The Hymnography of Holy and Great Week (Fr. George Metallinos)

The Passion of Christ, National Art Museum of Ukraine (1575-1600)

The Hymnography of Great Week 

By Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos

 

Great Week recapitulates the whole of human history: creation, the fall, and the re-formation and re-creation in Christ. Christ — the crucified and risen Lord of the Church and of history — is presented through the Sacred Services as the One who provides the solution to the timeless tragedy of man and gives meaning to history.

There is, moreover, coherence and continuity in what is read, chanted, and enacted in worship; this, however, is weakened by a fragmentary participation, in contrast to monastic liturgical practice. The recourse of those who love the Services to monasteries during these days — especially those of Mount Athos — has precisely this meaning: the possibility of experiencing the full range of the recapitulation of the salvation of man and the world offered through worship.

"Behold, We Are Going Up To Jerusalem..."

By Protopresbyter Fr. Antonios Christou

My beloved readers, with the help and grace of God, we have reached the end of Holy and Great Lent. As is well known, Great Lent is essentially completed on the Saturday of the Resurrection of Lazarus; on Palm Sunday we are permitted to eat fish, and from the evening, with the Service of the Bridegroom, the strict fast of Holy Week begins.

As for what we celebrate each day and experience during Holy and Great Week, we have dealt with this in other articles in the past. In the present article, we will concern ourselves with the content and perspective of the phrase of our Lord found in our title: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem…”. It is a phrase from the Gospel according to Mark, read on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, but it is also an opportunity, more broadly, to recall the entire relevant Gospel passage:

"Now they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was going before them; and they were amazed. And as they followed they were afraid. Then He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them the things that would happen to Him: 'Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him to the Gentiles; and they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again'” (Mark 10:32–34).

Venerable Joseph the Hymnographer in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

 

 

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

“While you were alive, O Father, you were a divine hymnographer of the Living God; 
But I, after your death, am a new hymnographer of you” (Verses of the Synaxarion).

This divine father was from Sicily and was the son of Plotinus and Agatha. He succeeded in fleeing his homeland so as not to be captured by the barbarians, and from there, traveling from place to place, he arrived in Constantinople, where he endured afflictions and persecutions for his pious zeal on behalf of the holy icons. He finished the course of his life in a holy manner, having become an excellent composer of hymns, and he fell asleep in the Lord after 866. Joseph wrote hymns that covered almost the entire Parakletike, as well as a great many poetic Canons of the Menaia; for this reason he is characterized as the preeminent hymnographer of the Church.

If the path of Christians who live with full awareness is “together with all the saints,” because in Christ we are all one — both those of the Church militant, as we say, and those of the Church triumphant — this is all the more true for Saint Joseph the Hymnographer: he is our constant fellow traveler, our daily companion, our great friend and brother, because through his hymns and canons our eyes are opened in the churches so that we may properly honor and glorify most of our Saints. For this reason it is not accidental that the wise hymnographer calls him the “prytaneis” (chief/leader) of all the other hymnographers (Kathisma of Matins).

How was the Saint able to write so many hymns, and with such great ease? And indeed hymns whose content reveals not only the historical course of each Saint, but above all his life in Christ and the mystical stirrings of his grace-filled heart? This, notes his own Hymnographer, is a gift from God. Christ gave it to him, responding to the request of his heart, even using as an instrument the Holy Apostle Bartholomew. “The Savior Lord, who knows how to glorify those who glorify Him, granted you the gift of poetry through the divine and venerable Apostle Bartholomew” (Doxastikon of Vespers).

And here precisely we have the deeper explanation: Joseph had Christ as his constant reference; it was Him he longed continually to glorify in his life, and therefore he considered it a necessity of his soul to be occupied both with Him and with His saints, who constitute another mode of doxological prayer to Him. “You glorified the divine ranks of all the saints and proclaimed with power their achievements, for you drew your words from the fountains of salvation” (Sticheron of Vespers).

Thus it is understandable that Saint Joseph loved and hymnologized the Saints so greatly, because he was a participant in their life — that is, a participant in the very life of the Lord. Only one who has a corresponding way of life with the saints, struggling against his passions with a painful turning of his heart toward the will of God and enduring all the temptations that accompany this turning, can both understand them and describe them in the proper way (Sticheron of Vespers, Lity).

