Holy Monday

  • Isn’t it a sur­prise to find that it’s Holy Week already? This Lent seemed to kind of fly by. For me, that was a func­tion of being a lit­tle bit used to the ser­vices, and hav­ing a work sched­ule that seems to be stuck in fifth gear. (BTW, apolo­gies for slack­ened blog­ging. Non-payable work takes a back seat, and some­times it isn’t even in the car.)

    But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a lot of con­nect­ing going on. Almost every week when I’ve heard the tropar­ion at Orthros that starts “Open to me the doors of repen­tance…”, I’m afraid that I’ll have a guilty look that goes from head to toe:

    Open to me the doors of repen­tance, O Lifegiver,

    For my soul goeth early to the tem­ple of Thy holiness, 

    com­ing in the tem­ple of my body, wholly polluted. 

    But because Thou art com­pas­sion­ate, purify me

    by the com­pas­sion of Thy mercies.

    How I wish that the lit­tle seis­mic impact of that would’ve kept me awake and alert. Instead, I sort of feel like a sleep­walker who is only now start­ing to look around and won­der where she is. Time to shake off the mil­lions of tiny thoughts that form the back­ground noise. Time to think for a minute about the most sig­nif­i­cant event in all of human his­tory — the event by which all events can be mea­sured and found want­ing. And then won­der what hap­pened to all my best inten­tions of being more pre­pared this year.

    As I said, I know the ser­vices bet­ter. I know the rhythm of things going for­ward, and how every­thing from this point seems to flow toward that sin­gle nexus point. But am I ready at all?

    Just as well we’ve got two more snooze alarms to go — the Bride­groom ser­vices tonight and tomor­row night. The tropar­ion at the cen­ter of it has that ancient feel that can seem a lit­tle out­dated or campy until you’ve gone year after year try­ing to “get Lent right” and fail­ing. And then you find that you’re the kind of per­son who really does want to address your own soul and say:

    Behold, the Bride­groom, cometh at midnight,

    And blessed is the ser­vant whom He shall find awake,

    But he whom He shall find neglect­ful is ver­ily unworthy.

    Behold there­fore, my soul, beware lest thou fall­est into deep slumber,

    And the doors of the king­dom be closed against thee,

    And thou be deliv­ered unto death.

    But be thou wake­ful, cry­ing, “Holy, holy, holy art Thou, O God.”

    Blessed Holy Week to us all, the sleepy and the unsleep­ing, those who watch and those who wait.


    Related posts:

    1. The Byzan­tine pace
    2. As we set out
    3. Prayer request
    4. One last Christ­mas prayer
    5. And about those eight tones …

    March 29th, 2010 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • DebD 03.29.2010

    Blessed Holy Week to you too. I feel pretty unpre­pared but more from dis­trac­tions rather than familiarity.

  • Mimi

    I am absolutely shocked it is Holy Week already — for me it is the com­bi­na­tion of the fact that Lent went by so quickly, and the fact it is so early this year.
    A blessed Holy Week, my friend!

  • s-p

    Indeed famil­iar­ity morphs into sleep­walk­ing through some of the ser­vices. But now and then some­thing slaps me in the face and I wake up. If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have got­ten the slap in the face at all.

  • Grace

    DebD:
    I’ve had those years too — so many of them, in fact, that I’m sur­prised that that’s not the case this year. But I don’t want to get cocky by any means. Just because I know where all the music is and the chanters & choir have done their home­work doesn’t mean we all breeze through. There’s still plenty to keep on top of.

  • Grace

    s-p:
    I *like* that point. Hey, I needed a slap in the face. But at least I was there to get it.

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required