus used the metaphors of a “grain of wheat” (John 12:24) or a “branch cut off from the vine” (John 15:2) to describe the arrogant ego. Paul used the unfortunate word “flesh,” which made most people think he was talking about the body. Yet both Jesus and Paul were pointing to the isolated and protected small self, and both said it has to go. Its concerns are too small and too selfish. An ego response is always an inadequate or even wrong response to the moment. It will not deepen or broaden life, love, or inner peace. Since it has no inner substance, our ego self is always attached to mere externals. The ego defines itself by its attachments and revulsions. The soul does not attach, nor does it hate; it desires and loves and lets go.

What the ego hates more than anything else is to change—even when the present situation isn’t working or is horrible. Instead, we do more and more of what does not work. The reason we do anything one more time is because the last time did not really satisfy us deeply. As English poet W. H. Auden wrote, “We would rather be ruined than changed, / We would rather die in our dread / Than climb the cross of the moment / And let our illusions die.” [1]

Rabbi Rami Shapiro names the paradox of powerlessness and surrender to God:

The fundamental and paradoxical premise of Twelve Step recovery as I experience it is this: The more clearly you realize your lack of control, the more powerless you discover yourself to be… [and] the more natural it is for you to be surrendered to God. The more surrendered to God you become, the less you struggle against the natural flow of life. The less you struggle against the flow of life, the freer you become. Radical powerlessness is radical freedom, liberating you from the need to control the ocean of life and freeing you to learn how best to navigate it.…

We are all addicted to control, and it is to this greater addiction that I wish to speak. The deepest truth of Step 1 requires us to admit that we are powerless over our lives, and that life itself is unmanageable. [2]

References:
[1] Selected from Richard Rohr, Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 10th anniv. ed. (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2011, 2021), 5–6; W. H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 105.

[2] Rami Shapiro, Recovery, the Sacred Art: The Twelve Steps as Spiritual Practice (Woodstock, VT: Skylight Paths, 2009), 3, 6.

Stinking Thinking: The Universal Addiction – Daily Meditation December 9th 2019 By Richard Rohr

The addiction and overdose crisis . . . does not so much reflect moral failings of individuals as it does reveal a sickness that has infected the country and our collective consciousness. —Timothy McMahan King [1]

Tim King fairly attributes the United States’ epidemic of addiction to “the failures of religion and of an anemic spirituality.” [2] Thankfully, I believe the Twelve-Step programs are a movement of the Spirit in our time. In creating Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, with typical American pragmatism, designed a truly practical program that really worked to change lives. Twelve-Step spirituality rediscovered the real transformative power in the spirituality of imperfection. Transformation has little to do with intelligence, willpower, or perfection. It has everything to do with honest humility, willingness, and surrender.

Here are four assumptions that I am making about addiction:

1. We are all addicts. Human beings are addictive by nature. King writes: “The question for each of us is not whether we are addicted but how we are addicted, and to what.Denial of the existence of addiction in your life is not a mark of moral accomplishment but a sign of blindness.” [3] Addiction is a modern name and honest description for what the biblical tradition called “sin” and medieval Christians called “passions” or “attachments.” They both recognized that serious measures or practices were needed to break us out of these illusions and entrapments.

2. “Stinking thinking” is the universal addiction. Substance addictions like alcohol and drugs are merely the most visible form of addiction, but we are addicted to our own habitual way of thinking and doing. These attachments are at first hidden to us. We cannot heal what we do not first acknowledge. We are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and, most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process reality. The very fact that we have to say this shows how little we see it. By definition, we can never see or handle what we are addicted to. It is always “hidden” and disguised as something else.

3. All societies are addicted to themselves and create deep codependency. There are shared and agreed-upon addictions in every culture and every institution. These are often the hardest to heal because they do not look like addictions—because we have all agreed to be compulsive about the same things and blind to the same problems.

4. Some form of alternative consciousness is the only freedom from this self and from cultural lies. Contemplation teaches us how to observe our own small mind and, frankly, to see how inadequate it is to the task in front of us. As Eckhart Tolle says, 98% of human thought is “repetitive and pointless.” How humiliating is that? When we see how self-serving, how petty, how narcissistic, and how compulsive our thinking is, we realize how trapped and unfree we truly are. We might even call it “possessed.”

In the Desert of the Heart By Paul Kingnorth

For see, you were inside, and I was outside, but I sought you there. Unlovely, I rushed without thinking among the things of beauty you made. You were with me, but I was not with you.’

St Augustine of Hippo

Sometimes it is difficult for me to write anything, because all I want to do is to be quiet. I have wanted this for years, and sometimes I achieve it, but it is fleeting. Maybe less fleeting by the year, though. Maybe the pull is growing, and the will and the ability. Growing slowly, like moss on a stone.

‘If anyone wants to learn the will of God’ said the Russian Orthodox priest Father Alexander Men, in one of his Lenten sermons¹, ‘let him seek silence.’ Christians have known this forever. They have fled to deserts and caves, monasteries and sketes. They have taken up residence on the tops of pillars and in the boles of hollow trees. They knew that the voice of God was both still and small² and could only be heard in silence, would only settle in a peaceful heart.

Silence – or at least, quiet; peace – is the natural environment of the Spirit of God, it seems, and we live in the world which appears purposefully designed to make this a great struggle. The roar of traffic, the planes crossing the skies, the hum of the electric wires, the black rectangles in our pockets which fragment our attention, stimulate our passions and take us anywhere but the place where we stand. Whatever the world is it makes silence, or even quiet, almost an impossibility. That means we cannot hear God. And when we cannot hear God, we are lost.

Most of us will never get the opportunity to live in the bole of a hollow tree, and probably wouldn’t much like it if we did. But it is possible to be distracted by outward appearances. If you live in the middle of a city, a desert or a forest may seem an attractive haven of peace, but of course it is possible to flee to the wilderness and take your restless, neurotic, world-tangled heart with you. Probably it is quite common. Silence, a peaceful heart, the landing strip of the Holy Spirit, is not achieved simply by fleeing external noise, though this certainly helps. Most of the noise comes from within.

Last Sunday was the second Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church. Each Lenten Sunday is built around a different theme, usually around one of the Church Fathers or a story from the Gospels, each designed to take us deeper into what is sometimes called the ‘bright sadness’ of the Lenten descent. The second Sunday is dedicated to the memory of St Gregory Palamas, the fourteenth-century monk who is celebrated in the Orthodox Church for his defence of the spiritual tradition of ‘hesychasm’, which today forms the core of the contemplative spirituality of the Christian East.

Hesychasm is one of those Greek words often encountered in Christian Orthodoxy which has no direct English translation; it is usually rendered as ‘stillness’. Hesychastic prayer is the pursuit of inner stillness, not for its own sake, but because this is the opening move of the entire purpose of Orthodox Christian spirituality, which is to seek theosis. This is another one of those Greek words, usually translated as ‘union with God.’ Theosis, according to the hesychasts, is achieved in silence, through solitary prayer and living, the aim of which is to offer up a peaceful heart for the Holy Spirit to dwell within. ‘The Holy Spirit is extremely meek,” wrote the Coptic monk Matthew the Poor. ‘He finds no rest in cries and confusion, or in a heart that is cruel, unjust, wrathful, irascible, or proud.’³ Hesychasm seeks to create the conditions for the Spirit to settle in our hearts; something He can only do if our hearts are at peace.

St Gregory Palamas is celebrated for the intellectual battle he waged in the early 1300s with an Italian Orthodox monk named Barlaam, who had visited Mount Athos, seen the practice of hesychasm at first hand and been scandalised by it. Barlaam, it is said, had been trained in the Western Scholastic tradition, and was horrified by what today he might call the ‘woo’ of Eastern Christian mysticism. He nicknamed the hesychasts omphaloscopoi, our third Greek word of the day, which translates as ‘navel gazers’. Barlaam thought that the hesychasts were deluded and blasphemous; a position I still hear occasionally today from some Protestants. St Gregory took him on, and his defence of hesychasm won the day in the East. In the process, he helped cement its place at the heart of Orthodox spirituality, where it remains today.

The practice most commonly associated with the hesychastic tradition is that of the Jesus Prayer, which all Orthodox Christians – and plenty of non-Orthodox ones for that matter – are familiar with, and which many of us practice daily, either in the boles of trees or in suburban homes before work or after dinner. It is not, of course, necessary to live in a desert or on Mount Athos to pursue inner silence, though again it may help. It is probably not true that it can be found as easily in the midst of a megacity as it can in a forest, at least for most of us: the temptations, and the distractions, are simply greater, which is why people flee in the first place. Still, the principle is clear, and is much enunciated by the Fathers of the Christian Church: the Spirit of God will only settle in a peaceful heart. Outer peace makes it easier to achieve inner peace, but it doesn’t create it. Inner peace is achievable in central London, just as neurotic self-obsession is possible in a desert cave.

This subject has obsessed me for years: the subject of silence, of stillness. I once wrote a book about the need to pursue it, and the difficulty of pursuing it as a writer. That book, Savage Gods, was a work of neurotic self-obsession if ever there was one, but it worried away at a question that had grown in me for years. It first arose, I think, when I began practicing Chan Buddhism at the age of forty: a practice which turned out to be a gateway drug to Eastern Christianity, just as soon as I was able to ask Christ to open the gate for me. Buddhism, like hesychasm, begins with the search for inner stillness, which it sees as a necessary precursor to understanding the delusions we tend to call ‘reality.’ This is entirely in accordance with Christian teaching, and indeed with modern understandings of human psychology.

The thing is, once you begin to examine those delusions, you see that one of the most pernicious is the construction of a self-identity. This is necessary to survive in the world, probably, but soon enough it becomes a yoke around the neck. This construction labelled ‘Paul Kingsnorth’, for example, now has a public reputation as a writer with certain opinions and a particular history. His future work, and indeed his income, is in some way reliant on keeping this fiction going. It is not a ‘fiction’ in the sense of it being a deliberate falsehood, but it is a construction, which means it is a story, which means that the actual me has ended up stuck inside it, as well do with our stories in the end.

Things are particularly bad for this ‘Paul Kingsnorth’ character, because he makes his living writing articles like this one. Not only does he need to do this to eat, but more existentially, he has written for so long that he now sees the world almost entirely through the lens of the written word. Even if he wasn’t getting paid to write things down, he would be writing them down anyway, which would just continue to encrust the artificial world around the artificial self, and make it harder to escape from both.

Whether we are writers or not, we create these personal fictions we call ‘identities’, and the older we get, the harder it is for that simple, primal stillness which is the precursor to true prayer to break back through. Back when I practiced Buddhism, I remember seeing with crystal clarity, at a level far deeper than the intellect, that if I wanted to progress spiritually I had to stop pumping out all these words. This was not because language itself was inherently bad – it is hardly avoidable – but because of something at once fuzzier and clearer, which even now I find it hard to explain. It was that words were part of the fiction of the world. It was so clear then – and it remains clear now – that spiritual progress, that work of theosis, requires us to drop all of our illusions. To smash through the cement of words and concepts and identities and opinions. To see ourselves naked before God. To make ourselves simple again.

