The Catalog of Good Deeds: Great Lent

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This year, the feast of Annunciation fell on the Great Saturday. Last time such a beautiful coincidence happened in 2007. What are the liturgical peculiarities of this day and how can we celebrate the feast?

After the rite of Burial of the Shroud (usually on Great Friday or at night on Great Saturday, an appealing glorification is sung: “With the voice of the archangel we cry to Thee, O Pure One: Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee!”

There are two Gospel readings: Matthew, the end of chapter 27, in which it is told about the burial of Chris, and the traditional readings of the feasts of the Mother of God – about the meeting of Virgin Mary with Elisabeth, the mother of john the Forerunner.

Two canons are joined together: the well-known canon of Great Saturday written by St. Kassia, a wonderful church poetess, and no less famous canon of Annunciation, based on an imaginary dialogue between Archangel Gabriel and the Mother of God.

Next morning, at the liturgy of St. Basil the Great, the apostolic and Gospel readings of Annunciation and Great Saturday are united again. After the end of the Eucharistic canon, when “Axion Estin” is usually sung or “All of creation rejoices in you, O full of grace” (in case of the liturgy of Basil the Great), the choir sings one of the favorite chants devoted to the Mother of God – “Do not weep for Me, Mother”. It inspired many poets and artists – from Michelangelo and his heart-rending “Pieta” to Anna Ahmatova and her painful poem “Requiem”.

However, if your parish church is called in honor of the Annunciation, then most likely you will hear another chant: “Let no profane hand touch the living Ark of God, but let the lips of the faithful, singing without ceasing the words of the Angel to the Theotokos, cry aloud in great joy: Hail, thou who are full of grace: the Lord is with thee.”

Church decorations

On Great Saturday, churches are especially beautiful. In the center on the church there is a Shroud decorated with flowers – the image of Jesus Christ in the tomb.

This year there will be even more beauty – near the Shroud there will be an analogion with the icon of the Annunciation of the Mother of God. The Good News about the coming of the Savior, and the tremulous waiting for the good news about His Resurrection.

At the same time, priests will be vested in traditional colors of Great Saturday. During the Burial and the Liturgy before the chant “Arise, O God, judge the earth” (before the apostolic readings), the vestments are black; after that – white vestments. There will be no traditional blue vestments of the Annunciation.

What is permitted to eat and how to celebrate the feast

There is the bad news for the lovers of traditional dished made of fish – there will be no fast easing because of Great Saturday. The good news is that it is permitted to drink some wine at the modest supper. By the way, wine is permitted on every Saturday and Sunday of Great Lent. Not for causing excessive drinking, but because wine in small portions strengthens us indeed.

There is a good piece of advice. On the occasion of the feast, prepare something like mulled wine. Something less time-consuming and not intoxicating. Dilute any wine you like with hot but not boiling water, add there a spoon of cinnamon, a branch of thyme or mint, a piece of apple, a tangerine skin, add a spoon of honey if the wine is too dry – and enjoy its pleasant flavor and taste.

Forget about your household worries. You did not have time for cleaning? Not a big deal. The main thing is to “clean’ your heart, not your house. You did not have time for baking a kulich? If you want one very much you can just buy it.

Remember an old proverb, “On the day of the Annunciation, a bird won’t make its nest, a girl won’t braid her hair”. Focus on living through this main Saturday of the year: “This is the most blessed Sabbath, On which Christ has fallen asleep to rise on the third day!”

By Nun Eugenia (Senchukova)

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

Source: http://www.pravmir.ru/blagoveshhenie-v-velikuyu-subbotu-pochemu-etot-den-osobennyiy/

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

Come, O faithful, let us work zealously for the Master; for he distributes wealth to his servants.

Let each of us, according to his or her ability increase the talent of grace:

let one be adorned in wisdom through good works; let another celebrate a service in splendor.

Ihe one distributes his wealth to the poor; the other communicates the word to those untaught.

Thus we shall increase what has been entrusted to us, and, as faithful stewards of grace, we shall be accounted worthy of the Master’s joy.

Make us worthy of this, Christ our God, in your love for mankind.

