We know so very little.
WISHING TO RESTORE THE FALLEN WORLD FROM CORRUPTION,
THE LORD CAME TO DWELL IN YOUR WOMB, THEOTOKOS,
IN A WAY THAT HE ALONE UNDERSTANDS.
AND ALL OF US WHO HAVE FOUND SALVATION
CRY ALOUD TO YOU WITH THE GREETING OF THE ANGEL:
REJOICE, BLESSED AMONG ALL WOMEN,
FOR YOU HAVE BROUGHT FORTH JOY TO THE WHOLE INHABITED EARTH!
When I was a protestant, my sect remembered a few of our great leaders, but not really many and not fervently. We believed ourselves to be anti-traditional, so we didn’t spend much time looking back to them. We went straight to the Bible, believing that it was mediated to us directly from the early church (first century) and that things had badly fallen apart by 100 AD. Yet we read the English translation, especially favoring (as I still do) the beauties of the one ordained by a probably bisexual and certainly unstable King who served as head of the church and commissioned his scholars to create a text that would be the official Bible of his kingdom, thus bringing unity.
I will always love the King James Version, and I will always be grateful to those from my home and my church who taught me to love the written word of God and the living Word as well. But I am pleased to be able to remember with joy and reverence 2000 years of heroes of the faith from literally every continent and virtually every country on earth.
I digress because of this marvelous veneration of St. Theodore in today’s matins, one I would have never learned about in my sectarian days:
CROWNED AND VICTORIOUS SAINT OF GOD,
YOU NOW STAND WITH THE ANGELS BEFORE CHRIST’S JUDGMENT SEAT.
FILLED WITH THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN,
PRAY WITHOUT CEASING FOR PEACE IN THE WORLD
AND FOR OUR SALVATION, THEODORE,
AS WE CELEBRATE YOUR JOYFUL FEAST WITH TRUE DEVOTION,//
BLESSED AND GLORIFIED MARTYR!
I do not have the self-mastery or degree of illumination for that, but Oh how I do want it.
Imagine being remembered by Christ, in and by His church, for all the right reasons, for all eternity. This is the honor Christ wants to give us!
Before reading a veneration like that, it was hard to grasp what the Apostles meant when they said things like, “If you humble yourself, he will exalt you.”
Exalt indeed. Memory eternal indeed.
LET US RECEIVE THE PROCLAMATION OF LENT WITH JOY!
FOR IF OUR FOREFATHER ADAM HAD KEPT THE FAST,
WE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN DEPRIVED OF PARADISE.
THE FRUIT WHICH KILLED US WAS BEAUTIFUL TO SEE AND GOOD TO EAT,
SO LET US NOT BE FOOLED BY OUR EYES,
FOR AFTER FOOD IS EATEN, IT IS WORTHLESS.
LET US FLEE FROM INTEMPERANCE,
SO THAT WE MAY NOT BE CONQUERED BY PASSIONS AFTER HAVING OUR FILL.
LET US SIGN OURSELVES WITH THE BLOOD OF THE ONE
WHO, FOR OUR SAKE, WAS VOLUNTARILY LED TO DEATH,
SO THAT THE DESTROYER MIGHT NOT TOUCH US.
SO WE WILL PARTAKE OF THE SACRED PASCHA OF CHRIST//
FOR THE SALVATION OF OUR SOULS.
Here is a reading of Milton’s Paradise Lost on the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise on Youtube.
And earlier:
I am bowed down to the earth, O Christ,
by the burden of my sinful deeds,
and in dark discouragement I cry to You, Lover of mankind:
By Your precious blood heal the incurable wounds of my soul
that I may sing the praises of Your Divinity.I have made iniquity my food and heedlessness my drink,
and I continue without any change.
I take pleasure in abstaining from food to no purpose,
for such is not the fast the Lord has chosen.
YOU HAVE APPOINTED REPENTANCE FOR ME, A SINNER, LORD,
WANTING TO SAVE ME, AN UNWORTHY MAN, BECAUSE OF YOUR GREAT MERCY.
I FALL DOWN TO YOU IN PRAYER:
HUMBLE MY SOUL THROUGH FASTING, FOR I HAVE FLED TO YOU//
LORD OF GREAT MERCY!