Jesus, in more than one of the Gospels, talks about children, and what they have to teach us. In Luke’s Gospel⁴, when the disciples attempt to shoo away groups of parents who want him to bless their babies, Jesus rounds on them. ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them’, he says, ‘for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’

In Matthew’s Gospel, meanwhile, the disciples are jostling amongst themselves to achieve Jesus’s favour – or perhaps they are just anxious for some clear guidance. ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ they ask Him.⁵ In response, Jesus calls a child over to them. ‘Truly I tell you,’ he says, ‘unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’

The ‘kingdom of heaven’, then, belongs to those who ‘become like little children’. In fact, unless we ‘change’, and learn to ‘receive the kingdom of God like a little child’, we will ‘never enter it.’ Jesus says this twice, and very emphatically. What does it mean?

Simplify, I think. To become childlike means to return again to the state in which God created us. To drop those self-created ‘personalities’. Children do not have strong opinions about the world. They do not – yet – have self-created egos which will trap them. They tend to move through the world wide-eyed, and to accept its magic. To become like a child is also to become like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, a pair of striking images which Jesus uses elsewhere to urge his followers away from complexity and towards simplicity;⁶ away from words and towards experience; away from noise and towards silence.

I have been struck repeatedly over the years by the fact that some of my favourite Christian saints were ‘uneducated’ people, in the world’s terms. The holiest of them, those who practiced straightforward Christian love with no frills, so often seem to have barely attended school. Some of them could barely read. I don’t think this is a coincidence.

In his little book Do You Know Yourself?⁷, a collection of talks on Christianity and psychology, the late Fr Symeon Kragiopoulos, a Greek Bishop with a reputation as a ‘profound anatomist of the soul’, anatomises those of us who have what he calls ‘complications’ within: a description which I would guess applies to most modern people, and perhaps most pre-modern ones as well. ‘Someone who has complications within him, who has been blocked internally … can’t live the spiritual life,’ he writes, starkly.

‘The harm that has happened to humanity,’ he goes on to say, ‘and particularly to contemporary humanity – that is, to us – it’s so great that in our effort to disentangle the complications that exist inside us we tangle them up even more.’ Humans, he says, begin life with ‘this blue sky in their souls, this clear heaven, this purity and holiness.’ In the beginning we are children, as Jesus tells his disciples to be again. But we complicate everything as we grow, with our stories, with our egotistic scrabbling, with all the stuff of life from which there is no escape. We build necessary shells to protect ourselves, and ‘the heaven of [our] souls is clouded and darkened.’ This is what it means to be ‘Fallen.’

What can help us, then? Christianity we say – if we are Christians, that is – but Fr Symeon is not convinced. ‘I’d dare to say that even Christianity is getting tangled up inside us and is itself getting mixed up,’ he says. Those of us who call ourselves ‘Christians’ do not have the simple, childlike souls we are called to embrace. ‘In the final analysis,’ he says, ‘while a person is Christian, while he believes in the Gospel, while he believes in Jesus Christ, while he confesses and receives communion, he is blocked.’ The blockage comes from the fact that so many of us are influenced more by ‘the spirit of western Christianity, which we perhaps call Christian civilisation, than by the Christianity of the Gospel and the Fathers, by that Christianity that really redeems a human being, that cleanses man and releases him from all those parasites and from all those pitfalls and makes it pure and clean.’

All of which, I suppose, takes us back to where we started: the silence. I have just written 2,500 words of noise to try and get at the matter of silence, and of course have not achieved it, because it is not achieved this way. Lent is a strange journey of deepening: I have learned this very slowly over the years. I am far from being any kind of ascetic, and my Lenten discipline regularly disappoints me, but even so, something seems to happen every year. This year, I have not wanted to say much for weeks. Even when I write, I write about silence. Something is calling me away. I am still not sure where to go, or how.

It took me a long time as a Christian to even begin to understand that much of the work, at least for beginners, is simply in shutting up. There is no point in worrying about whether you are silent or childlike or holy enough, or in trying to make yourself some kind of holy ascetic through force of will. Force of will doesn’t get you that far. You can run off to the forest or the desert if you like: some people are called to that life and some people are not. But we are all called to make a desert of our hearts. The Holy Spirit will alight there, we are told, when it finds a peace to welcome it.

However, we do it, so much of the work, I think now, is struggling to allow silence a place to grow. When we do that, much of our overcomplicated, worldly nonsense just falls away, even if only for a second. The cement cracks, our stories shatter, and we begin to see how to walk away from ourselves. In the silence, perhaps we discover how to be children again.

Father Symeon should have the last word, I think, because I have written too many already:

‘Spiritual work happens secretly in the heart. Externally, let everything else threaten us. Like the sea: The wind blows, waves rise. But deep down it’s all quiet, peaceful, serene.

This is how a man who trusts in God lives. There might be a wild rage out there, but deep down nothing hinders the soul from having a mystical communion with God, a mystical love for God. Quietly and mystically, in a special way that the heart perceives, the Lord is whispering: “Don’t be afraid. I am here. Keep walking this path. Keep loving me, keep believing in me, keep following me”.

It’s not enough to suffer myriad things in life. When, though, you believe in God and accept all these – whatever it is that happens to you – gladly, for the love of God, God will make a saint out of you.’⁸

Fr Men’s Lenten homilies are collected in Awake To Life, published in 1996 by Oakwood Publications, California

1 Kings 19:12

Quoted from Guidelines For Prayer by Matthew the Poor, St Macarius Press, 2021

Luke 18:15

Matthew 18:1 – 5

Matthew 6:26 – 34

Published by Divine Ascent Press, California, in 2010.

‘Christians of Comfort.’ https://www.orthodoxpath.org/spiritual-life/christians-of-comfort/

u were inside, and I was outside, but I sought you there. Unlovely, I rushed without thinking among the things of beauty you made. You were with me, but I was not with you.’

St Augustine of Hippo

Father Symeon should have the last word, I think, because I have written too many already:

‘Spiritual work happens secretly in the heart. Externally, let everything else threaten us. Like the sea: The wind blows, waves rise. But deep down it’s all quiet, peaceful, serene.

This is how a man who trusts in God lives. There might be a wild rage out there, but deep down nothing hinders the soul from having a mystical communion with God, a mystical love for God. Quietly and mystically, in a special way that the heart perceives, the Lord is whispering: “Don’t be afraid. I am here. Keep walking this path. Keep loving me, keep believing in me, keep following me”.

It’s not enough to suffer myriad things in life. When, though, you believe in God and accept all these – whatever it is that happens to you – gladly, for the love of God, God will make a saint out of you.’⁸

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Fr Men’s Lenten homilies are collected in Awake To Life, published in 1996 by Oakwood Publications, California

1 Kings 19:12

Quoted from Guidelines For Prayer by Matthew the Poor, St Macarius Press, 2021

Luke 18:15

Matthew 18:1 – 5

Matthew 6:26 – 34

Published by Divine Ascent Press, California, in 2010.

‘Christians of Comfort.’ https://www.orthodoxpath.org/spiritual-life/christians-of-comfort/

A Modern Lent By Father Stephen Freeman

Few things are as difficult in the modern world as fasting. It is not simply the action of changing our eating habits that we find problematic – it’s the whole concept of fasting and what it truly entails. It comes from another world.

We understand dieting – changing how we eat in order to improve how we look or how we feel. But changing how we eat in order to know God or to rightly keep a feast of the Church – this is foreign. Our first question is often, “How does that work?” For we live in a culture of utility – we want to know the use of things. Underneath the question of utility is the demand that something make sense to me, and that I be able to ultimately take charge of it, use it as I see fit and shape it according to my own desires. Perhaps the fast could be improved?

Our modern self-understanding sees people primarily as individual centers of choice and decision. A person is seen as the product of their choices and decisions – our lives are self-authenticated. As such, we are managers.

Of course there are many problems with this world-view from the perspective of Classical Christianity. Though we are free to make choices and decisions, our freedom is not unlimited. The largest part of our lives is not self-determined. Much of the rhetoric of modernity is aimed towards those with wealth and power. It privileges their stories and mocks the weakness of those without power with promises that are rarely, if ever, fulfilled.

Our lives are a gift from God and not of our own making. The Classical Christian spiritual life is not marked by choice and self-determination: it is characterized by self-emptying and the way of the Cross.

When a modern Christian confronts the season of Lent – the question often becomes: “What do I want to give up for Lent?” The intention is good, but the question is wrong. Lent quickly becomes yet another life-choice, a consumer’s fast.

The practice of the traditional fast has been greatly diminished over the past few centuries. The Catholic Church has modified its requirements and streamlined Lenten fasting (today it includes only abstaining from meat on the Fridays of Lent – which makes them similar to all the other Fridays of the year). The Protestant Churches that observe the season of Lent offer no formal guidelines for Lenten practice. The individual is left on their own.

Orthodoxy continues to have in place the full traditional fast, which is frequently modified in its application (the “rules” themselves are generally recognized as written for monastics). It is essentially a vegan diet (no meat, fish, wine, dairy). Some limit the number of meals and their manner of cooking. Of course, having the fast in place and “keeping the fast” are two very different things. I know of no study on how Orthodox in the modern world actually fast. My pastoral experience tells me that people generally make a good effort.

Does any of this matter? Why should Christians in the modern world concern themselves with a traditional practice?

What is at stake in the modern world is our humanity. The notion that we are self-authenticating individuals is simply false. We obviously do not bring ourselves into existence – it is a gift. And the larger part of what constitutes our lives is simply a given – a gift. It is not always a gift that someone is happy with – we would like ourselves to be other than we are. But the myth of the modern world is that we, in fact, do create ourselves and our lives – our identities are imagined to be of our own making. We are only who we choose to be. It is a myth that is extremely well-suited for undergirding a culture built on consumption. Identity can be had at a price. The wealthy have a far greater range of identities available to them – the poor are largely stuck with being who they really are.

But the only truly authentic human life is the one we receive as a gift from God. The spirituality of choice and consumption under the guise of freedom is an emptiness. The identity we create is an ephemera, a product of imagination and the market. The habits of the marketplace serve to enslave us – Lent is a call to freedom.

A Modern Lent

Thus, a beginning for a modern Lent is to repent from the modern world itself. By this, I mean renouncing the notion that you are a self-generated, self-authenticating individual. You are not defined by your choices and decisions, much less by your career and your shopping. You begin by acknowledging that God alone is Lord (and you are not). Your life has meaning and purpose only in relation to God. The most fundamental practice of such God-centered living is the giving of thanks.

Renounce trying to improve yourself and become something. You are not a work in progress. If you are a work – then you are God’s work. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in” (Eph 2:10).
Do not plan to have a “good Lent” or imagine what a “good Lent” would be. Give up judging – especially judging yourself. Get out of the center of your world. Lent is not about you. It is about Christ and His Pascha.
Fast according to the Tradition instead of according to your own ideas and designs.This might be hard for some if they are not part of the traditional Church and thus have no fasting tradition. Most Catholics have differing rules for fasting than the Orthodox. If you’re Catholic, fast like a Catholic. Don’t admire other people’s fasting.

If you’re Protestant but would like to live more traditionally, think about becoming Orthodox. Short of that, covenant with others (family, friends) to keep the traditional fast. Don’t be too strict or too lenient, and if possible keep the fast in a manner that is mutually agreed rather than privately designed. Be accountable but not guilty.

Pray. Fasting without praying is called “the Fast of Demons,” because demons never eat, but they never pray. We fast as a means of drawing closer to God. Your fasting and your prayer should be balanced as much as possible. If you fast in a strict manner, then you should pray for extended periods. If you fast lightly, then your prayers may be lighter as well. The point is to be single – for prayer and fasting to be a single thing.
To our prayer and fasting should be added mercy (giving stuff away, especially money). You cannot be too generous. Your mercy should be as invisible as possible to others, except in your kindness to all. Spend less, give away more.