As more and more people attend and thoughtfully follow the services of Holy Week, many are struck by the incomparably rich hymnography, often sung in unique and evocative melodies. Many of us have favorite hymns, which we greet as friends when they come along each year. There are the landmark hymns of the Bridegroom services, repeated for several nights running. There are, of course, the unforgettable moments of Holy Thursday: “Of Thy Mystical Supper!” The Twelve Gospels! Then Friday: the Burial Shroud! The Lamentations!… Then Saturday and the victorious Prokeimenon! These are like lanterns, lighting our way forward in an otherwise dark terrain.

One of my own favorites is a humbler little hymn (blink and you’ve missed it for the year) sung with the Aposticha at Matins and Vespers on Holy Tuesday. [The hymn’s text is at the beginning of this post.] Why do we sing such a hymn during Holy Week? Let’s spend a minute examining its liturgical context before looking at it more closely.

By the time we sing this hymn, we have entered squarely into the journey to Christ’s life-giving Passion. We have traveled six weeks of Great Lent. We have celebrated the victorious entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem (a bitter victory: Jesus knowingly enters the city where he is to be betrayed and slain). We have heard him preaching with increased intensity against civil and religious hypocrisy and injustice. But as we follow Jesus’s journey, we also direct attention at ourselves. As we Orthodox always do in our penitential hymnography (for example, in the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete), we apply all that hypocrisy, all the examples of pride, lust, murderous intent, to our own lives as we live them. It is not a pretty picture. So we ask God’s forgiveness and beg him to help us to become better human beings.

During Holy Week, this sort of penitence is brought to a high level of intensity, a dosage that we cannot sustain for long. But here we are pushed to our limits, because Our Lord himself, the King of Glory, who made the heavens and the earth, is on his way to being betrayed, abandoned, and slaughtered. Matters do not get any more serious than that. We have to make sure we are paying full attention.

That is why, at the Bridegroom services, usually celebrated on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings of Holy Week, we pray for several things surrounding the theme of bring ourselves into realization of who we are and what is happening:

– We ask God to “illumine the vesture of our souls,” to purify us, to give us appropriate clothing in order to celebrate properly the Feast of Feasts.

– We remind our own selves to be wakeful and watchful, rouse ourselves out of our slumber, to penetrate the usual half-awake state of our minds and hearts.

– We contemplate scriptural images as lessons or as inspiration. The common theme to all these services is that of the Bridegroom (Christ) who comes in the middle of the night and finds some who are prepared, others for whom it is now too late. But on different evenings we sing about the withered fig tree, the betrayal of Judas, and – as a positive image – the repentant harlot who wipes Jesus’s feet with her tears and hair.

It is within this broader context, then, that we come to that Holy Tuesday hymn, in which we urge each other to do the particular work that God has given us to do. Let’s look through it to see what it is saying, and why people may be attracted to it.

– We goad each other to work zealously. Don’t almost do something, or just thing about doing it, or do it in a half-baked way. Do it, and do it well for the sake of God.

– Notice that God gives the wedding garment. God gives the talent. Without this initial gift, we have nothing, we are nothing. But once we realize that God has filled our otherwise empty vessels, it is very much up to us to take up that gift and to act on it.

– When God distributes his gifts, he is not using a cookie cutter to form identical little shapes. He is not drawing a uniform pattern for us to imitate like robots. We are different from each other; we do not strive to conform to a single model, even if sometimes the image of a virtuous person in the Church’s Tradition seems frustratingly uniform. In iconography and spiritual literature (depending on where we’re looking) we might find a preponderance of monks, bishops, and virgins. But if we look closer, we find a message applicable to school teachers, social workers, bankers, moms, dads, writers, sanitation workers – people from all walks of life and different talents.

– When it begins enumerating tasks, our hymn encourages us to “do good work” – whatever our station of life, whatever our vocation. Then it identifies specific vocations – but let us take note how these are both particular and universal in character.

– One “celebrates a service in splendor.” (When I was sacristan during my student days at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, I watched as Fr. Paul Lazor, the consummate liturgical celebrant, made a large and meaningful sign of the cross over himself during that line.) Although this verse does carry a particular, clerical meaning, doesn’t it also pertain to our corporate celebration of the liturgy? All of us celebrate the liturgy in splendor when we participate meaningfully in it. Going still further, can this not also pertain to any way in which we – whether lay or ordained – as “priests” offer the world to God, making our whole life a creative service of splendor?

– In the Divine Liturgy we pray for “those who remember the poor.” Is helping the poor, then, something that someoneelse always does? No. Although we recognize realistically that not everyone is called to make his or her whole life a service to the poor, none of us is off the hook in the basic, universal, Christ-imitating vocation of ministry to the poor, solidarity with the outcast, speaking out against injustice.

– While teaching the Word applies in a particular way to teachers and catechists, don’t we all impart knowledge and wisdom – both explicitly and implicitly Christian Truth – in our various vocations (not least those of us who are parents or godparents)?

Wherever we are, whatever we do, whatever our station in life our task is to build upon what we have been given. First, of course, we have to identify the gift, and that is not always simple. But by understanding the gift and recalling that it indeed comes from God himself, we can build on it. The gospels tell us that wasting our talents is one of the things that seriously displeases God. But we pray that, if we recognize and work with our gifts, we will be “deemed worthy of the Master’s joy,” a joy that is beyond anything that we can imagine.

Source: https://svotssynaxis.com/2012/04/10/holy-tuesday-a-hymn-of-invitation/

By Hieromonk Silouan (Pasenko),

the abbot of the Naval Church of St. Nicholas in Chersonese

That story happened during Great Lent. It was connected with the event, after which not only my life changed, but even my own name became different.

I was studying in the Theological Academy and was preparing for the monastic tonsuring, which the students of the academy usually have during Great Lent. At that time I was lucky to visit Holy Mount Athos. It is hard to express with words the impression, which that place made on me. The examples of Athonite elders and brothers, patient obedience of the brethren and beautiful services full of prayer, the beauty of the local nature and a completely different perception of life without any false interests – all those things fed my soul spiritually.

The Lord gave me an opportunity to visit one beautiful monastery on the rocky breakages of Athos. In the gates of the monastery, we were met by schemahierodeacon Silouan. He was a Serbian by his origin, but he told us that he was tonsured in honor of a Russian ascetic, whose spiritual feat is rather revered among the brethren of the monastery. Together with Fr. Silouan we visited a small cemetery, climbed the highest tower of the monastery and venerated the sacred items gathered in the monastery. In the evening, when I got acquainted with some brothers of the monastery, I heard a strange dress to me from one old monk. “Silouanos”, he said. I would not even pay attention to that, if the brothers did not tell me that the monk addressed to me. But my name was Nikita!

“Just an accident”, I thought and forgot about that episode the very next day. I had to leave soon , and Fr. Silouan said asked me about one thing: to send him the name with which I would be tonsured a monk. He promised to commemorate me in his prayers.

In a few weeks, I had a tonsuring in the Academy. According to the tradition of our academy, the monks receive the names of the saint graduates. That is why everyone anticipated that there would appear Fr. Cyrion, Fr. Paisios or may be Fr. Anatoly in the academy. Accordin to another tradition, we drew the papers with names. Then was the sacrament. The hierarch raised the scissors above my head and proclaimed cutting my hair: “Our brother Silouan is tonsured by the cutting of the hairs of his head...”

So far, Great Lent for me is the time when you are waiting for a miracle that will inevitably happen to you.

Source: https://foma.ru/velikopostnaya-nesluchaynaya-sluchaynost.html

Holy Monday

Behold, the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night, and blessed is that servant whom He shall find watching, but unworthy is he whom He shall find in slothfulness. Beware, then O my soul, and be not overcome by sleep, lest thou be given over to death and shut out from the Kingdom. But return to soberness and cry aloud: Holy, holy, holy art Thou, O God: through the Theotokos have mercy upon us.

Troparion

About the Icon:

Jesus and the Five Wise Virgins stand on the roof of the house that they have entered for the wedding party. These five women had extra oil to keep their lamps burning until the Bridegroom, Christ, arrived.

The Five Foolish Virgins standing outside the house had no extra oil and their lamps went out just as the groom was arriving.

The extra oil is actually the good things that we do and the valuable company that we keep; this is the oil that makes sure that our lamp, our faith, is always lit, as we wait for our Bridegroom.

Holy Monday Evening. The Service of the Bridegroom

Introduction to Holy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

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 [Second Coming], and Jesus' castigation of the hypocrisy and dark motives of the religious leaders."

The Orthros [Matins] Service of Holy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is called the Service of the Bridegroom, and gets its name from the central figure in the well-known parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:113). 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 suggest the Parousia.

Each day of Holy Week has its own particular theme. The theme of Monday (celebrated in anticipation on Palm Sunday evening) is that of the barren fig tree (Matthew 21: 18-20) which yields no fruit and is condemned. On Tuesday (celebrated Monday evening) the theme is on the vigilance of the wise virgins (Matthew 25: 1-13) who, unlike their foolish sisters, were ready when the Lord came to them. On Wednesday (celebrated Tuesday evening) the focus is on the sinful woman (Matthew 26: 6-13) who repents. Great emphasis is made in the liturgical services to compare the woman, a sinful harlot who is saved, to Judas, a chosen apostle who is lost. The one gives her wealth to Christ and kisses his feet; the other betrays Christ for money with a kiss.

Some suggested activities for families:

Make a point to attend services with your children. Make time to read the "theme" gospel lessons before coming to services, since they are not part of the Gospel reading, but only referred to during the service. Speak with your children about Christ's Second Coming, ie., that "He will come again" as we recite in the Nicene Creed. Jesus reminds us during the first three days of Holy Week, as was done on many occasions during Lent, that we must be watchful and repent while there is still time.

Holy Tuesday (Celebrated on Holy Monday Evening)

Behold, my soul, the Master entrust thee with a talent. Receive His gift with fear; make it gain interest for Him; distribut to the needy, and make the Lord thy friend. So shalt thou stand on His right hand when He comes in glory, and thou shalt hear His blessed words: “Enter, servant, into the joy of thy Lord.” I have gone astray, O Savior, but in Thy great mercy count me worthy of this joy.

Aposticha

On Great Tuesday the Church calls to remembrance two parables, which are related to the Second Coming. One is the parable of the Ten Virgins (Mt 25.1-3); the other is the parable of the Talents (Mt 25.14-30). These parables point to the inevitability of the Parousia [Second Coming] 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.

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. 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.

By Fr. Peter Orfanakos

Source: http://orthochristian.com/69890.html

Eighteen weeks, or more than one third of the annual cycle, is the ecclesiastical liturgical cycle that revolves around the celebration of the Resurrection.

This is from the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee until the Sunday of All Saints. It is a liturgical journey rich in religious and spiritual experiences.

It is a sweet joyful-sorrow. Grief according to God which leads through the Cross to the Resurrection.

And, as in all the liturgical traditions of our Holy Church, so also with this festal cycle, the wisdom of our Holy Fathers who set it in order is revealed.

Not to follow the formalism provisions but to get to the depth of the essence, which is none other than the eternal plan of the divine economy.

In this direction, this text summarizes the events of Holy and Great Week as a noetic and spiritual ladder, which leads the faithful to venerate the revered Passion and glorious Resurrection of the Savior.

The Saturday of Lazarus can be considered the prologue - the first step - and the resurrection of Lazarus the friend of Christ shortly before the Passion of the Lord prefigures His own glorious Resurrection.

Jesus, who wept as He went to the tomb, where His friend was buried, says to the one who was four days dead and commands with the familiar words: "Lazarus, come forth!"

At that moment and with those words of His, who Himself is the Resurrection and the Life, Lazarus immediately resurrected. He who breathed the breath of life into Adam has life in Himself.

This is how His own Resurrection from the dead is theologically interpreted after His descent into Hades, and it ensures our own expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.

With the expectation of the Resurrection, therefore, we enter Holy and Great Week, that we may journey together and be crucified together, as well as be resurrected together, and finally be united with our Lord.

On Palm Sunday we celebrate the bright and glorious festival of the entrance of the Lord into the Holy City of Jerusalem.

He comes exactly as it was prophesied by Zechariah in the Old Testament: "Behold, your king is coming to you; he is just and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

Meekly He sits on the donkey, just and endowed with salvation, to suffer the perfect injustice and extreme humiliation, by His Passion, and especially the Cross, to grant salvation to fallen humanity.

He fulfills the plan of Divine Providence and reopens the door of Paradise as a compassionate Father, who never ceases to love His children.

