GREAT WEEK
(Holy & Great Monday, April 14)
“Behold the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching, and again unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, 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, are You, O our God! Through the Theotokos have mercy on us!” (Great Monday-Wednesday Troparion/Apolytikion)
The leitmotif of the first three days of this Holy & Great Week is watchfulness. That is, we are called to be like the five “wise virgins,” being prepared to meet the Bridegroom when He comes at “midnight,” which symbolizes our transition/passover or our “Pascha,” after we fall asleep for the final time in this life.
Note that in the Parable of the 10 Virgins, they “all” fell asleep when the Bridegroom was delayed. So, the meaning of the above-quoted hymn is not that we should never sleep, but that we should not become “asleep” or dead to the job(s) given us by the Bridegroom, which are our vocations. While we do have different vocations, made up of various responsibilities, as Christians we share the vocation of keeping our “lamp” lit, with enough oil in it to keep it burning, whatever we happen to do and whether we’re physically asleep or awake. The “lamp” signifies our perspective on things, our “eye,” or the way we see things, (as in “The lamp of the body is the eye…” Mt 6:22). And the “oil” signifies the grace of the Holy Spirit, Who abundantly pours His energies into us, when we are open and awake to Him.
So, as we near the final days before Pascha, we’re given to understand that Christ’s Pascha/Passover is “our” Pascha/Passover. More precisely, Christ is our Pascha or Passover, as St. Paul says: “For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.” (1 Cor 5:7) In communion with Him, and as we accompany Him this week on His way of the cross, death, burial and resurrection, we are being enlightened about our own cross, death, burial and resurrection. This is not an easy thing, for many of us, to allow God to enlighten our perspective on death. The reality of death in our midst, whether we’re increasingly aware of our own mortality, or we’ve been crushed by the death of loved ones, is a difficult thing to process on our own. Only God can help us with that. His Son, Who tramples death by death, by the grace of His Spirit, can help us with that. But we celebrate Pascha every year, (and every Sunday, in a “smaller” way), because it’s a life-long process, this enlightenment of our perspective on death. As we accompany You on Your Way this week, Lord, help us and save us, and enlighten us by Your grace.
