Lenten Triodion - school of piety (On repentance and prayer)

(reading offered at a public meeting of the Kiev Religious and Educational Society, February 9, 1905) In the cycle of rapidly changing time - the surest indicator of the transience of our lives - we again approached those saving days when our most loving mother, St. the church reminds us of the need for us, in view of our moral improvement, prosperity and revival, sincere and sincere repentance. “Open the doors of repentance, O Life-Giver,” our church begins to sing from last Sunday and continues to repeat throughout the entire Pentecostal period until the fifth week inclusive, thereby rousing all believers to the saving feats of fasting, repentance and prayer. A few days later St. the church will more persistently and powerfully remind us of the same thing in an expressive and deeply touching church song addressed directly to the soul of a repentant person: “My soul, my soul, arise that you are sleeping; the end is approaching, and imashi is embarrassed; Arise, then, that Christ God, who is everywhere and fulfills all things, may have mercy on you” 1. But the difficult days we experience take on the meaning of days of repentance, conducive to fervent prayer with tears, heartfelt contrition for sins, to acts of widespread charity and almsgiving, and to other corresponding virtuous Christian deeds, not only because we have entered a period of time when the church calls us to repentance and with its deeply touching chants tries to dispose us to this, but also because they are alarming and fraught with the most unexpected events that weigh heavily on the heart of an impressionable observer, these days, with a number of external causes, take on the character of days of nationwide sorrow, inconsolable tears and the most sincere repentance of sins, as the cause of the evils and disasters experienced. A difficult bloody war, which has already crossed the line of the second year, full of failures and defeats at sea and land, a whole series of expensive losses and irreparable losses that are offensive to our people's self-awareness and national self-esteem, unsteadiness of minds among the Russian intelligentsia, fermentation among the student youth, who have completely forgotten their first duty - to study and prepare themselves to be useful figures for their fatherland and support and consolation for their parents, the tragically bloody unrest of workers in the factories and factories of capitals and cities, a whole series of senseless political murders, which ended these days with the terrible shedding of porphyry blood in the heart of Russia in Moscow, within the walls of the sacred Kremlin, and similar extremely regrettable phenomena in our internal social life, which made us the subject of ridicule and malicious ridicule on the part of our enemies and envious people in the West, and in the war with us distant Japan - all these are phenomena in which there can be no place for other feelings, another mood of spirit and heart. The highest church bureaucracy in our fatherland, the Holy Governing Synod, recalls this in its eloquent and convincing message to all “beloved children of the Holy Orthodox All-Russian Church”, in a message sent out regarding the sad events of St. Petersburg in the past month of January. “In such a difficult trial that befell our beloved fatherland, the said message says, all his sons, young and old, from nobles to commoners, should show ardent faith in God, pour out fiery prayers to the Lord, wash their sins with tears of repentance, unanimously stand up for the defense of the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland, having accepted, according to the word of the holy Apostle, all armor God, in order to withstand on the evil day and having overcome everything, to stand” (Eph. 6:13)... “We see, we read further in this message, in these trials the beneficial right hand of the Most High. The Lord loves him and punishes him. He, the Most Merciful, punishes us so that we all do not perish in the end, but come to repentance” 2. We personally, in particular, have other motivating reasons for deciding to occupy your enlightened attention in this conversation with questions about repentance and prayer. In our previous speech about fasting on the basis of the teaching on this subject of our church liturgical book, called the “Lenten Triodion”, we, as is known 3, due to lack of time and due to the vastness of the subject, did not touch on two other essential motives of it - repentance and prayer, revealed in the named book by the inspired hymn writers, St. brothers Theodore and Joseph Studites, with no less completeness, thoroughness and artistic and poetic beauty, like the teaching on fasting, and deserving equally from a believer and an inquisitive researcher of our church