My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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THE BEGINNING OF THE TRIODION (THE SUNDAY OF THE PUBLICAN AND THE PHARISEE) - February 17th.
[Gospel reading: St. Luke 18:10-14)
On this and the following two Sundays, the theme is repentance. Repentance is the door through which we enter Lent, the starting-point of our journey to Pascha. And to repent signifies far more than self-pity or futile regret over things done in the past. The Greek word metanoia means 'change of mind': to repent is to be renewed, to be transformed in our inward viewpoint, to attain a fresh way of looking at our relationship to God and to others. The fault of the Pharisee is that he has no desire to change his outlook; he is complacent, self-satisfied, and so he allows no place for God to act with him. The Publican, on the other hand, truly longs for a 'change of mind': he is self-dissatisfied, 'poor in spirit', and where there is self-dissatisfaction there is room for God to act. Unless we learn the secret of the Publican's inward poverty, we shall not share in the Lenten springtime. The theme of the day can be summed up in a saying of the Holy Desert Fathers: Better a man who has sinned, if he knows that he has sinned and repents than a man who has not sinned and thinks of himself as righteous.
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Before the Festival of Pascha there has developed a long preparatory season of repentance and fasting, extending in present Orthodox usage over ten weeks. First, come twenty-two days (four successive Sundays) of preliminary observance; then six weeks or forty days of the Great Fast of Lent; and finally Holy and Great Week. Balancing the seven weeks of Lent and Holy and Great Week, there follows after Pascha a corresponding season of fifty (50) days of thanksgiving, concluding with Pentecost.
Each of these seasons has its own liturgical book. For the time of preparation, there is the Lenten Triodion or 'Book of Three Odes'. For the time of thanksgiving, there is the Pentekostarion also known in Slav usage as the Festal Triodion. The point of division between the two books is midnight on the evening of Holy and Great Saturday, with Matins (Orthros) for Pascha Sunday as the first service in the Pentekostarion. This division into the distinct volumes, made for reasons of practical convenience, should not cause us to overlook the essential unity between the Lord's Crucifixion and His Resurrection, which together form a single, indivisible action. And just as the Crucifixion and the Resurrection are one action, so also the 'three holy days' - Great Friday, Holy Saturday and Pascha - constitute a single liturgical observance. Indeed, the division of the Lenten Triodion and the Pentekostarion into two books did not become standard until after the 11th century; in early manuscripts, they are both contained in the same codex.
What do we find, then, in this book of preparation that we term the Lenten Triodion? It can most briefly be described as the book of the fast. Just as the children of Israel ate the 'bread of affliction' (Deuteronomy 16:3) in preparation for the Passover, so Christians prepare themselves for the celebration of the New Passover by observing a fast. But what is meant by this word 'fast' (nisteia)? Here the utmost care is needed, so as to preserve a proper balance between the outward and the inward. On the outward level fasting involves physical abstinence from food and drink, and without such exterior abstinence a full and true fast cannot be kept, yet the rules about eating and drinking must never be treated as an end in themselves, for ascetic fasting has always an inward and unseen purpose. Man is a unity of body and soul, 'a living creature fashioned from natures visible and invisible', in the words of the Triodion; and our ascetic fasting should, therefore, involve both these natures at once. The tendency to over-emphasize external rules about food in a legalistic way, and the opposite tendency to scorn these rules as outdated and unnecessary, are both alike to be deplored as a betrayal of true Orthodoxy. In both cases, the proper balance the outward and the inward has been impaired. (Source: The Lenten Triodion translated from the original Greek by Mother Mary and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" - Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George