The Meaning of the Great Fast

THE TRUE NATURE OF FASTING

‘We waited, and at last our expectations were fulfilled’, writes the Serbian Bishop Nikolai of Ochrid, describing the Easter service at Jerusalem. ‘When the Patriarch sang “Christ is risen”, a heavy burden fell from our souls. We felt as if we also had been raised from the dead. All at once, from all around, the same cry resounded like the noise of many waters. “Christ is risen” sang the Greeks, the Russians, the Arabs, the Serbs, the Copts, the Armenians, the Ethiopians—one after another, each in his own tongue, in his own melody… Coming out from the service at dawn, we began to regard everything in the light of the glory of Christ’s Resurrection, and all appeared different from what it had yesterday; everything seemed better, more expressive, more glorious. Only in the light of the Resurrection does life receive meaning.’

This sense of resurrection joy, so vividly described by Bishop Nikolai, forms the foundation of all the worship of the Orthodox Church; it is the one and only basis for our Christian life and hope. Yet, in order for us to experience the full power of this Paschal rejoicing, each of us needs to pass through a time of preparation. ‘We waited,’ says Bishop Nikolai, ‘and at last our expectations were fulfilled.’ Without this waiting, without this expectant preparation, the deeper meaning of the Easter celebration will be lost.

So it is that before the festival of Easter there has developed a long preparatory season of repentance and fasting, extending in present Orthodox usage over ten weeks. First come twenty-two days (four successive Sundays) of preliminary observance; then the six weeks or forty days of the Great Fast of Lent; and finally Holy Week. Balancing the seven weeks of Lent and Holy Week, there follows after Easter a corresponding season of fifty days of thanksgiving, concluding with Pentecost.

Each of these seasons has its own liturgical book. For the time of preparation there is the Lenten Triodion or ‘Book of Three Odes’, the most important parts of which are here presented in English translation. For the time of thanksgiving there is the Pentekostarion, also known in Slav usage as the Festal Triodion. The point of division between the two books is midnight on the evening of Holy Saturday, with Mattins for Easter Sunday as the first service in the Pentekostarion. This division into two distinct volumes, made for reasons of practical convenience, should not cause us to overlook the essential unity between the Lord’s Crucifixion and His Resurrection, which together form a single, indivisible action. And just as the Crucifixion and the Resurrection are one action, so also the ‘three holy days’ (triduum sanctum)—Great Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday—constitute a single liturgical observance. Indeed, the division of the Lenten Triodion and the Pentekostarion into two books did not become standard until after the eleventh century; in early manuscripts they are both contained in the same codex.

What do we find, then, in this book of preparation that we term the Lenten Triodion? It can most briefly be described as the book of the fast. Just as the children of Israel ate the ‘bread of affliction’ (Deut. 16:3) in preparation for the Passover, so Christians prepare themselves for the celebration of the New Passover by observing a fast. But what is meant by this word ‘fast’ (nisteia)? Here the utmost care is needed, so as to preserve a proper balance between the outward and the inward. On the outward level fasting involves physical abstinence from food and drink, and without such exterior abstinence a full and true fast cannot be kept; yet the rules about eating and drinking must never be treated as an end in themselves, for ascetic fasting has always an inward and unseen purpose. Man is a unity of body and soul, ‘a living creature fashioned from natures visible and invisible’, in the words of the Triodion; and our ascetic fasting should therefore involve both these natures at once. The tendency to over-emphasize external rules about food in a legalistic way, and the opposite tendency to scorn these rules as outdated and unnecessary, are both alike to be deplored as a betrayal of true Orthodoxy. In both cases the proper balance between the outward and the inward has been impaired.

The second tendency is doubtless the more prevalent in our own day, especially in the West. Until the fourteenth century, most Western Christians, in common with their brethren in the Orthodox East, abstained during Lent not only from meat but from animal products, such as eggs, milk, butter and cheese. In East and West alike, the Lenten fast involved a severe physical effort. But in Western Christendom over the past five hundred years, the physical requirements of fasting have been steadily reduced, until by now they are little more than symbolic. How many, one wonders, of those who eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday are aware of the original reason for this custom—to use up any remaining eggs and butter before the Lenten fast begins? Exposed as it is to Western secularism, the Orthodox world in our own time is also beginning to follow the same path of laxity.