hymnography deep and complete attention. What we left unsaid in our last conversation, we intend to fill in this time. The sublime teaching of our Lenten Triodion on repentance and prayer, just as precisely as the teaching on fasting, is preceded by an indication of instructive and edifying examples from St. The Gospels, and from the lives of saints, most clearly depict before us the implementation in practice of the indicated Christian virtues - true repentance and prayer. The reason for this is explained in great detail by Patriarch Nicephorus Callistos Xanthopulos in the synaxarion of the service on the week of the Publican and the Pharisee. “For those who want to go away from physical warfare, from the commanders of the battle, have time to get used to it, we read in this synaxarion, as if they had cleaned and sharpened their weapons, and arranged everything else for good, and created every stumbling block from the environment, they will diligently hide themselves for exploits, and supply them for their needs. Many times before, they bring battles, and words, and stories, and parables to themselves, and intensify their souls to jealousy: laziness, and fear, and despondency, and other things that are poor, drive away. Thus, the divine fathers also preface the trumpet of fasting, followed by the militia against the demons, as if our souls were to have some kind of biased passion, and to cleanse the poison created by long time; Even though we do not have anything from the good, we have striven to acquire it, and as if armed, prepare for fasting by feat and let us go. For now, the first weapon to virtue is repentance and humility, and again the stumbling block to the greatest humility, pride and exaltation; The real authentic parable from the Divine Gospel is the first of all to be set out, the Pharisee, because pride and arrogance, should put aside our passion for teaching; The publican will again resist the passion of sowing, humility and repentance against the creation" 4 . Having pointed out an example of sincere and sincere repentance in the person of a humble and self-abasing publican, and contrasting them with the pride and conceit of a Pharisee as an obstacle to sincere repentance, our Lenten Triodion in the service of the next week - the Prodigal Son offers believers a vivid example of the deep moral fall of man, on the one hand, and the infinity of God's all-forgiving love for a sinner who turns with sincere repentance of sins theirs, on the other. Patriarch Nicephorus Callistos Xanthopoulos, whom we named above, in the synaxarion of this week gives an explanation of this service and a more specific one, namely: the desire of the church to save a grave sinner from disastrous despair. “There are people,” he says, who, aware of many bad things in themselves, from a very young age living dissolutely, indulging in drunkenness and lust, and thus plunging into the depths of evil, come to despair, which is a product of pride, and therefore do not want to turn to the path of virtue, and excusing themselves (gravitating on them) by the bonds of evil, they always fall into the same or even greater evil. In view of this, the holy fathers, having a humane and fatherly attitude toward such people, and wanting to lead (them) away from despair, placed here after the first (about the publican and the Pharisee) a real parable (about the prodigal son), with which they uproot the disease of despair and awaken (the sinner) to the perception of virtue, showing by the example of the prodigal the philanthropic and most good mercy of God to those who have sinned a lot and representing by this parable of Christ that there is no sin that conquers God’s love for mankind” 5 . So that these allegorical examples of true repentance, taken from the Gospel, are more deeply imprinted in the heart of a sinner and do not seem to him ideals unattainable in life, St. the church, or as our Lenten Triodion puts it, “the last and last (i.e., the fathers) gave up the hymns in this (i.e., fifth) week of the succession of our venerable mother Mary of Egypt” 6 . It is known that the worldly life of this saint, in the words of the church song, “was first filled with all sorts of fornications” 7 , but after, through sincere repentance, tears and prayer, Mary of Egypt “became so radiant” that she could “easily pass over the waters and be taken from the earth” 8 , and therefore it is fair for the sinners of this world until the end of the century to remain “an image of repentance” “during the time of fasting” 9 , which is revealed to be followed full opportunity for everyone. The example, thus, is indicated directly from historical reality and clothed in the flesh and blood of a living person. Let us now listen with due attention to how deeply touching, touching and poetically sublime hymns of the holy