Thoughts at the Threshold of the Holy Fast of Great Lent
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HOLY APOSTLES ORTHODOX CHURCH Currently meeting in Twin Chimneys Office Park 10760 Baltimore Avenue, Beltsville, Maryland 20705 Archpriest George Johnson, Rector; [email protected] Ph: 301-931-3400, church, 301-572-5738, rectory www.holyapostlesorthodoxchurch.org OUR FUTURE CHURCH HOME MARCH 2011 PARISH BULLETIN THOUGHTS AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE HOLY FAST OF GREAT LENT Money! Power! Honor! These are the temptations that, unfortunately, many people are unable to resist. This is the source of all the disputes, disagreements and divisions among Christians. This is the root of people's forgetting the "one thing needful" which is proposed to us by the true Christian faith and which consists of prayer, acts of repentance, and sincere, un-hypocritical charity to our neighbors. The Holy Church always calls us to this, but especially now, during the Great Fast! What is required of us Christians is not some kind of "exalted politics," not lofty phrases and hazy philosophy, but the most humble prayer of the Publican: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!", acts of repentance, and doing good to our neighbors, which proceeds from a pure heart. It is for the practice of all of this that the Church has established Great Lent! How powerfully, colorfully, graphically, and convincingly, with what ardent inspiration is all of this spoken of in the divine services of Great Lent! No one anywhere has such a wealth of edification in this regard as do we Orthodox in our incomparable Lenten services, which, to their shame, the majority of Orthodox in our times do not know at all. Archbishop Averky of Syracuse (+1976) A Child’s Lent Remembered The following excerpt is taken from Ivan Shmelyov's “Anno Domini, a wistful recollection of life in his pious, old-fashioned, well to-do home in pre- Revolutionary Moscow” – From “Orthodox America” Clean Monday I waken from harsh light in my room: a bare kind of light, cold, dismal. Yes, it's Great Lent today. The pink curtains, with their hunters and their ducks, have already been taken down while I slept, and that's why it's so bare and dismal in the room. It's Clean Monday today for us, and everything in our house is being scrubbed. Grayish weather, the thaw. The dripping beyond the window is like weeping. Our old carpenter, Gorkin, "the panel man", said yesterday that when Lady Shrovetide leaves, she'll weep. And so she is--drip...drip...drip... There she goes! I look at the paper flowers reduced to shreds, at the gold-glazed "Shrovetide" sweet cake--a toy, brought back from the baths yesterday; gone are the little bears, gone are the little hills--vanished, the joy. And a joyous something begins to fuss in my heart; now everything is new, different. Now it will be "the soul beginning"-- Gorkin told me all about it yesterday. "It's time to ready the soul," To prepare for Communion, to keep the fast, to make ready for the Bright Day. "Send One-eye in to see me!" I hear Father's angry shouting. Father has not gone out on business; it's a special day today, very strict. Father rarely shouts. Something important has happened. But after all he forgave the man for drinking; he cancelled all his sins; yesterday was the day of Forgiveness. And Vasilli Vasillich forgave us all, too, that's exactly what Ira said in the dining room, kneeling: "I forgive you all!" So why is Father shouting then? The door opens; Gorkin comes in with a gleaming copper basin. Oh, yes, to smoke out Lady Shrovetide! There's a hot brick in the basin, and mint, and they pour vinegar over them. My old nurse, Domnushka, follows Gorkin around and does the pouring; it hisses in the basin and a tart steam rises a sacred steam. I can smell it even now, across the distance of the years. “Sacred.” That's what Gorkin calls it. He goes to all the corners and gently swirls the basin. And then he swirls it over me. "Get up, dearie, don't pamper yourself," he speaks lovingly to me, sliding the basin under the skirt of the bed. "Where has she hid herself in your room, fat old Lady Shrovetide. We'll drive her out. Lent has arrived. We'll be going to the Lenten market, the choir from St. Basil's will be singing 'My soul, my soul arise;' you won't be able to tear yourself away." That unforgettable, that sacred smell: the smell of Great Lent. And Gorkin