One reason for this decline in fasting is surely a heretical attitude towards human nature, a false ‘spiritualism’ which rejects or ignores the body, viewing man solely in terms of his reasoning brain. As a result, many contemporary Christians have lost a true vision of man as an integral unity of the visible and the invisible; they neglect the positive role played by the body in the spiritual life, forgetting St. Paul’s affirmation: ‘Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit… glorify God with your body’ (1 Cor. 6:19–20). Another reason for the decline in fasting among Orthodox is the argument, commonly advanced in our times, that the traditional rules are no longer possible today. These rules presuppose, so it is urged, a closely organized, non-pluralistic Christian society, following an agricultural way of life that is now increasingly a thing of the past. There is a measure of truth in this. But it needs also to be said that fasting, as traditionally practised in the Church, has always been difficult and has always involved hardship. Many of our contemporaries are willing to fast for reasons of health or beauty, in order to lose weight; cannot we Christians do as much for the sake of the heavenly Kingdom? Why should the self-denial gladly accepted by previous generations of Orthodox prove such an intolerable burden to their successors today? Once St. Seraphim of Sarov was asked why the miracles of grace, so abundantly manifest in the past, were no longer apparent in his own day, and to this he replied: ‘Only one thing is lacking—a firm resolve’.

The primary aim of fasting is to make us conscious of our dependence upon God. If practised seriously, the Lenten abstinence from food—particularly in the opening days—involves a considerable measure of real hunger, and also a feeling of tiredness and physical exhaustion. The purpose of this is to lead us in turn to a sense of inward brokenness and contrition; to bring us, that is, to the point where we appreciate the full force of Christ’s statement, ‘Without Me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5). If we always take our fill of food and drink, we easily grow over-confident in our own abilities, acquiring a false sense of autonomy and self-sufficiency. The observance of a physical fast undermines this sinful complacency. Stripping from us the specious assurance of the Pharisee—who fasted, it is true, but not in the right spirit—Lenten abstinence gives us the saving self-dissatisfaction of the Publican (Luke 18:10–13). Such is the function of the hunger and the tiredness: to make us ‘poor in spirit’, aware of our helplessness and of our dependence on God’s aid.

Yet it would be misleading to speak only of this element of weariness and hunger. Abstinence leads, not merely to this, but also to a sense of lightness, wakefulness, freedom and joy. Even if the fast proves debilitating at first, afterwards we find that it enables us to sleep less, to think more clearly, and to work more decisively. As many doctors acknowledge, periodical fasts contribute to bodily hygiene. While involving genuine self-denial, fasting does not seek to do violence to our body but rather to restore it to health and equilibrium. Most of us in the Western world habitually eat more than we need. Fasting liberates our body from the burden of excessive weight and makes it a willing partner in the task of prayer, alert and responsive to the voice of the Spirit.

It will be noted that in common Orthodox usage the words ‘fasting’ and ‘abstinence’ are employed interchangeably. Prior to the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church made a clear distinction between the two terms: abstinence concerned the types of food eaten, irrespective of quantity, whereas fasting signified a limitation on the number of meals or on the amount of food that could be taken. Thus on certain days both abstinence and fasting were required; alternatively, the one might be prescribed but not the other. In the Orthodox Church a clear-cut distinction is not made between the two words. During Lent there is frequently a limitation on the number of meals eaten each day, but when a meal is permitted there is no restriction on the amount of food allowed. The Fathers simply state, as a guiding principle, that we should never eat to satiety but always rise from the table feeling that we could have taken more and that we are now ready for prayer.

If it is important not to overlook the physical requirements of fasting, it is even more important not to overlook its inward significance. Fasting is not a mere matter of diet. It is moral as well as physical. True fasting is to be converted in heart and will; it is to return to God, to come home like the Prodigal to our Father’s house. In the words of St. John Chrysostom, it means ‘abstinence not only from food but from sins’. ‘The fast’, he insists, ‘should be kept not by the mouth alone but also by the eye, the ear, the feet, the hands and all the members of the body’: the eye must abstain from impure sights, the ear from malicious gossip, the hands from acts of injustice. It is useless to fast from food, protests St. Basil, and yet to indulge in cruel criticism and slander: ‘You do not eat meat, but you devour your brother’. The same point is made in the Triodion, especially during the first week of Lent:

As we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion…

Let us observe a fast acceptable and pleasing to the Lord.

True fasting is to put away all evil,

To control the tongue, to forbear from anger,

To abstain from lust, slander, falsehood and perjury.

If we renounce these things, then is our fasting true and acceptable to God.

Let us keep the Fast not only by refraining from food,

But by becoming strangers to all the bodily passions.

The inner significance of fasting is best summed up in the triad: prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Divorced from prayer and from the reception of the holy sacraments, unaccompanied by acts of compassion, our fasting becomes pharisaical or even demonic. It leads, not to contrition and joyfulness, but to pride, inward tension and irritability. The link between prayer and fasting is rightly indicated by Father Alexander Elchaninov. A critic of fasting says to him: ‘Our work suffers and we become irritable… I have never seen servants [in pre-revolutionary Russia] so bad tempered as during the last days of Holy Week. Clearly, fasting has a very bad effect on the nerves.’ To this Father Alexander replies: ‘You are quite right… If it is not accompanied by prayer and an increased spiritual life, it merely leads to a heightened state of irritability. It is natural that servants who took their fasting seriously and who were forced to work hard during Lent, while not being allowed to go to church, were angry and irritable.’

Fasting, then, is valueless or even harmful when not combined with prayer. In the Gospels the devil is cast out, not by fasting alone, but by ‘prayer and fasting’ (Matt. 17:21; Mark 9:29); and of the early Christians it is said, not simply that they fasted, but that they ‘fasted and prayed’ (Acts 13:3; compare 14:23). In both the Old and the New Testament fasting is seen, not as an end in itself, but as an aid to more intense and living prayer, as a preparation for decisive action or for direct encounter with God. Thus our Lord’s forty-day fast in the wilderness was the immediate preparation for His public ministry (Matt. 4:1–11). When Moses fasted on Mount Sinai (Exod. 34:28) and Elijah on Mount Horeb (3 [1] Kgs. 19:8–12), the fast was in both cases linked with a theophany. The same connection between fasting and the vision of God is evident in the case of St. Peter (Acts 10:9–17). He ‘went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour, and he became very hungry and wanted to eat’; and it was in this state that he fell into a trance and heard the divine voice. Such is always the purpose of ascetic fasting—to enable us, as the Triodion puts it, to ‘draw near to the mountain of prayer’.

Prayer and fasting should in their turn be accompanied by almsgiving—by love for others expressed in practical form, by works of compassion and forgiveness. Eight days before the opening of the Lenten fast, on the Sunday of the Last Judgement, the appointed Gospel is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt. 25:31–46), reminding us that the criterion in the coming judgement will not be the strictness of our fasting but the amount of help that we have given to those in need. In the words of the Triodion:

Knowing the commandments of the Lord, let this be our way of life:

Let us feed the hungry, let us give the thirsty drink,

Let us clothe the naked, let us welcome strangers,

Let us visit those in prison and the sick.

Then the Judge of all the earth will say even to us:

‘Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you.’

This stanza, it may be noted in passing, is a typical instance of the ‘evangelical’ character of the Orthodox service-books. In common with so many other texts in the Triodion, it is simply a paraphrase of the words of Holy Scripture.

It is no coincidence that on the very threshold of the Great Fast, at Vespers on the Sunday of Forgiveness, there is a special ceremony of mutual reconciliation: for without love towards others there can be no genuine fast. And this love for others should not be limited to formal gestures or to sentimental feelings, but should issue in specific acts of almsgiving. Such was the firm conviction of the early Church. The second-century Shepherd of Hermas insists that the money saved through fasting is to be given to the widow, the orphan and the poor. But almsgiving means more than this. It is to give not only our money but our time, not only what we have but what we are; it is to give a part of ourselves. When we hear the Triodion speak of almsgiving, the word should almost always be taken in this deeper sense. For the mere giving of money can often be a substitute and an evasion, a way of protecting ourselves from closer personal involvement with those in distress. On the other hand, to do nothing more than offer reassuring words of advice to someone crushed by urgent material anxieties is equally an evasion of our responsibilities (see Jas. 2:16). Bearing in mind the unity already emphasized between man’s body and his soul, we seek to offer help on both the material and the spiritual levels at once.

