The Spiritual Ladder of Holy Week
A 25 April 2016 article by Father George Economou
posted on Mystagogy
Eighteen weeks, or
more than one third of the Church Year, is the ecclesiastical liturgical cycle that revolves around the celebration of the
Resurrection. This is from the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee until
the Sunday of All Saints. It is a liturgical journey rich in religious and spiritual experiences.
It is a sweet joyful-sorrow. Grief according to God which leads through
the Cross to the Resurrection. And, as in all the liturgical traditions
of our Holy Church, so also with this festal cycle, the wisdom of our Holy Fathers who set it in order is revealed.
Not to follow the formalism provisions, but to get to the depth of the essence, which is none other than the central eternal plan of the Divine Economy.
The Saturday of Lazarus can be considered the prologue –
the first step – and the resurrection of Lazarus, the friend of Christ, shortly before the Passion of the Lord prefigures
His own glorious Resurrection.
Jesus, who wept as He went to the tomb
where His friend was buried, says to the one who was four days dead and commands
with the familiar words: “Lazarus, come forth!” At that moment
and with those words of His who Himself is the Resurrection and the Life, Lazarus immediately resurrected.
He who breathed the breath of life into Adam has life in Himself.
This is how His own
Resurrection from the dead is theologically interpreted after His descent into Hades, and it ensures our own expectation of
the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come. With the expectation
of the Resurrection, therefore, we enter Great and Holy Week, that we may journey together and be crucified together, as well
as be resurrected together, and finally be united with our Lord.
On Palm Sunday
we celebrate the bright and glorious festival of the Entrance of the Lord into the Holy City of Jerusalem. He comes
exactly as it was prophesied by Zechariah in the Old Testament: “Behold, your king is coming to you; he is just and
endowed with salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Meekly, He sits on the donkey, just and
endowed with salvation, to suffer the perfect injustice and extreme humiliation, by His Passion, and especially the Cross,
to grant salvation to fallen humanity. He fulfills the plan of Divine Providence
and reopens the door of Paradise as a compassionate Father, who never ceases to love His children.
On Great and Holy Monday the Church remembers blessed Jospeh the All-Comely.
He was the son of Jacob, whom his brothers wanted to kill and repeat the horrible fratricide of Cain because of their
envy.
He suffered horrible bullying by his own brothers.
God, however, protected him from death, and so was he was sold to traders and led as a captive to Egypt, where Potiphar purchased him, and after he refused to sin with his master's wife, he
was unjustly slandered and imprisoned. Still, even there, the grace of God
acted on his behalf, and not only was he liberated, but he became the closest confidant and collaborator of Pharaoh.
In the sufferings of the All-Comely Joseph, and in his love, by which he forgave
his brothers, the Church sees the Passion of the Lord and His perfect love prefigured, which is why we honor his memory on Great and Holy Monday.
On the same day we also remember the event of the withered fig tree, which reveals
the holy will of God that we are to struggle and multiply our talents entrusted to us and increase our inheritance of grace,
that we may bear spiritual fruit. Otherwise, as our Lord said in the Sermon
on the Mount, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit, is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
This is what happened to the withered fig tree.
On Great
and Holy Tuesday we remember the Parable of the Ten Virgins. With this parable we are called to cultivate watchfulness, alertness, as we do
not know the day or hour when we will be called to the heavenly marriage of the Bridegroom Christ, and risk
not having oil in our lamps.
Let our hands not be empty, because we
have no mercy and love, because we are perhaps unmerciful and hard-hearted before the needs of our neighbors.
On Great and Holy Wednesday we remember the harlot who anointed
the Lord with myrrh prior to His salvific Passion. One act and one person who will probably even scandalize us!
How dare such a woman approach Jesus! Yet our Lord loves all His children. He does not exclude any of His children from salvation and teaches us not to judge,
so that we will not be judged. And indeed, this harlot is saved by her repentance,
just as the thief who is crucified with the Lord, and like Zacchaeus along with countless other examples in the history of
the Church.
So also are we invited if we are sunk in
our sins and in despair over our actions, and we are encouraged by the all-loving mercy of God to offer Him our broken and
contrite hearts, to be healed and to have a clean heart created in us.
On Great and Holy Thursday the
Church celebrates the washing of the disciples’ feet in the sacred Basin, the Last Supper, the supernatural prayer and
the betrayal. It is a practical teaching of extreme humility, the tradition
of the Mystery of the Divine Eucharist, the amazing High Priestly Prayer of Gethsemane, as well as the false betrayal of Judas
by a kiss.
Jesus desires to eat the Passover Meal
with His disciples, and even prepares the details of the supper, and He welcomes them as a servant, washing their feet on
His knees, and serving them at table. There He delivers the Mystery of Mysteries,
and seals the New Testament with His Blood. He also gives Judas an opportunity
at repentance by foretelling who it would be that would betray Him, but the
lawless Judas was unwilling to change his mind.
On Great
and Holy Friday we commemorate the salvific and horrible Passion, especially the Cross and Death of the Lord, as
well as the salvific confession of the grateful thief on the Cross. He was
crucified for us and He suffered and was buried and became obedient even unto death, death by a cross.
On Great and Holy Saturday all mortal flesh is silent as we celebrate the entombment of the Body
of God and the Savior’s descent into Hades. But already the tomb cannot
contain the Lord of Glory, and we have foretaste of the joy of the Resurrection.
At the Lamentations at the tomb, which is chanted on the morning of Great and Holy Saturday, we proclaim once again:
“Arise, O Lord, and judge the earth, for to You belong all the nations.”
Through this journey and ladder and our conscious participation in the wonderful life of worship in the Church, we
arrive at Pascha, the Feast of Feasts..
May we be made worthy of Divine Grace to venerate once again this year, the Glorious and Life-creating Resurrection.
