The Shepherd, August 2004
THE COMING MONTH
JULY was a month in which there were no Great Feasts and no special fasting periods. August is very different. The first two weeks are kept as a fast in preparation for the the Dormition of the Mother of God. And there are five major feastdays in the month, two of them ranked among the Twelve Great Feasts of the Church Year, and one of them itself specially kept as an extra fastday.
Three of the feasts are those of our Lord and, in the Russian practice, are popularly know as the First, Second and Third (feasts of) the Saviour. These are: the Procession of the Honourable Wood of the Cross (1st/14th); the Great Feast of the Transfiguration (6th/19th) and the Translation of the Holy Mandilion, the icon of our Saviour not-made-by-hands (16th/29th). The Dormition of the Mother of God itself (15th/28th) is kept as a Great Feast, and near the end of the month we have the Beheading of St John the Baptist (29th August / 11th September) which is the feast also kept as a fast day, even though this year it falls on a Saturday.
The “First Saviour” is a feast that was inaugurated in Byzantine times, because in the hot Summer times, the Imperial City was often plagued with diseases and epidemics. The portion of the Cross, kept in the Imperial Palace, was during the first two weeks of August solemnly taken round the City so that the people could resort to it in this time of particular trial. The feast reminds us of something that we so often forget: that in time of need we should turn to the Saviour and the power of His Cross for help, just as the Israelites of old turned to the up-raised brazen serpent in the wilderness to seek deliverance from the plague of snake-bites they were suffering (Numbers 21:4-9). The bringing out of the Cross in our churches on this day also strengthens us to keep the holy fast, as does the witness of the Maccabee Martyrs, who, even in the Old Testament dispensation, before Grace was poured out, preferred to die rather than break the fasting prescriptions which holy Tradition had given them.
The “Second Saviour” is the festival of the Lord’s Divine glory, when on Mount Thabor something of that glory was revealed to the Apostles Peter, James and John (Matthew 17:1-9, Luke 9:28-36). It is also a festival of the Holy Trinity. God the Son is seen in the person of Jesus Christ, the Father is heard to speak from Heaven, and the Holy Spirit is manifest in the dazzling light. We are also called to partake in the glory which is manifested in this festival. Christ had that glory naturally being God as well as being a man; we are called to share in that glory, not as possessing it naturally or as of right, but through His grace and mercy.
Next in the calendar comes the Great Feast of the Dormition, in which we see one of our kind, the Mother of God, entering into that same glory, and being clothed upon with it, so that in the psalmic prophecy concerning her, it says not only does she stand at the right hand of her Son as Queen, but that she is “arrayed in a vesture of inwoven gold, adorned in varied colours” (Ps. 44:8) Our calling to partake of the glory of the Divinity is not mission impossible, the All-holy Virgin, one of our kind, has already and is already achieving it.
The “Third Saviour” commemorates an event which took place in the year 944, when the Holy Mandilion was received at the Imperial City of Constantinople. The history of this icon stretches back to the earthly life of our Saviour. At that time the prince of Edessa fell ill and petitioned the Saviour to visit him and cure him. Failing that, he asked that an artist might be permitted to paint the Saviour and take the portrait back to the prince, so that looking upon His likeness he might receive a blessing. Instead, the Lord pressed a towel to His face and gave it to the artist, who found the Divine countenance imprinted upon the towel miraculously. He took this icon, not made by hands, back to the prince who was thereby healed of his disease. Later the Apostle Thaddæus preached the Gospel in Edessa, and the prince, Abgar, and many of his people were converted to the True Faith. The prince had the wonder-working icon set in a niche above the city gates as a protection for their city. However, a couple of generations later, pagan rulers took over the city, and fearing that the icon might be desecrated, the Christians placed a burning oil lamp before it, and then sealed over the niche with a tile. Centuries later it was re-discovered, and it was found that two further miracles had happened. The oil lamp was still burning before the icon, and a copy of the icon had been imprinted on the tile which had sealed the niche. As those parts had been overrun by Moslems, the icon was taken to Constantinople in the tenth century for safe-keeping and as a protection for the Christian Empire. It is believed that the icon was stolen by the Crusaders after the sack of the City in A.D 1204, and that the ship which was carrying it away to Venice was wrecked in the sea of Marmara, and thus the icon was lost. Copies of the icon are, however, revered in nearly every Orthodox church throughout the world. The depiction shows only the face of the Lord, on the towel, surrounded by a halo, which in turn is divided by three arms of a cross in which we have the Greek letters, omicron, omega and nu, which signify He Who is, and so proclaim the Divinity of the Saviour.
The fifth major feast in the month is the Beheading of the Baptist, which is usually celebrated with a Vigil service. This festival celebrates the martyric death of St John the Forerunner which is recorded in the Gospels (Matt. 14:1-13; Mark 6:14-30). The Baptist had spent his whole life, from infancy, in the wilderness (Luke 1:80), and so lived a life of the severest asceticism, as our Saviour Himself testifies (Matt. 11:18), and so we honour him with prayer and fasting. Also Herod and those will him spent this day partying and so, as so often happens at such events, fell into sin, and our fasting is a statement of dissociation from his manner of life. Many Greek people have a folk custom of always eating something round and red on this day in memory of the Baptist’s head; - surely with a little more sensitivity, the Russians keep an opposite custom of refraining from eating anything round and red!
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