Eating, drinking, praying and generosity are very natural activities. Look at your life. How natural is your eating? Is your diet driven by manufactured, processed foods (especially as served in restaurants and fast food places)? These can be very inhuman ways of eating. Eating should take time. It is not a waste of time to spend as much as six hours in twenty-four preparing, sharing, eating and cleaning up. Even animals take time to eat.

Go to Church a lot more (if your Church has additional Lenten services, go to them). This can be problematic for Protestants, in that most Protestant worship is quite modern, i.e. focused on the individual rather than directed to God, well-meant but antithetical to worship. If your Church isn’t boring, it’s probably modern. This is not to say that Classical Christianity is inherently boring – it’s just experienced as such by people trained to be consumers. Classical Christianity worships according to Tradition and focuses its attention on God. It is not there for you to “get something out of it.”
Entertain yourself less. In traditional Orthodox lands, amusements are often given up during the Lenten period. This can be very difficult for modern people in that we live to consume and are thus caught in a cycle of pain and pleasure. Normal pleasures such as exercise or walking are not what I have in mind – although it strikes me as altogether modern that there should be businesses dedicated to helping us do something normal (like walking or exercising), such that even our normal activities become a commodity to consume.
Fast from watching/reading the news and having/expressing opinions. The news is not presented in order to keep you informed. It is often inaccurate and serves the primary purpose of political propaganda and consumer frenzy. Neither are good for the soul. Opinions can be deeply destructive to the soul’s health. Most opinions are not properly considered, necessary beliefs. They are passions that pass themselves off as thoughts or beliefs. The need to express them reveals their passionate nature. Though opinions are a necessary part of life – they easily come to dominate us. Reducing the need to express how we feel about everything that comes our way (as opposed to silently weighing and considering and patiently speaking what we know to be true) is an important part of ascesis and self-control.

I could well imagine that a modern person, reading through such a list, might feel overwhelmed and wonder what is left. What is left is being human. That so much in our lives is not particularly human but an ephemeral distraction goes far to explain much of our exhaustion and anxiety. There is no food for us in what is not human.

And so the words of Isaiah come to mind:

Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk Without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in fatness (Isa 55:1-2).

“Let your soul delight itself in fatness…” the irony of Lent.

Nativity Fast Class #3 – Repentance Through Thanksgiving

We’re going to break away from our focus on the ‘Victory Of The Cross’ this Thanksgiving week. As you may know, Cynthia Oquendo’s son Wilder will be baptized Sunday morning beginning at 9:30am. I’d like us to attend this important sacrament so we’ll make this an abbreviated class. Further, we’re likely to have lots of folks who are out of town this holiday weekend.

My topic for this class is repentance through thanksgiving. We’ll be using an extract from Chapter 2 of the book “The Engraving of Christ in Man’s Heart” written by Archimandrite Zacharias as our source material. As we enter Thanksgiving week, I thought it might be useful to explore thanksgiving as a means of repentance. Many of us may elevate repentance to this difficult place that we intend to move towards but we can’t seem to find a way to get started. I think the prescription of using gratitude and thanks as a means of practicing repentance can help us begin today on this journey of repentance. Archimandrite Zacharias is alive and a monk at the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England. He is a frequent visitor to the U.S. and a disciple of St. Sophrony who was his spiritual father.

We’ll address these three questions in the class:

How can thanksgiving help us overcome our pride?
How can thanksgiving help us overcome our despair?
How is thanksgiving practiced in the Divine Liturgy

You can also access the fuller contents of this extract by clicking here.

How can thanksgiving help us overcome our pride?

The way of thanksgiving heals us from the passion of pride, and strengthens us against the temptation to despair. Thanksgiving and gratitude equal humility, which can be inferred from the word of the Apostle Paul: ‘Now we have received, not the (proud) spirit of the world, but the (humble) spirit which is of God; that we might (gratefully) know the things that are freely given to us of God.’ 15 It is important, consequently, to remember that the blessing and the grace of God increase within us through humility and particularly through thanksgiving. Holy Scripture, both Old and New, confirms this saying, ‘God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble’. 16 When we enter the grace of thanksgiving, we acquire the right kind of godly zeal, which befits the children of God.

How can thanksgiving help us overcome our despair?

Those who thank God never fall into despair and their heart is never empty of His consolation. This is illustrated by the example of a Christian man who once made a confession that he wanted to commit suicide because there was nothing but pain in his life. His spiritual father responded by asking him if there was anything good in his life, if, for instance, he was breathing and alive at that moment. His reply was positive, after which his spiritual father told him, ‘Start thanking God for the breath He gives you, for your physical life, and then for anything else God reveals that you have received as a gift from Him.’ The man started to thank God that he could breathe and that he was alive, and began to feel stronger within. Then he thanked God for knowing His Name, and that he received consolation from prayer in His Holy Name. Finally, his thanksgiving was so sincere and fervent, that he completely forgot about his despair and thoughts of suicide, and escaped this demonic temptation.

According to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, there is no greater virtue in the sight of God, than the giving of thanks while going through ill-health, persecution, injustice, or rejection. It pleases God when we are in pain and say, ‘Glory to Thee O God! I thank Thee, Lord, for all that Thou hast done for me.’ When guards were dragging Saint John Chrysostom into exile, sick, much afflicted, and maltreated, they passed by a church. The Saint asked them to let him stay for a while in front of the Holy Altar, on which he leaned and said to God, ‘Glory be to Thee, O Lord, for everything’, and at that moment he committed his holy soul into the hands of God. When our life is in danger, there is no attitude more pleasing to God than thanksgiving. If in that moment of pain, we cling to God with our mind and say to Him, ‘I thank Thee Lord, for everything. Neither death, nor any other sorrow can separate me from Thee, for Thou art He that doth overcome death’, then this proves that our faith has become stronger than the death which threatens us. This is a great feat in the sight of God which carries us over to the other shore. In other words, it leads us into a dynamic life, into the blessed communion of all the Saints, into an everlasting doxology and thanksgiving to God throughout all ages in His Kingdom.

The Divine Liturgy is a great means given to us of fighting the passion of despondency, so that we can overcome the spiritual death which preys upon our life. In the Liturgy we learn to do what the Apostle Paul describes in his Epistle to the Philippians, that is, first to offer up mighty thanksgiving to God, and then humbly, with shame because of our spiritual weakness, to make our petitions for all that we need of Him. 17 This is well pleasing to God, so He gives His grace, and gradually light and the feeling of His presence increases in the heart. This small light shines more and more until it breaks forth into a perfect day in our heart, 18 as the Prophet Solomon says, and Christ dwells in our heart by faith. 19

How is thanksgiving practiced in the Divine Liturgy?

In the Divine Liturgy, we are taught to give perfect thanks to the almighty and beloved God in a manner worthy of Him. The Divine Liturgy is the Cross and the Resurrection at the same time, because the Body and the Blood of the Lord which we receive contain the same grace and the same blessing which His Body had after the Resurrection, when He ascended into heaven. The Divine Liturgy is the expression of our gratitude for the Passion, the Cross and the Resurrection of the Lord. This is why in the heart of the Liturgy we hear, ‘Take, eat; this is my Body.’ ‘This is the Body’, the Lord says, ‘which I offered, lifted up upon the Cross, led into the grave and raised up into the heavens resurrected; but I also left this Body on the earth on the night of the Last Supper so that you may partake in it and in all the grace which accompanies it, because in it dwells the fulness of Divinity.’ And then he continues, ‘Drink ye all of it; this is my Blood. The Blood which I shed on the Cross as a ransom for the sins, and for the salvation of the whole world.’ Therefore, when we repeat these words at every Liturgy, it is as if we are saying to Him, ‘To Thee, O Lord, is due all thanksgiving, all glory, every blessing, for Thou hast offered Thy Body and Thy Blood as nourishment for us so that we may be saved and live for all eternity.’ Of course, in heaven and on earth, there is no other matter or vision that occupies the souls of the Saints, than Christ’s saving sacrifice. The study of God’s indescribable love towards us strengthens the souls of the righteous to remain always in an everlasting doxology of joy, thanksgiving, and love worthy of God, Who is holy and good.

The Apostle Paul writes, ‘For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.’ 20 Everything in our life is sanctified if we receive it with gratitude. When we offer thanksgiving to God, all things, every object and every creature, become a means of salvation for us. God’s words are, ‘Take, eat…, drink ye all of it; this is my Blood.’ The Divine Liturgy is founded on these words and then follows the prayer that God may come and fill everything with the Holy Spirit, just as He fulfilled these great and saving mysteries which remain forever. In response, at the end of the Liturgy we can chant a new and triumphal hymn, ‘We have seen the true Light. We have received the heavenly Spirit. We have found the true faith. We worship the undivided Trinity; for the same hath saved us.’ This is the ‘new song’ of the children of God, which they chant every day out of gratitude and love. 21 Such is the zeal and inspiration of Christians who have been born again through the Divine Liturgy.

In order for the children of God, who represent the Cherubim and Seraphim at the Divine Liturgy, not to ‘draw back’, 22 their thanksgiving must be replete and offered with ever increasing tension: ‘We thank Thee for all whereof we know and whereof we know not; for benefits both manifest and hid which Thou hast wrought upon us.’ 23 Of course, the things that God has done for us which we cannot see are greater in number, because the eyes of our soul are not open and enlightened. Yet we believe in what we are taught by the Church and in the prayer of the Divine Liturgy. This is why the Liturgy has such warmth; it is a flame of thanksgiving and gratitude. In the central hymn of the Divine Liturgy we chant, ‘We hymn Thee, we bless Thee, we give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, and we pray unto Thee, our God.’ Three verbs of thanksgiving and glory and one of entreaty are used here, because God the Saviour has already accomplished everything for us; He has given us all that we need for our soul to remain united with His Spirit, and for us to enter His never-ending blessedness. The only thing that is left is for our body to become incorrupt, and this He will grant us in the age to come, where we will be like the Angels of God in His Kingdom, as the Lord said to the Sadducees. 24

Despite all this, we must not forget that our participation in the abundance of life which the Lord offers us in the Liturgy, depends not only upon how much we have prepared in our ‘closet’ 25 the day before, but every day as well. Our whole life ought to be a single preparation to present ourselves worthily before God in His house, and to thank Him for what we owe Him with all our heart, and in a manner befitting Him. The Apostle Paul says that we are all members of the Body of Christ. 26 When we graft a wild olive it grows into a cultivated olive. The Church does the same through baptism; it grafts us onto the Body of Christ. In order for us, however, to be living members of the Body, each one must preserve the gift received from God. The Apostle Paul says that, ‘Every man hath his proper gift of God’. 27 Each member has his unique gift, which he must cultivate in order to continue as a living member of this Body. Our preparation before the Liturgy is our cultivation of the gift God gave us to become a Christian. One way of preparing is by praying on our own for a period of time before the Liturgy, and then going to Church with our heart full of warmth, faith, love, hope, in expectation of the Lord’s mercy, and full of spiritual dispositions. That is an offering we bring to God and the Church, a gift to the assembly of the brethren who have gathered together in the temple.

