By Fr. George Dorbarakis
The midnight troparion “Behold the bridegroom comes…” is based on the Parable of the Ten Virgins, initiating the beginning of Great Week: the Lord, the bridegroom of every human soul, comes in the middle of the night. What does this mean?
1. First of all, it means that the main characteristic of Christ’s relationship with us is love. And not just a love moving within conventional formal frameworks, but a love without limits, which we can almost touch in the relationship of the lover to his beloved. “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son…” And it cannot be otherwise, since the Lord revealed – “explained” – that “God is love.” Our God, then, who became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, is the One who becomes our bridegroom, because in His infinite love for us, sinful people, He takes us into Himself and makes us one with Him: humanly speaking, His thought, His heart, His desire are for us, like that of a bridegroom towards his bride.
2. Then (a) He comes in a way that we cannot define and demarcate. His coming is always the result of His absolutely voluntary love, the fruit of His own initiative, which is to say that He appears where no one expects Him and in a way that perhaps can never be suspected: sometimes through an accident, sometimes from reading a book, sometimes from a sorrow and trial, but mainly from our encounter with the most abandoned, the least of our fellow human beings. “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” (b) He therefore comes where “objectively” He should not be, namely in the darkness of sin. At the time when one commits sin, at that time he can be called by the coming Lord. As happened with the Apostle Paul who was called at the time when he was persecuting Christians, as with the Apostle Matthew who was called at the time when he was at the “customs office.” In other words, every hour for each of us can be the hour of our grace, of our calling by the bridegroom Christ – what ultimately happened in God’s economy for our salvation: in the darkness of human sin the Redeemer Christ came! “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us!” But also (c) He comes and calls man without most of the time any of the other people taking notice of this call. Like the case of Saint Mary of Egypt, who alone was prevented from entering the temple, without anyone beside her feeling what was happening in her soul. The Lord is always the one coming and knocking at the door of our soul: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” The encounter of man with the Lord takes place in the secret depths of the heart, which only He knows and to a certain extent also the spirit of man. In the heart, in an unspecified way, most of the time, the entire game of man’s salvation is “played out”.
3. And this varied coming to us of the loving bridegroom Christ usually encounters two states: the state of watchfulness and the state of idleness. Watchfulness means responding to His love and experiencing with Him the joy of His presence, psychically and physically, for all eternity. “We love because He first loved us.” Idleness means being so attached to my passions - the love of pleasure, the love of money, the love of glory - that I do not even understand His coming and His call, and even understanding Him, but postponing my response. The assessment of the two situations, as given to us by the holy hymnographer, is clear: blessedness the first, unworthiness the second. With the corresponding results of course. The choice is now the absolute responsibility of each one. “Beware therefore, my soul!”
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
