SUNDAY OF THE PRODIGAL SON — TONE 1. St. Nicholas, Equal to the Apostles, Archbishop of Japan (1912).
Tone 1 Troparion (Resurrection)
When the stone had been sealed by the Jews, while the soldiers were guarding Your most pure body, You rose on the third day, O Savior, granting life to the world. The powers of heaven therefore cried to You, O Giver of Life: “Glory to Your Resurrection, O Christ! Glory to Your Kingdom!// Glory to Your dispensation, O Lover of mankind!”
Tone 4 Troparion (St. Nicholas)
The truth of your deeds has revealed you to your flock as a rule of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of self-control; your humility exalted you; your poverty enriched you.// O Father Bishop Nicholas, pray to Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Tone 3 Kontakion (St. Nicholas)
You proved yourself to be be a holy priest, O Nicholas. You served God in Myra and lived the gospel of Christ. You offered your life for your people, And rescued the innocent from death. Therefore God has glorified you as a trustworthy guide of things divine.
Tone 3 Kontakion (from the Lenten Triodion)
I have recklessly forgotten Your glory, O Father; and among sinners I have scattered the riches which You had given me. Therefore I cry to You like the Prodigal: “I have sinned before You, O compassionate Father; // receive me a penitent, and make me as one of Your hired servants!”
Tone 1 Prokeimenon (Resurrection)
Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us /as we have set our hope on You! (Ps. 32:22)
V. Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous! Praise befits the just! (Ps. 32:1)
1 Corinthians 6:12-20(Epistle)
All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
Tone 8
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!
V. God gives vengeance unto me, and subdues people under me. (Ps. 17:48)
V. He magnifies the salvation of the King and deals mercifully with David, His anointed, and his seed forever. (Ps. 17:51)
Luke 15:11-32 (Gospel)
Then He said: “A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry. Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’ But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’”
Sunday of the Prodigal Son
The Sunday after the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee is the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. This parable of God’s forgiveness calls us to “come to ourselves” as did the prodigal son, to see ourselves as being “in a far country” far from the Father’s house, and to make the journey of return to God. We are given every assurance by the Master that our heavenly Father will receive us with joy and gladness. We must only “arise and go,” confessing our self-inflicted and sinful separation from that “home” where we truly belong (Luke 15:11-24).
After the Polyeleion at Matins, we first hear the lenten hymn “By the Waters of Babylon.” It will be sung for the next two Sundays before Lent begins, and it serves to reinforce the theme of exile in today’s Gospel.
Starting tomorrow, the weekday readings summarize the events of Holy Week. On Monday we read Saint Mark’s account of the Entry into Jerusalem. On Tuesday we read how Judas went to the chief priests and offered to betray the Lord. On the night before His death Christ tells His disciples that one of them will betray Him. He also predicts that they will desert Him, and that Peter will deny Him three times. On Wednesday the Gospel describes how Judas betrayed the Savior with a kiss. Thursday’s Gospel tells how Jesus was questioned by Pilate. On Friday we read the narrative of Christ’s crucifixion and death.
Saint Nicholas, Equal of the Apostles, Archbishop of Japan
Saint Nicholas, Enlightener of Japan, was born Ivan Dimitrievich Kasatkin on August 1, 1836 in the village of Berezovsk, Belsk district, Smolensk diocese, where his father served as deacon. At the age of five he lost his mother. He completed the Belsk religious school, and afterwards the Smolensk Theological Seminary. In 1857 Ivan Kasatkin entered the Saint Peterburg Theological Academy. On June 24, 1860, in the academy temple of the Twelve Apostles, Bishop Nectarius tonsured him with the name Nicholas.
On June 29, the Feast of the foremost Apostles Peter and Paul, the monk Nicholas was ordained deacon. The next day, on the altar feast of the academy church, he was ordained to the holy priesthood. Later, at his request, Father Nicholas was assigned to Japan as head of the consular church in the city of Hakodate.
At first, the preaching of the Gospel in Japan seemed completely impossible. In Father Nicholas’s own words: “the Japanese of the time looked upon foreigners as beasts, and on Christianity as a villainous sect, to which only villains and sorcerers could belong.” He spent eight years in studying the country, the language, manners and customs of the people among whom he would preach.
In 1868, the flock of Father Nicholas numbered about twenty Japanese. At the end of 1869 Hieromonk Nicholas reported in person to the Synod in Peterburg about his work. A decision was made, on January 14, 1870, to form a special Russian Spiritual Mission for preaching the Word of God among the pagan Japanese. Father Nicholas was elevated to the rank of archimandrite and appointed as head of this Mission.
Returning to Japan after two years in Russia, he transferred some of the responsibility for the Hakodate flock to Hieromonk Anatolius, and began his missionary work in Tokyo. In 1871 there was a persecution of Christians in Hakodate. Many were arrested (among them, the first Japanese Orthodox priest Paul Sawabe). Only in 1873 did the persecution abate somewhat, and the free preaching of Christianity became possible.
In this year Archimandrite Nicholas began the construction of a stone building in Tokyo which housed a church, a school for fifty men, and later a religious school, which became a seminary in 1878.
In 1874, Bishop Paul of Kamchatka arrived in Tokyo to ordain as priests several Japanese candidates recommended by Archimandrite Nicholas. At the Tokyo Mission, there were four schools: for catechists, for women, for church servers, and a seminary. At Hakodate there were two separate schools for boys and girls.
In the second half of 1877, the Mission began regular publication of the journal “Church Herald.” By the year 1878 there already 4115 Christians in Japan, and there were a number of Christian communities. Church services and classes in Japanese, the publication of religious and moral books permitted the Mission to attain such results in a short time. Archimandrite Nicholas petitioned the Holy Synod in December of 1878 to provide a bishop for Japan.
Archimandrite Nicholas was consecrated bishop on March 30, 1880 in the Trinity Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Returning to Japan, he resumed his apostolic work with increased fervor. He completed construction on the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Tokyo, he translated the service books, and compiled a special Orthodox theological dictionary in the Japanese language.
Great hardship befell the saint and his flock at the time of the Russo-Japanese War. For his ascetic labor during these difficult years, he was elevated to the rank of Archbishop.
In 1911, half a century had passed since the young hieromonk Nicholas had first set foot on Japanese soil. At that time there were 33,017 Christians in 266 communities of the Japanese Orthodox Church, including 1 Archbishop, 1 bishop, 35 priests, 6 deacons, 14 singing instructors, and 116 catechists.
On February 3, 1912, Archbishop Nicholas departed peacefully to the Lord at the age of seventy-six. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified him on April 10, 1970, since the saint had long been honored in Japan as a righteous man, and a prayerful intercessor before the Lord.
“The grace of God put me in the embrace of God and instead of drinking the sincere milk of divine Love, I leapt out of His arms and took a journey into a far country where I sit in darkness and the shadow of death. O Lord Jesus Christ, my God, Thou hast said with Thine immaculate lips: ‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out,’ and I, O Lord, fall before Thee and cry aloud: Accept my supplication, wretched though I be. I have lost, O Lord, the power of divine adoption, which Thou hast granted us through Thy Holy Blood. Yet, Thou, O Lord, take not from me all power of return. Show me Thy lovingkindness, O Merciful One, and receive me the prodigal, falling before Thee, O Thou that hast come into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”
The Ineffable Goodness of the Father — Archimandrite Zacharias
On the second Sunday of the Triodion, the Gospel reading is perhaps among the most beautiful, as it sums up the whole mystery of God. The word of the Gospel is concise and simple. It seeks to express the truth without stimulating the imagination. Whoever accepts it attracts the Spirit of truth to come and work in the soul strange wonders that surpass every mind and understanding. It has been said that even if the whole of Holy Scripture were lost and only this parable preserved, it would be enough for our salvation because it gives a global and complete vision of the relationship of God with man. It is commonly called the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Son’, but a more suitable title might be the ‘Parable of the Fatherly Compassion and Love of God’. Who of us is so pure in his works and in his conscience towards God and neighbour, that he has no reason to repent? We have all erred and we spend our days in the falsehood of sin in a world that lies in evil. And since regret is nothing other than the pain and anguish that the soul feels because of sin, who then has no need of compassion in his repentance, compassion which alleviates and heals this pain of the soul?
These Sundays that lead into Great Lent indicate the attitude which man must adopt if he yearns to be well-pleasing to God, if his heart is consumed with the desire to cross the abyss which separates his life in this world from the eternal Kingdom of God.
This parable does not describe a utopia, but the common experience of the faithful who turn to God with contrition, humility and self-reproach. Saint Sophrony writes about the first time when, with contrition for his sins, he approached the mystery of confession: All my life appeared to me as a total lie. When I approached the priest, I was incapable of speaking because of my affliction, and tears, and pain of heart, and I only wept. And believe me, before I had begun to articulate my sins, the Lord Himself ‘came out to meet me, and fell on my neck and kissed me’. I was dear to Him, and He did not wait for me to say ‘Forgive me’, just as in the parable the prodigal son said ‘Father, forgive me, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight’ after his father had already taken him into his arms… What a night that was… It is impossible to describe in words. How the Lord loves us!
The prodigal son did not become daring because of the warm welcome of his Father, but he repeated out loud with courage the confession that he had already made in his heart. In order to return to God, the younger son followed the path indicated by the Apostle Paul. He reasoned with his mind, believed with his heart and confessed with his mouth unto salvation. Through confession he found justification. The good Father accepted him with gentleness and discretion, without rebuking him, without adding reproaches upon the hardship he was already suffering. As soon as the sinner conceives the idea of return, God pours forth His grace and draws nigh to man’s heart.
As soon as he confesses ‘I have sinned’ and reveals his unworthiness and uselessness, God restores him as His son. As soon as he pronounces his self-accusation, God secretly grants forgiveness both in Heaven and on earth through His ministers. ‘The father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.’ The servants of the Father represent the priests who are an angelic order within the Church and serve Christians on the path of salvation.
God restores man to the honour of sonship that he had in the beginning. When we depart from Him, instead of children of God, we become like unto demons. However, He is faithful and He cannot deny Himself. He is ‘the faithful witness’, He always remains the loving Father. For this reason, as soon as we come to a sense of honour and repent, we find His arms wide open, and He clothes us with the first grace.
The ring that He commands the servants to put on the son’s hand symbolises the grace of the Holy Spirit, the soul’s betrothal to the Lord. God clothes the penitent in the radiant garment of Christ’s justification, which is divine adoption. He gives him shoes for his feet, that is, the readiness to run the way of His commandments, the way of truth and salvation. In this life, God gives the earnest of His grace, but not yet its fulness. The wedding feast, the perfect union of the soul with the Bridegroom, is to come in the next life.
Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou. At the Doors of Holy Lent
Sunday Bulletin February 9, 2025