28th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — Tone 3. Sunday of the Forefathers. Holy Prophet Daniel and the Three Holy Youths: Ananias, Azarias and Misael (600 BC).
Tone 3 Troparion (Resurrection)
Let the heavens rejoice! Let the earth be glad! For the Lord has shown strength with His arm. He has trampled down death by death. He has become the first born of the dead. He has delivered us from the depths of hell, and has granted to the world//great mercy.
Tone 2 Troparion (Forefathers)
Through faith You justified the Forefathers, betrothing through them the Church of the gentiles. These saints exult in glory, for from their seed came forth a glorious fruit: she who bore You without seed.// So by their prayers, O Christ God, have mercy on us!
Tone 6 Kontakion (Forefathers)
You did not worship the graven image, O thrice-blessed ones, but armed with the immaterial Essence of God, you were glorified in a trial by fire. From the midst of unbearable flames you called on God, crying: “Hasten, O compassionate One! Speedily come to our aid,//for You are merciful and able to do as You will!”
Tone 4 Prokeimenon (Forefathers)
Blessed are You, O Lord God of our fathers, / and praised and glorified is Your Name forever! (Song of the Three Holy Children, v. 3)
V. For You are just in all that You have done for us! (v. 4)
Colossians 3:4-11 (Epistle)
When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
Tone 4
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!
V. Moses and Aaron were among His priests; Samuel also was among those who called on His Name. (Ps. 98:6)
V. They called to the Lord and He answered them. (Ps. 98:6)
Luke 14:16-24 (Gospel)
Then He said to him, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’ And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. ’For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’”
Sunday of the Forefathers
The Sunday that falls between December 11-17 is known as the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers. These are the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh, who lived before the Law and under the Law, especially the Patriarch Abraham, to whom God said, “In thy seed shall all of the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3, 22:18).
‘Be Ye in Crucified Love’
Fr. Zacharias Zacharou
I once told Father Sophrony that without the love of Christ it is better for man not to live even one day upon earth. He took it even further and increased my tension, answering: ‘Without the love of Christ it is better for him not even to come upon earth.’
The hymns of the Church say: ‘Thou hast shown us a mighty steadfast love, O Lord, for Thou didst give Thine Only-begotten Son over to death for us. Wherefore, in thanksgiving we cry unto Thee: Glory to Thy power, O Lord!’ In other words, Christ began a relationship with us, a bond of mighty love, which He manifested towards us, but which He also expects from us. He who enters this loving relationship and does all things in order to preserve this mighty love, will make quick progress. There is no logic in this. As he walked towards his martyrdom, Saint Ignatius the Godbearer was saying: ‘My Love is crucified.’ What does it mean? He had such pain and sorrow in his soul, such longing for God that he was raring to deliver himself to martyrdom. Only thus could his thirst and longing be quenched, only thus could his soul be satisfied.
It is in this love that perfection lies, as Saint Paul says in his Epistle to the Ephesians: ‘Only with all the saints we can comprehend the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of Christ.’1 We are enriched by the gifts of the others if we bring our own little gift to join the rest of the Body.
In that communion all things are common and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are contained therein. Only in this assembly, in this heavenly communion of all the saints is there fulness of salvation, fulness of divine love, for God saves all His people, all His generation, He does not save individuals. That is why He gave the two commandments, to love Him with our whole heart and our fellows as ourselves. We need both: to love the Head, the King of this communion of the saints, and to love all those who become the members of this Body. May God help us not to miss it.
Referring to divine love, Saint Paul uses two most striking images: the circumcision of the heart2 and the marks of Christ3 are the signs of those who are wounded by love. Christians should be people who have a circumcised heart, who bear the marks of Christ, who are wounded by love. Only he who finds the path of divine love becomes incorruptible: for it is divine love itself that makes man eternal. Such a one will not look around at the others and will not criticize anybody. He will see them as fellow victims of death, and he will be full of compassion for all.
The many worldly cares can drown this love if man has not learned to live by an unwritten covenant: to give to God that which is God’s, 4 a part of his time, a part of his life, and offer Him steadily his whole heart. ‘For God loveth a cheerful giver,’ 5 who gives from the heart. If man is thus accustomed and keeps a rule, then even the cares will not harm him, especially if those cares are for the Body of Christ, for the brotherhood.
It is a great help to get used to a rule of life and keep it. Even if those that are weak may stumble and remain behind for a while, they will come back to their rule because they have become accustomed to keep this habit, which will help heal the stumble and fill the gap. This is what the Fathers say: if man has learnt to repent, even if he falls into a certain temptation, he will find more rapid healing. It is a covenant of love. If you get used to give one share from your twenty four hours to God, and give it with longing, that is with tears – how else? – then the entire day will be sanctified. And if you have two or three such moments in the day, it is even better, although Saint Ephraim of Katounakia told me that, ‘Hot tears are shed only once a day.’ Perhaps he referred to shedding tears to the end. He said that for this reason, in monasteries, novices are kept busy with work all the time so as to increase their thirst and longing for the moment when they can withdraw to the solitude of their cell, stand before the Lord and pour out their heart to Him with tears. The aim is for them to acquire spiritual mourning.
This is how both Saint Ephraim and Saint Sophrony found grace. Our Father Founder had an inconsolable repentance; he was considering himself as an apostate because he had flirted in his youth with the oriental religions.
He never became Buddhist, he never denied Christ, but for a while his mind stopped at that alluring philosophy and he flirted with it. Afterwards he would not forgive himself and his repentance would give him no rest. Of course, after a time of such repentance, his soul became crystal clear from every stain.
Imagine what a grace God has given him just from the statement, ‘I AM THAT I AM.’ He received such an enlightenment from these words. I would pass over them without noticing, my mind would not stop at them; other passages spoke to me more. Those words were exactly what he needed at that moment, the revelation that true Being is personal. After his encounter with the Divine, the rest of Saint Sophrony’s life was a martyrdom of repentance out of his crucified love for the Personal God.
In his introduction to the writings of Saint Silouan, he writes: ‘The witnesses to Christ’s love are so rare, because there is no more difficult, more painful spiritual effort than the ascetic striving for love; no testimony more terrible than bearing witness to love; and no preaching more challenging than the preaching of love.’ 6 He lived himself in his own life the truth that, on this earth, divine love leads man to the Cross. That is why, in the hymns of his service, he is called a ‘crucified lover of the Crucified Christ’.
Footnotes
- Eph. 3:18.
- Rom. 2:29.
- Gal. 6:17.
- Matt. 22:21.
- 2 Cor. 9:7.
- Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), Saint Silouan the Athonite, trans. Rosemary Edmonds, (Tolleshunt Knights, Essex: Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 1991), p. 2.
Sunday Bulletin December 10, 2023