Each year
we are invited once again to traverse the sacred days of the fast and come to
that Week of all weeks - Holy Week. We are invited by the Church to take pause
and reorient our crazy hectic schedule around "church time." Every
year we are guided through this rich, profound and beautiful cycle of services
where we participate in Christ's final days. If we pause enough we enter into
the deep silence of the fear, isolation, sadness of the coming crucifixion of
our Lord. Though the one Subject is Christ Himself, we come to find that it is
us as well who become a vital component to these services. As we are
remembering these events - Judas, the crowds, the Virgins awaiting the
bridegroom, the harlot who anointed Christ's feet - we begin to see that we are
just like these persons. We are the Virgins who are not ready for the
bridegroom. We are Judas who so often are willing to sell Christ for the sake
of our worldly gain, we are the disciples who deny our Lord, and we are the
crowds who boldly proclaim "crucify him!" As a new mission we
continue to take steps to fill out our liturgical cycle and this year we are
adding the services for Monday through Thursday known as Bridegroom Matins.
The first
three days of Holy Week are referred to as "the end". We have just
laid our palm branches down into the silence of Christ's final days. Darkness
and judgment are the theme for the first three days. This is centered around
the the Gospel reading from Great and Holy Tuesday found in Matt. 24:36 - 26:2.
This is the parable of the ten virgins. Here we are urged not to be like the
five foolish virgins who were not prepared for the coming of the bridegroom.
The troparion hymn sung on these three days:
Behold the bridegroom comes at midnight, and
blessed is the servant whom he shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the
servant whom He shall find heedless.
Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed
down with sleep, lest you be given over to death, and lest you be shut out of
the Kingdom.
But rouse yourself, crying: "Holy! Holy!
Holy! art Thou, O our God. Through the Theotokos have mercy on us!"
Also
another hymn:
Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my
Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light,
enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me.
As we
enter into Holy Week we are overwhelmed with the sense that we have nothing to
offer our Lord and that we have wasted our life and are asleep and that we have
missed the coming of the bridegroom. It is only through the grace and mercy of
our Lord's voluntary Passion that we are made worthy to enter. We hear this
echoed on Monday evening:
How shall I, the unworthy one, appear in the
splendor of Thy saints?
For if I dare enter Thy bridal chamber with
them my garments will betray me: they are unfit for a wedding.
The angels will cast me out in chains.
Cleans the filth of my soul, O Lord, and save
me in Thy love for mankind.
O Christ the Bridegroom, my soul has
slumbered in laziness.
I have no lamp aflame with virtues.
Like the foolish virgins I wander aimlessly
when it is time for work.
But do not close Thy compassionate heart to
me, O Master.
Rouse me, shake off my heavy sleep.
Lead me with the wise virgins into the bridal
chamber, that I may hear the pure voice of those that feast and cry
unceasingly: O Lord, glory to Thee!
It is
important to let the full weight of these services permeate us. Let the heavy
truth of seeing ourselves as we truly are lead us to glorify Christ's passion
and cause us to cry out as we will on Holy Friday, "show us also Thy
Glorious resurrection!"
By Fr. Christopher Foley
A Prayer for Christ's Assistance and Thanks
for His Mercies
St. Symeon the New Theologian:
But, O
Lord, guide of those gone astray, the unerring path of those who come to You,
turn us all around and place us before Your ladder, and direct our hands with
Your own hand to take hold of it, and enable us to raise ourselves from the
earth and to step onto the first rung, so that we may know that we have
somehow, sometime, taken hold of something with our hands and have raised
ourselves a little from the earth. For we are obliged to ascend, just a little,
at first to You, in order that You, the good Master, may come down from so far
away and unite Yourself to us. Show us, Master, the door at the forecourt of
Your Kingdom, so that we may knock patiently at it until the gate should open
to us by virtue of our voluntary death, and we enter within and knock one by
one at the gates and open them. May You Yourself, hearing our groans and the
beating of our breasts, hurry to come down from your high chambers, You the
greatly compassionate and merciful God, that we may hear the sounds of Your
all-immaculate feat and know that You are opening the innermost gates, closed
to sinners, and drawing near us and saying: "Who is he who is
knocking?" and that, answering with cries and tears, we may reply to You
with trembling and joy: "We are, Master, we the unworthy, the wretched,
Your cast-off and wicked servants, we who until now have been wandering astray
among mountains and cliffs and ravines. We are those who have senselessly
soiled Your holy Baptism, who denied our covenants with You. We are those who
have fled away and even deserted voluntarily to Your enemy who plots against
our souls. Now, though, having remembered You and Your love for mankind, we
have run away from there and, weary with labor, have come to You in great fear
and trembling.
Forgive
and be not angry with us, Master, but with mercy and compassion for us wretched
ones open to us, Lord, and do not call to mind our evils, neither bear rancour
for our ingratitude, for we have stood long hours in knocking, nor
misunderstand us, Your servants, lest, having been slighted, we turn backwards.
We have grown weary beating on the doors to the forecourts of Your Kingdom.
Open to us, You Who by nature love mankind, have compassion on us. For if only
You open to us the door of Your mercy by a little, who will not shudder at seeing
you? Who will not fall prostrate in fear and trembling and beseech Your mercy?
Who, seeing You Who have ten thousand times ten thousand angels and a thousand
thousand archangels and thrones and powers, abandoning the heights and coming
down to us, and meeting and opening to us, and both welcoming us graciously and
falling upon our necks and kissing us, who will not immediately wounded to the
quick and undone as if he were dead? And his bones will be poured out on the
earth like water, and he will weep day and night reckoning up the ocean of Your
compassion and goodness, and reflecting the glory and splendor of Your
countenance. Glory be to You, Who have arranged all things thus. Glory to You,
Who have been well-pleased to be seen by and united with us. Glory to You, Who
for the sake of Your great compassion are revealed and seen by us, You Who by
nature are invisible even to the heavenly powers themselves. Glory to You,
Whose mercy toward us is unspeakable, Who have deigned through repentance both
to abide and to walk with us. Through the payers of our Holy Fathers, O Lord
Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Source: http://holycrossoca.org/newslet/0804.html
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