By Fr. George Dorbarakis
“Lord, I have fasted from all achievements, I have enjoyed my fill of errors; now, therefore, when I am hungry, fill me with your saving and revered food” (Ode 1, Tone 1).
“Lord, I have fasted from all achievements, I have enjoyed my fill of errors; now, therefore, when I am hungry, fill me with your saving and revered food” (Ode 1, Tone 1).
From the first ode of the canon, the troparion expresses the spiritual state that usually occurs in people who are faithful to Christ: the multitude of sins, the lack of the fruits of the Spirit. And this should not surprise us. Because even if a person's life on earth lasts just one hour, the word of God teaches us, he will still unfortunately sin - it is the price of the disobedience of the first created beings, which, like a contaminated root, has permeated the entire tree of humanity ever since. And it is possible that the Lord Jesus Christ has come and has given us the opportunity, by our incorporation into His Holy Body through Holy Baptism, to overcome sin, but such is the laziness of our lives that we ultimately do not even do this: despite all His help, we continue on the path of our own disobedience. Therefore, as our life progresses, we see the increase of our sins.
However, we also see our sin from another perspective: the more we relate to the Lord, the more we strive with the grace of God to keep His commandments, the more our spiritual eye is opened and sees things that it was previously unaware of, that is, it sees sins that it had not even suspected before. Like the Apostle Paul, who, while not seeing any visible sin in his conscience, did not rest. For “My Judge is the Lord,” he said, that is, He who sees even the most imperceptible movements of the soul, which we ourselves are unaware of. Is this not an indirect confirmation of what both the word of God and the modern Depth Psychology, as it is called, point out? That is, when we speak of the human soul, we are speaking of something that has a bottomless depth, literally of an “abyss” of the unconscious, which has its own “rules” and its own ways? So I fasted, says Saint Joseph the Hymnographer, though not from food and vices, but from achievements. And he reached satiety for this reason from errors and sins.
However, the poet does not leave us abandoned. He reminds us that there is always a way of escape, healing and salvation: turning to the Lord, who is ready to forgive us and offer us that food that fills our hungry soul, namely His grace, His very self. The solution to all the negatives of ourselves, but also of this world, is always the love of our Creator.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