Therefore the Saint activated his gift because he was moved by the breath of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. That Spirit, ultimately, he had as his teacher and guide. “A great wonder! Tell us, Joseph, how did you speak and record your hymns so easily? As if you were being taught by someone else. Surely the Holy Spirit was speaking through you” (Lity).

The result is clear: whatever moved the Saint in his writings, this is what he also transmitted — the uplifting of hearts. The ecclesiastical hymnography of Saint Joseph leaves no room for misunderstanding. “Having ascended to the height of the virtues and received from God the wisdom from above, you clarified the divine dogmas of the Scriptures. Therefore you raise every person through your hymns to divine eros, indicating the excellent paths of compunction” (Kathisma of Matins).

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.

 

Prologue in Sermons: April 3

 

 

On the Eternal Torments of Sinners

April 3

(The Word of Saint John Chrysostom on those who say that there is no torment for sinners.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Some say there will be no eternal torment and that God threatens it only to instill fear in sinners. But is this really true?

Saint John Chrysostom says: “Some sin-lovers say that there will be no eternal torment. Such will be condemned with the heretics... That there will be eternal torment, the Lord showed by punishing sinners even in this life. Thus, we accept punishment for our sins even now: either an unfortunate war happens to us, or a fire, or famine, or the death of livestock, or death visits our families, or we suffer from illness. All this also comes to us now for our sins. Besides what has been mentioned, sometimes fire scorches us, and water drowns us, and thunder and lightning strike... And this in this life... But in the future, eternal torment awaits sinners. And believe, brethren, that truly eternal torment awaits sinners. Ask the Jews and heretics, and finally, the demons themselves, and they will tell you unanimously that there is judgment, torment, and retribution for each according to his deeds, and that God punishes sinners and crowns the righteous with glory. So assure your soul and teach it not to invent false doctrines. 

Saint Sophronios of Jerusalem: The Guardian of the All-Holy Sepulchre

The Guardian of the All-Holy Sepulchre

By Archimandrite Kallinikos Georgatos

(The present text is an expanded version of a sermon delivered at the Solemn Vespers of the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent in 2014, at the Sacred Metropolitan Church of Saint Demetrios in Nafpaktos.)

Behind the wondrous life of Venerable Mary of Egypt, which amazed both men and angels; behind the theological prayers and the beautiful hymns of our Church; behind the struggle of the Orthodox against the Monothelites and other heretics of the 6th and 7th centuries A.D.; behind the beneficial regime for the Orthodox Romans concerning the Holy Pilgrimage sites and the All-Holy Sepulchre — there stands a great saint of our Church, Saint Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who throughout his entire life sought the will of God and fulfilled it at all cost, despite the whirlwind of historical events in which he lived; and Christ rewarded him by granting him His rich blessing.

To this great Saint, and to those things which make him the “Guardian of the All-Holy Sepulchre,” we shall refer below — briefly, but with reverence and gratitude for what he offered to the Church of Christ.

Venerable Titus the Wonderworker in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

This blessed and holy Father of ours, Titus, from a young age loved Christ, went to a cenobitic monastery, and withdrew from the world and from his relatives. There he devoted himself so greatly to humility and obedience that he surpassed not only the brotherhood but every person. He also became a shepherd of the rational sheep of Christ and had such meekness and love and compassion as no one else among men. He was preserved pure in soul and body from a young age like an angel of God. Therefore the Lord also granted him exceptional grace of wonderworking, and thus he departed to Him, leaving to his disciples and fellow ascetics his ascetic struggles as a living pillar and an indelible image.

Saint Theophanes, the hymnographer of Venerable Titus the Wonderworker, wishing to characterize the great holiness of the Venerable one, uses as an example what happens with holy myrrh: it is composed of dozens of aromatic ingredients and substances in order to reach the height of its exquisite fragrance. In the same way also was Venerable Titus: “A myrrh of sanctification, O venerable one, you were wholly compounded from the fragrances of your ascetic life, into a fragrance of our God” (Ode 3). In other words, Venerable Titus is a fragrance of Christ, who is also considered by Saint Theophanes, in a spiritual sense, to be a disciple of the Apostle Paul, like that former disciple and co-worker of Paul, the Apostle Titus: “we praise you as a new Titus, a disciple of Paul” (Ode 1).