brothers Theodore and Joseph the Studites, who became famous, among other things, for their exploits of high Christian asceticism, our Lenten Triodion encourages the believing sons of the Orthodox Church to perform exploits of repentance and prayer: “This is the time of repentance - the pre-festive entrance to this fast: arise, my soul, warmly reconcile yourself to your benefactor and God, so that you may escape this righteous and truly terrible judgment” 10. “The time has come for repentance, show the fruits of abstinence, for my soul, look to those who have previously repented, cry out to Christ: save me who have sinned, just as the Master saved me, the publican, breathed from the heart, the Good One, the only one of great mercy” 11. For true repentance, according to the teachings of the Lenten Triodion, first of all, deep Christian humility is required from penitents, leading them to forgiveness towards their neighbors and to complete self-condemnation and suppression of any thought of exaltation. “The publican has lived in the field of life together, and the Pharisee has lived in the same place: but through arrogance we have drowned in shame, but through humility we have been saved” 12. “Using the ladder of humility in the image of a tax collector, ascend to the heavenly heights: but the Pharisee, accursed by rotten pride and madness, ascended, descending to the depths of hell” 13. “The arrogant and malicious, the proud and impudent ones, let us cast aside, reasonable ones, the Pharisees’ temperament, the fiercely praised one, so that we do not expose ourselves to the divine graces” 14. “Let us reject, faithfully, highly praised pride, fierce exaltation and vile arrogance, and the most evil Pharisees’ absurd ferocity to God” 15. “Every good thing is defecated from exaltation, but every evil thing is consumed from humility: if we kiss the faithful one who abhors the image of a vain person” 16. “Let us come to zeal, faithfulness, corrective meekness, humility living together in groaning of the heart, weeping and prayer, as if the imams gave forgiveness from God” 17. Only after suppressing pride, exaltation and achieving true Christian humility, is sincere repentance available and possible for the sinner, which must be accompanied by fervent prayer to the Lord for forgiveness of the sins committed, in order to again earn His lost love, mercy and favor. The prayerful impulse of the soul, overwhelmed by the consciousness of the depth of its moral fall, on the one hand, and the immeasurable mercy of God, covering every sin committed, on the other, truly cannot but evoke hot tears of repentance. Tearful prayer before God is the first companion of heartfelt, sincere repentance, which opens the gates of heaven to the sinner. “Let us love the passion-killer fast, let us diligently abstain in our prayers, weep, weep “A good time has appeared, joy in the divine soul, convicting every face: come, let us receive this joyfully, purifying ourselves with fasting and prayer” 18. “Having now found the tenderness of the fast time, let us weep deeply and sigh, and lift up our hands to the only Savior to save our souls” 19. “Wonderful weapons are prayer and fasting: this is shown to Moses the writer of the law, and to Elijah the zealot in sacrifices. In that abiding, faithfulness, let us cry out to the Savior: You alone have sinned, have mercy on us." 20 “Let us fall in prayer to our God, with warm tears and sighs, imitating the publican’s high-minded humility, singing in faithfulness: Blessed art thou, O God of our fathers” 21 . “We are all jealous of the sighing of the publican, and we converse with God with warm tears, crying out to Him: O lover of mankind, O Thou who has sinned, O most generous One, cleanse and save” 22 “To ourselves, brothers, we will all humble ourselves with sighs, we will beat our conscience with sobs: so that in eternal judgment then we will appear faithfully innocent, having received forgiveness” 23. The Lenten Triodion expressively defines the meaning of repentant tears for a sincerely repentant sinner as follows: “Give me the clouds, O Christ, to tear me down on the red day of Lent, so that I may weep and wash away the filth that comes from sweets, and I will appear to You, cleansed, when the Judge, Lord, comes from heaven, to judge man, as the judge and the righteous are one” 24. “O Lord Almighty, we know how much tears can bear. You raised Hezekiah from the gates of death, delivered the sinner from many years of sins, justified the publican more than the Pharisee, and I pray, having spoken with them, have mercy on me” 25. To excite the penitent to tears of repentance, St. The church therefore established the singing of the touching penitential canon of Andrew of Crete during the first five days of the first week of Lent and on Thursday in the fifth week