Short Thoughts on Holy Week 2009

It is now a week after Pascha and I am still in the afterglow of the Holy Week and that wonderful celebration.  As are most things that we experience  in life, what I came away  with  was not what I expected.  

1)  We will never plumb the deepest depths of what Christ's work on the Cross means to us.  Such love is so deep that it is not knowable.  As the blessed Apostle says, "we know in part".  Oh, to have  a deeper understanding of that love than I have now.

2)  Our own sinfulness is deeper and darker than we can admit.  As we come closer to Christ we  are confronted  with our own sin in a more real way.  And, at the same time we are confronted with the sin around us---sometimes in the very people who we love and respect the most.  It is a time of fleeing from being judgmental, grasping for the mercy of God, and bowing in thankfulness for the work of the God-Man on our behalf.

3)  Our enemy of old never rests.   He prowls about like a roaring lion.  He is at work even while we celebrate blessed Pascha.  He is tireless, but his end is secured by the great work of  the first Holy Week.

4)  The church in Acts was a mixed lot: Jews, Greeks, Hellenized Jews, Romans,  Ethiopians, rich, poor, uneducated, schooled, men, women, married, virgins,  revolutionaries, Pharisees, saints, outlaws, etc.  There was nothing homogenized about them---except for the work of the Holy Spirit as He worked amidst their ascesis to transform them into what they were meant to be from the Garden.  I am thankful for the diversity that I see in some of our Orthodox churches, especially the last two that I worshipped in.  There is much to be said about having  ten or fifteen (or more) ethnic groups being represented  under one roof, and being in harmony  despite all the potential divisiveness.  

5)  We are all worth everything to our Creator.  We all bear the image of God.   All of us, individually, are the one lamb that he would leave the  flock for, on a Sabbath or otherwise.  May the Triune God grant us the ability to see each other in that same light. 

6)  The Lenten fast is necessary for one to experience fully the Paschal celebration.  The more we give ourselves to the spirit  (vs. the letter) of the fast, the more we appropriate the grace that the Triune God has for us.  As St. Maximus has said, "Spiritual knowledge without ascetic practice is the theology of the demons".

Through the prayers of our holy fathers, may the Triune God bless those who  read these words.