Homily on Holy Friday and the Cross (St. John of Damascus)

Homily on Holy Friday and the Cross 

Discourse 3

By St. John of Damascus

1. The struggle of our fasting is completed and ends at the Cross. And where ought the end of the victory to arrive, if not at the trophy of Christ? For the Cross is the trophy of Christ, which indeed happened once, but always puts the demons to flight. Truly, where are the idols and the vain slaughters of animals? where are the temples and the fire of impiety? All were extinguished by one holy blood and were cast down, and there remains the Cross — an all-powerful power, an invisible arrow, an immaterial remedy, a pain-relieving blow, a glory full of reproach.

So then, even if I recount countless other things about Christ, and if I astonish my listener by narrating countless miracles, I do not boast so much in those as in the Cross. I mean this by what I say: Jesus came forth from a Virgin; it is a great miracle for marriage to be bypassed and for nature to innovate; but, if the Cross had not existed, the first virgin of Paradise would not have been saved by her deeds.

Now, however, through the event of the Crucifixion the woman is saved first, healing the ancient evil with new gifts. The dead man was raised in Galilee, but he died again; but I, who have been raised through the Cross, can no longer fall into death. Jesus crossed the sea, God in a boat, and the wood offered a temporary benefit; but I have acquired an eternal wood, beneficent, which, using it as a rudder, I confront the spiritual waves of wickedness.

The Hours of Great Friday (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Unnailing,” egg tempera, 1932, Holy Church of Pantanassa, Monastiraki.

The Hours of Great Friday

By Photios Kontoglou

“It was astonishing to behold the Maker of heaven and earth hanging upon a Cross.”

Today, on Great Friday in the morning, they say the Hours in the church. In whatever church one may happen to be, it is good, but whoever happens to be in some monastery or in some deserted chapel, he can say that he truly felt compunction.

The Hours do not have much chanting; most of the texts are read. At the beginning they read from the Psalter three psalms: “Give ear to my words, O Lord; understand my cry,” “Why did the nations rage and the peoples meditate empty things?” “O God, my God, attend to me; why have You forsaken me?” Then they chant two or three troparia, beginning from this: “Today the veil of the temple is rent for a reproof of the lawless, and the sun hides its own rays, seeing the Master being crucified.” And after the priest says the Gospel, they begin again the reading. How well these readings are chosen — the psalms, the prophecies, and the other readings of Holy Scripture!

At the time when the chanters chant and the readers read, you see on the arches painted those things which they chant and those which they read. And you think that the words are one with the images, which are made from fasting hands. You hear the priests chanting the troparion:

The Crucifixion (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Crucifixion,” fresco of the side-chapel of Saint Irene, of the Pesmazoglou family, Kifisia.

The Crucifixion 

By Photios Kontoglou

The night that they seized Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, His disciples from their fear scattered and left Him alone in the hands of the lawless, so that the prophecy might come true: “They will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.”

The evildoers therefore bound Christ and led Him to the high priest Caiaphas, and there the scribes and the elders were gathered together. Peter was following to see the end. Meanwhile the Pharisees were seeking to find false witnesses in order to put Christ to death. And some were found who said that they heard Him saying that I will destroy the Temple of Solomon and in three days I will build it without stones. Caiaphas stood up and said to Christ: “Do you not answer? What do these testify against you?” And He was silent. The High Priest says to Him again: “Are you the Christ, the Son of God?” And Christ answered him: “I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming upon clouds.” Then Caiaphas said: “What need do we have of witnesses? You heard that He blasphemed.” And the others cried out that He is guilty and to be put to death. And they took Him and spat on Him and struck Him and said to Him: “Prophesy to us.”

Homily on the Honorable Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ (Theophanes Kerameus)

On the Honorable Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ 

Homily 27

By Theophanes Kerameus

Perhaps indeed I may seem burdensome to your love, and wearisome, because to you who have labored through the whole night in standing and psalmody I bring, as a burden, the hearing of teaching. But forgive me, since I am insatiable toward your progress; and stretch your eagerness, that you may gain more. For if the God-hating Jews kept vigil through the whole night in order to seize and crucify the Lord, how shall we not keep watch, that we may learn the purpose of the sacred Gospels which have been sung to us and read? Therefore, having shaken off all listlessness from the soul, give heed to what is being said.

And when the Savior had furnished the sacred guests of the Secret Supper, having Himself ministered and set Himself before them as food, He goes out with them to the Mount of Olives, neither avoiding the Passion (for how could He who both foreknew and foretold and was able to escape suffering do so?), nor yet going of His own accord to the murderers; for the former would have been a dissolution of the dispensation and a kind of ignoble cowardice, while the latter would have furnished a pretext to the abominable ones, as though they had not sinned in killing Him who willingly gave Himself up and almost seized the Passion. At the same time He becomes for us also a model of true courage, being seen superior both to cowardice and to rashness, and teaching through Himself neither to rush headlong toward temptations, nor, when they come upon us, to be ignobly terrified.

Song for Great Friday (Monk Moses the Athonite)

 Song for Great Friday 

 

By Monk Moses the Athonite

 

Great Friday

Always on Great Friday
be alone like Christ,
awaiting the final nail, the vinegar, the spear.