of the same Lent, as days on which people are most predisposed to heartfelt repentant prayer with hot tears. The first two troparions of this canon read as follows: “Where will I begin to cry about my accursed life and deeds; I will make some kind of beginning, O Christ, for this present mourning; but as you are kind, grant me forgiveness of sins” 26. “Come, accursed soul with your flesh, confess to the Creator of all, and remain the rest of your former speechlessness, and bring tears to God in repentance” 27. Disposing sinners to fervent tearful prayer, St. The church also gives them a wonderful, deeply meaningful example of a prayer of repentance, compiled by St. Ephraim the Syrian: “Lord and Master of my life,” indicating at the same time for secret prayer the short, but poured out from the depths of the heart, prayer of the publican: “God, cleanse me a sinner and have mercy on me.” In the so-called “church statute”, “the holy fathers intended” that the first of these prayers should be pronounced by everyone “with tenderness and fear of God, if one also has the gift of tears,” “standing right and steadily in vain to God mentally and physically,” and be accompanied by a great bow, “to bring the might of the head to the ground.” The second prayer is said with small or “light” bows, “without falling on your knees, bowing your head lower to the ground.” But the “church law” is also not limited to positive instructions regarding prayer and prostrations, but also provides for cases of deviations from these instructions on the part of persons “who do not submit to the holy fathers’ tradition, who are below the skill of holy prostrations, and who understand the goodness of praying below the holy prayer.” The type of these pilgrims in our churches on the days of repentance, “fertilizing their laziness” and “thinking that their rightful laborers will be compared to the saints with great bows,” is depicted here in a very picturesque and striking way. Such a prayer book, according to the image of the church charter, “having bowed with a single hunched position, bowing a little, crossing himself, nods his head, and with his unruliness, like the rank, fills the devotees with bows: below, he prays intelligently and spiritually to God, but for a long time, hunched over, he makes his vain bows, and so does the prayer of St. Ephraim, as if in amazement he hurries to speak. In the same way, we hasten to direct all prayers with bows, and from those imaginary, dishonest bows, and from his insane prayer, he will rise up, like a fool, below himself knows what he has done, below they look at the head of the church, but he precedes someone else, they are restless, like a cane shaken by the wind, despite the best, they want to learn below: but as soon as someone has formed his character, this is what is affirmed. to be" 28. True repentance must be accompanied by active fruits worthy of repentance on the part of the repentant (Matthew 3:8). Almsgiving on the widest scale, according to the teachings of our Lenten Triodion, should be, after tearful prayer, the most natural companion of sincere repentance. Not without the wise foresight of St. The church, in one of the preparatory weeks for Lent, established the reading of the parable of Zacchaeus, in which, before Christ said: “For this day has come salvation to this house” (Luke 19:9), the following significant speeches are heard from the lips of the sinful elder publican: “Behold, half of my property, Lord, will I give to the poor: and whoever I have offended with this, I will repay in quadruples (v. 8). Our Lenten Triodion, in its touching hymns, glorifies this Christian virtue, which is especially appropriate for repentants: “Let us purify ourselves by fasting and prayer, and by the providence of the poor we will please God, we will sigh, weep warmly, like the imams at the time of conversion: so that we may be delivered from the weeping of the eternal being in the flames of Gehenna, sending glory to Christ, who has ordained repentance for all people who turn their thoughts to righteousness” 29 . “Come before the end, all of you, brethren, let us approach the gracious God with a pure heart, rejecting everyday circumstances, taking care of souls, abhorring the consumption of sweets, abstaining from abstinence, and taking care of alms: for by this, as it is written, the angels have received the nets. Let us feed the poor, who has fed us with his flesh: let us clothe ourselves in the light, like a robe, and with the prayers of the Most Pure Theotokos and the Virgin Mother, 1). Sedalen on 2 verses at Matins on Tuesday of the 3rd week. Forsaking having received sins, we cry out to him with tenderness: Lord, deliver us from this false answer and make us worthy to stand at your right hand, as you are merciful and lover of mankind” 1). “Come, let us purify ourselves with alms and the generosity of the poor, neither trumpeting nor demonstrating our benevolence, so that the right hand does not lose sight of the work, so that vanity does not squander the fruit of alms, but in the secret secret we cry to the leader: Father, forgive our sins, as a lover of mankind” 30. The entire sum of virtuous actions prescribed by the Lenten Triodion for penitents during the days of fasting is expressed in the following church hymn: “Fasting, tears, prayers, almsgiving, a compassionate disposition, right thought, purity of life, let us show the faithful that we may enjoy glory” 31 . So, this is the form in which our liturgical book, called the Lenten Triodion, offers the teaching on repentance and prayer. This teaching, based on the Word of God and the writings of the fathers and teachers of the Christian Church, is distinguished by the depth and sublimity of thought, sincerity and warmth of feeling and high poetic inspiration. Having already had a venerable history in the Christian Church in the past, the teaching on repentance and prayer of our Lenten Triodion will undoubtedly retain the force of binding in the distant future, for future generations and members of the Orthodox Church. That is why, in view of the alarming and difficult times experienced by our beloved fatherland, in these days it is quite natural to bring the theoretical teaching about the high Christian virtues preached by the Lenten Triodion to life-practical soil, to the sphere of topical phenomena. Repentance is necessary for every person: it heals his spiritual ulcers and attracts God’s mercy and favor to him. Our military failures on the fields of Manchuria and heavy losses on the waves of the Pacific Ocean, the unprecedented confusion of minds among our average intelligentsia, the mass movements of workers, the extremely anxious mood of minds among students who found themselves outside the threshold of their schools and without a specific cause, the bloody vile atrocities of invulnerable anarchists who terrorized the peaceful citizens of our fatherland and thanks to this, living among them with impunity and guardians of public order hiding from the watchful eye - all this makes it necessary for us in the coming Lent to repent not individually, but nationwide and even nationally. Such repentance, in the absence or closure of theaters, places of public pleasure and entertainment that are incompatible with national mourning, gives everyone the opportunity to “come to their senses” (Luke. 15:17), look deeper and more carefully into your soul, and ask your conscience frankly: isn’t each of us to blame for the sad events of our days? Those in power and subordinates, leaders and warriors, fathers and teachers of our schools, judges, merchants, artisans, workers, in these days of national repentance, let them thoroughly test their conscience and give an answer to it: are they doing the work to which they were called and to which they volunteered? from their evil way, and from the unrighteousness that is in their hands, saying: Who knows, if he repents and prays to God, and turns from the wrath of his wrath, and we will not perish. And God saw their deeds, as if they had turned from their wicked ways: and God repented of the evil that he said he would do to them, and did not do it” (John 3:8-10). Hot tears, as we said, are an indispensable companion to deep, sincere repentance. The time we are experiencing—a time of nationwide grief—is worthy of tears. Mothers who are leaving for the Far East mourn their children, sometimes who have not even touched the cup of worldly pleasures - right from school, and the wives of their husbands - the breadwinners of their children and often their only support. Parents shed bitter tears and experience unspeakable moral suffering, often denying themselves the most necessary things for the sake of a decent upbringing of their children, seeing that this joy of theirs, the best hope and support of old age, is dying and demoralized among their comrades and peers in higher educational institutions, led astray from the true path by propagandists of harmful ideas and unrealizable utopias. Fathers whose children are now graduating from secondary schools and are preparing to continue their education in our higher educational institutions, which have recently become not hotbeds of enlightenment and conductors of good, but constant hotbeds of political unrest and moral demoralization, look into the future with horror. For many of these young men, if, God forbid, the senseless “strike” desired by the enemies of our fatherland actually comes true, and lectures are stopped until September, the doors of these institutions will be closed, due to the overflow of the enrollment for the first future course. In a word, there are a lot of