YOU HAVE APPOINTED REPENTANCE FOR ME, A SINNER, LORD,
WANTING TO SAVE ME, AN UNWORTHY MAN, BECAUSE OF YOUR GREAT MERCY.
I FALL DOWN TO YOU IN PRAYER:
HUMBLE MY SOUL THROUGH FASTING, FOR I HAVE FLED TO YOU//
LORD OF GREAT MERCY!
This passage is from the end of Matins, but helps me remember what we are about:
COME, LET US BATTLE THOUGHTS OF PASSION THROUGH FASTING,
SHIELDING OURSELVES WITH SPIRITUAL WINGS
SO THAT WE MAY ENDURE THE ENEMY’S STORM WITH EASE!
THAT WE MAY BE WORTHY OF ADORING THE CROSS
OF THE SON OF GOD WHO WAS VOLUNTARILY SLAIN FOR THE WORLD,
THAT WE MAY SPIRITUALLY CELEBRATE THE SAVIOR’S RESURRECTION FROM THE
DEAD!
And here is why we fast:
Rejecting the bitter food of sin,
let us seek to please Christ,
Who of His own will tasted gall
and by the Cross cast down the author of evil.
Sin has become a habit for me,
and it drags me down to complete perdition.
But by Your Cross deliver me from my sinfulness,
compassionate Lord of many mercies!
The simple, direct beauty of this passage arises from its honesty and authenticity as much as its skillful use of imagery (if it can be called that):
The furnace of the passions consumes my soul;
but quench its flames with the dew of Your mercy.
For in Your loving self-abasement, Benefactor,
at Your Crucifixion,
You made a fountain of dispassion to flow from Your pure side.
We all honor you, undefiled Virgin,
as the shining lamp and candlestick
in which the fire of the Godhead came to dwell,
bringing light to those held fast in the dark night of corruption,
and we bless your childbearing, blessed among women!
And here has been the great surprise for me. When I thought of fasting in legalistic terms, and therefore wouldn’t do it, this would never have entered my mind, which was disordered by its false categories:
The Fast shines upon us all more brightly than the sun,
bringing us the light of grace,
proclaiming the good news of the Cross,
of the precious Passion, and the saving day of Resurrection.
This striking phrase puts it all in perspective:
the fire and torment that I deserve to suffer
because of my delight in sin.
It’s not good for our souls to pursue our every passion. Feeling strongly about something is not reason enough to act. If we did not delight in sin, we would not be tempted to do it. And we ought not to delight in it. One could almost say that sin is a matter of taste.
I bow down to the one Essence;
I sing to the three Persons:
the One God of all, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
the ever-existing Life.
This is the first day of the Fast.
For you, soul, let it be the setting aside of sin,
the return to God; to life with Him.
Flee from the abyss of evil.
Love only those ways which lead to peace,
resting before and within God.
From the Lenten Triodion
At approximately the midpoint of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom we are confronted with what may be the most difficult practical challenge of the whole service.
Let us who mystically represent the cherubim
And who sing the thrice holy hymn
To the undivided Trinity
Now lay aside all earthly care
One finds out that his taxes are worse than he thought, that his stomach is not being healed, that his back pain will not go away, that his staff has been hired out from under him, that his loan is under water, that his knee prevents him from playing with his children, and he is told to “lay aside all earthly care.”
Were it not that we “mystically repersent the cherubim” this appeal would be nonsense.
But for the remainder of the liturgy, we have mystically entered the place of the heavenly and ideal altar, where Christ Himself sits. We truly are in the presence of angels and archangels, yet He deigns to receive at our hands this liturgy.
Truly everything changes at this point in the liturgy. While we pray some of the same prayers, our perspective is altered. We are in heaven now, tasting of the first fruits, illuminated by His Holy Spirit, accepted in the Beloved.
Even the highest angels welcome us and are pleased that we are here.
In “The Lenten Spring” Thomas Hopko describes St. John Climacus as one of the most “severe” of saints. Yet, Dr. Hopko points out, it is St. John Climacus who speaks of the joy that can be found only in godly grief.
Schmemann tells us that “the spiritual fathers had a unique understanding of the human soul. They truly knew the art of repentence, and every year during lent they make this art accessible to everyone who has ears to hear and eyes to see.”