himself, completely special, as if he were kind of sacred, too. Way before light, he had already gone to the bath, steamed himself thoroughly, put on everything clean. Clean Monday today! Only the kazakin is old; today only the most workaday clothes may be worn, that's "the law". And it's a sin to laugh, and you have to rub a bit of oil on your head, like Gorkin. I'll be eating without oil now, but you have to 2 oil the head, it's the law, "for the prayer's sake." There's a flow about him, from his little gray beard, all silver really, from the neatly combed head. I know for a fact that he's a saint. They're like that, God's people that please Him. And his face is pink, like a cherubim's, from the cleanness. I know that he's dried himself bits of black bread with salt, and all bent long he'll take them with his tea, "instead of sugar." But why is Daddy angry with Vasilli Vasillich, like that? "Oh, sinfulness..." says Gorkin with a sigh. “It's hard to break habits, and now everything is strict, Lent. And, well, they get angry. But you hold fast now, think about your soul. It's the season, all the same as if the latter days were come. That's the law! You just recite, "O Lord and Master of my life...' and be cheerful." And I begin silently reciting the recently memorized Lenten prayer. The rooms are quiet and deserted, full of that sacred smell. In the front room, before the reddish icon of the Crucifixion, a very old one , from our sainted great-grandmother who was an Old Believer; a "Lenten" lampada of clear glass has been lit, and now it will burn unextinguished until Pascha. When Father lights it-- on Saturdays he lights all the lampadas himself--he always sings softly, in a pleasant-sad way: "Before Thy Cross, we bow down, O Master," and I would sing softly after him, that wonderful refrain: "And Thy holy Resurrection, we glorify!” A joy-to-tears beats inside my soul, shining from these words. And I behold it, behind the long file of Lenten days--the Holy Resurrection, in lights. A joyful little prayer! It casts a kindly beam of light upon these sad days of bent. I begin to imagine that now the old life is coming to an end, and it' s time to prepare for that other, life, which will be – where? Somewhere, in the heavens. You have to cleanse the soul of all sinfulness, and that's why everything around you is different. And something special is at our side, invisible and fearful. Gorkin told me that now, "it's like when the soul is parting from the body." THEY keep watch, to snatch away the soul, and all the while the soul trembles and wails: "Woe is me, I am cursed!" They read about it in church now, at the Standings. “Because they can sense that their end is coming near, that Christ will rise! And that's why we're given Lent, to keep close to Church, to live to see the Bright Day. And not to reflect, you understand. About earthly things, do not reflect! And they'll be ringing everywhere: 'Think back! Think-back!" He made the words boom inside him nicely. Throughout the house the window vents are open, and you can hear the mournful cry and summons of the bells, ringing before the services: think- back...think-back. That's the piteous bell, crying for the soul. It's called the Lenten peal. They've taken the shutters down from the windows, and it'll be that way, poor looking, clear until Pascha. In the drawing room, there are gray slipcovers on the furniture; the lamps are bundled up into cocoons, and even the one painting, "The Beauty at the Feast," is draped over with a sheet. That was the suggestion of His Eminence. Shook his head sadly and said: "A sinful and tempting picture!" But Father likes it a lot--such class! Also draped is the engraving that Father for some reason calls "the sweet-cake one"; it shows a little old man dancing, and an old woman hitting him with a broom. That one His Eminence liked a great deal, even laughed. Ali the house folk are very serious, in workday clothes with patches, and I 3 was told also to put on the jacket with the worn-through elbows. The rugs have been taken out; it's such a lark now to skate across the parquet. Only it's scary to try--Great Lent: skate hard and you'll break a leg. Not a crumb left over from Shrovetide, mustn't be so much as a trace of it in the air. Even the sturgeon in aspic was passed down to the kitchen yesterday. Only the very plainest dishes are left in the sideboard, the ones with the dun spots and the cracks – for Great Lent.