Showing posts with label Great Lent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great Lent. Show all posts
The miracle of Saint Theodore and the boiled wheat
Today we
remember the miracle of Saint Theodore and the boiled wheat. Fifty years after
the death of Saint Theodore, the emperor Julian the Apostate (361-363), wanting
to commit an outrage upon the Christians during the first week of Great Lent,
commanded the city-commander of Constantinople to sprinkle all the food
provisions in the marketplaces with the blood offered to idols. Saint Theodore
appeared in a dream to Archbishop Eudoxius, ordering him to inform all the
Christians that no one should buy anything at the marketplaces, but rather to
eat cooked wheat with honey (kolyva).
In memory
of this occurrence, the Orthodox Church annually celebrates the holy Great
Martyr Theodore the Recruit on the first Saturday of Great Lent. On Friday
evening, at the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts following the prayer
at the ambo, the Canon to the holy Great Martyr Theodore, composed by Saint
John of Damascus, is sung. After this, kolyva is blessed and distributed to the
faithful. The celebration of the Great Martyr Theodore on the first Saturday of
Great Lent was set by the Patriarch Nectarius of Constantinople (381-397).
The
Troparion to Saint Theodore is quite similar to the Troparion for the Prophet
Daniel and the Three Holy Youths (December 17, Sunday Before Nativity). The
Kontakion to Saint Theodore, who suffered martyrdom by fire, reminds us that he
also had faith as his breastplate (see I Thessalonians 5:8).
Saint
Theodore the Recruit is also commemorated on February 17.
Source: https://oca.org/saints/lives/2018/02/24/9-1st-saturday-of-great-lent-the-miracle-of-the-boiled-wheat
“Broke the Fast!”: a Short Story by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
Sometimes it happens like this: a person tries to keep the fast, but then he falls and feels that he has defiled his whole fast, and that there is nothing left from his feat. In fact, it is far from being like this. God looks at this fast from a different viewpoint. I can explain this to you with one example from my personal experience.
When I was a doctor, I was dealing with one poor
Russian family. I did not take any money from them because they just had no
money. Once, during Great Lent, when I was fasting especially strictly, trying no to violate any church rules, they invited me for dinner. It turned out that
during whole Lent they were saving money to buy a small chicken to treat me. I
looked at that chicken and saw the end of my fasting feat in it. Of course, I
ate a piece of it. I could not afford myself to offend them.
I went to my spiritual father and told him about the
misfortune that had happened to me. I told him that I was fasting almost
perfectly during Lent, but then I ate a piece of chicken during the Holy Week. Fr. Athanasios
looked at me and said:
- You know what? If God looked at you and saw that you
have no sins and that a small piece of chicken could defile you, He would protect
you from that. But God looked at you and saw that you were so sinful that no chicken can defile you more than that.
I believe that many people can use this example in
order not to blindly follow church canons, but be honest people first of all.
Sure, I ate a piece of chicken: not as something dirty, but as a gift of human’s
love. I remember an episode from the book by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, where he
wrote that everything what exists in this world is God’s love. Even the food we
eat is the Divine love in edible form.
From the book by Mitropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, “The
Works”
A Guide to Reading the Holy Fathers During Great Lent
Great Lent might be a time of increase in spiritual reading. We
present a day-by-day Patristic Reading Plan for every of the forty days of
Great Lent. It should be helpful in immersing in the writings of the Early
Fathers during the Great Fast. Click on each reading for more...
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Source: http://pemptousia.com/2017/02/a-patristic-reading-plan-for-the-great-lent/
Great Penitential Canon by St Andrew of Crete
The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts as one of the great masterpieces of Orthodox piety and liturgical creativity.
The joyousness which accompanies the performance of
the Divine Liturgies of St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom was
regarded by the early Church as not suitable for the penitential season of the
Great Fast. For this reason, the Synod in Laodicea (363 AD) forbade the
performance of the Divine Liturgies during the Great Lent. except on Saturday,
Sunday, the Feast of the Annunciation, and Holy Thursday.
The Christians of that time were in the habit of
receiving Holy Communion almost daily and now were deprived of the strengths
derived from Holy Communion for about a week. The greatly saddened them.
The Church, desiring Her children to continue their
pious habit of daily receiving the Holy Communion, permitted its reception but
from Holy Gifts that had been consecrated in a preceding Liturgy. Thus the
Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts was formed, and was celebrated on evenings from
Monday through Friday during Great Lent; there is no consecration of the Sacred
Elements at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, but those who desire to
communicate receive the Holy Gifts which have been consecrated at the previous
Divine Liturgy. The Christians did not eat anything all day.
