The
book The Way of the Lord through the Triodion and Pentecostarion traverses Lent
and then the period from Easter to the feast of All Saints one week after
Pentecost, giving a brief explanation of the events commemorated. Above all, it
clarifies the purpose of the Church during this period: the renewal of her
children, the Christian faithful.
The
purpose of man’s life, according to the Saints, is to acquire the grace of the
Holy Spirit. However, in fact, the acquisition of grace is only the first step
towards the fulfilment of the purpose God set for man before the foundation of
the world. Man must also guard the grace he has received. Rather, he must
perpetually increase with ‘the increase of God’,1 by partaking in endless
divine perfection.
The
Church has established the feasts during the year as milestones for the renewal
of grace and the regeneration of the lives of its members. Exceptional
landmarks of renewal for the faithful are, on the one hand, the period of the
Triodion, which begets the grace of entering into the living Presence of the
Risen Lord, and on the other hand, the period of Pentecost, which leads to the
fulfilment of the promise of the Father, the gift of the Paraclete.
During
Lent the Christian athlete receives a taste of death in his struggle for the
sake of God’s commandment. But this deadening is a catalyst; first of all, for
the discovery of his deep heart and then for finding freedom of heart, which
enables him to undertake the work of repentance and spiritual regeneration.
The
exercises that the Church prescribes during Lent, fasting, mourning, repentance
and bearing shame, give a taste of death, so that the faithful believer who
partakes of them may always bear within himself, as the Apostle, ‘the dying of
the Lord Jesus’.2
Of
course, this death is of the old man ‘with the affections and lusts’,3 which
like a vice grip the heart. Only when the heavy collar is broken and the heart
is set free, can man make a godly presentation before the holy Conqueror of
death, the Almighty Jesus. Only then, having found and freed his heart from all
kinds of attachments, does he experience the Resurrection of Christ.
In
this way, the ascetic feats which the Church enjoins bring about the deadening
of the old man, yet, in fact, they are seeds of resurrection. They are
transformed into ‘power of indestructible life’4 according to the measure of
the deadening which preceded it.
Therefore, the ascetic labour of this period
could be characterised as ‘negative’, ‘apophatic’, as it aims at the divestment
of old passions, so that the worker of godliness is free to run ‘the way of the
commandments’,5 to follow Christ, ‘whithersoever He goeth’.6
From
Easter night a different kind of asceticism begins, no longer ‘negative’ but
‘positive’, ‘cataphatic’ which trains man in the expectation of the promise of
the Father, in the ardent thirst for the grace of the Paraclete, the Holy
Spirit.
In
the middle of Lent the Church raises the holy Cross in order to reignite
inspiration, to ‘lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees’.7 In
essence, the feast of the Veneration of the Cross reveals the character of the
asceticism of this period, the voluntary mortification for the sake of the
divine commandment which bears holiness and the grace of the resurrection, life
everlasting. The character of the asceticism of the Pentecostarion is conveyed
by the troparion of the feast of Mid-Pentecost, again in the middle of the
season: ‘In the midst of the feast grant my thirst soul to drink of the waters
of godliness.’
Every
Sunday of the Pentecostarion imparts a lesson, guiding us to the faith that
will rekindle our fervour, desire and thirst for the gift of the all-Holy
Spirit. According to Christ’s promise, when the Holy Comforter comes, he leads
man ‘into all truth’.8 He strengthens his earthy nature to bear grace, so that
he can stand in the fulness of Christ’s love and offer Him in return a ‘mighty
love’ ‘with all his heart, with all his mind, and with all his strength’.
Just
as Holy Lent is marked by the tension of striving to find and cultivate the
deep heart, so the season of the Pentecostarion is marked by the tension of the
struggle to preserve the experience of the Resurrection. The thirst for the
fulfilment of the promise of the Father provokes an earthquake which transforms
human nature and renders it fit to receive the fiery flame of the Paraclete.
And this gift of Pentecost leads man ‘into all the fulness of the blameless
love of Christ’, which is ‘the bond of perfection’. It works the greatest
miracle in all the created world, the union of his heart with the Spirit of
God.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου