The First Week of Holy Great Lent
By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev
By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!
By the mercy of God, having passed through the preparatory weeks, we now enter into Holy and Great Lent. And we enter it remembering the very beginning of man’s life on earth: his creation, his fall into sin, and his expulsion from paradise.
The Holy Church now compels us not only to recall what once happened to the first man, but to come to know ourselves.
Abba Poemen, explaining his teaching on the foundations of spiritual life, said that only he has begun spiritual labor who has come to know himself. And Isaac the Syrian, speaking of a man who has come to know himself, places him above the one who has been counted worthy to see an angel.
Self-knowledge is the work of a Christian’s entire life; yet the beginning of this knowledge — knowing who I am, whence I came upon the earth, and where I shall go from this life — is necessary even for beginners.
And by God’s mercy each of us at some moment in life has come to know this truth. On this day of Adam’s expulsion from paradise, the Holy Church also points out to us our origin:
“My Creator, the Lord, having taken dust from the earth and breathed into me the breath of life, quickened me and honored me upon the earth as ruler over all visible things and as a fellow-dweller with the angels.”
Gregory the Theologian, speaking of the creation of man, indicates that by his creation man is the crown of all creation; that the Lord, having first created the invisible world and then the visible, desired afterward to unite these two worlds in one small world — this new creation, man — and to have him as His confidant, so that through this new angel in the flesh He might unite the visible and invisible worlds, as we would now say, the spiritual and the material. For this reason man was created, says Gregory the Theologian: to raise his material nature up to the level of the soul. Man’s task is to make his body, from being merely a servant, a co-servant with God; to raise visible nature to the height of the invisible.
We know that the Lord, creating man by His living breath, gave him free will, so that he could follow the commandments or go against them. For this reason, says the great teacher Gregory the Theologian, God gave the command that Adam should not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This food was the measure of the perfect; therefore the first man was not to partake of it. It was a commandment strengthening his freedom — he could keep it or break it — and we know that he broke it:
“I have stripped off the God-woven garment, wretched one that I am, having disobeyed Your divine command, O Lord, at the counsel of the enemy; and now I am clothed with fig leaves and garments of skin.”
This stripping off of the garment, this nakedness and the awareness of this nakedness, is the state of man in sin.
The Canon of this day tells us that we must weep for our sinful deeds:
“Come, my impassioned soul, weep today for my deeds, remembering the first nakedness in Eden, whereby you were cast out from sweetness and unceasing joy.”
This nakedness is what we shall hear about all week:
“I have torn now my first garment, which the Creator wove for me in the beginning, and therefore I lie naked,” the Canon of Andrew of Crete will say to us.
This stripping of the first God-woven garment — the one which the Father gives to the prodigal son upon his return, the “first robe,” the one which, after Christ came to earth, we receive in the Mystery of Baptism when we are baptized into Christ — this garment we have lost, like the first man. We must now recognize our spiritual nakedness, recognize that we have again torn this garment and that “therefore I lie naked.”
And with what has man clothed himself?
He has clothed himself in another garment, a garment given through sin:
“I have clothed myself in a torn robe which the serpent wove for me by his counsel, and I am ashamed.”
This garment, which we have received as a garment of corruption, which we wear and must put off; this is what we must understand today in order to be clothed in pure robes.
And we know that there is such a path by which we may receive a pure garment:
“Enlighten the robe of my soul, O Giver of Light, and save me,” we sing when we behold Christ’s bridal chamber adorned and have no garment to enter it.
The first man was called by the Lord to this path. When the Lord called Adam to repentance, instead of repenting he blamed the Creator Himself: “The woman which You gave me, she deceived me.”
He blamed God instead of himself. This failure to place his own sins at the head of his life destroyed the first man; and it can also destroy us, who through Christ have again been clothed in the first garment. And the Holy Church tells us that, having recognized our nakedness, we must weep for our deeds:
“Come, my impassioned soul, weep today for your deeds, remembering the first nakedness in Eden, whereby you were cast out from sweetness and unceasing joy.”
“Clothed in garments of shame, alas for me, instead of the radiant robe, I weep for my ruin, O Savior, and in faith I cry to You, O Good One: ‘Despise me not, O God, but call me back.’”
“I weep and groan and lament, seeing the cherub with the flaming sword commanded to guard the entrance of Eden, inaccessible to all transgressors; unless You, O Savior, make it accessible to me.”
This state of weeping which is now proposed to us, the Holy Church will instruct us in it throughout the entire first week:
“Where shall I begin to weep for the deeds of my wretched life? What beginning shall I make, O Christ, to this present lamentation? But as You are compassionate, grant me forgiveness of sins.”