On Holy and Great Monday the Church remembers blessed Joseph the All-Comely. He was the son of Jacob, whom his brothers wanted to kill and repeat the horrible fratricide of Cain because of their envy.

He suffered horrible bullying by his own brothers. God, however, protected him from death, and so was sold to traders and led as a captive to Egypt, where Potiphar purchased him, and after he refused to sin with his master's wife, he was unjustly slandered and imprisoned.

Still even there, the grace of God acted on his behalf, and not only was he liberated, but he became the closest confidant and collaborator of Pharaoh.

In the sufferings of the all-comely Joseph and in his love, by which he forgave his brothers, the Church saw the Passion of the Lord and His perfect love prefigured, which is why it has been set to honor his memory on Holy and Great Monday.

On the same day we also remember the event of the withered fig tree, which reveals the holy will of God that we are to struggle, and multiply our talents entrusted to us and increase our inheritance of grace, that we may bear spiritual fruit.

Otherwise, as our Lord said at the Sermon on the Mount, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit, is cut down and thrown into the fire." This is what happened with the withered fig tree.

On Holy and Great Tuesday we remember the Parable of the Ten Virgins. With this parable we are called to cultivate watchfulness, alertness, as we do not know the day or hour when we will be called to the heavenly marriage of the Bridegroom Christ, and risk not having oil in our lamps.

Let our hands not be empty, because we have no mercy and love, because we are perhaps unmerciful and hard-hearted before the needs of our neighbors.

On Holy and Great Wednesday we remember the harlot woman, who anointed the Lord with myrrh prior to His salvific Passion. One act and one person who will probably even scandalize us!

How dare such a woman approach Jesus! Yet our Lord loves all His children. He does not exclude any of His children from salvation and teaches us not to judge, so that we will not be judged.

And, indeed, this harlot woman was saved by repentance, just as the thief who was crucified with the Lord, and like Zacchaeus along with countless other examples in the history of the Church.

So also are we invited if we are sunk in our sins and in despair over our actions, and we are encouraged by the all-loving mercy of God to offer Him our broken and contrite hearts, to be healed and to have a clean heart created within us.

On Holy and Great Thursday the Church celebrates the washing of the disciples feet in the sacred Basin, the Secret Supper, the supernatural prayer and the betrayal.

It is a practical teaching of extreme humility, the tradition of the Mystery of the Divine Eucharist, the amazing High Priestly Prayer of Gethsemene, as well as the false betrayal of Judas by a kiss.

Jesus desired to eat with His disciples, and even prepares the details of the supper, and He welcomes them as a servant, washing their feet on His knees, and serving them at the table.

There He delivers the mystery of mysteries and seals the New Testament with His Blood.

He also gives Judas an opportunity at repentance by foretelling who it would be that would betray Him, but the lawless Judas was unwilling to change his mind.

On Holy and Great Friday we commemorate the salvific and horrible Passion, especially the Cross and Death of the Lord, as well as the salvific confession of the grateful thief on the cross.

He was crucified for us and He suffered and was buried and became obedient even unto death, death by a cross.

On Holy and Great Saturday all flesh is silent, as we celebrate the entombment of the Body of God and the Savior's descent into Hades. But already the tomb cannot contain the Lord of Glory. And we have a foretaste of the joy of the Resurrection. At the Vespers of the Resurrection, which is chanted on the morning of Holy and Great Saturday, we proclaim once again while spreading out bay leaves: "Arise O Lord and judge the earth, for to You belong all the nations."

Through this journey and ladder and our conscious participation in the wonderful life of worship in the Church this year is completed, just as in every year, Holy and Great Week and the spiritual struggle of the faithful.

Since, then, we will hopefully arrive at Pascha Sunday, may we be made worthy of Divine Grace to venerate once again this year, the glorious and life-bearing Resurrection.

By Fr. George Economou

Translated by John Sanidopoulos

Source: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2016/04/the-spiritual-ladder-of-holy-week.html

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Why Annunciation on Great Saturday was such a special day?

Behold the Bridegroom Comes at Midnight: Excerpts from Bridegroom Matins

An Important Hymn from The Great and Holy Tuesday

Waiting for a Lenten Miracle that Will Inevitably Happen to You

Introduction to Holy and Great Monday and Tuesday

A Short Summary of Events of The Holy and Great Week

Partners