Prologue in Sermons: April 2

Weapons Against Enemies

April 2

(A Word from the Leimonarion about robbers who took things from an elder.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

“Do not be overcome by evil,” says the Apostle, “but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21). What do these words indicate? That fire is not extinguished with oil; that is, evil cannot be stopped or cut off by evil, and that the evil we suffer from our enemies and offenders can be stopped and overcome only by good.

What, then, are the means by which we overcome evil with good?

The first means is to do some good to your enemy. Once robbers came to an elder and said to him: “Whatever you have in your cell, we will take.” And they took everything, forgetting one sackcloth. The elder took this sackcloth, ran after them, and, handing it to them, said in turn: “My children, you forgot this also.” This act so touched the robbers that they returned to the elder everything they had taken, repented, and said: “Truly, this man is a man of God” (Prologue, April 2).

The second means is to humble oneself before the enemy. Two bishops quarreled with each other. One of them was rich, the other poor. The rich one sought an opportunity to harm the poor one. The poor bishop, learning of this, said to his clergy: “We shall conquer him.” The clergy answered: “Who can stand against him, master?” “Wait and you will see,” said the poor bishop. And so, when the rich bishop was walking surrounded by a multitude of people, the poor bishop fell at his feet with all his clergy and cried out: “Forgive us, master, we are your servants!” The other, struck by this, himself fell at the feet of the poor bishop and said: “You are my master and father!” And from that time there was great love between them (Leimonarion, ch. 208).

Venerable Mary of Egypt in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

The hymnography of the Church, through the pen of Saint Theophanes the Hymnographer, is devoted, on the feast of Venerable Mary, to the description of her astonishing transformation: from debauchery to the heights of spiritual life, as well as to the recording of her experiences from the corresponding periods of her “before Christ and after Christ” life. One hymn, in fact, from Ode 3 presents the Venerable one in her former sinful life as Eve, who disobeyed the will of God and sinned, but in her later sanctified life as the thirsty deer that runs to the springs of the waters. And what is the point that is common in both periods? The wood. The first wood, the tree, which through sin led to the initiation of death: what happened with the first-created humans; the second, the wood of the Cross of the Lord, which led to deep faith in Christ and the finding of true life. “Having approached the wood of sin,” says the Holy Hymnographer specifically, “and having been initiated into deadly knowledge, you ran to the wood that gives life, to the Cross of the Lord, crying out to Him: You are our God, and there is none righteous besides You, O Lord.”

Where did the problem lie in the first period of Mary’s life? In the turning of her mind only toward evil, which means the cultivation of those improper, passion-filled thoughts that always result in the impurity of the soul and its enslavement to the passions and to the devil (Ode 1). Mary, influenced by the ancient serpent, had literally taken the downward path and her descent into the abyss of perdition (Ode 1). She did not take her Creator into account at all, and thus she unfortunately became a means of destruction for many others as well, especially young people (Ode 1). Her condition was such that it is expressed by the Lord in the most dramatic and absolute way: “Woe to him through whom the scandal comes,” woe to the one who becomes the cause of another’s spiritual stumbling, and: “It would be better for such a person to tie a millstone around his neck and depart from this life!”

Homily on Humility for the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent (St. Sergius Mechev)

Homily on Humility for the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent 

By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!

The Holy Church concludes its guidance of us as we pass through the great school of the Fast, pointing out to us the examples of two great ascetics of spiritual labor, whom we must imitate — John of the Ladder and Mary of Egypt — yet on this last Sunday it reminds us also of one more necessary condition of spiritual labor.

You heard in today’s Gospel reading how Christ, being on the way to Jerusalem, said to His disciples: “The Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes… and they will mock Him, and beat Him, and spit upon Him, and kill Him…” (Mark 10:33–34). And the disciples “were astonished, and as they followed Him, they were afraid.”

And then, having heard about the resurrection, the sons of Zebedee came to Him and said: “We want You to do for us whatever we ask.” He said to them: “What do you want Me to do for you?” They said to Him: “Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory.” After the Lord answered them that this is not for Him to give, “but for those for whom it is prepared,” and the other disciples, hearing the request of the sons of Zebedee, were indignant at them, the Lord called them all and said: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you: whoever desires to be great among you shall be your servant; and whoever desires to be first among you shall be the servant of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42–45).