ON THE PASSION OF CHRIST 

AND THE BOOK OF JOB

The Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament. The Book of Job reveals its meaning in an amazing way. It is read during the church services during Great Lent. This book prepares us to meet with the Suffering and Risen Christ.

JOINING THE WHOLE CHURCH AT THE TOMB: THE EXPERIENCE OF HOLY WEEK

By Fr. John Hainsworth

Every year during Holy Week I read to my congregation an eyewitness account of a certain Pascha night on Solovki Island in 1925. For centuries, this island in the White Sea had been the home of a venerable and remote monastery. After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the monks were replaced by political and religious prisoners. The once-beautiful monastery became a concentration camp. The climate of that region was especially harsh and the island well out of sight, and the newly formed gulag became a place of unspeakable horror for its inhabitants.

HOLY WEEK: AN EXPLANATION

Great Lent and Holy Week are two separate fasts, and two separate celebrations. Great Lent ends on Friday of the fifth week (the day before Lazarus Saturday). Holy Week begins immediately thereafter. Let's explore the meaning of each of the solemn days of Passion Week.

The Lord Comes To His Voluntary Passion

As the Lord was coming to His voluntary passion, He said to His Apostles on the road, ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man will be betrayed, as it is written of Him’. Come then, let us too, with minds made pure, journey with Him, and let us be crucified with Him, and for His sake become dead to the pleasures of life, that we may live with Him and hear Him as He cries, ‘I am no longer going up the earthly Jerusalem to suffer, but to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God. And I shall raise you up with Me to the Jerusalem above, in the kingdom of heaven’.

"Bring More Evils Upon Them, O Lord"

In the Septuagint version of Isaiah 26:15, we read the following:

"Bring more evils upon them, O Lord, bring more evils upon those who are glorious upon the earth."

Orthodox are familiar with this verse because it is chanted during Great Lent and Holy Week for the Orthros service. Those unfamiliar with the Old Testament, in which verses like these are quite common, often get scandalized by such verses due to misunderstanding and ignorance. Below is an explanation by Elder Paisios the Athonite taken from the book With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man:

Synaxarion: Holy and Great Monday

BIBLE SET OUT FOR FAMILY READING

GREAT MONDAY

Curse of the fig tree parable incriminating

On this day - the second after the grand entrance into Jerusalem - coming back to town in the morning, Jesus Christ, "he was hungry and saw a fig tree by the road, went up to her and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no will also continue to fruit from you again. And immediately the fig tree withered away. "(Jn 12, 24-33, 35-36, 46-48. Mt. 21, 18-19)

The Services Of The Bridegroom

Sunday Evening through Tuesday Evening

Introduction

Beginning on the evening of Palm Sunday and continuing through the evening of Holy Tuesday, the Orthodox Church observes a special service known as the Service of the Bridegroom. Each evening service is the Matins or Orthros service of the following day (e.g. the service held on Sunday evening is the Orthros service for Holy Monday). The name of the service is from the figure of the Bridegroom in the parable of the Ten Virgins found in Matthew 25:1-13.

Background

Passion Week: Holy and Great Monday

Archpriest Victor Potapov, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

On Passion Week

Jacob, Joseph, and his brothers.

We are entering into difficult days today: days when we recall the Passion of Christ; days when it will be difficult for us to come to church and endure long services, to pray. Many ask themselves: is there any point in coming to services when we are so physically tired, when our thoughts are flying here and there, when we have no inner concentration and true participation in what is going on?