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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TRIODION
The three weeks that commence on the Fourth Sunday prior to Holy and Great Lent constitute the weeks of spiritual preparation. Each has its own distinct theme which is expressed in the Gospels readings appointed for the Divine Liturgies on these days:
1. Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14)
The Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee is the first Sunday of a three-week period prior to the commencement of Holy and Great Lent. It marks the beginning of a time of preparation for the spiritual journey of Holy Lent, a time of Orthodox Christians to draw closer to God through worship, prayer, fasting, and acts of mercy (charity). It also on this day that the Triodion is introduced, a liturgical book that contains the divine services from this Sunday, the tenth before Pascha (Easter), to Holy and Great Saturday.
On this and the following two Sundays, the theme is repentance. Repentance (metanoia) 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 term 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 within 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 this saving 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 Desert Fathers: "Beware 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."
2. Sunday of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)
The Sunday of the Prodigal Son is the second Sunday of a three-week period prior to the commencement of Holy and Great Lent. The Parable of the Prodigal forms an exact icon of repentance in its different stages. Sin is exile, enslavement to strangers, hunger. Repentance is the return from exile to our true home; it is to receive back our inheritance and freedom in the Father's house. But repentance implies action: "I will rise up and go..." (verse 18). To repent is not just to feel dissatisfied, but to make a decision and to act upon it.
On this and the next two Sundays, after the solemn and joyful words of the Polyeleos at Orthros (Matins), we add the sorrowful verses of Psalm 136, 'By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept...". This Psalm of exile, sung by the children of Israel in their Babylonian captivity, has a special appropriateness on the Sunday of the Prodigal when we call to mind our present exile in sin and make the resolve to return home.
3. The Sunday of the Judgment (Matthew 25: 31-46)
The two past Sundays spoke to us of God's patience and limitless compassion, of His readiness to accept every sinner who returns to Him. On this third Sunday, we are powerfully reminded of a complementary truth: no one is so patient and so merciful as God, but even He does not forgive those who do not repent. The God of love is also a God of righteousness, and when Christ comes again in glory, He will come as our judge. 'Behold the goodness and severity of God" (Romans 11:22). Such is the message of Holy Lent to each of us: turn back while there is still time, repent before the end comes.
This Sunday sets before us the 'eschatological' dimension of Holy Lent: the Great Fast is a preparation for the Second Coming of the Savior for the eternal Passover in the Age to Come. (This is the theme that will be taken up in the first three days of Holy and Great Week.) Nor is the judgment merely in the future. Here and now, each day and each hour, in hardening our hearts towards others and in failing to respond to the opportunities we are given of helping them, we are already passing judgment on ourselves.
The Sunday Before Lent: The last of the preparatory Sundays has two themes: It commemorates Adam's expulsion from Paradise, and it is also the Sunday of Forgiveness. There are obvious reasons why these two things should be brought to our attention as we stand on the threshold of the Great and Holy Lent. One of the primary images in the Triodion is that of the return to Paradise. Lent is a time when we weep with Adam and Eve before the closed gate of Eden, repenting with them for the sins that have deprives us of our free communion with God. But Lent is also a time when we are preparing to celebrate the saving event of Christ's death and rising, which has reopened Paradise to us once more (Luke 23:43). So sorrow for our exile in sin is tempered by hope of our re-entry into Paradise.
The second theme, that of forgiveness is emphasized in the Gospel reading for this Sunday (Matthew 6: 14-21) and in the special ceremony of mutual forgiveness at the end of Vespers on Sunday evening. Before we enter the Lenten fast, we are reminded that there can be no true fast, no genuine repentance, no reconciliation with God, unless we are at the same time reconciled with one another. A fast without mutual love is the fast of demons. As the commemoration of the ascetic Saints on the previous Saturday has just made clear to us, we do not travel the road of Lent as isolated individuals but as members of a family. Our asceticism and fasting should not separate us from our fellow men but link us to them with ever stronger bonds. The Lenten ascetic is called to be a man for others. (Lenten Triodion)
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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