“Blessed are those who mourn,” our Lord promised us, “For they shall be comforted.”
The Blessed (and theremore mourning) apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians an epistle whose soul is “Bright sorrow”– “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” In it, he reflected on an earlier letter in which he had caused the Corinthians to grieve over sin in their company.
“For even if I made you grieve with my letter,” he said, “I do not regret it… Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentence. For you were made sorry in a godly manner… For godly sorrow produces repentence leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.”
It would seem that the mourning our Lord blesses is not the artificial, self-centered mourning of the world – a self-pitying grief over the misery of life and all the disappointments it inevitably brings – most of all from ourselves. This mourning arises from sloth and brings in its wake profound regret. It is a faint-hearted and disspirited mourning that achieves nothing of value. Indeed, it produces death.
Such a mourning gives rise to artificial rejoicing, a juvenile pep-talk that thrives on denial of reality. “I’m alive! I’m alert! And I feel great! (So what if my soul is in mortal danger, the anxieties of life are more than I can handle, and I don’t know the way to go.) I’m alive! I’m alert! And I feel great!”
Godly sorrow produces repentence, and repentence produces life – it leads to salvation!
St. Paul proceeds to demonstrate to the Corinthians how they can see for themselves that their sorrow produced salvation:
For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner: What diligence it produced in you, what clearing, what indignation, what fear,
what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter.”
The result? “Therefore we have been comforted in your comfort. And we rejoiced exceedingly more for the joy of Titus… Therefore I rejoice that I have confidence in you in everything.” (I Corinthians 7: 8-16)
When Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden, necessity thrust upon them a fundamental choice: Will they grieve over the lost paradise, sitting on the ground and despairing over all that was once theirs? Or will they grieve over the broken relationship with the God who make their former paradise, wailing in repentence over their sins, knowing that the evil they endured was not the change in their environment but the destruction of their souls. Would they grieve with the grief of the world and produce death, or would they grieve with a godly sorrow and bear the fruit of salvation.
The fathers knew that we would confront the same choice every day, so they set aside the season of Lent, during which we could learn to sorrow in a godly way, to repent of the sins that have destroyed our souls, to begin to taste the mourning more painful than despair and the rejoicing more comforting than escape: to learn the art of repentence.
We can examine our own sorrows and ask whether they are godly. Indeed, we must examine them. We are prone to grumble and call it godliness. But do they produce the fruit listed above: diligence, clearing, indignation, fear, vehement desire, zeal, vindication!?
May God grant softness and honest repentence to the callous heart of His most unprofitable servant.
In the gospel account, the sons of Thunder (James and John) and others were arguing about who would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. They were young.
Today is the synaxis (Greek for “gathering” – same root as synagogue) of John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, and Gregory the Theologian. The tradition hands down the account of this gathering, informing us that in the 11th century some Orthodox had divided into factions over the question of which of the three was greatest. They’d even taken the names of the fathers to identify themselves. All three of them appeared to a monk, telling him that their glory was equal and they should be remembered together.
This story reminds us of the Corinthian hang-up: I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, and I am of Christ. Is Christ divided, St. Paul asks. When we cannot achieve greatness on our own due to our unwillingness to pay the price of greatness: becoming a servant, then we strive for greatness by association.
The only authentic greatness our God offers us is the greatness of the servant. Seeking that greatness, so contrary to our hearts low desires, would cure us of every division. May we be numbered among the peacemakers, and thus be called the sons of God!
I went to confession tonight and entered with my head full of strategies by which I could overcome my sins so I’d never sin again and all that. My sins are pretty disturbing.
When I finished, Father reminded me that all I have to do is keep my wedding garment clean. He kept it very simple. No strategies necessary. No cleverness. Just confess your sins, receive the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist, love your neighbor. Keep it simple.
And then he did something extraordinary. Having heard my confession and learned even more about my wicked soul, he asked me if I had thought about serving on the vestry. A part of me felt as if he had not heard a word I had said. But there it was – the forgiveness of sins, exhibited before the icon, before I could even leave the sanctuary.
At the end of vespers we repeated these priceless words: “He is a good God and loves mankind.”
Indeed.