Footnotes

1 Rom. 8: 7. 2 Jas. 4: 4. 3 1 Cor. 15: 32. 4 Cf. Matt. 6: 21 5 1 Thess. 4: 13. 6 John 17: 3. 7 Eps. 3: 12. 8 Cf. Job 7: 17-18. 9 Rom. 8: 32. 10 Eph. 1: 4. 11 Saint Maximus the Confessor, ‘Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice’ in The Philokalia, trans. and ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware (London & Boston: Faber & Faber, 1995), Vol. 2, 3: 29, p. 216. 12 See Prayer of the Great Blessing of the Waters, ‘Thou hast poured forth the air that living things may breathe’. 13 Luke 17: 10. 14 Cf. 2 Cor. 7: 1. 15 See 1 Cor. 2: 12. 16 Cf. Prov. 3: 34 (LXX); Jas. 4: 6; 1 Pet. 5: 5. 17 Phil. 4: 6. 18 Cf. Prov. 4: 18. 19 Eph. 3: 17. 20 1 Tim. 4: 4-5. 21 Ps. 33: 3. 22 Heb. 10: 39. 23 Anaphora, Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Basil. 24 Matt. 22: 30. 25 Matt. 6: 6. 26 1 Cor. 12: 27. 27 1 Cor. 7: 7. 28 Lity of Theophany. 29

Repentance Through Thanksgiving – The Engraving Of Christ In Man’s Heart (From Chapter 2) By Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou

As we enter Thanksgiving week, I thought it might be useful to explore thanksgiving as a means of repentance. Many of us may elevate repentance to this difficult place that we intend to move towards but we can’t seem to find a way to get started. I think the prescription of using gratitude and thanks as a means of practicing repentance can help us begin today on this journey of repentance. Archimandrite Zacharias is alive and a monk at the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England. He is a frequent visitor to the U.S. and a disciple of St. Sophrony who was his spiritual father. I hope you find this article a great way of combining repentance and Thanksgiving …adding substance and meaning to this holiday – Bruce M.

What theory and which thoughts contribute to this greatest miracle known to the created world, namely, the union of the heart of man with the Spirit of God?

We are given this theory in Holy Scripture, where we learn that from the excess of His goodness, God formed man’s heart in a unique way, and it was the target of His visitation from evening until morning and from morning until evening. 8 It was made to be suitable for and capable of receiving its Creator when He would come into the world for the salvation of all. In order to take care of man and make him in the image of His Son, that is, a god according to grace, He conceived such a great plan for him, that He even ‘spared not His own Son’ 9 in order to fulfil it. Certainly, if man occupied the Mind of God ‘before the foundation of the world’, 10 then he must indeed be sublime in his origin and his destination, and extraordinary in the potential hidden in his nature which is made in the image of God.

This theory inspires faith which is activated by love and gratitude. Through thanksgiving to God for His merciful providence, the believer is enriched with spiritual gifts. We receive grace in proportion to the gratitude we show. As the great Saint Maximus says, God measures out His gifts to men according to the gratitude with which they receive them. 11 Thus we enter the blessed fulness of God’s grace: the greater the gratitude and glory we offer Him, the more abundant is the measure of His gifts to us. By thanksgiving, man acquires a hypostasis in the sight of God and his life has value in eternity, so that in the day of His glorious coming he will be able to stand in His unshakeable presence.

Moreover, with the gifts that he has, the believer enters into the communion of the gifts of the other members of the Body of Christ, the Saints and all of the Lord’s elect upon earth. In this rich assembly of grace, which the believer enters through thanksgiving and gratitude, he forgets about the smaller gifts he has received, and reaches out to a greater fulness of love and perfection, hungry and thirsty for the gift of God. Anyone who thanks God is a stranger to despondency, yet is overcome by a blessed sadness, because he cannot thank God for all His benefits in a manner worthy of Him, even for every breath of air which He pours out upon the face of the earth. 12 Consequently, thanksgiving such as this, leads to true repentance of which there is no end in this life. Then we understand why, in His Gospel, the Lord places self-condemnation arising from gratitude above all the commandments, deeming that we are useless and unworthy even when we have fulfilled all His commandments. ‘So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, we are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.’ 13 Such a spirit preserves divine grace fervent in the lives of the faithful, and this leads to inspiration that saves, by sending away deathly despondency and giving strength daily to ‘perfect holiness in the fear of God’. 14

The way of thanksgiving heals us from the passion of pride, and strengthens us against the temptation to despair. Thanksgiving and gratitude equal humility, which can be inferred from the word of the Apostle Paul: ‘Now we have received, not the (proud) spirit of the world, but the (humble) spirit which is of God; that we might (gratefully) know the things that are freely given to us of God.’ 15 It is important, consequently, to remember that the blessing and the grace of God increase within us through humility and particularly through thanksgiving. Holy Scripture, both Old and New, confirms this saying, ‘God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble’. 16 When we enter the grace of thanksgiving, we acquire the right kind of godly zeal, which befits the children of God.

Those who thank God never fall into despair and their heart is never empty of His consolation. This is illustrated by the example of a Christian man who once made a confession that he wanted to commit suicide because there was nothing but pain in his life. His spiritual father responded by asking him if there was anything good in his life, if, for instance, he was breathing and alive at that moment. His reply was positive, after which his spiritual father told him, ‘Start thanking God for the breath He gives you, for your physical life, and then for anything else God reveals that you have received as a gift from Him.’ The man started to thank God that he could breathe and that he was alive, and began to feel stronger within. Then he thanked God for knowing His Name, and that he received consolation from prayer in His Holy Name. Finally, his thanksgiving was so sincere and fervent, that he completely forgot about his despair and thoughts of suicide, and escaped this demonic temptation.

According to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, there is no greater virtue in the sight of God, than the giving of thanks while going through ill-health, persecution, injustice, or rejection. It pleases God when we are in pain and say, ‘Glory to Thee O God! I thank Thee, Lord, for all that Thou hast done for me.’ When guards were dragging Saint John Chrysostom into exile, sick, much afflicted, and maltreated, they passed by a church. The Saint asked them to let him stay for a while in front of the Holy Altar, on which he leaned and said to God, ‘Glory be to Thee, O Lord, for everything’, and at that moment he committed his holy soul into the hands of God. When our life is in danger, there is no attitude more pleasing to God than thanksgiving. If in that moment of pain, we cling to God with our mind and say to Him, ‘I thank Thee Lord, for everything. Neither death, nor any other sorrow can separate me from Thee, for Thou art He that doth overcome death’, then this proves that our faith has become stronger than the death which threatens us. This is a great feat in the sight of God which carries us over to the other shore. In other words, it leads us into a dynamic life, into the blessed communion of all the Saints, into an everlasting doxology and thanksgiving to God throughout all ages in His Kingdom.

The Divine Liturgy is a great means given to us of fighting the passion of despondency, so that we can overcome the spiritual death which preys upon our life. In the Liturgy we learn to do what the Apostle Paul describes in his Epistle to the Philippians, that is, first to offer up mighty thanksgiving to God, and then humbly, with shame because of our spiritual weakness, to make our petitions for all that we need of Him. 17 This is well pleasing to God, so He gives His grace, and gradually light and the feeling of His presence increases in the heart. This small light shines more and more until it breaks forth into a perfect day in our heart, 18 as the Prophet Solomon says, and Christ dwells in our heart by faith. 19

In the Divine Liturgy, we are taught to give perfect thanks to the almighty and beloved God in a manner worthy of Him. The Divine Liturgy is the Cross and the Resurrection at the same time, because the Body and the Blood of the Lord which we receive contain the same grace and the same blessing which His Body had after the Resurrection, when He ascended into heaven. The Divine Liturgy is the expression of our gratitude for the Passion, the Cross and the Resurrection of the Lord. This is why in the heart of the Liturgy we hear, ‘Take, eat; this is my Body.’ ‘This is the Body’, the Lord says, ‘which I offered, lifted up upon the Cross, led into the grave and raised up into the heavens resurrected; but I also left this Body on the earth on the night of the Last Supper so that you may partake in it and in all the grace which accompanies it, because in it dwells the fulness of Divinity.’ And then he continues, ‘Drink ye all of it; this is my Blood. The Blood which I shed on the Cross as a ransom for the sins, and for the salvation of the whole world.’ Therefore, when we repeat these words at every Liturgy, it is as if we are saying to Him, ‘To Thee, O Lord, is due all thanksgiving, all glory, every blessing, for Thou hast offered Thy Body and Thy Blood as nourishment for us so that we may be saved and live for all eternity.’ Of course, in heaven and on earth, there is no other matter or vision that occupies the souls of the Saints, than Christ’s saving sacrifice. The study of God’s indescribable love towards us strengthens the souls of the righteous to remain always in an everlasting doxology of joy, thanksgiving, and love worthy of God, Who is holy and good.

The Apostle Paul writes, ‘For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.’ 20 Everything in our life is sanctified if we receive it with gratitude. When we offer thanksgiving to God, all things, every object and every creature, become a means of salvation for us. God’s words are, ‘Take, eat…, drink ye all of it; this is my Blood.’ The Divine Liturgy is founded on these words and then follows the prayer that God may come and fill everything with the Holy Spirit, just as He fulfilled these great and saving mysteries which remain forever. In response, at the end of the Liturgy we can chant a new and triumphal hymn, ‘We have seen the true Light. We have received the heavenly Spirit. We have found the true faith. We worship the undivided Trinity; for the same hath saved us.’ This is the ‘new song’ of the children of God, which they chant every day out of gratitude and love. 21 Such is the zeal and inspiration of Christians who have been born again through the Divine Liturgy.

In order for the children of God, who represent the Cherubim and Seraphim at the Divine Liturgy, not to ‘draw back’, 22 their thanksgiving must be replete and offered with ever increasing tension: ‘We thank Thee for all whereof we know and whereof we know not; for benefits both manifest and hid which Thou hast wrought upon us.’ 23 Of course, the things that God has done for us which we cannot see are greater in number, because the eyes of our soul are not open and enlightened. Yet we believe in what we are taught by the Church and in the prayer of the Divine Liturgy. This is why the Liturgy has such warmth; it is a flame of thanksgiving and gratitude. In the central hymn of the Divine Liturgy we chant, ‘We hymn Thee, we bless Thee, we give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, and we pray unto Thee, our God.’ Three verbs of thanksgiving and glory and one of entreaty are used here, because God the Saviour has already accomplished everything for us; He has given us all that we need for our soul to remain united with His Spirit, and for us to enter His never-ending blessedness. The only thing that is left is for our body to become incorrupt, and this He will grant us in the age to come, where we will be like the Angels of God in His Kingdom, as the Lord said to the Sadducees. 24

Despite all this, we must not forget that our participation in the abundance of life which the Lord offers us in the Liturgy, depends not only upon how much we have prepared in our ‘closet’ 25 the day before, but every day as well. Our whole life ought to be a single preparation to present ourselves worthily before God in His house, and to thank Him for what we owe Him with all our heart, and in a manner befitting Him. The Apostle Paul says that we are all members of the Body of Christ. 26 When we graft a wild olive it grows into a cultivated olive. The Church does the same through baptism; it grafts us onto the Body of Christ. In order for us, however, to be living members of the Body, each one must preserve the gift received from God. The Apostle Paul says that, ‘Every man hath his proper gift of God’. 27 Each member has his unique gift, which he must cultivate in order to continue as a living member of this Body. Our preparation before the Liturgy is our cultivation of the gift God gave us to become a Christian. One way of preparing is by praying on our own for a period of time before the Liturgy, and then going to Church with our heart full of warmth, faith, love, hope, in expectation of the Lord’s mercy, and full of spiritual dispositions. That is an offering we bring to God and the Church, a gift to the assembly of the brethren who have gathered together in the temple.

