I plan to post the daily entries from my book The Eternal Sacrifice each weekday of Great Lent, here at orthodoxtruth.org, as well as to make an audio recording for a new Spreaker podcast, also entitled The Eternal Sacrifice. Order the book at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/FrStevenAllen and tell others about it!
You can listen to today’s podcast at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/clean-monday-2020
To the Pious Reader
I like short lists. When you have a short list, you actually get things done. This is supremely true in spiritual life, where we tend to overburden ourselves with impossible goals and end up doing nothing. “The better is the enemy of the good.”
To perform all the spiritual exercises of the Orthodox Great Lent is simply impossible. The Holy Fathers designed it this way, so that we would fall flat on our faces and realize that we are unspiritual people, which is the first step on the path to sanity (much less salvation). But to perform some of the Lenten exercises is certainly possible and, indeed, obligatory. If you cannot rouse yourself to do something – anything – beyond your usual devotions (or lack thereof) during the solemn Paschal Fast, you may as well stop calling yourself a Christian.
I offer you this little book as an aid to enjoying one of the treasures of Great Lent, the passages from the Book of Genesis read every weekday at Vespers during Lent, from Clean Monday through the eve of Lazarus Saturday. With few exceptions, most parish churches do not offer weekday services every day of Lent, though most try at least to open their doors on Wednesdays and Fridays. And even if one’s parish church is blessed to perform the daily sacrifice of praise, very few of her parishioners can simply stroll down the street and pop in to hear the service at leisure, because of the unChristian – not to say inhuman – demands of contemporary life. But one can take a little book to work or school and read a portion of the service for a few minutes during a break, or keep it by one’s favorite place to read at home. This is one such little book.
I call the book The Eternal Sacrifice to highlight one aspect of the typology of Genesis that speaks directly to the Paschal Mystery, that is, the types (foreshadowings, prophecies-in-action) of Our Lord’s supreme priestly Holocaust for us, the bloody Sacrifice of Himself on the altar of the Cross, which in turn became the basis for the Church’s daily mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God forever slain for us, in the Divine Liturgy. When we participate attentively at the Divine Liturgy, and, supremely, when we receive His sacrificed, living, and true Body and Blood in Holy Communion, we step from this passing world into the eternal moment before the world, when the Lamb of God was already mystically slain in the Holy Trinity’s pre-eternal counsel for our salvation; we enter the in-time yet out-of-time moment of Our Lord’s Passover through death to life in His death on the Cross and rising from the Tomb; and we enter the eternal Kingdom, where we shall sit down and feast forever at the Banquet of the Lamb, and He Who Is, Who Was, and Who Ever Shall Be will give us Himself without end and without stint, always more and more, and more wondrously, forever.
So that you do not have to go back and forth from your Bible to this volume, I have incorporated the daily selections from Genesis into the book, followed each day by some pious thoughts which I hope will help you penetrate the sacred text for spiritual benefit. If only a few of these words do indeed spur you to greater love for Our Lord in His Sacrifice for us and thereby increase the grace you receive at your Paschal communion, please do think of their author on the Bright Night, and offer a prayer for
your servant in Christ,
Steven Allen, Priest
First Week of Lent – Monday (Clean Monday)
In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. But the earth was unsightly and unfurnished, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the water. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided between the light and the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night, and there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it be a division between water and water, and it was so. And God made the firmament, and God divided between the water which was under the firmament and the water which was above the firmament. And God called the firmament Heaven, and God saw that it was good, and there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God said, Let the water which is under the heaven be collected into one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And the water which was under the heaven was collected into its places, and the dry land appeared. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gatherings of the waters he called Seas, and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the herb of grass bearing seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and the fruit-tree bearing fruit whose seed is in it, according to its kind on the earth, and it was so. And the earth brought forth the herb of grass bearing seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and the fruit tree bearing fruit whose seed is in it, according to its kind on the earth, and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. – Genesis 1: 1-13
As we begin Great Lent, we begin also to read the Book of Genesis at Vespers. The first words remind us of the foundation of all spiritual life, the firm conviction that God is our Creator and that we are His creatures:
In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.
The infinitely good and wise God, the omnipotent One, brought all things from nothing into being. This includes you and me.
My existence is contingent, not necessary. The blink of an eye separates me in time from the abyss of nothingness from which I came, and the blink of an eye separates me in time from the hour of my death. Compared to God, I am nothing.
All of our problems arise from forgetting this fundamental reality, in one way or another. If only we were actively mindful of this at every day and hour, we would always be happy. Our sorrows come from trying to be God. This is true of each of us personally as well as the entire human race. When we remember that we are finite, sinful, and doomed to die, all of life comes into perspective, and we can attain peace of heart.
May the grace of this Great Lent, which may be our last, bring us to constant remembrance that we are creatures and therefore our Creator should be everything to us.
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