I am weary as the end comes to
this Holy Week. Someone posted on Facebook at the beginning of this Week that
there are something like thirty hours of Services between Lazarus Saturday and
Pascha. Yes, I am weary. I am supposed to be. We are all supposed to be. Watching
and waiting, as the Disciples found in the Garden, is wearying work. Being in
the Upper Room between the Crucifixion and Resurrection is wearying. Participating
in Great Lent with its ascetical disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving (not
to mention at least three Lenten Services each week) for forty days and then going
through an Orthodox Holy Week - if we actually attend most of the Services – is
wearying. It is painful work. It is difficult work. But it is important work –
work which is a necessary part of our salvation.
Part of my own personal weariness
as priest and pastor has to do with people’s participation – or lack of
participation – in the Lenten and Holy week Services. This year’s attendance
was the lowest in our little Mission's history. And so I suffer what to most of
my brothers in the Holy Priesthood will be familiar: priestly weariness. This is not to blame the Faithful. Each of us
– lay and clergy – has to struggle with our own levels of commitment and
participation. And we who have been called to the Altar also have to struggle
with how we react to how others engage with their own struggle. It is tiring –
not because it must be, but because of my own weaknesses. This weariness, too,
is a necessary part of my salvation, being disappointed by others (my problem,
not theirs) and learning – again – that everything I do I am called to do first
and foremost for the Lord, in the presence of His angels and saints.
The Temple is set up for the
Paschal Liturgy tonight. Most of this was done late this morning after serving
the Vesperal Divine Liturgy of St. Basil for Holy Saturday – the celebration of
Christ’s victorious descent to the dead and the annihilation of Death and Hell.
A little of the set-up for tonight I did this afternoon. It looks beautiful,
but it’s not Pascha yet. It will be, however, because Christ – the Destroyer of
Death – is in our midst.
Many of us are tired – perhaps
even most of us. And we’re tired of being tired. It seems to be almost the
normal thing these days to be too busy to rest. Our calendars are full to
over-flowing, pressed down squeezed in. But with what are they full? Are the
things that occupy our non-working and non-sleeping hours things that
contribute to our salvation and the salvation of those around us, or are they
the things that our world – a world which is passing away – tells us that we
must do in order to be successful, or good parents, or good neighbours? When I
think of some of the things that I hear keep people from Church Services –
especially weekday Church Services – I wonder where our values are. (And just a
note: as I say this I am thinking of many more people than just the few
Faithful ones in my own parish community).
We are tired. But are we tired
enough of the emptiness of our full to overflowing lives to do something about
it? Perhaps what we lack is a vision that proclaims that there is another way –
the radical way of Christ Jesus which was once known as “The Way”. Perhaps part
of our weariness is a dearth of models for the fullness of the Orthodox Christian
life, the absence of which leaves us with few alternatives to the busy but
empty lives we are living. And lacking models of another way, we persist in our
weariness.
Let us pray this Paschal Season
for living models to counter the emptiness of our lives. Let us pray for
vocations to monasticism here in North America, for lively committed Parishes
which are not afraid to be counter-cultural and stand against the tides of evil
that permeate our society. And let us pray that we who are enlivened by Christ’s
Resurrection may ourselves become such models.
Glory to God for all things.