The gift that we cultivate when we are alone unites us with the Body of Christ. It leads us into the communion of all the other gifts of the members of Christ’s Body, the Saints in heaven, and also of His elect upon earth so that in truth we become rich. In monasteries, monks also have their daily prayer rule, which they do not consider to be a burden. On the contrary, it is an honour and privilege given to them to help them enter the communion of the grace of God, the communion of the gifts of the brethren who are their fellow strugglers.

Consequently, the more we cultivate our gift when we are alone, the more we shall be prepared when we come to church, to enter this blessed communion of gifts, the blessed communion of those who possess gifts, the blessed communion of the grace of God. For the grace of God stablishes the Church, who, like a mother, helps and inspires the faithful with her prayers and Liturgies, which create an upward impetus, while the Saints, who are the glorified members of the Body of Christ, pull them up with their prayers and intercessions. This is the meaning of the Church: a helpful push from below and a saving pull from above.

Those who offer a ‘sacrifice of love’ in their preparation for the Liturgy, come to the temple bearing gifts for God, which bring inspiration and impart joy, peace and grace to the other brethren. The greater and more attentive our preparation, the purer and stronger will our entry be into the family, that is, the communion of God. In one of the hymns of Theophany, it is written, ‘Where the King is present, there His army also goes.’ 28 That is to say, where Christ is, the King of heaven and earth, there are the orders of the heavenly spirits: His All Holy Mother, the Saints, the Archangels and Angels, and also all the Christians who have received the gift of the Holy Spirit and struggle for their perfection in all the places of His dominion.

By contrast, when we go to the Divine Liturgy without having prepared, we are not being fair to God and our brethren, because we do not have any gifts in our heart to offer God and with which to enter into this marvellous communion with the other members who do come bearing gifts.

Depending on how much they have prepared for the service, those who come to church maintain the warmth of their heart, so that they bear gifts for God and their brethren. We do not mean simply material gifts, like the goats and lambs which the Hebrews brought to God as offerings. Now they bring their heart, full of the warmth of faith, full of the light of God’s word from constant study of the Gospel, and full of the strength which the mystery of God produces in their soul. The hope and expectation they bear within, incites the faithful to exclaim and say to God, ‘Thine own, of Thine own, we offer unto Thee in all and for all’. 29 In other words, these things that are Yours, from the things You have given, when You provided everything we need to live and to be saved, we offer them to You, according to the commandment You have given us. And He receives their gifts, bread and wine, things which are insignificant but which become precious, because the congregation have placed in them all their faith, repentance, love, hope, their expectation in the Holy of Holies, and finally their whole life and humility. The Lord then accepts them, blesses them, and transforms them into His Body and Blood. That is, He also adds to them all the power and grace which were in His Body after the Resurrection and gives them back to us saying, ‘The holy things unto the holy.’ 30 This is the voice of God to His people. If the faithful have placed all their life in the gifts, they will succeed in exchanging them. In return they will receive all God’s life, all His grace, all His blessing, in short, the fulness of salvation.

In order for the door of the grace of God to open again, first of all we must thank Him ‘unto the end’ for all that He has given us until now. In this, we take heed to the words of the Lord, ‘If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?’ 31 In other words, man cannot receive a greater fulness of God’s grace if he has not first responded with a gratitude befitting God for all the changes of ‘the right hand of the most High’ in his life up to the present. 32

Thanksgiving, therefore, is the zeal which the children of God ought to possess. It is so pleasing to God, that the great Apostle Paul urges us first to give thanks to God for everything and only then to present our petitions to the Lord, ‘Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God,’ 33 and ‘In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.’ 34

In such a blessed communion of grace, we find true and dynamic divine inspiration which allows no rest on earth, but goes from faith to more perfect faith; from hope to confidence in the Living Jesus Who raises even the dead; from love to a greater fulness of love; and from a single light to the perfect day of His Kingdom that knows no eventide, wherein we will find the eternal rest of our souls with ‘all His Saints’ 35 and the ‘spirits of just men made perfect’. 36

Footnotes: 1 Rom. 8: 7. 2 Jas. 4: 4. 3 1 Cor. 15: 32. 4 Cf. Matt. 6: 21 5 1 Thess. 4: 13. 6 John 17: 3. 7 Eps. 3: 12. 8 Cf. Job 7: 17-18. 9 Rom. 8: 32. 10 Eph. 1: 4. 11 Saint Maximus the Confessor, ‘Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice’ in The Philokalia, trans. and ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware (London & Boston: Faber & Faber, 1995), Vol. 2, 3: 29, p. 216. 12 See Prayer of the Great Blessing of the Waters, ‘Thou hast poured forth the air that living things may breathe’. 13 Luke 17: 10. 14 Cf. 2 Cor. 7: 1. 15 See 1 Cor. 2: 12. 16 Cf. Prov. 3: 34 (LXX); Jas. 4: 6; 1 Pet. 5: 5. 17 Phil. 4: 6. 18 Cf. Prov. 4: 18. 19 Eph. 3: 17. 20 1 Tim. 4: 4-5. 21 Ps. 33: 3. 22 Heb. 10: 39. 23 Anaphora, Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Basil. 24 Matt. 22: 30. 25 Matt. 6: 6. 26 1 Cor. 12: 27. 27 1 Cor. 7: 7. 28 Lity of Theophany. 29

Born To Set Us Free From Our Infirmities

December 4, 2021 · Fr. Philip LeMasters

Galatians 5:22-6:2; Luke 13:10-17

When Jesus Christ was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath, he saw a woman who was bent over and could not straighten up. She had been that way for eighteen years. Imagine how her life had changed due to her disability, how frustrating that chronic illness had to be, especially in a time before modern medicine and physical therapy. The Lord said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.” When He laid hands on her, she was healed. When the woman stood up straight again, she glorified God.

As was often the case when the Savior healed on the Sabbath day, there were those standing around just waiting to criticize Him for working on the day of rest. He responded to them by noting that people do what is necessary to take care of their animals on the Sabbath. “So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” The force of His point was so clear that those self-righteous hypocrites were put to shame and the people rejoiced.

In these weeks of the Nativity Fast, we pray, fast, give to the needy, and confess and turn away from our sins as we prepare to celebrate the wonderful news of the Incarnation of the Son of God, of our Lord’s birth at Christmas for the salvation of the world. Today’s gospel text provides a beautiful image of what Jesus Christ has done for us by becoming a human being by uniting divinity and humanity in His own Person. These weeks of preparation give us all the opportunity to gain the spiritual clarity to see ourselves in that poor woman bent over and bound with chronic, debilitating infirmity.

Though we often do our best to hide it, we are all too well acquainted with illness, pain, and death. We face chronic challenges of various kinds from which we cannot deliver ourselves or our loved ones. We have diseases of soul, of personality, of behavior, and of relationships that cripple us, that keep us from acting, thinking, and speaking with the joyful freedom of the children of God. We are all bent over and crippled in profound ways in relation to the Lord, our neighbors, and even ourselves. We have all fallen short of fulfilling God’s gracious purposes for us, as has every generation since Adam and Eve.

Joachim and Anna knew all about long-term frustration and pain, for like Abraham and Sarah they were childless into their old age. God heard their prayers, however, and gave them Mary, who would in turn give birth to the Savior Who came to liberate us all from sin and death. We celebrate in the coming week the feast of St. Anna’s conception of the Theotokos, which foreshadows the coming of the Lord to loose us from the infirmities that hinder our participation even now in the joyful life of the Kingdom.

The story of the Old Testament unfolded through the family of Abraham, who was told by God that he would be the father of a large, blessed family. Some think of life after death as being accomplished through ongoing generations of children and grandchildren, not by victory over death itself. If God’s blessings extended no further than the grave, however, then no one would ever be loosed from bondage to the wages of sin, which is death itself. Only a Savior Who is truly divine and human could enter fully into the fatal consequences of our corruption and then rise victorious over them, making it possible for us to participate in the eternal life of the heavenly kingdom.

The history of the Hebrews was preparatory for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah in Whom God’s promises are fulfilled and extended to all who have faith in the Savior, regardless of their ethnic or national heritage. Christ did not come to promote one nation over another or to set up an earthly kingdom of any kind, but to fulfill our original calling as those created in the image and likeness of God. He unites divinity and humanity in Himself and makes it possible for us to share in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity as distinct, unique persons who become radiant with the divine glory by grace. God breaks the laws of nature, at least as we know them in our world of corruption, in order to save us, enabling elderly women like Sarah and Anna to conceive and bear children and a young virgin named Mary to become the mother of His Son, Who Himself rose from the dead after three days in the tomb. He is born at Christmas to work our liberation, to break the bonds of death, and to heal the brokenness of our life in this world of corruption.

The Lord did not treat the woman in today’s reading according to her physical condition as simply an impersonal bundle of disease, even as St. Anna’s fate was not defined by barrenness. Instead, He revealed her true identity as a beloved person, a daughter of Abraham, by enabling her to stand up straight for the first time in years. On that particular Sabbath day, Jesus Christ treated her as a unique, cherished child of God who was not created for slavery to a wretched existence of pain, disease, and despair, but for blessing, health, and joy. She glorified God for this deliverance from bondage, for this restoration of freedom, as did those who saw the miracle.

The good news of Christmas is that the Savior is born to do the same for us all, to set us free from captivity to the decay, corruption, and weakness that have taken root in our souls. He comes to deliver us from being defined by our infirmities so that we can leave behind our bondage and enter into the joyous freedom of the children of God. He comes to restore us as living icons who manifest His glory and salvation as the unique persons He created us to be.

Our salvation is a process of becoming more fully our true ourselves by embracing Christ’s healing of the human person. There is no limit to the unique beauty of our souls other than those we impose by our own refusal to unite ourselves to Him in holiness. The more we share by grace in the life of the Holy Trinity, the more we will see that the process of our fulfillment in God is eternal. Since our fundamental calling is to become like God in holiness, we become more truly ourselves whenever we turn away from slavery to sin and corruption in order to embrace more fully the new life that Christ has brought to the world.

Most people today probably do not think of Advent and Christmas in relation to liberation from our bondage to sin and death. More typically, we distort them into opportunities to strengthen our addiction to the love of money and possessions and to excess in food and drink. Such self-centered indulgence is really nothing but bondage to ourselves, which can easily leave us so weak spiritually that we will never be able to straighten ourselves up. That is not surprising because, as God’s children, we were not created to find our fulfillment in the passing things of creation or in satisfying self-centered desires for bodily pleasure. That is why we must resist the cultural temptation to become so busy with shopping, planning, and partying this time of year that we end up ignoring the profound spiritual gravity of our Lord’s Incarnation. He is born to restore us to the full dignity of His sons and daughters, to make us personal participants in the blessing and joy of the heavenly kingdom. He comes to loose us all from slavery to sin and death.

