Enter in Great Week

Fr. Vasileios Kalliakmanis 

            a) Joseph the Most Comely[1] leads the chorus of the celebrants at the great and universally important event of divine compassion, the path of the Lord to His voluntary suffering. In his person, the Gospel messages of reconciliation and forgiveness, of mature restraint and purity of heart all find their application.

He himself may not have heard the dulcet message of love towards one’s enemies; he may not have known at first hand the radiant countenance of the Bridegroom of the Church, which inspires service, sacrifice and honesty; he may have lived hundreds of years before Him. But none of this prevented him from being a man of God, an evangelist before the Gospels, a prudent man in times of imprudence, an obedient disciple before the appearance of the Teacher.

            b) Joseph is a model, a prefiguration and adumbration of Christ in the Old Testament. “Now Joseph was handsome to look upon and extremely well-favoured”, says the author of Genesis (39, 6) and he became an important personality, in whom external good looks were combined with radiance of soul. When we think of Joseph, the mind is drawn to the beloved Bridegroom of the Church, Who is “fairer than any other person”, Who invites every thirsting and hungry soul to His banquet. And Great Week is, indeed, a spiritual feast, in which all people have been invited to partake. But the people who have their fill of the spiritual fare are those who have “a wedding garment”, tears of repentance and fear of God.

            c) Just as Saint Peter says about Christ: “He committed no sin, nor was there any guile in his mouth” (I Pet., 2, 22), so Joseph was honourable in his stance towards the God of his fathers, and also towards his fellow human beings. And even though the temptations of the flesh and of revenge were particularly perilous in his case, he was so well-armed with sobriety that neither the honour accorded to him by his master nor the behaviour of his brothers who sold him into slavery were able to touch him. And if the Egyptian wife of Potiphar, the captain of the Pharaoh’s guard, was besotted with him, he himself did not give in to lust. Firm in his decision, “he fled sin and was not ashamed to be naked as the first man was before his disobedience”.

            d) He paid a high price for his honesty, however, as he was cast into prison. But even there the grace of God did not desert him. On the contrary, as the Blessed Nikodimos writes, his imprisonment  became the  reason that “when he had interpreted the dreams of certain royal prisoners there in the prison, they took him out of prison and he spoke boldly before the king and became the lord of the whole land of Egypt”. Despite the unfavourable external conditions, Joseph followed the will of God faithfully, as he did the voice of his pure conscience. Because, whereas his brothers had sold him out of envy for the love their father bore him, he, as “Lord of the Land of Egypt”, not only welcomed them, but also supported them in their weakness and even considered his enslavement an act of God.

            e) In the spiritual chorus, Joseph the Most Comely is followed by the Wise Virgins who keep their lamps trimmed and full of oil, the divine virtues. Then come the faithful women disciples, the harlot and the grateful robber. What is one to admire first in this divine company: the vigilance and alertness of the wise virgins; the tears and sighing of the harlot; the repentance of the robber; or the outspokenness and boldness of the women disciples? All of this can inspire. All of it conceals a sprouting of the life in the Spirit.

            f) Following Christ to His voluntary passion, and completing the great company, are the terrified, distressed and doubting disciples who, even though they’ve been introduced into the mystery of the Cross by the Lord Himself, are overwhelmed and shocked by the events. Judas betrayed the Teacher and was lost in his introverted isolation and the lust for money. Peter denied the Lord, other disciples fell into lethargy, while yet others were scattered “like sheep without a shepherd”. It needed the tears of repentance, the shafts of divine love and the experience of the resurrection for the disciples, now as apostles, to re-establish full communion with the Life-Giving Christ.

            h) There are others who didn’t simply watch the events “from afar”, but who condemned their benefactor as an evil-doer, the lawmaker as illegal, “the king of all as culpable”. And it’s not only the Scribes and Pharisees who denied Him, but all the sanctimonious people throughout all generations who condemn and judge others while not lifting a finger themselves to enter His kingdom. Because of their hard-heartedness and arrogance they cannot love God or their fellow human beings and so are outside “the bridal chamber of Christ the Saviour”.

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[1] Genesis 39, 6. In Greek πάγκαλος, from πάνυ and καλός, meaning “very beautiful”. Πάνυ is one of the many words that have been used in Greek over the centuries as a substitute for “Yes”. Another, particularly appropriate to Great Week was the expression “Συ είπας”, which is used in the Gospels (Math. 26, 25 and  64), when Christ tells (a) Judas, who asked if he would be the one to betray Him, and (b) the High Priest, who asked if He was the Son of God, that they had spoken truly. The English translation “Thou hast said so” sounds as if Christ is prevaricating. A better translation would be “You said it”, in the American sense of “Absolutely!”. Of course, we do not know what Christ actually said, since he would have spoken in Aramaic or Hebrew,  but, if the Greek translation is accurate- and there is no reason to doubt it, since many people in Israel at that time were bilingual- then the meaning is clear. [Translator's note]