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| "The Crucifixion" by the hand of Photios Kontoglou, from the year 1962, located in the northern arch of the Church of Saint Nicholas in Kato Patision. |
Joyful Mourning – Great Mystery
By Photios Kontoglou
By Photios Kontoglou
In this world, everything fades, everything loses its vibrancy and is extinguished, in the end leaving the human heart indifferent. Only the life of Christ, His words and above all His Passion remain forever vivid in the heart of that person who has the vitality of faith and fills it with devotion and with that sweet sadness that is full of hope and that the Fathers called “joyful sorrow” (χαρμολύπη) or “joyful mourning” (χαροποιόν πένθος).
Well, this sad but also blessed joy, true joy, this joy Christ gives to those who love Him, such as those who go to weep in the churches on these holy days. The joy of Christ also brings peace to the heart, which is inseparable from all the gifts that Christ gives to His loved ones. Christ said to his disciples: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you. I do not give you as the world gives,” that is, “I do not give you the false peace that the world gives, just as I do not give you the false joy that the world gives, but the true one that comes from a pained heart.”
The Orthodox heart feels this joyful mourning. And everything in Orthodoxy is full of consolation and hope, everything in it expresses this peaceful state of the Christian’s soul, the structure of the church, the psalmody, the iconography, the utensils of the temple, the appearance of the priests, the vestments, everything. It is the breath of the Paraclete, the Comforter, who sweetens everything, even the most sorrowful for the eyes of the unbeliever.
So too the hymnography of the Passion of the Lord is full of this “joyful mourning,” of the “blessed hope” of immortality. And this hope is strengthened in our hearts by the forgiveness that the thief received on the Cross and which the hymnographer expresses in the exquisite Exapostelarion of Great Thursday who says: "You made the thief worthy of Paradise on the same day, O Lord. Illumine me with the wood of the Cross and save me."
Source: From an article in ELEFTHERIA on Thursday 4/11/1963. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
Well, this sad but also blessed joy, true joy, this joy Christ gives to those who love Him, such as those who go to weep in the churches on these holy days. The joy of Christ also brings peace to the heart, which is inseparable from all the gifts that Christ gives to His loved ones. Christ said to his disciples: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you. I do not give you as the world gives,” that is, “I do not give you the false peace that the world gives, just as I do not give you the false joy that the world gives, but the true one that comes from a pained heart.”
The Orthodox heart feels this joyful mourning. And everything in Orthodoxy is full of consolation and hope, everything in it expresses this peaceful state of the Christian’s soul, the structure of the church, the psalmody, the iconography, the utensils of the temple, the appearance of the priests, the vestments, everything. It is the breath of the Paraclete, the Comforter, who sweetens everything, even the most sorrowful for the eyes of the unbeliever.
So too the hymnography of the Passion of the Lord is full of this “joyful mourning,” of the “blessed hope” of immortality. And this hope is strengthened in our hearts by the forgiveness that the thief received on the Cross and which the hymnographer expresses in the exquisite Exapostelarion of Great Thursday who says: "You made the thief worthy of Paradise on the same day, O Lord. Illumine me with the wood of the Cross and save me."
Source: From an article in ELEFTHERIA on Thursday 4/11/1963. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
