The Fifth Sunday of Lent Sunday of St Mary of Egypt

   It is not possible to establish with any certainty what part history and what part legend play in the traditions that relate to “St Mary of Egypt”. One may as well simply admit the fact that the Church wished to make her, as we sing during matins: “a pattern of repentance”. She is a symbol of conversion, of contrition, and of austerity. On this last Sunday of Lent, she expresses the last and most urgent call that the Church addresses to us before the sacred days of the Passion and the Resurrection.

   The epistle read at the liturgy (Heb. 9. 11-14) compares the ministry of Christ to that of the High Priest of the Jews. Once, each year, he entered into the Tabernacle, but Christ “entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us”. The High Priest purified and sanctified the faithful by sprinkling them with the blood and ashes of sacrificed animals. “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”.

Selected quotes from the Ladder of Divine Ascent

Saint John Climacus

Fresco in the Holy Trinity Church at
Saint John the Baptist Monastery

- It is better to grieve our parents than the Lord. For He has created and saved us, but they have often ruined their loved ones and delivered them up to their doom.
- Repentance is the renewal of baptism. Repentance is a contract with God for a second life.
- A penitent is a buyer of humility.
- Before our fall, the demons say that God is a friend of man; but after the fall, that He is inexorable.
- Some inquire and wonder: “why, when remembrance of death is so beneficial for us, has God hidden from us the knowledge of the hour of death?” – Not knowing that in this way God wonderfully accomplishes our salvation.
- Do not wish to assure everyone in word of your love for them, but rather ask God to show them your love without words.
- The beginning of freedom from anger is silence of the lips when the heart is agitated; the middle is silence of the thoughts when there is a mere disturbance of soul; and the end is an imperturbable calm under the breadth of unclean winds.
- As with the appearance of light, darkness retreats, so at the fragrance of humility, all anger and bitterness vanishes.

From the Cross to the depth of God

   This Sunday, at the end of the Divine Service, we shall have a procession with the Holy Cross placed in the midst of flowers; each believer will get one of these flowers when embracing the Cross. The Cross is surrounded with three candles as if the Holy Trinity is bowing for every believer cleaving to the Cross.

   We, however, reach for meanings and do not stop at the Icon we kiss; we search for deeper understandings, for what lies behind this sacred kiss. And what lies deeper is what the Lord has said in the Bible this Sunday: “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”, as if He was saying that this is a condition if we want to consider ourselves His disciples, accepting life as it is given, as it comes and be crucified on it. The Cross is cast in our lives or, in other word, our lives are cast on the Cross. Each and every one of us is hindered by this or that person or by his own sin, thus his whole being is scattered. Jesus did not invent the Cross, but He found it in Him, in His Flesh and Blood, in the flesh of a weary humanity. Jesus did not love the Cross and does not request from us to search for suffering, suffering is loathsome, and the Lord wished that this cup pass from Him. Our faith does not call us to suffer, however suffering is in us made by the sin rooted in us.

On Spiritual fatherhood

   What is mainly the importance of “fatherhood”: A “father”, psychologically, is a foundation, a center point, an authority. Our existence is founded on the basis of fatherhood. The whole universe is directed towards a father… towards the Father… the God Father… (The Creed – the first words in Saint Paul’s Epistles – Our Father who art in Heaven).

   The same way we are born physically we are to be born spiritually: Saint Paul says: “for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you” (1 Cor 4: 15)… There is a “life” that is given… An operation, a sort of a creation…  A transition from a life that is “natural”, regular, psychological, superficial, to a life that is “spiritual”, the world of the Holy Spirit, a world that is beyond nature, a deep “inner” life, that is vertical… and this life has been transmitted by succession ever since Christ and His apostles, through this tradition… a living tradition…  A continuity in newness…

A Journey Of Ascent.

   “O DIVINE LORD of all that exists, Thou hast illumined the Apostle and Evangelist Luke with Thy Holy Spirit, thereby enabling him to represent Thy most Holy Mother, the One who held Thee in her arms and said: The Grace of Him Who has been born of me is spread through the world!

   Enlighten and direct my soul, my heart and my spirit. Guide the hands of Thine unworthy servant so that I may worthily and perfectly portray Thine Icon, that of   Thy Mother, and all the Saints, for the glory, joy and adornment of Thy Holy Church.

   Forgive my sins and the sins of those who will venerate these icons and who, kneeling devoutly before them, give homage to those they represent.

   Protect them from all evil and instruct them with good counsel. This I ask through the intercession of Thy most Holy Mother, the Apostle Luke, and all the Saints. Amen.”

   The iconographer prayer before starting an icon.

On Fasting

   Father, some say that the great Apostle Paul conveyed different teaching concerning fasting from that of our Savior Christ. Can you explain this to me?.

   ELDER CLEOPA: Fasting, according to the testimony of Saint Basil the Great, is the oldest commandment given by God to man. This great father of the Church of Christ says:

   "O Man, be pious and meditate with fear on the antiquity of the fast, for as old as is the world so old is as the commandment of fasting. Indeed this commandment was given in paradise when God said to Adam: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.'"

In What Way Can One Guard the Senses from Passions?.

    Our senses are those very doors and windows through which either life or death may enter.

   Every idea of evil and every form of passion enters the heart through the mediation and service of the senses. And if the senses are not guarded, then the evil passions are also not guarded. How can they be guarded and closed to such passions? Listen. The windows of the Temple of Solomon were covered with fine nets to prevent the entry of impure insects (cf. Ez 41 :6). This may serve as a reminder that he who does not want any impure pas­sions of the senses to enter into his soul must drape his senses with spiritual nets. What are these nets? It is the memory of death, for one; our account before Christ on the day of judgment; the memory of eternal suffering. Through these, man can put away the evil passions and sins, when they come before his eyes and his other senses. St. Neilos has confirmed that this is so: "Those who desire to keep their mind as a clean and pure temple, where the doors and windows are covered with fine nets to prevent the entry of any impure insects, must similarly cover their senses by meditating on the sobering realities of the future judgment which prevent the entry of any impure images to creep in".

Pour your heart to God

   Question: In our modern culture that is so materialistic, scientific and focused on biology and the natural sciences, how can we even become aware that the heart is something more than just a muscle?. How can we become aware of ourselves as being something more than just a brain or a circulatory system?!.

   Answer: We must learn the language of God. Because we all have sinned, we all have a common language, the language of pain. When we come to God, we will inevitably have to suffer in order to be purified. If we speak to God with that pain, if we pour out our heart to God with that pain, then God will listen to us, and the heart will be activated.