In the remaining weeks of the Nativity Fast, let us follow St. Paul’s advice to acquire “the fruit of the Spirit…love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, [and] self-control.” Let us use this season to crucify “the flesh with the passions and the lusts” as we are loosed from the debilitating corruptions of sin by the mercy of the God-Man born for our salvation. As we pray, fast, give to the needy, and confess and repent of our sins this Advent, let us do so with the joyful hope of the woman who could finally stand up straight after eighteen years. For the Savior is born to deliver us from bondage in all its forms. It is time to rise up with Him into the blessed life of holiness He comes to share with us, for we have already had more than enough of pain and infirmity. As daughters and sons of Abraham by faith, let us embrace the healing that is ours in Jesus Christ.

Akathist Hymn of Thanksgiving : Glory to God for All Things

It is a great joy to gather together Thanksgiving morning and to pray, contemplate and sing this beautiful Akathist. Father Stephen gives us some short , powerful guidance on what to do in that space between stimulus and response today … and how prayer and thanksgiving can become a new means of coping with what , without God, may invoke our distress and anxiety. The Akathist powerfully reminds us of how much can be added to our perception and our lives when we accept God’s unceasing invitation for us to join ourselves to Him

August 8, 2007 · Fr. Stephen Freeman

I have seen several translations of this hymn. This one comes from the site of St. John the Baptist Cathedral (ROCOR) in Washington, D.C. I have edited it only typographically. It was composed by Metropolitan Tryphon (Prince Boris Petrovich Turkestanov) +1934 – but frequently attributed to Father Gregory Petrov, who died in a Soviet prison camp. It continues to grow in its popularity within the Orthodox Church. In my parish’s usage, we sing it to the Alaskan Akathist Melody, a simple, two-line, tune that can easily be adapted to the unpredictable number of lines in the hymn. With each day, some news of one thing or another reaches me that is cause either for distress or anxiety – but is met far better with prayer and thanksgiving. Either there is a God whom we trust or “we are of most men to be pitied.” I prefer to give thanks.

ODE 1

Everlasting King, Your will for our salvation is full of power. Your right arm controls the whole course of human life. We give You thanks for all Your mercies, seen and unseen: For eternal life, for the heavenly joys of the Kingdom which is to be. Grant mercy to us who sing Your praises, both now and in the time to come. Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

IKOS 1

I was born a weak, defenseless child, but Your angel spread his wings over my cradle to defend me. From birth until now, Your love hasillumined my path, and has wondrously guided me towards the light of eternity. From birth until now the generous gifts of Your Providencehave been marvelously showered upon me. I give You thanks, with all who have come to know You, who call upon Your Name:

Glory to You for calling me into being.
Glory to You, showing me the beauty of the universe.
Glory to You, spreading out before me heaven and earth, like the pages in a book of eternal wisdom.
Glory to You for Your eternity in this fleeting world.
Glory to You for Your mercies, seen and unseen.
Glory to You, through every sigh of my sorrow.
Glory to You for every step of my life’s journey,for every moment of glory.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 2

O Lord, how lovely it is to be Your guest. Breeze full of scents — mountains reaching to the skies — waters like a boundless mirror, reflecting the sun’s golden rays and the scudding clouds. All nature murmurs mysteriously, breathing depths of Your tenderness. Birds and beasts of the forest bear the imprint of Your love. Blessed are you, mother earth, in your fleeting loveliness, which wakens our yearning for happiness that will last forever in the land where, amid beauty that grows not old, rings out the cry: Alleluia!

IKOS 2

You have brought me into life as if into an enchanted paradise. We have seen the sky like a chalice of deepest blue, where in the azure heights the birds are singing. We have listened to the soothing murmur of the forest and the melodious music of the streams. We have tasted fruit of fine flavor and the sweet-scented honey. We can live very well on your earth. It is a pleasure to be your guest.
Glory to You for the feast-day of life.
Glory to You for the perfume of lilies and roses.
Glory to You for each different taste of berry and fruit.
Glory to You for the sparkling silver of early morning dew.
Glory to You for the joy of dawn’s awakening.
Glory to You for the new life each day brings.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 3

It is the Holy Spirit Who makes us find joy in each flower–the exquisite scent, the delicate color — the beauty of the Most High in the tiniest of things. Glory and honor to the Spirit, the Giver of Life, Who covers the fields with their carpet of flowers, crowns the harvest with gold, and gives to us the joy of gazing at it with our eyes. O be joyful and sing to Him: Alleluia!

IKOS 3

How glorious You are in the springtime, when every creature awakens to new life and joyfully sings Your praises with a thousand tongues! You are the source of life, the destroyer of death. By the light of the moon, nightingales sing, and the valleys and hills lie like wedding-garments, white as snow. All the earth is Your promised bride awaiting her spotless Husband. If the grass of the field is like this, how gloriously shall we be transfigured in the Second Coming, after the Resurrection! How splendid our bodies, how spotless our souls!

Glory to You for the warmth and tenderness of the world of nature.
Glory to You for the numberless creatures around us.
Glory to you for the depths of Your wisdom–the whole world a living sign of it.
Glory to You: On my knees, I kiss the traces of Your unseen hand.
Glory to You, enlightening us with the clarity of eternal life.
Glory to You for the hope of the unutterable, imperishable beauty of immortality.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 4

How filled with sweetness are those whose thoughts dwell on You: how life-giving Your holy Word. To speak with You is more soothing than anointing with oil, sweeter than the honeycomb. To pray to You lifts the spirit, refreshes the soul. Where You are not, there is only emptiness; hearts are smitten with sadness; nature, and life itself, becomes sorrowful. Where You are, the soul is filled with abundance, and its song resounds like a torrent of life: Alleluia!

IKOS 4

When the sun is setting, when quietness falls, like the peace of eternal sleep, and the silence of the spent day reigns, then in the splendor of its declining rays, filtering through the clouds, I see Your dwelling-place. Firey and purple, gold and blue, they speak prophet-like of the ineffable beauty of Your presence, and call to us in their majesty. We turn to the Father:

Glory to You at the hushed hour of nightfall.
Glory to You, covering the earth with peace.
Glory to You for the last ray of the sun as it sets.
Glory to You for sleep’s repose that restores us.
Glory to You for Your goodness, even in time of darkness, when all the world is hidden from our eyes.
Glory to You for the prayers offered by a trembling soul.
Glory to You for the pledge of our reawakening on the glorious last day, that day which has no evening.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 5

The dark storm-clouds of life bring no terror to those in whose hearts Your fire is burning brightly. Outside is the darkness of the whirlwind, the terror and howling of the storm, but in the heart, in the presence of Christ, there is light and peace, silence. The heart sings: Alleluia!

IKOS 5

I see Your heavens resplendent with stars. How glorious You are, radiant with light! Eternity watches me by the rays of the distant stars. I am small, insignificant, but the Lord is at my side: Your right arm guides me wherever I go.

Glory to You, ceaselessly watching over me.
Glory to You for the encounters You arrange for me.
Glory to You for the love of parents, for the faithfulness of friends.
Glory to You for the humbleness of animals which serve me.
Glory to You for the unforgettable moments of life.
Glory to You for the heart’s innocent joy.
Glory to You for the joy of living, moving, and being able to return Your love.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 6

How great and how close You are in the powerful track of the storm! How mighty Your right arm in the blinding flash of the lightning! How awesome Your majesty! The voice of the Lord fills the fields, It speaks in the rustling of the trees. The voice of the Lord is in the thunder and the downpour. The voice of the Lord is heard above the waters. Praise be to You in the roar of mountains ablaze. You shake the earth like a garment; You pile up to the sky the waves of the sea. Praise be to You, bringing low the pride of man. You bring from his heart a cry of penitence: Alleluia!

IKOS 6

When the lightning flash has lit up the camp dining hall, how feeble seems the light from the lamp. Thus do You, like the lightning, unexpectedly light up my heart with flashes of intense joy. After Your blinding light, how drab, how colorless, how illusory all else seems.

Glory to You, the highest peak of men’s dreaming.
Glory to You for our unquenchable thirst for communion with God.
Glory to You, making us dissatisfied with earthly things.
Glory to You, turning on us Your healing rays.
Glory to You, subduing the power of the spirits of darkness and dooming to death every evil.
Glory to You for the signs of Your presence, for the joy of hearing Your voice and living in Your love.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 7

In the wondrous blending of sounds, it is Your call we hear. In the harmony of many voices, in the sublime beauty of music, in the glory of the works of great composers, You lead us to the threshold of paradise to come, and to the choirs of angels. All true beauty has the power to draw the soul towards You and make it sing in ecstasy: Alleluia!

IKOS 7

The breath of Your Holy Spirit inspires artists, poets, scientists. The power of Your supreme knowledge makes them prophets and interpreters of Your laws, who reveal the depths of Your creative wisdom. Their works speak unwittingly of You. How great are You in Your creation! How great are You in man!

Glory to You, showing Your unsurpassable power in the laws of the universe.
Glory to You, for all nature is filled with Your laws.
Glory to You for what You have revealed to us in Your mercy.
Glory to You for what you have hidden from us in Your wisdom.
Glory to You for the inventiveness of the human mind.
Glory to You for the dignity of man’s labor.
Glory to You for the tongues of fire that bring inspiration.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 8

How near You are in the day of sickness. You Yourself visit the sick. You Yourself bend over the sufferer’s bed; his heart speaks to You. In the throes of sorrow and suffering, You bring peace; You bring unexpected consolation. You are the Comforter. You are the Love which watches over and heals us. To You we sing the song: Alleluia!

IKOS 8

When in my childhood I called upon You consciously for the first time, You heard my prayer; You filled my heart with the blessing of peace. At that moment I knew Your goodness, knew how blessed are those who turn to You. I started to call upon You, night and day, and even now, I call upon Your Name:

Glory to You, satisfying my desires with good things.
Glory to You, watching over me day and night.
Glory to You, curing affliction and emptiness with the healing flow of time.
Glory to You; no loss is irreparable in You, giver of eternal life to all.
Glory to You, making immortal all that is lofty and good.
Glory to You, promising us the longed-for meeting with our loved ones who have died.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 9

Why is it that on a feast-day the whole of nature mysteriously smiles? Why is it that then a heavenly gladness fills our hearts, a gladness far beyond that of earth, and the very air in church and in the altar becomes luminous? It is the breath of Your gracious love; it is the reflection of the glory of Mount Tabor. Then do heaven and earth sing Your praise: Alleluia!

IKOS 9

When You called me to serve my brothers and filed my soul with humility, one of Your deep-piercing rays shone into my heart; it became luminous, full of light, like iron glowing in the furnace. I have seen Your face, face of mystery and of unapproachable glory.

Glory to You, transfiguring our lives with deeds of love.
Glory to You, making wonderfully sweet the keeping of Your commandments.
Glory to You, making Yourself known where man shows mercy on his neighbor.
Glory to You, sending us failure and misfortune, that we may understand the sorrows of others.
Glory to You, rewarding us so well for the good we do.
Glory to You, welcoming the impulse of our heart’s love.
Glory to You, raising to the heights of heaven every act of love in earth and sky.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 10

No one can put together what has crumbled into dust, but You can restore a conscience turned to ashes; You can restore to its former beauty a soul lost and without hope. With You, there is nothing that cannot be redeemed. You are Love; You are Creator and Redeemer. We praise You, singing: Alleluia!

IKOS 10

Remember, my God, the fall of Lucifer, full of pride; keep me safe with the power of Your grace. Save me from falling away from You; save me from doubt. Incline my heart to call upon You, present in everything.

Glory to You for every happening, every condition Your Providence has put me in.
Glory to You for what you speak to me in my heart.
Glory to You for what you reveal to me, asleep or awake.
Glory to You for scattering our vain imaginations.
Glory to You for raising us from the slough of our passions through suffering.
Glory to You for curing our pride of heart by humiliation.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 11

Across the cold chains of the centuries, I feel the warmth of Your breath; I feel Your blood pulsing in my veins. Part of time has already gone, but now You are the present. I stand by Your cross; I was the cause of it. I cast myself down in the dust before it. Here is the triumph of love, the victory of salvation. Here the centuries themselves cannot remain silent, singing Your praises: Alleluia!

IKOS 11

Blessed are they that will share in the King’s banquet; but already on earth You give me a foretaste of this blessedness. How many times with Your own hand have You held out to me Your Body and Your Blood, and I, though a miserable sinner, have received this Sacrament, and have tasted Your love, so ineffable, so heavenly!

Glory to You for the unquenchable fire of Your grace.
Glory to You, building Your Church, a haven of peace in a tortured world.
Glory to You for the life-giving water of baptism in which we find new birth.
Glory to You, restoring to the penitent purity white as the lily.
Glory to you for the Cup of Salvation and the Bread of eternal joy.
Glory to You for exalting us to the highest heaven.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 12

How oft have I seen the reflection of Your glory in the faces of the dead. How resplendent they were, with beauty and heavenly joy; how ethereal, how translucent their faces; how triumphant over suffering and death, their felicity and peace. Even in the silence they were calling upon You. In the hour of my death, enlighten my soul, too, that it may cry out to You: Alleluia!

IKOS 12

What sort of praise can I give You? I have never heard the song of the cherubim, a joy reserved for the spirits above. But I know the praises that nature sings to You. In winter, I have beheld how silently in the moonlight the whole earth offers You prayer, clad in its white mantle of snow, sparkling like diamonds. I have seen how the rising sun rejoices in You, how the song of the birds is a chorus of praise to You. I have heard the mysterious murmurings of the forests about You, and the winds singing Your praise as they stir the waters. I ahve understood how the choirs of stars proclaim Your glory as they move forever in the depths of infinite space. What is my poor worship? All nature obeys You, I do not. Yet while I live, I see Your love, I long to thank You, pray to You, and call upon Your Name:

Glory to You, giving us light.
Glory to You, loving us with love so deep, divine, and infinite.
Glory to You, blessing us with light, and with the host of angels and saints.
Glory to You, Father All-Holy, promising us a share in Your Kingdom.
Glory to You, Holy Spirit, Life-giving Sun of the world to come.
Glory to You for all things, holy and most merciful Trinity.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

ODE 13

Life-giving and merciful Trinity, receive my thanksgiving for all Your goodness. Make us worthy of Your blessings, so that, when we have brought to fruit the talents You have entrusted to us, we may enter into the joy of our Lord, forever exulting in the shout of victory: Alleluia!

(Repeat Ikos 1, Ode 1.)

Temple Of The Foolish Rich Man – Homily by Father Phillip LeMasters

Have you ever thought about the similarities and differences between barns and temples? Usually when we think of barns, we think simply of places to house farm animals or to store crops. We normally do not think of them as having much spiritual significance. The rich man in today’s gospel lesson thought of his barns only in terms of his business, which was so successful that he looked forward simply to relaxing, eating, drinking, and enjoying himself. Unfortunately, he did so to the point of making his possessions an idol. He was rich in things of the world, but poor towards God. He was ultimately a fool, for he based his life on what was temporary and lost his own soul. His barn became a temple only to himself.

We live in a culture that constantly tempts us to follow this man’s bad example. More so than any previous generation, we are bombarded with advertising and other messages telling us that the good life is found in what we can buy. Whether it is cell phones, clothing, cars, houses, entertainment, food, or medicines, the message is the same: Happiness comes from buying the latest new product. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, this message is particularly strong. We do not have to become Scrooges, however. It is one thing to give reasonable gifts to our loved ones in celebration of the Savior’s birth, but it is quite another to turn this holy time of year into an idolatrous orgy of materialism that obscures the very reason for the season.

We are not really near Christmas yet, as Advent just began on November 15. Today, as we continue to celebrate the ForeFeast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, we are reminded of the importance of preparing to receive Christ at His birth. Instead of looking for fulfillment in barns and the money they produce, we should follow her into the temple. Sts. Joachim and Anna took their young daughter to the temple in Jerusalem, where she grew up in prayer and purity in preparation to become the living temple of God when she consented to the message of the Archangel Gabriel to become the mother of the God-Man Jesus Christ. The Theotokos was not prepared for her uniquely glorious role by a life focused on making as much money as possible, acquiring the most fashionable and expensive products, or simply pleasing herself. No, she became unbelievably rich toward God by focusing on the one thing needful, by a life focused on hearing the word of God and keeping it.

In ways appropriate to our own life circumstances, God calls each of us to do the same thing. And before we start making excuses, we need to recognize that what St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians applies to us also: “[Y]ou are no longer strangers and sojourners, but…fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in Whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in Whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” In other words, to be a Christian is to be a temple, for the Holy Spirit dwells in us both personally and collectively. The only way to become a better temple is to follow the example of the Theotokos in deliberate, intentional practices that make us rich toward God, that open ourselves to the healing and transformation of our souls that Christ has brought to the world. We must participate personally in His holiness if we want to welcome Him anew into our lives at Christmas.

The rich fool became wealthy by investing himself entirely in his business to the neglect of everything else. In contrast, the Theotokos invested herself so fully in the Lord that she was able to fulfill the most exalted, blessed, and difficult calling of all time as the Virgin Mother of the Savior. In order for us to follow her example by becoming better temples of Christ, we also have to invest ourselves in holiness. The hard truth is that holiness does not happen by accident, especially in a culture that worships at the altar of pleasure, power, and possessions. So much in our world shapes us every day a bit more like the rich fool in our gospel lesson, regardless of how much or how little money we have. Many of us are addicted to electronic screens on phones, computers, and televisions. What we see and hear through virtually all forms of entertainment encourages us to think and act as though our horizons extend no further than a barn. In other words, the measure of our lives becomes what we possess, what we can buy, and whatever pleasure or distraction we can find on our own terms with food, drink, sex, or anything else. We think of ourselves as isolated individuals free to seek happiness however it suits us. No wonder that there is so much divorce, abortion, sexual immorality, and disregard for the poor, sick, and aged in our society. Investing our lives in these ways is a form of idolatry, of offering ourselves to false gods that can neither save nor satisfy us. The barn of the rich fool was also a temple, a pagan temple in which he basically worshiped himself. If we are not careful, we will become just like him by laying up treasures for ourselves according to the dominant standards of our culture and shut ourselves out of the new life that Christ has brought to the world.

We cannot control the larger trends of our society, but we can control what we do each day. During this Nativity Fast, no matter the circumstances of our lives, we can all take steps to live more faithfully as members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone. In other words, we can intentionally reject corrupting influences and live in ways that serve our calling to become better living temples of the Lord. Yes, we can stop obsessing about our barns and enter into the temple of the one true God.

The first step is to set aside time for prayer. If we do not pray every day, we should not be surprised that it is hard to pray in Church or that we find only frustration in trying to resist temptation or to know God’s peace in our lives. We also need to read the Bible. If we fill our minds with everything but the Holy Scriptures and the lives of the Saints, we should not be surprised that worry, fear, and unholy thoughts dominate us. Fasting is also crucial. If we do not fast or otherwise practice self-denial, we should not be surprised when self-centered desires for pleasure routinely get the better of us and make us their slaves. We should also share with the poor. If we do not give generously of our time and resources to others in need, we should not be surprised when selfishness alienates us from God, our neighbors, and even our loved ones. This is also a time for humble confession and repentance. If we refuse to acknowledge and turn from our sins, we should not be surprised when we are overcome by guilt and fall into despair about leading a faithful life. No, the Theotokos did not wander into the temple by accident and we will not follow her into a life of holiness unless we intentionally reorient ourselves toward Him.

None of us will do that perfectly, but we must all take the steps we are capable of taking in order to turn our barns into temples. Remember that the infant Christ was born in a barn, which by virtue of His presence became a temple. The same will be true of our distracted, broken lives when—with the fear of God and faith and love—we open ourselves to the One Who comes to save us at Christmas. The Theotokos prepared to receive the Savior by attending to the one thing needful, to hearing and keeping His word. In the world as we know it, that takes deliberate effort, but it remains the only way to be rich toward God. And that is why Christ is born at Christmas, to bring us into His blessed, holy, and divine life which is more marvelous than anything we can possibly imagine. As the Lord said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

The Mystery of Holy Week – Father Stephen Freeman

Among the more pernicious ideas that inhabit our contemporary world is the notion that we are all isolated, independent, and alone. Even when we gather, we think of ourselves as but one among many. Among the most glaring exceptions to this form of thought, however, are sporting events. People attend a football game and declare when it is finished, “We won!” or “We lost!” We feel genuine joy at the first and sadness at the second. We do not say, “They won” (unless we mean the opposing side). This is not actually strange. Sport has, from its earliest beginnings, been a religious experience. That said, it is an experience that we fail to consider or understand. It is also a shallow, meaningless, religion.

The mystery of sport is that we have some sense not only watching, but participating in what takes place. The team’s victory is my victory. The emptiness of this mystery is that what is being “participated” in has no substance or true being. We feel robbed when a referee blows a call and the game ends with the wrong winner. At such a moment the emptiness of the game is revealed. It had no more meaning than a mistake.

This meditation on sport is a very vacuous way to get at the notion of true participation (of which it is but the least shadow). True participation lies at the heart of all worship and much else in our lives. A marriage, at its best, is a participation, a literal sharing in the life of the other. The language of Scripture describes a spouse as “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” What each does affects the other, both for good and for ill. The same is true for other relationships to lesser extents. St. Silouan said, “My brother is my life.” This participation is the very nature of love itself. We are commanded to “love your neighbor as yourself.” There can be no other form of love.

Scripture describes the knowledge of God as a participation – it is a sharing in His life. God can never be the “object” of our love for He is not an object. Because knowledge of God is by participation, Christ can say, “This is eternal life, that they might know Thee… and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” (Jn. 17:3) This, of course, is a great frustration to atheists who claim that God does not exist because they cannot perceive Him as object. The emptiness of modern life presumes that there is no participation anywhere, only life as an object among objects. Little wonder that modernity thrives on violence (if people are objects, then we can do violence without damage to ourselves).

Participation in the Holy

Our modern mind-set has difficulties with the long, exhausting services of Orthodox Holy Week. Each of the services is something of a liturgical presentation of the significant events of that day that led up to the death and resurrection of Christ. They are also a “deep-dive” into the rich meanings, both in the events themselves, but also in hearts of all involved. But more than this, the services constitute a participation in the events themselves. Just as the Holy Eucharist is a “participation” in the Body and Blood of Christ (1Cor. 10:16), so the various services of the Church are a participation in that which they represent.

St. Paul writes, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.” (Gal. 2:20) The death and resurrection of Christ are not simply events that we think about, things that happened long ago that we think of as significant. The crucifixion of Christ (to use but one example) is an event of eternal reality (as an extension of its historical character), as well. It is not just eternal, but reaches out and includes all things. It is a misunderstanding when Christians say that “Christ died for me,” without also saying, “Christ died in me, and I have died with Him.” St. Paul describes this as the very nature of Holy Baptism (Rom. 6:3).