tears, lamentations and sighs in our time, but these tears are still the tears of individual individuals. These tears are not enough for our time. There is a need for a nationwide cry to the Lord with fervent prayer: let us not remember our sins and iniquities and turn away from us all the frantic sedition of our adversaries; to establish peace, serenity and piety in our land; O hedgehog grant us victory and victory over our enemies. Let these nationwide tears, or, as our Lenten Triodion puts it, “clouds of tears,” water our native Russian land, wash away our untruths, our sins, disorder, atrocities, sedition, and let the blessed peace and piety, characteristic and proper of “Holy Rus'”, with which name our fatherland has long been adorned, grow again in its rich fields. Finally, almsgiving, as a companion to repentance and fasting, in your days should find forms of expression that are somewhat different and not usual. According to the words of the Savior, “always take the poor with you” (Matthew 26:11). Consequently, our speech about alms is directed not towards the poor and wretched who overflow the haystacks of our city, but somewhat further and wider. Of course, here, first of all, the most diverse needs of our terrible, difficult war in the Far East arise before us in all their relentless insistence, but, thank God, out of a sense of duty and patriotism, and because in the fields of Manchuria almost all of us have close relatives, the giving hand of the Russian person does not become scarce, and donations for the sick and wounded, for widows and orphans do not stop. But the same terrible war has already created and in the future will undoubtedly increase the number of a different kind of needy and disabled beggars, cripples, evacuated or sent home to restore lost health and because they are unsuitable for the army. These unfortunate people in their homeland in the village often have to be out of work and, in order to improve their poor health, find themselves in the most helpless position. One common and simple way for this kind of unfortunate to get out of trouble, which was not their fault, is to reach out for alms... And we, indeed, already see on the streets of Kyiv disabled people of the current war with “George” on their chests in the role of beggars... It’s hard and offensive! It is here, at these unfortunate people, that our charity should most likely and first of all be directed at this time. Beggars of this kind are a disgrace to our society, a living and grave reproach to all of us. With our feasible penny, therefore, we must rush to their aid, but not only to put this penny into the outstretched hand that recently held the sword firmly on the battlefield, but in order to create for them disabled shelters, where these our heroes would find for themselves everything they need for life, and would cease to serve as a grave reproach for us in our ingratitude towards them, as to our selfless defenders from external enemies. Kontakion in the penitential canon of St. Andrey Kritsky. Church Vedom., 1905, No. 3, appendix. pp. 2, 3. See our first reading of the past 1904 on February 25 under the title: “The Lenten Triodion - a school of piety” (about fasting). Lenten Triodion. M. 1879, l. 5, vol. – 6. Ibid., l. 11 rev. We are extracting from the Synaxarion of the Week of the Prodigal according to the translation of Mr. Ya. Z., published in St. Petersburg. Spirit. Vestn. for 1895, No. 4, p. 70. Lenten Triodion, l. 328 rev. Ibid., l. 332 rev. Kontakion 5th week of fasting. Ibid., l. 329. From the stichera I cried out to the Lord. Troparion 9 of the Canon for Matins on Monday of Cheese Week. Sedalen on Tuesday of the first week. Troparion from 6 songs of the canon for the week of the publican and the Pharisee. Troparion from 7 songs of the canon for the week of the publican and the Pharisee. Troparion from 5 songs of the same service. Troparion from 3 songs of the same service. Troparion from 1 song of the same service. Troparion from song 5, the heel of cheese week. Troparion from 1 song of the canon for Monday of the second week at Compline. From stichera to stichera on Monday 2 weeks. Troparion from the 7th Song of the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee. Troparion from 8 songs of the same week. Ikos in the service of the same week. From the stichera I cried out to the Lord on Monday of the first week. From the stichera I cried out to the Lord during the week of the publican and the Pharisee. From 1 song of the great canon at Compline on Monday of the first week. Typical. or Church Charter M., 1893, l. 416–417 vol. From the stichera to the stichera at Matins into the Devil's Vai. From stichera to stichera for Vespers in the first week of Lent. Troparion from 4 songs of the canon on Thursday of the 3rd week of Lent. You might be interested in: