The Triodion as a Guide to Psychosomatic Purification

 

The Triodion as a Guide to Psychosomatic Purification

By Heracles Rerakis, 
Professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

The Triodion constitutes a spiritual period that grounds us in our truth. It reminds us of the purpose of our life and of its limits. It shows us the vanity of our aims, pursuits, and priorities. It brings us back to our existential reality. It leads us onto the path that we may have lost.

It is a period that we experience every year in order to remind us of the role of time in our lives, as well as of a crucial issue that we usually forget: the way of returning to the starting point from which we set out.

The Triodion of the Church teaches and forms us once again, through Worship, Prayer, Fasting, Self-control, Purification, Love, and all the Virtues, in the manner of our life and of our saving communion with God and with our fellow human being.

The ecclesiastical Triodion, as a spiritual compass, orients us toward the mysteries of the stages of the virtues, according to Christian teaching, whose starting point is the great decision of repentance — the miracle of God for our salvation, “the divine gift that raises man from Hades to the light of God,” according to Saint Sophrony of Essex.

The Triodion, adorned with all divine Wisdom, constitutes the only correct beginning and foundation of our spiritual life. The path of repentance that it offers us is not merely an inner struggle of self-criticism, but a conscious confession that, in order to approach the Redeemer of the world, the first and primary thing is humility.

Humility has, as its spiritual offspring, purification. Purification, however, is not something one decides to undertake when one feels and believes oneself to be pure. For this reason, the first step that we need to take in order to enter the stage of purification of the Triodion is to accept, in humility, that we are sinners, unworthy and unclean, and that our only hope is that He — the Sinless One — will receive us into His Body, with His love, mercy, and compassion, and help us, through the Holy Spirit, to be cleansed from every stain.

Every step toward purification, however, must be accompanied by humility and a sense of sinfulness. “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” must become the companion of our life.

For our Saints, the result of true humility is true repentance. Repentance through humility teaches us how to cast out from within ourselves every evil thought and every worldly and everyday concern that threatens and hinders our spiritual progress and purification.

Saint Sophrony considered it very important in our spiritual journey that we be able to prove ourselves not worthy, but “unworthy of God.” This can indeed bring about a tremendous change in our life, since it will free us from the anxieties, worries, and cares that fill our souls when we become slaves to the basic and fundamental passions of worldly life: love of wealth, love of glory, and love of pleasure. That is why the Apostle Paul speaks of freedom from the bondage of the passions. The fasting of the Triodion helps in this liberation from the passions.

The first fast that the Triodion proposes is that of egotism and pride. Thus humility is born, which helps us to feel the unworthiness experienced by the Publican, as he stood bent over in a corner of the Temple:
 
“And the tax collector stood afar off and would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, make atonement for me, a sinner’” (Luke 18:13).

The proud man, as the Pharisee was, cannot repent, because his repentance is imaginary and hypocritical — it is repentance of the lips and not of the heart, verbal and not internal, ostentatious, formal, and false rather than true, since it does not have humility as its starting point, as he himself confirms by his attitude:

“The Pharisee, standing, prayed thus with himself, boastfully and ostentatiously, to impress, to glorify himself and the virtues of the law that he practiced, even comparing himself with others: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all that I acquire’” (Luke 18:11–12).

He judges himself and boasts, considering that he is worthy before God and that he has already attained Paradise by his deeds. He followed the Jewish tradition, in which people had learned to pray formally and to keep the law piously and religiously, but only externally — without humility, contrition, repentance, or return; that is, without true repentance. He believes that his communication with God constitutes the model relationship with God, that it expresses the will of God, and he celebrates it with such pride in his justification that he is certain no one can object.

The Triodion, however, expressing the new Spirit that the God-man brought into the world, grounds us in Orthodox spirituality, which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and urges us to move away from such false fixations of egotism and self-satisfaction over achievements that God does not bless. For this reason Christ advises: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

And Saint John Chrysostom notes: “The descent of humility becomes an ascent. Humility is the door of the Kingdom. Nothing is higher than humility.”

In the Triodion, repentance becomes a bridge to justification — not by us, but by God, since He alone is our Judge. When a person repents, he glorifies God, and then Christ forgives him, renews him, and glorifies him as a now-purified person, showing him the Light of His glory already in this life.

Thus, the one who glorifies God offers Him a pure heart, and He glorifies that heart and grants it His uncreated energy, offering it the vision of Himself, the Light of His Glory, from this life: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Within the Triodion of Orthodoxy, all this therapeutic treatment is offered — one that is specific and bears specific fruits.

Saint Gregory Palamas states: 

“The Philanthropic Father, through the Son, reconciles us to Himself. He calls us to labor in His vineyard for ourselves, and for this struggle He gives us a wage. What an indescribable measure of love for mankind! ‘Come,’ He says to us, ‘receive eternal life, which is offered by Me in abundance. I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.’ This abundance of life is the wage for those who labored for themselves and cultivated themselves. Let us see what all these people did: First, they cut away everything that was superfluous and useless. They voluntarily distanced themselves from everything that was an obstacle to their spiritual fruitfulness and inner enrichment. What are these useless things? Wealth, excess food, vanity, every evil passion of soul and body, every sound and sight, and every word that can cause harm to the soul. If someone does not take care, with diligence, to cut away all these things and to cleanse the shoot of the heart, he will never bear fruit for eternal life.”

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.