Thus begins the Great Canon.
How can we weep if we have no tears?
Entering this week of Great Lent, we must come to know our condition and the condition in which we ought to be.
The Holy Fathers say that tears do not produce weeping, but rather weeping produces tears. “Weeping does not come from tears, but tears from weeping,” says Saint John the Prophet (Barsanouphios and John, Answer 282).
Weeping may arise from various causes, but it may also arise from repentance; for Saint Barsanouphios says: “Weeping washes every man from sins” (Answer 254).
And according to John Climacus, weeping is “a sorrow of the repentant soul that has taken root” (Ladder, Step 7, 60).
If we realize that our soul is decaying, covered with sores, as Andrew of Crete says, that we are under the power of soul-destroying Belial, and that our soul is sick with corruption, then first of all there will arise in us the desire to be delivered from this corruption, and we shall ask the Lord to forgive our sins and heal our wounds and sores.
And if at this moment we have no weeping and no tears, then let us in the days of Great Lent learn from those who knew how to repent and how to weep for their sins.
How shall we acquire weeping?
The Holy Fathers say that for the lazy it is difficult to attain weeping, for in the words of Saint Barsanouphios: “A man attains weeping through labor, through much study of Scripture, patience, reflection on the Last Judgment and eternal shame, and through self-denial, as the Lord said: ‘If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me’ (Matt. 16:24). To deny oneself and take up one’s cross means to cut off one’s will in everything and to regard oneself as nothing” (Answer 254).
This is what the Holy Fathers advise — first of all, labor and study of Holy Scripture.
Throughout the whole year, here in church at the divine services, we are instructed in Holy Scripture; but in the days of Great Lent, when we continually cry to the Lord, “O God, have mercy on me, a fallen one,” we are given the Canon of Andrew of Crete, which consists entirely of images taken from Holy Scripture. Everything vivid in the Old and New Testaments concerning sin, repentance, and prayer — Andrew of Crete has gathered it all. From Abel, Cain, and Joseph, through Moses, the Prophets, and King David — through those who knew how to repent and pray — the Church leads us.
“David once added iniquity to iniquity, yet immediately he showed a twofold repentance.”
Everything revealed to us in the Gospel is brought together in the Great Canon in a penitential, prayerful form:
“I bring before you examples from the New Scripture, leading you, O soul, to compunction: emulate the righteous, turn away from sinners, and appease Christ with prayers, fasting, purity, and reverence.”
This is what the Holy Fathers say. Such weeping is given through study of Holy Scripture, and the Holy Church gives us this instruction in an exceptional form in the Canon of Andrew of Crete.
We also need instruction in patience and reflection on the Last Judgment; and through the teachings of Ephraim the Syrian during this week, the Holy Church reveals to us this judgment of our conscience.
Finally, there remains self-denial. Adam did not renounce himself; he placed himself first and blamed the Creator: “The woman which You gave me, she deceived me.”
But we must remember other words: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself…” We must renounce our “I”; we must, according to the Holy Fathers, regard ourselves as nothing before God and ask the Lord to cleanse us from our sicknesses and wounds. Yet we have none of this, and therefore the Church calls us to weep and lament.
And these are not mere words — nor is it merely words that one can have weeping without tears; for if we have in our soul a sorrow that has taken root, then, according to John Climacus, we already have weeping.
“We shall not be accused,” he says at the end of his chapter on weeping, “(O brethren), we shall not be accused at the departure of our soul for not having worked miracles, nor for not having theologized, nor for not having been beholders of divine mysteries; but we shall certainly give an answer to God for not having wept unceasingly for our sins” (Step 7, 70).
Thus speaks the great Father. And what shall be said not about ascetics, but about us, who even in these great days have no weeping — days when all that is best and most edifying has been gathered with such love by the Holy Fathers and is given to us day by day in these preparatory weeks?
What answer shall we give if all the riches gathered in the Canon of Andrew of Crete, in the stichera we shall sing, in the penitential psalms of the sinful yet righteous King David, pass us by?
What answer shall we give if this year too passes in vain, if we do not come to know ourselves, do not recognize our sins, do not strive to ask God for repentance and tears — for all this depends both on us and on God?
Shall we not come to the church and together with Andrew of Crete and all the righteous ask for mercy, ask for penitential weeping?
Let us pray to those great ascetics whom we commemorated on Saturday, that we may receive the joy of weeping for our sins, sicknesses, and infirmities. Let us, together with Adam, cry out daily throughout this week: “O God, have mercy on me, a fallen one.” Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.