Bishop Augoustinos Kantiotis: Our duties during Great Week

rom a homily delivered at the Holy Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior, Moschato–Athens, on the evening of April 10, 1960.

 

We have arrived, my beloved, at the saving Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, at Great Week.

This week is called Great because within its 168 hours, from today until the night of the Resurrection, great events are commemorated, unique and epoch-making, which shook the earthly things and the heavenly things and the things beneath the earth.

For this reason, this week is called Great; but for this reason also, it must not pass as the others do.

And I raise the question: what are the duties of a Christian during Great Week? I am not addressing unbelievers, atheists, or chiliasts; I am addressing believers, who want to celebrate properly. What, then, are the duties that we have during this week?

The first duty, my brethren, is to thank from our heart our Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, our whole life ought to be a thanksgiving, a “Glory to Thee, O Lord,” for His small and great benefactions, the manifest and the hidden, for all the good things, material and spiritual, which His grace bestows in abundance: the sun, the air, the water, the flowers, the seashores, the whole creation. Let us thank Him also for our parents and siblings, for wife and children, for time and the seasons, for whatever is blessed and necessary.

An ungrateful man is worse than an animal. You have a dog, you throw it a piece of bread, and it wags its tail and says thank you to you. So man also ought to be grateful to God. Let us thank Him for everything, but above all for the sacrifice of His Son, for His venerable Passion. Let us also thank Him for something else: for His long-suffering toward our many crimes, and especially toward our blasphemies, for which the earth ought to have opened and swallowed us up and the sea to have swelled and drowned us, and yet He endures us. For this reason, on Great Friday the Church says, “Glory to Thy long-suffering, O Lord, glory to Thee.”

So, one of our duties is to thank God. The other is to attend the sacred services. The services of Great Week are not like the others; they differ greatly. Its hymns, which are sweeter than honey, these inspired poems such as, for example, the Lamentation at the Tomb, do not exist in any religion in the world. These troparia alone, which neither the Franks nor the Protestants nor anyone else have, are enough to prove that our Church is not from the earth; it is from heaven, it is God-inspired.

Who composed these things? Where were they written, in schools and universities? They were fashioned in caves by holy ascetics, whose tears fell upon the earth and made it blossom. They did not write them simply with their mind and the letters they knew; these are the blood of their heart, sound feeling, an expression of life, holy experiences, truths which only those who truly loved Christ could possess. One must be insensible not to be moved by them. Let us therefore follow them in church, holding a Synopsis.

Our third duty. This week is a week of fasting, of strict fasting. Do not listen to the materialists and the impious; we, from the tradition of the Apostles and Fathers of Orthodoxy, keep the fasts of our holy Church, and especially this fast. When we say fasting, we do not mean simply that the stomach should fast in order to remember the vinegar of the Cross; we mean that together with the stomach the mouth should also fast from evil-speaking, the tongue from foul speech, the eyes from shameful spectacles. On such days in Byzantium, the emperors used to sign an order: on Great Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday the hippodromes and all the theaters were to be closed. The Church mourns. If we were a Christian state, from tomorrow the dens of vice and the centers of corruption ought to be closed, and mourning ought to prevail for Him Who was lifted up for us upon the Cross.

But we also have another duty. It is the duty of confession and Holy Communion. On this I shall not expand. I will say only this. During these holy days, and especially on the night of the Resurrection, we are called to remain in the church until the end with the Paschal candle. Whoever hears “Christ is Risen” and then leaves, it would have been better for him to remain at home. What happens, that the churches empty out after “Christ is Risen,” is a profanation, a showing of contempt toward Christ. Let us therefore remain until the end and prepare ourselves for Holy Communion. This week is preeminently a week of Holy Communion.

What is Holy Communion? It is the Body and Blood of our Christ, the fire of heaven. What are you, I ask you, straw? Do not approach the holy things; you will be burned. Are you gold? If you are gold, gold is not threatened by fire; the more it approaches the fire, the more it is purified. So you also, O Christian: if you are unrepentant, the fire will burn you, as it burned Judas who communed unworthily; but if you have passed through the furnace of holy confession, then approach; Holy Communion will be a medicine of immortality.

During Great Week we also have a sacred duty toward our brethren who suffer and are afflicted. It is a week of love and almsgiving. A choice food for someone who is hungry, a new garment—not an old one—for someone who has none, help for the widow and the orphans, a necessary medicine, a visit to the sick, a comforting word to the sorrowful, whatever at last a heart that loves can think of.

But I have not said everything; there is still something more, and this is the most difficult of all. All that I have said—you may do it; but if you do not do this last thing, you are not a Christian. What is it? I know Christians who are people of prayer, who keep their ear stretched toward the sacred words, who fast strictly, who confess, who commune; but few Christians have I known who possess—what?—the “Let us forgive all things in the Resurrection” (doxastikon of the praises of Pascha). Great Week is a week of forgiveness.

Who, my brethren, in this life has no dislikes, coldnesses, antagonisms; who has no enemy? During these holy days let us lift up our gaze to the Crucified One. No one was wronged and suffered as our Christ was. While the nails were tearing His flesh and the curses and anathemas of the Pharisees His heart, He prayed upon the Cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). So let us also during these holy days forgive one another: daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law, brother with brother, friend with friend, children with parents, all without exception. Let us widen our hearts, let us feel within ourselves the love of our Christ. Without love how can we celebrate?

My brethren! Great Week means: a hand open for mercy, eyes tearful with repentance, feet running to the church, a heart reconciled, full of adoration for the Crucified One. Are we carrying out these duties?

Do you know what we are like? It is as though there were a beggar, and every day they threw him a few pennies, and then there comes an hour when some king passes by and says to him, “Open your palms,” and begins to count out to him 1, 2, 3, … 5, … 10, … 100, … 168 sovereigns, and his eyes are dazzled. And he, instead of taking that treasure and making use of it, goes to the river and begins throwing the sovereigns into the water. Is that not madness? So these hours too—thus the Church says, calling them “hours”—are a treasure. Every hour, every bell, every strike, every minute, is an important hour.

Let us make good use of these holy days. Let us not allow them to slip away like the rest of our life. Do we know whether we shall live to celebrate another Great Week? Might this Great Week be the last of our life? Last year how many were with us? And where are they now? We are departing, the train is whistling, once only do we pass over this crust.

I pray that this Great Week may be a significant turning point in our life. May the Lord grant that it be a week of holy thoughts, sacred feelings, heroic decisions, sanctification of soul. May we seal Great Week with the words, “Remember me, O Lord, when Thou comest in Thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42).

 

Greek source: https://katanixi.gr/ta-kathikonta-mas-ti-megali-evdomada/