The same mystical link that unites the sacrament of Holy Baptism and the death of Christ, is also found in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, and is the mystery that unites us to Him in all of the services. Worship has a sacramental character at all times.

In Holy Week, we do not make an extra effort merely to engage in liturgical excess. We extend that which is contained in the Liturgy of every Sunday morning across the days of an entire week that we might concentrate our souls on every detail of that most holy sacrifice, and in that concentration, allow ourselves to become aware of the grace given to us in that holy union. The services are long because the days of that week were long. We exhaust ourselves because He was exhausted. At its deepest moment, Christ Himself asked if it were possible for all of this to happen some other way. Our own doubts and hesitations are thus sanctified, and participate in the agony of the Garden. St. Paul gives voice to our hearts in our longing for participation in Christ:

“…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship [lit. “communion”]of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil 3:10-11)

Christ gives Himself for us that He might give Himself in us. We give ourselves to Him, that we might be with Him: crucified, buried, risen. It is our inheritance in the Kingdom.

Good strength in the events of this week!

The Bridegroom Services… Holy Week Begins

By Father Steven Kostoff with extracts from Greek Diocese Website

Holy Week begins tonight with the Bridegroom Matins of Holy Monday sung and chanted in anticipation on Sunday evening. The festal atmosphere of Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday will yield to the solemnity, sobriety and sadness of Holy Week as the Lord moves toward His voluntary and life-giving Passion. The Son of God came into the world “to bear witness to the truth” (JN. 18:37) and “to give his life as a ransom for many.” (MK. 10:45). It is our privilege and responsibility to accompany Christ to Golgotha to the extent that our lives make that possible.

As Fr. Sergius Bulgakov wrote: “The beauty, the richness and the power of these services take possession of the soul and sweep it along as upon a mystic torrent.” (The Orthodox Church, p. 131) Therefore, let us “lay aside all earthly care” during Holy Week and focus on our Lord Jesus Christ.

At the services of Holy Week, we enter into the “today” of the events being reactualized so that the event and all of its salvific power is made present to the gathered community. Thus, we are not simply commemorating a past event for its dramatic impact, or presenting something of an Orthodox “passion play.” Rather, we re-present the event of the Crucifixion so that we participate in it within the liturgical time of the Church’s worship.

As Bishop Ilarion Alfeyev writes:

“Each one of us receives Christ as our personal Savior, and so we each make our own all the events of Christ’s life through personal experience, to whatever extent we can. The feast day is a realization here and now of an event that occurred once in time but is always happening outside time.”

And he adds, speaking of the great saints and their faith in the Resurrection of Christ:

“They lived … by their experience of eternity and knew that Easter was not a single day of the year, but an eternal reality in which they participated daily.” (The Mystery of Faith, p. 119)

That means that our presence at one of the Holy Week services confronts us with a series of choices and decisions, as it did the original participants: to be with Christ or to be with any of those who chose to crucify Him. Will our lives reveal us as imitators of the sinful but repentant woman, or as imitators of Judas the betrayer? Do we show signs of repentance or do we betray Christ in the small events of daily living? Or, perhaps like those for whom a moment of decision was at hand, we remain “guiltless” but apathetic bystanders whose very indecisiveness keeps us distant from the company of Christ.

This is essential to bear in mind precisely because we are referring to actual, concrete historical events that occurred at a particular place in time among a particular people – the Jews to whom Christ belonged, and the Roman authorities that controlled much of Palestine. In our piety we can inadvertently stand aloof of the actual dramatis personae caught up in the divine-human drama of our Lord’s Passion and harshly judge all of the “wrongdoers” from the safe distance of our Christian faith.

Bridegroom Service Introduction

Beginning on the evening of Palm Sunday and continuing through the evening of Holy Tuesday, the Orthodox Church observes a special service known as the Service of the Bridegroom. Each evening service is the Matins service of the following day (e.g. the service held on Sunday evening is the Orthros service for Holy Monday). The name of the service is from the figure of the Bridegroom in the parable of the Ten Virgins found in Matthew 25:1-13.

Background

The first part of Holy Week presents us with an array of themes based chiefly on the last days of Jesus’ earthly life. The story of the Passion, as told and recorded by the Evangelists, is preceded by a series of incidents located in Jerusalem and a collection of parables, sayings and discourses centered on Jesus’ divine sonship, the kingdom of God, the Parousia, and Jesus’ castigation of the hypocrisy and dark motives of the religious leaders. The observances of the first three days of Great Week are rooted in these incidents and sayings. The three days constitute a single liturgical unit. They have the same cycle and system of daily prayer. The Scripture lessons, hymns, commemorations, and ceremonials that make up the festal elements in the respective services of the cycle highlight significant aspects of salvation history, by calling to mind the events that anticipated the Passion and by proclaiming the inevitability and significance of the Parousia.

The Matins of each of these days is called the Service of the Bridegroom. The name comes from the central figure in the well-known parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13). The title Bridegroom suggests the intimacy of love. It is not without significance that the kingdom of God is compared to a bridal feast and a bridal chamber. The Christ of the Passion is the divine Bridegroom of the Church. The imagery connotes the final union of the Lover and the beloved. The title Bridegroom also suggests the Parousia. In the patristic tradition, the aforementioned parable is related to the Second Coming; and is associated with the need for spiritual vigilance and preparedness, by which we are enabled to keep the divine commandments and receive the blessings of the age to come. The troparion “Behold the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night…”, which is sung at the beginning of the Matins of Great Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, relates the worshiping community to that essential expectation: watching and waiting for the Lord, who will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Holy Monday

On Holy Monday we commemorate Joseph the Patriarch, the beloved son of Jacob. A major figure of the Old Testament, Joseph’s story is told in the final section of the Book of Genesis (chs. 37-50). Because of his exceptional qualities and remarkable life, our patristic and liturgical tradition portrays Joseph as tipos Christou, i.e., as a prototype, prefigurement or image of Christ. The story of Joseph illustrates the mystery of God’s providence, promise and redemption. Innocent, chaste and righteous, his life bears witness to the power of God’s love and promise. The lesson to be learned from Joseph’s life, as it bears upon the ultimate redemption wrought by the death and resurrection of Christ, is summed up in the words he addressed to his brothers who had previously betrayed him, “’Fear not … As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.’ Thus he reassured them and comforted them” (Genesis 50:19-21). The commemoration of the noble, blessed and saintly Joseph reminds us that in the great events of the Old Testament, the Church recognizes the realities of the New Testament.

Also, on Great and Holy Monday the Church commemorates the event of the cursing of the fig tree (Matthew 21:18-20). In the Gospel narrative this event is said to have occurred on the morrow of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:18 and Mark 11:12). For this reason it found its way into the liturgy of Great Monday. The episode is also quite relevant to Great Week. Together with the event of the cleansing of the Temple this episode is another manifestation of Jesus’ divine power and authority and a revelation as well of God’s judgment upon the faithlessness of the Jewish religious classes. The fig tree is symbolic of Israel become barren by her failure to recognize and receive Christ and His teachings. The cursing of the fig tree is a parable in action, a symbolic gesture. Its meaning should not be lost on any one in any generation. Christ’s judgment on the faithless, unbelieving, unrepentant and unloving will be certain and decisive on the Last Day. This episode makes it clear that nominal Christianity is not only inadequate, it is also despicable and unworthy of God’s kingdom. Genuine Christian faith is dynamic and fruitful. It permeates one’s whole being and causes a change. Living, true and unadulterated faith makes the Christian conscious of the fact that he is already a citizen of heaven. Therefore, his way of thinking, feeling, acting and being must reflect this reality. Those who belong to Christ ought to live and walk in the Spirit; and the Spirit will bear fruit in them: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-25).

Holy Tuesday

On Holy Tuesday the Church calls to remembrance two parables, which are related to the Second Coming. The one is the parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-3); the other the parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). These parables point to the inevitability of the Parousia and deal with such subjects as spiritual vigilance, stewardship, accountability and judgment.

From these parables we learn at least two basic things. First, Judgment Day will be like the situation in which the bridesmaids (or virgins) of the parable found themselves: some ready for it, some not ready. The time one decides for God is now and not at some undefined point in the future. If “time and tide waits for no man,” certainly the Parousia is no exception. The tragedy of the closed door is that individuals close it, not God. The exclusion from the marriage feast, the kingdom, is of our own making. Second, we are reminded that watchfulness and readiness do not mean a wearisome, spiritless performance of formal and empty obligations. Most certainly it does not mean inactivity and slothfulness. Watchfulness signifies inner stability, soberness, tranquility and joy. It means spiritual alertness, attentiveness and vigilance. Watchfulness is the deep personal resolve to find and do the will of God, embrace every commandment and every virtue, and guard the intellect and heart from evil thoughts and actions. Watchfulness is the intense love of God.

Holy Wednesday

On Holy Wednesday the Church invites the faithful to focus their attention on two figures: the sinful woman who anointed the head of Jesus shortly before the passion (Matthew 26:6-13), and Judas, the disciple who betrayed the Lord. The former acknowledged Jesus as Lord, while the latter severed himself from the Master. The one was set free, while the other became a slave. The one inherited the kingdom, while the other fell into perdition. These two people bring before us concerns and issues related to freedom, sin, hell and repentance.

The repentance of the sinful harlot is contrasted with the tragic fall of the chosen disciple. The Triodion make is clear that Judas perished, not simply because he betrayed his Master, but because, having fallen into the sin of betrayal, he then refused to believe in the possibility of forgiveness. If we deplore the actions of Judas, we do so not with vindictive self-righteousness but conscious always of our own guilt. In general, all the passages in the Triodion that seem to be directed against the Jews should be understood in this same way. When the Triodion denounces those who rejected Christ and delivered Him to death, we recognize that these words apply not only to others, but to ourselves: for have we not betrayed the Savior many times in our hearts and crucified Him anew?

I have transgressed more than the harlot, O loving Lord, yet never have I offered You my flowing tears. But in silence I fall down before You and with love I kiss Your most pure feet, beseeching You as Master to grant me remission of sins; and I cry to You, O Savior: Deliver me from the filth of my works.

While the sinful woman brought oil of myrrh, the disciple came to an agreement with the transgressors. She rejoiced to pour out what was very precious, he made haste to sell the One who is above all price. She acknowledged Christ as Lord, he severed himself from the Master. She was set free, but Judas became the slave of the enemy. Grievous was his lack of love. Great was her repentance. Grant such repentance also unto me, O Savior who has suffered for our sake, and save us.

Icon of the Bridegroom

“The Bridegroom” Icon portrays Christ during His Passion, particularly during the period when our Lord was mocked and tortured by the soldiers who crowned Him with thorns, dressed Him in purple and placed a reed in His Hands, jeering Him as the “King of the Jews.”

Orthodox Christian Celebration of the Bridegroom Service

The services conducted on Palm Sunday evening and on the evenings of Holy Monday and Tuesday are the Matins services of the following day. After the reading of the Psalms at the beginning of the service the Troparion of the Bridegroom Service is chanted three times. On Palm Sunday evening as this hymn is being chanted, the priest carries the icon of Christ as Bridegroom in procession. The icon is placed in the middle of the solea of the church and remains there until Holy Thursday.

The Matins Gospel readings for each of the Bridegroom Services are:

Holy Monday – Matthew 21:18-43; Holy Tuesday – Matthew 22:15-46, 23:1-39; and Holy Wednesday – John 12:17-50.