Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday: The End
These three days, which the Church calls Great and Holy have within the liturgical development of Holy Week a very definite purpose. They place all its celebrations into the perspective of End; they remind us of the eschatological meaning of Pascha. So often the Holy Week is considered one of the ‘beautiful traditions’ or ‘customs,’ a self-evident ‘part’ of our calendar. We take it for granted and enjoy it as a cherished annual event which we have ‘observed’ since childhood. We admire the beauty of its services, the pageantry of its rites and, last but not least, we like the fuss about the paschal table. Then, when all this is done, we resume our normal life. But do we understand that when the world rejected its Savior, when ‘Jesus beg – and to be sorrowful and very heavy . . . and his soul was exceedingly sorrowful even unto death,- when He died on the Cross, ‘normal life’ came to its end and is no longer possible? For there were ‘normal’ men who shouted, ‘Crucify Him!’ who spat at Him and nailed Him to the Cross.’ They hated and killed Him precisely because He was troubling their normal life. It was indeed a perfectly ‘normal’ world which preferred darkness and death to light and life. By the death of Jesus, ‘normal’ world, ‘normal’ life were irrevocably condemned, or rather, they revealed their true and abnormal nature: their inability to receive the Light and the terrible power of evil in them – ‘Now is the judgment of this world.‘ (John 12:31) The Pascha of Jesus signified its end to ‘this world’ and it has been at its end since then. This end can last for hundreds of centuries; this does not alter the nature of time in which we live as the ‘last time.’ ‘The fashion of this world passeth away . . .’ (I Corinthians 7:31)
The Ultimate Passage
Pascha means passover, passage. The feast of Passover was for the Jews the annual commemoration of their whole history as salvation, and of salvation as passage from the slavery of Egypt into freedom, from exile into the promised land. It was also the anticipation of the ultimate passage – into the Kingdom of God. And Christ was the fulfillment of Pascha. He performed the ultimate passage – from death into life, from this ‘old world’ into the new world, into the new time of the Kingdom. And He opened the possibility of this passage to us. Living in ‘this world’ we can already be ‘not of this world,’ i.e., be free from slavery to death and sin, partakers of the ‘world to come.’ But for this, we must also perform our own passage, we must condemn the old Adam in us, we must put on Christ in the baptismal death and have our true life hidden in God with Christ, in the ‘world to come.’
And thus Easter is not an annual commemoration – solemn and beautiful – of a past event. It is this Event, itself shown, given to us, as always efficient, always revealing our world, our time, our life as being at their End, and announcing the Beginning of the new life. And the function of the three first days of Holy Week is precisely to challenge us with this ultimate meaning of Pascha and to prepare us for the understanding and acceptance of it.
1. This eschatological – and it means ultimate, decisive, final – challenge is revealed, first, in the common troparion of these days:
Behold! The Bridegroom comes at midnight,
and blessed is the servant whom He shall ind watching;
and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless.
Beware, herefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep,
lest you be given up to death, and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom.
But rouse yourself, crying: Holy! Holy! Holy! art Thou, O our God,
Through the Theotokos, have mercy on us!
Midnight is the moment when the old day comes to its end and a new day begins. It is thus the symbol of the time in which we live as Christians. For, on the one hand, the Church is still in this world, sharing in its weaknesses and tragedies. Yet, on the other hand, her true being is not of this world, for she is the Bride of Christ and her mission is to announce and to reveal the coming of the Kingdom and of the new day. Her life is a perpetual watching and expectation, a vigil pointed at the dawn of this new day. But we know how strong is still our attachment to the old day, to the world with its passions and sins. We know how deeply we still belong to this world. We have seen the light, we know Christ, we have heard about the peace and joy of the new life in Him, and yet the world holds us in its slavery. This weakness, this constant betrayal of Christ, this incapacity to give the totality of our love to the only true object of love are wonderfully expressed in the exapostilarion of these three days:
Thy Bridal Chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I ay enter, O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul and save me.
2. The same theme develops further in the Gospel readings of these days. First of all, the entire text of the four Gospels (up to John 13:3 1) is read at the Hours (1st, 3rd, 6th and 9th). This re-Capitulation shows that the Cross is the climax of the whole life and ministry of Jesus, the Key to their proper understanding. Everything in the Gospel leads to this ultimate hour of Jesus and everything is to be understood in its light. Then, each service has its special Gospel lesson:
On Monday:
At Matins: Matthew 21:1843. The story of the fig tree, the symbol of the world created to bear spiritual fruits and failing in its response to God.
At the Liturgy of the Presanctifiied Gifts: Matthew 24:3-35. The great eschatological discourse of Jesus. The signs and announcement of the End. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away .
On Tuesday:
At Matins: Matthew 22:15-23, 39- Condemnation of the Pharisees, i.e., of blind and hypocritical religion, of those who think they are the leaders of men and the light of the world, but who in fact ‘shut up the Kingdom of heaven to men.’
At the Presanctified Liturgy: Matthew 24:36-26:2. The End again and the parables of the End: the five wise virgins who had enough oil in their lamps and the five foolish ones who were not admitted to the bridal banquet; the parable of the talents . . . Therefore be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh. And, finally the Last Judgment.
On Wednesday:
At Matins: – John 12:17-50. The rejection of Christ, the growing conflict, the ultimate warning: Now is the judgment of the world … He that rejects my words has one that judges him, the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last days.
At the Presanctified Liturgy: – Matthew 26:6-16. The woman who poured the precious ointment on Jesus, the image of love and repentance which alone unites us with Christ.
3. These Gospel lessons are explained and elaborated in the hymnology of these days: the stichera and the triodia (short canons of three odes each sung at Matins). One warning, one exhortation runs through all of them: the end and the judgment are approaching, let us prepare for them:
As the Lord was going to His voluntary passion, He said to the Apostles on the way, ‘Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be delivered up, as it is written of Him.’ Come, therefore, let us also go with Him, purified in mind. Let us be crucified with Him and die through Him to the pleasures of this life. Then we shall live with Him and hear Him say:
I go no more to the earthly Jerusalem to suffer, but to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God, I shall raise you up to the Jerusalem on high in the Kingdom of Heaven. (Monday Matins)
Behold, the Master has entrusted you with the talent, O my soul. Receive the gift with fear, Repay the One who gave by giving to the poor, and gain the Lord as your friend, so that when He comes in glory, you may stand at His right hand and hear His blessed voice:
Enter, my servant, into the joy of your Lord, Though I have gone astray, make me worthy of this, O Savior, through Thy great mercy. (Tuesday Matins)
4. Throughout the whole Lent the two books of the Old Testament read at Vespers were Genesis and Proverbs. With the beginning of the Holy Week they are replaced by Exodus and Job. Exodus is the story of Israel’s liberation from slavery to the Egyptians, of Israel’s Passover. It prepares us for the understanding of Christ’s exodus to His Father, of His fulfillment of the whole history of salvation. Job, the Sufferer, is the Old Testament icon of Christ. This reading announces the great mystery of Christ’s sufferings, obedience and sacrifice.
5. The liturgical structure of these three days is still of the Lenten type. It includes, therefore, the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian with prostration, the augmented reading of the Psalter, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts and the lenten liturgical chant. We are still in the time of repentance, for repentance alone makes us partakers of the Pascha of Our Lord, opens to us the doors of the Paschal banquet, And, then, on Great and Holy Wednesday, as the last Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is about to be completed, after the Holy Gifts have been removed from the altar, the Priest reads for the last time the prayer of St. Ephraim. At this moment, the preparation comes to an end. The Lord summons us now to His Last Supper.