‘When thou seest the naked, cover him; and hide not thyself from thine own flesh.’ The Eastern liturgical tradition, in common with that of the West, treats Isaiah 58:3–8 as a basic Lenten text. So we read in the Triodion:

While fasting with the body, brethren, let us also fast in spirit.

Let us loose every bond of iniquity;

Let us undo the knots of every contract made by violence;

Let us tear up all unjust agreements;

Let us give bread to the hungry

And welcome to our house the poor who have no roof to cover them,

That we may receive great mercy from Christ our God.

Always in our acts of abstinence we should keep in mind St. Paul’s admonition not to condemn others who fast less strictly: ‘Let not him who abstains pass judgement on him who eats’ (Rom. 14:3). Equally, we remember Christ’s condemnation of outward display in prayer, fasting or almsgiving (Matt. 6:1–18). Both these Scriptural passages are often recalled in the Triodion:

Consider well, my soul: dost thou fast? Then despise not thy neighbour.

Dost thou abstain from food? Condemn not thy brother.

Come, let us cleanse ourselves by almsgiving and acts of mercy to the poor,

Not sounding a trumpet or making a show of our charity.

Let not our left hand know what our right hand is doing;

Let not vainglory scatter the fruit of our almsgiving;

But in secret let us call on Him that knows all secrets:

Father, forgive us our trespasses, for Thou lovest mankind.

If we are to understand correctly the text of the Triodion and the spirituality that underlies it, there are five misconceptions about the Lenten fast against which we should guard. In the first place, the Lenten fast is not intended only for monks and nuns, but is enjoined on the whole Christian people. Nowhere do the Canons of the Ecumenical or Local Councils suggest that fasting is only for monks and not for the laity. By virtue of their Baptism, all Christians—whether married or under monastic vows—are Cross-bearers, following the same spiritual path. The exterior conditions in which they live out their Christianity display a wide variety, but in its inward essence the life is one. Just as the monk by his voluntary self-denial is seeking to affirm the intrinsic goodness and beauty of God’s creation, so also is each married Christian required to be in some measure an ascetic. The way of negation and the way of affirmation are interdependent, and every Christian is called to follow both ways at once.

In the second place, the Triodion should not be misconstrued in a Pelagian sense. If the Lenten texts are continually urging us to greater personal efforts, this should not be taken as implying that our progress depends solely upon the exertion of our own will. On the contrary, whatever we achieve in the Lenten fast is to be regarded as a free gift of grace from God. The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete leaves no doubt at all on this point:

I have no tears, no repentance, no compunction;

But as God do Thou Thyself, O Saviour, bestow them on me.

In the third place, our fasting should not be self-willed but obedient. When we fast, we should not try to invent special rules for ourselves, but we should follow as faithfully as possible the accepted pattern set before us by Holy Tradition. This accepted pattern, expressing as it does the collective conscience of the People of God, possesses a hidden wisdom and balance not to be found in ingenious austerities devised by our own fantasy. Where it seems that the traditional regulations are not applicable to our personal situation, we should seek the counsel of our spiritual father—not in order legalistically to secure a ‘dispensation’ from him, but in order humbly with his help to discover what is the will of God for us. Above all, if we desire for ourselves not some relaxation but some piece of additional strictness, we should not embark upon it without our spiritual father’s blessing. Such has been the practice since the early centuries of the Church’s life:

Abba Antony said: ‘I know of monks who fell after much labour and lapsed into madness, because they trusted in their own work and neglected the commandment that says: “Ask your father, and he will tell you.” ’ (Deut. 32:7)

Again he said: ‘So far as possible, for every step that a monk takes, for every drop of water that he drinks in his cell, he should consult the gerontes, in case he makes some mistake in this.’