It received its present form from St. Gregory the
Great, Bishop of Rome in the sixth century. It became a Canon at the Quinisext
Council in 692 AD. The Canon reads:
On all days of the holy fast of Great Lent, except on
the Sabbath (i.e. Saturday), and the Lord's Day (i.e. Sunday) and the holy day
of the Annunciation, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is to be served
(Canon 52, Quinisect Council, 692 AD).
As the years passed, however, the Christians
unfortunately lost their original zeal and ignored the benefits from Holy
Communion, and so they did not receive it every day or even every Sunday. They
received it at long intervals. Therefore the Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts
lost its original and main meaning to those celebrating it. Today, it is used
only during the Great Fast, on Wednesdays and Fridays; on Thursday in the fifth
week of Great Fast; and on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in Passion (Holy)
Week.
The Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts consists of
Vespers, with special Prayers together with a portion of the Divine Liturgy,
omitting its most important part, the consecration of the Holy Gifts; and the
Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours (with the Typical Psalms) are used in a particular
manner at the beginning.
The Sacred Elements, consecrated at the Divine Liturgy
on Saturdays and Sundays, are preserved on the holy Altar in the tabernacle.
The priest places the Gifts on the diskos with prayer and incensing after the
Great Litany, during the chanting of the psalms (kathisma). He carries them in
solemn procession around the back of the Altar, and to the Table of Oblation.
The evening psalm, Lord I call upon You, is then sung
with the special hymns for the day. This is followed with the evening entrance,
the hymn Gladsome Light, and two Biblical readings; from Genesis and from
Proverbs. The Bible readings are punctuated by the Priest blessing the faithful
with the censer and a lighted candle proclaiming "The Light of Christ
illumines all!". This blessing symbolises the light of Christ's
Resurrection, which illumines the Old Testament Scriptures and the entire life
of mankind. This is the very Light with which Christians are illuminated in the
life of the Church through Holy Baptism.
The Prayer of St. Ephraim is read after the singing of
the evening psalm "Let my prayer rise in Your sight as incense. The
augmented litany is chanted, and the Presanctified Gifts are brought solemnly
and to the altar table. This is when the following special entrance hymn is
chanted:
Now the
powers of heaven do serve invisibly with us.
Lo, the King
of Glory enters.
Lo, the
mystical sacrifice is upborne, fulfilled.
Let us
draw near in faith and love, and become communicants of life eternal.
Alleluia,
Alleluia, Alleluia.
The Prayer of St. Ephraim is read again, accompanied
with a litany and a special prayer before Holy Communion (Eucharist). "Our
Father Who art in heaven ..." is sung and the faithful receive Holy
Communion to the singing of:
"O
taste and see that the Lord is good. Alleluia"
The communicants "depart in peace" with
thanksgiving to God for His Coming. The special dismissal prayer asks God for a
successful fulfillment of Lent and to worthily celebrate the Great Feast of
Pascha - the Resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.
O
Almighty Lord ... Who has brought us to these all-holy days for the
purification of the soul and body, for the controlling of carnal passions ...
and the hope of the resurrection ... enable us to fight the good fight, to
accomplish the course of the Fast, to preserve inviolate the Faith ... to be
accounted victors over sin ... and uncondemned, to attain unto and to adore Thy
Holy Resurrection...
The evening reception of Communion is fulfilled after
a day of prayer and fasting, with the total abstinence from food and drink at
least from the early morning hours of the day - not an easy task.
The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is one of the
great masterpieces of Orthodox piety and liturgical creativity. It reveals the
central Christian doctrine and experience in its form and content; namely that
our life must be spent in prayer and fasting in order to be in communion with
Christ who will come like 'a thief in the night'. It tells us that all of our
life, and not only on fast periods, is completed with the Presence of the
Victorious Christ who is risen from the dead. It witnesses to the fact that
Christ will come at the end of the ages to judge the living and the dead, and
to establish God's Kingdom "of which there will be no end". It tells
us that we must be ready for His arrival, and to be found watching and serving;
in order to be worthy to "enter into the joy of the Lord".
The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is one of the
most beautiful and meaningful liturgies in the Orthodox Christian Church.
Adapted
from Fr Thomas Hopko's Orthodox Church in America
and Fr
Nicholas M. Elias's Greek Orthodox Church, Athens
Source:
http://www.orthodoxchristian.info/pages/Gifts.htm
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