Let Us Not Remain Outside the Bridal Chamber of Christ (Great Tuesday)
By Fr. George Dorbarakis
By Fr. George Dorbarakis
“Having understood the hour of the end, O soul, and having feared the cutting down of the fig tree, diligently work the talent given to you, O wretched one, keeping watch and crying out: Let us not remain outside the bridal chamber of Christ.”
1. The above kontakion of Holy Tuesday, in a few lines, sets before us the course of true life in Christ. “Let us not remain outside the bridal chamber of Christ”: the Hymnographer, that is, our Church, calls us not to remain outside the bridal chamber of Christ. What is the bridal chamber? It is Christ Himself and our relationship with Him. He is the Bridegroom and every believer is the bride-soul. Our aim is precisely to remain always united with Him, as happens in the relationship between bridegroom and bride. This constitutes both Paradise and the Kingdom of God. For this reason He came and became man: to receive us and incorporate us into His holy Body, the Church; to make us branches of the tree that is Himself. “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Each believer, after holy baptism — by which he has put on Christ — becomes an extension of Him, another manifestation of His presence in the world.
What then is the concern of the believer, so as not to remain outside the bridal chamber? To keep the garment with which he was clothed at baptism — Christ Himself — clean and undefiled. “As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” This is also the purpose of the whole Christian life: “to preserve the purity of holy baptism” (Abba Mark the Ascetic), that is, “to preserve the Holy Spirit in our life, by whom we became Christians” (Saint Seraphim of Sarov). Yet the reality of life often comes and overturns this desire. The fear lest the garment be stained — lest we lose Christ — becomes reality. This is expressed by the Hymnographer in the well-known exapostilarion of these days: “I see Your bridal chamber adorned, O my Savior, and I have no garment that I may enter therein.” Sadly, everyday life often leads us into forgetfulness, into forgetting our promises at baptism, and we literally “tear apart” the garment we received, through our many sins. At one time our love of pleasure, at another our love of money, at another our love of glory — these central passions which spring from the root of all evils, self-love — cause us to lose what should be the priority of our life. “Seek first the Kingdom of God” (the Lord). “I count all things as refuse, that I may gain Christ” (the Apostle Paul).
2. What is it that could help us not to deviate from this priority? Our saints, of course, grounded in the words of the Gospel, remind us: not to fall away from our love for the Lord; to keep our heart always burning toward Him who is our Creator, our Sustainer, our Judge, but above all the Bridegroom of our life. He Himself continually asks this of us: “Abide in My love.” “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.” Therefore, our love for the Lord is that which naturally ought to keep us in this state of grace. Yet, because this often does not happen, our saints remind us that we can remain in the vigilance that the Lord asks for even by lower means and less exalted thoughts — yet always with the awareness that we are not in the normal state: that is, with the remembrance of death and the fear of hell. This is precisely what the Kymnographer of the kontakion reminds us: “having understood the hour of the end, O soul, and having feared the cutting down of the fig tree.” It is the same to which Saint Andrew of Crete calls us in the Great Canon: “My soul, my soul, arise — why are you sleeping? The end is near, and you will be troubled.” The Holy Fathers remind us more generally that a believer can remain in the will of God in three ways: by fear (the state of the servant), by expectation of God’s gifts (the state of the hireling), and by love (the state of the son). The last, as we said, is the natural one, but the others also are not rejected by our good Father.
3. In whatever state we may be, what is required is vigilance, so that we do not lose our living relationship with Christ, the Bridegroom of our soul. And what we are specifically called to do is to work the talent given to us — that is, to activate the gifts we received at holy baptism and chrismation. This activation — essentially a life according to the commandments of Christ — brings, by the grace of God, the fruits that we must have as branches of Christ’s vine. And these fruits are none other than those mentioned by the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, kindness, faith, meekness, self-control.” Wherever we perceive the presence of these fruits, it means we are touching the presence of the Holy Spirit, and thus our living relationship with Jesus Christ. Where they are absent, it means there is no presence of Christ there, even if His name is invoked. We are outside the bridal chamber! “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who sent Me.”
This labor is the priority of a Christian’s life, and for this reason diligence is required. The awareness of the gift given to us — to be members of Christ, to manifest Christ — naturally leads a conscious Christian not to “work” lazily or carelessly, but with zeal and effort. The more a believer realizes this reality, the more he will expand toward Christ, which means he will open himself toward his fellow man in love — and thus even from here he will begin to experience the Kingdom of God.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