Hear the casting of lots without disturbance
as they divide your possessions—
the blasphemies, the provocations, the indifference.

Without Friday, Sunday does not come;
then you forget the sufferings of the roads
of the Great Friday of our life.

Poem For Great Friday (Elder Basil of Kavsokalyva)

Poem For Great Friday

By Elder Basil of Kavsokalyva

TODAY THE SKY IS BLACK

Today the sky is black,
today the day is dark;
today the lawless ones
have taken counsel—

to crucify the Christ,
the King of all;
and they have given order
to the smith for nails.

“Come, smith,
forge the nails—
make three sharp spikes!”
But that lawless man
goes and fashions five.

Prologue in Sermons: April 10

On Obedience

April 10

(A Word from the Paterikon on Obedience)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Why is it, brethren, that the virtue of obedience is placed above many other virtues? What is the reason for this?

One of the elders said: he who abides in obedience receives a greater reward than the one who, by his own will, is saved in the desert. And he added that another of the elders was shown the places where the saints rest after death. There in one glorious place he saw a man, and it was revealed to him that this man, when he lived, was constantly ill, but in his illness he did not complain, but glorified God. In another place he saw another man, and it was said to him that this one is blessed because in life he was hospitable and received strangers into his house and gave them rest. In a third place he saw yet another man, who was blessed because he spent his whole life in the desert, not seeing the face of a man. Finally, in one especially glorious place he saw a man who, in the degree of his blessedness, was above all and wore a golden collar on his neck. “For what?” asked the one who beheld the vision. The one who was blessed for patience in illness said to him: “For this reason he is exalted above all, that the others did good deeds by their own will, but this one wholly subjected his will to the will of God and to the will of his spiritual father, and spent his whole life in obedience. For this he also received greater glory than all.”

Judas in Orthodox Hymnography (Fr. George Metallinos)

 

 

Judas in Orthodox Hymnography 

 

By Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos

The figure of Judas is a protagonist in the hymnography of Holy Week. His treacherous attitude is contrasted with the repentant attitude of the “sinful woman" and the confession of love from the thief. The passion of avarice is the main motive for his betrayal of his teacher. A "painful death" becomes the real reward of Judas.

1. Judas in the Hymns of Holy Week

The figure of Judas has occupied Art in all its forms. The same goes for Orthodox hymnography,1 which dissects the Gospel narrative around his person in a vivid and penetrating way. Hymnography constitutes the heart of Orthodox ecclesiastical worship,2 and was the most important poetic creation of Byzantium/Romania.3 In fact, the possibilities offered by poetic discourse make Hymnography the most suitable means for the continuous mystagogy of the ecclesiastical pleroma, with a discourse that is delightful, wrapped in the modest and attractive garment of the ecclesiastical melody.4 The pleroma, listening to or even participating in the chanting of the hymns, experiences and confesses the faith by "weaving from words a melody to the Word."5 Through the poetry of hymns, the worship of Orthodoxy becomes its enduring mouth. The hagiographic and patristic discourse thus becomes the daily song of God's people, who sing their faith and confess it.

The Holy Fathers and Mothers, who compose the hymns, offer through them the theology and theognosis of their hearts purified and illuminated by the Holy Spirit, dipping their pen in the stream of their faith and the tears of their repentance. A mention of the works attributed to Saint Dionysius the Areopagite is important. The poetry and music of Orthodox worship - we read - constitute an "echo" of the heavenly hymnody, which the holy hymnographer (and not just a "poet") hears with his spiritual ears and conveys with the created means available to him in earthly worship. The hymns of the Church are thus understood as a copy of the heavenly "archetype."6 It is not surprising, therefore, that the poetic creations of proven saints, who are also authentic theologians of the Church, enter Orthodox worship.7

Love of Money: The Heavy Sickness of the Soul (Photios Kontoglou)

Love of Money: The Heavy Sickness of the Soul 

By Photios Kontoglou

“Make for yourselves money-bags that do not grow old, an unfailing treasure in the heavens, where no thief comes near” (Luke 12:33)

“The love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Tim. 6:10)

Of all the sicknesses that afflict the human soul, the most disgusting, in my judgment, is love of money, stinginess. From a young age I detested it. And now, although with age I have changed my mind about many things, about stinginess I have not changed. I would rather deal even with a murderer than with a miser. For the murderer may have killed in a surge of soul, in anger, and later repented, whereas the miser is a cold calculator, rotten to the bone. In the murderer you may find some feelings; in the miser you will find none. The miser is of course always selfish, loving only himself, but many times he is a monster worse even than the selfish man, because he may not even love himself, and may let himself die of hunger.

With this, man shows how he can fall into a condition that no other animal reaches. Only he, who called himself “king of the animals,” arrives at such disgusting foolishness that, out of his stinginess, he hides his money in the mattress or the pillow and dies of hunger. Have you ever seen a stingy dog? Or a donkey that has plenty of hay to eat and yet does not touch it, and is found dead from hunger? You see how the miser becomes mad, and indeed the most unpleasant, the most repulsive kind of madman.