The Shepherd, March 2008
THE COMING MONTH
MARCH this year, and indeed half of April, falls within the Holy and Great Lent. Placed as we are in the Orthodox diaspora, many people have very little experience of the fast and how it is kept, other than their attempts to restrict the diet to mostly vegan foods. This is because very few come to church except on Sundays, and during the Great Lent the services from each Monday to Friday take on a completely different character from that during the rest of the year and during the weekends within Lent. This is why at Brookwood, understanding that many people simply cannot come on other days of the week, we always have the Sunday evening Vespers early . It is the first of the services in the week served in the lenten way, and by having it earlier we hope more people will stay and at least experience that one lenten service, short though it is.
On the weekdays in Lent, there are more readings from the Psalter and the services are accompanied by more prostrations. Outside of Lent the whole Book of Psalms is read through once a week in church, but in Great Lent, not only is the eighteenth kathisma (section) read on Vespers every day from Monday to Friday, but all the other kathismata (except the seventeenth) are read twice in the week. In Mattins the canon is interspersed with verses from the Old Testament Odes, and the Second Ode, which outside Lent is omitted, is used on lenten Tuesdays. It is the second ode of the holy Prophet Moses the Godseer, and is taken from Deuteronomy 32:1-43. Every service ends with the Prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian, which is either read through once with three prostrations, or read followed by twelve “Lord, have mercies,” on each of which we make a bow touching the ground, and then read through again with a fourth prostration at the end. Except on the Annunciation the full Divine Liturgy is only celebrated on Saturdays (the Sabbath) and Sundays (the Lord’s day, the Day of Resurrection). On Wednesdays and Fridays, and on some other days when an important Saint’s day falls, we have instead the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. This is a modified form of Vespers in which the Holy Gifts, consecrated at the Divine Liturgy on the previous Sunday, are imparted to the faithful. It is done during a Vespers (evening) service, because we are expected during these solemn days to maintain a complete fast until the evening, and so we take Holy Communion then, before breaking our fast.
In addition to these “structural” changes to the services, the hymns and prayers used in this period are more penitential, and they continually call us to repentance, using images from the Old and the New Testaments. One of the most beautiful of these compositions is, of course, the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, which is divided into four sections, and read during Great Compline on the Monday to Thursday evenings of the First Week of the Fast. It is again read - this time in its entirety - on the Wednesday evening of the Fifth Week of the fast.
It is impossible to express how uplifting these services are for the attentive soul, inspired as they are by the Holy Spirit, and we can only urge each of you to try and attend at least some of them, or if this is impossible, because of work commitments or living far from a church, at least to read some of the lenten services with your prayers at home.
Among the saints that we celebrate in March, there are, of course, two which are very close to our community. The Martyrdom of St Edward falls on 18th / 31st March - this year a Monday; and on 12th / 25th we have the feast of St Gregory the Great, the Pope of Rome, who was the Apostle of the English. Our community at Brookwood was founded from the, unfortunately short-lived, English-language parish dedicated to St Gregory in London, and it is for that reason that we always commemorate him in our dismissals. In the East he is usually known as St Gregory the Dialogist, because his work, “The Dialogues,” was so popular that, like St John of the Ladder, the Saint took his epithet from the book which he had written.
On 6th / 19th March we celebrate the Forty-two Martyrs of Amorion. They were all high ranking officers in the Byzantine army. The Emperor Theophilus, under whom they were serving, lost a battle to the Saracens, who took the city of Amorion and its environs. Many of the Christians were slain or sold into slavery, but these high ranking officers, being notable persons, were imprisoned. Perhaps their captors hoped to receive ransom money for them. In the end, they were kept for seven years and the Moslems tried repeatedly to convert them to their own religion. The Forty-two remained steadfast in their confession of the Orthodox Faith. The Saracens tried to suggest that Mohammed was a greater prophet than Christ, but the martyrs rejected this lie, pointing out that Christ had many witnesses to His greatness, both the Old Testament prophets and the many saints and martyrs of the New Testament dispensation. The Moslems then suggested that because at that time they had gained political supremacy over large tracts of the Empire, this proved their religion was superior. The Martyrs pointed out that if such a thing were an indication that their religion were true, they would also have to accept that the old religions of the pagan Romans and Egyptians had been true as well, for they had held sway over much of the civilised world in their time. Seeing that the Moslems could not move them to accept their false religion, and that they were not even “converted” by threats and by torture, they were eventually all beheaded in the year 845. Their bodies were thrown into the River Euphrates, but they were retrieved by the local Christians and given reverent burial.
Our Venerable Father Nikon of the Kievan Caves Monastery (23rd March / 5th April) was the first disciple and fellow ascetic of St Antony of the Caves, the founder of the monastic life in Russia. St Nikon came to the monastery when he was already a priest, but placed himself in obedience to St Antony and with his blessing tonsured the first monks there. Among those whom he professed were two favorites of the Prince Izyaslav, Barlaam and Ephraim, and this aroused the prince’s anger against him, and so he was forced to leave Kiev for a period. He settled on the peninsula of Tmutarakan, where with his disciple he founded a second monastic house dedicated to the Mother of God. Later he was permitted to return to the place of his repentance, the Kiev Caves Monastery, where St Theodosius, now the abbot, treated him with the greatest reverence, often asking him to instruct the brethren. St Nikon occupied himself with book-binding, and Theodosius, though his abbot, would act as his assistant in this work. When he was already an old man, St Nikon was elected abbot, and he was greatly concerned that the monastery church should be beautifully adorned. He prayed that this might be possible, and iconographers arrived from Constantinople. They explained how, through his prayers, Sts Antony and Theodosius had appeared to them in a vision and instructed them to go to Kiev to aid him in this godly work. After a long life of many labours, St Nikon reposed on 23rd March, 1088 A.D. His sacred relics wee laid in the cave of St Antony there.
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