These words apply not only to monks but also to lay people living in the ‘world’, even though the latter may be bound by a less strict obedience to their spiritual father. If proud and wilful, our fasting assumes a diabolical character, bringing us closer not to God but to Satan. Because fasting renders us sensitive to the realities of the spiritual world, it can be dangerously ambivalent: for there are evil spirits as well as good.

In the fourth place, paradoxical though it may seem, the period of Lent is a time not of gloom but of joyfulness. It is true that fasting brings us to repentance and to grief for sin, but this penitent grief, in the vivid phrase of St. John Climacus, is a ‘joy-creating sorrow’. The Triodion deliberately mentions both tears and gladness in a single sentence:

Grant me tears falling as the rain from heaven, O Christ,

As I keep this joyful day of the Fast.

It is remarkable how frequently the themes of joy and light recur in the texts for the first day of Lent:

With joy let us enter upon the beginning of the Fast.

Let us not be of sad countenance…

Let us joyfully begin the all-hallowed season of abstinence;

And let us shine with the bright radiance of the holy commandments…

All mortal life is but one day, so it is said,

To those who labour with love.

There are forty days in the Fast:

Let us keep them all with joy.

The season of Lent, it should be noted, falls not in midwinter when the countryside is frozen and dead, but in spring when all things are returning to life. The English word ‘Lent’ originally had the meaning ‘springtime’; and in a text of fundamental importance the Triodion likewise describes the Great Fast as ‘springtime’:

The springtime of the Fast has dawned,

The flower of repentance has begun to open.

O brethren, let us cleanse ourselves from all impurity

And sing to the Giver of Light:

Glory be to Thee, who alone lovest mankind.

Lent signifies not winter but spring, not darkness but light, not death but renewed vitality. Certainly it has its sombre aspect, with the repeated prostrations at the weekday services, with the dark vestments of the priest, with the hymns sung to a subdued chant, full of compunction. In the Christian Empire of Byzantium theatres were closed and public spectacles forbidden during Lent; and even today weddings are forbidden in the seven weeks of the fast. Yet these elements of austerity should not blind us to the fact that the fast is not a burden, not a punishment, but a gift of God’s grace:

Come, O ye people, and today let us accept

The grace of the Fast as a gift from God.

Fifthly and finally, our Lenten abstinence does not imply a rejection of God’s creation. As St. Paul insists, ‘Nothing is unclean in itself’ (Rom. 14:14). All that God has made is ‘very good’ (Gen. 1:31): to fast is not to deny this intrinsic goodness but to reaffirm it. ‘To the pure all things are pure’ (Titus 1:15), and so at the Messianic banquet in the Kingdom of heaven there will be no need for fasting and ascetic self-denial. But, living as we do in a fallen world, and suffering as we do from the consequences of sin, both original and personal, we are not pure; and so we have need of fasting. Evil resides not in created things as such but in our attitude towards them, that is, in our will. The purpose of fasting, then, is not to repudiate the divine creation but to cleanse our will. During the fast we deny our bodily impulses—for example, our spontaneous appetite for food and drink—not because these impulses are in themselves evil, but because they have been disordered by sin and require to be purified through self-discipline. In this way, asceticism is a fight not against but for the body; the aim of fasting is to purge the body from alien defilement and to render it spiritual. By rejecting what is sinful in our will, we do not destroy the God-created body but restore it to its true balance and freedom. In Father Sergei Bulgakov’s phrase, we kill the flesh in order to acquire a body.

But in rendering the body spiritual, we do not thereby dematerialize it, depriving it of its character as a physical entity. The ‘spiritual’ is not to be equated with the non-material, neither is the ‘fleshly’ or carnal to be equated with the bodily. In St. Paul’s usage, ‘flesh’ denotes the totality of man, soul and body together, in so far as he is fallen and separated from God; and in the same way ‘spirit’ denotes the totality of man, soul and body together, in so far as he is redeemed and divinized by grace. Thus the soul as well as the body can become carnal and fleshly, and the body as well as the soul can become spiritual. When St. Paul enumerates the ‘works of the flesh’ (Gal. 5:19–21), he includes such things as sedition, heresy and envy, which involve the soul much more than the body. In making our body spiritual, then, the Lenten fast does not suppress the physical aspect of our human nature, but makes our materiality once more as God intended it to be.

Such is the way in which we interpret our abstinence from food. Bread and wine and the other fruits of the earth are gifts from God, of which we partake with reverence and thanksgiving. If Orthodox Christians abstain from eating meat at certain times, or in some cases continually, this does not mean that the Orthodox Church is on principle vegetarian and considers meat-eating to be a sin; and if we abstain sometimes from wine, this does not mean that we uphold teetotalism. When we fast, this is not because we regard the act of eating as shameful, but in order to make all our eating spiritual, sacramental and eucharistic—no longer a concession to greed but a means of communion with God the giver. So far from making us look on food as a defilement, fasting has exactly the opposite effect. Only those who have learnt to control their appetites through abstinence can appreciate the full glory and beauty of what God has given to us. To one who has eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, an olive can seem full of nourishment. A slice of plain cheese or a hard-boiled egg never taste so good as on Easter morning, after seven weeks of fasting.

We can apply this approach also to the question of abstinence from sexual relations. It has long been the Church’s teaching that during seasons of fasting married couples should try to live as brother and sister, but this does not at all signify that sexual relations within marriage are in themselves sinful. On the contrary, the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete—in which, more than anywhere else in the Triodion, we find summed up the significance of Lent—states without the least ambiguity:

Marriage is honourable, and the marriage-bed undefiled.

For on both Christ has given His blessing,

Eating in the flesh at the wedding in Cana,

Turning water into wine and revealing His first miracle.

The abstinence of married couples, then, has as its aim not the suppression but the purification of sexuality. Such abstinence, practised ‘with mutual consent for a time’, has always the positive aim, ‘that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer’ (1 Cor. 7:5). Self-restraint, so far from indicating a dualist depreciation of the body, serves on the contrary to confer upon the sexual side of marriage a spiritual dimension which might otherwise be absent.

To guard against a dualist misinterpretation of the fast, the Triodion speaks repeatedly about the inherent goodness of the material creation. In the last of the services that it contains, Vespers for Holy Saturday, the sequence of fifteen Old Testament lessons opens with the first words of Genesis, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…: all created things are God’s handiwork and as such are ‘very good’. Every part of this divine creation, so the Triodion insists, joins in giving praise to the Maker:

The hosts of heaven give Him glory;

Before Him tremble cherubim and seraphim;

Let everything that has breath and all creation

Praise Him, bless Him, and exalt Him above all for ever.

O Thou who coverest Thy high places with the waters,

Who settest the sand as a bound to the sea and upholdest all things:

The sun sings Thy praises, the moon gives Thee glory,

Every creature offers a hymn to Thee,

His Author and Creator, for ever.

Let all the trees of the forest dance and sing…

Let the mountains and all the hills

Break forth into great rejoicing at the mercy of God,

And let the trees of the forest clap their hands.

This affirmative attitude towards the material world is founded not only on the doctrine of creation but also on the doctrine of Christ. Again and again in the Triodion, the true physical reality of Christ’s human nature is underlined. How, then, can the human body be evil, if God Himself has in His own person assumed and divinized the body? As we state at Mattins on the first Sunday in Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy:

Thou hast not appeared to us, O loving Lord, merely in outward semblance,

As say the followers of Mani, who are enemies of God,

But in the full and true reality of the flesh.

Because Christ took a true material body, so the hymns for the Sunday of Orthodoxy make clear, it is possible and, indeed, essential to depict His person in the holy ikons, using material wood and paint:

The uncircumscribed Word of the Father became circumscribed,

Taking flesh from thee, O Theotokos,

And He has restored the sullied image to its ancient glory,

Filling it with the divine beauty.

This our salvation we confess in deed and word,

And we depict it in the holy ikons.

This assertion of the spirit-bearing potentialities of the material creation is a constant theme during the season of Lent. On the first Sunday of the Great Fast, we are reminded of the physical nature of Christ’s Incarnation, of the material reality of the holy ikons, and of the visible, aesthetic beauty of the Church. On the second Sunday we keep the memory of St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), who taught that all creation is permeated by the energies of God, and that even in the present life this divine glory can be perceived through man’s physical eyes, provided that his body has been rendered spiritual by God’s grace. On the third Sunday we venerate the material wood of the Cross; on the sixth Sunday we bless material branches of palms; on Wednesday in Holy Week we are signed with material oil in the sacrament of Anointing; on Holy Thursday we recall how at the Last Supper Christ blessed material bread and wine, transforming them into His Body and Blood.

Those who fast, so far from repudiating material things, are on the contrary assisting in their redemption. They are fulfilling the vocation assigned to the ‘sons of God’ by St. Paul: ‘The created universe waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God… The creation will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail until now’ (Rom. 8:19–22). By means of our Lenten abstinence, we seek with God’s help to exercise this calling as priests of the creation, restoring all things to their primal splendour. Ascetic self-discipline, then, signifies a rejection of the world, only in so far as it is corrupted by the fall; of the body, only in so far as it is dominated by sinful passions. Lust excludes love: so long as we lust after other persons or other things, we cannot truly love them. By delivering us from lust, the fast renders us capable of genuine love. No longer ruled by the selfish desire to grasp and to exploit, we begin to see the world with the eyes of Adam in Paradise. Our self-denial is the path that leads to our self-affirmation; it is our means of entry into the cosmic liturgy whereby all things visible and invisible ascribe glory to their Creator.

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREAT FAST

Lent, as it exists today in the Orthodox Church, is the result of a long historical development, of which no more than a brief summary can be offered here. The portion of the Church’s Year covered by the Lenten Triodion falls into three periods:

(1) The Pre-Lenten Period: three preparatory Sundays (the Publican and the Pharisee; the Prodigal Son; the Last Judgement), followed by a preliminary week of partial fasting, ending with the Sunday of Forgiveness.

(2) The Forty Days of the Great Fast, beginning on Monday in the first week (or, more exactly, at Sunday Vespers on the evening before), and ending with the Ninth Hour on Friday in the sixth week.

(3) Holy and Great Week, preceded by the Saturday of Lazarus and Palm Sunday.

The third of these three periods, the Paschal fast of Holy Week, is the most ancient, for it was already in existence during the second and third centuries. The fast of forty days is mentioned in sources from the first half of the fourth century onwards. The pre-Lenten period developed latest of all: the earliest references to a preliminary week of partial fasting are in the sixth or seventh century, but the observance of the other three preparatory Sundays did not become universal in the Greek East until the tenth or eleventh century.

(1) The Paschal Fast in the second and third centuries. In the second century it was the custom for Christians in both East and West to observe, immediately before Easter Sunday, a short fast of one or two days, either on Saturday only or on Friday and Saturday together. This was specifically a Paschal fast in preparation for the service of Easter night. It was a fast of sorrow at the absence of the Bridegroom, in fulfilment of Christ’s own words: ‘But the days will come, when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days’ (Mark 2:20). The fast, whether of one or two days, was in principle a total one, without any food or drink being taken at all.

By the middle of the third century, this Paschal fast had in many places been extended to embrace the entire week from Monday to Saturday. There was, however, no uniformity of practice, and some Christians fasted for less than the full six days. Only a few can have managed to keep a total fast throughout the whole period. In some places it was the practice to eat bread and salt, with water, at the ninth hour (3 p.m.) on the four days from Monday until Thursday, and then to keep, if possible, a total fast on Friday and Saturday; but not all the faithful were as strict as this. In this six-day Paschal fast may be seen the distant origins of Holy Week; but the developed ritual to which we are accustomed, with special commemorations on each day of the week, is not found until the late fourth century. During the pre-Nicene period, there seems to have been a unitary celebration of Christ’s death and rising, considered as a single mystery, at the Paschal vigil lasting from Saturday evening until Easter Sunday morning. Friday was kept as a fast in preparation for this vigil, but it had not as yet become a distinct and specific commemoration of the Crucifixion; the Cross and the Resurrection were celebrated together during Easter night.

(2) The Fast of Forty Days. There is no evidence of a forty-day fast in the pre-Nicene period. The first explicit reference to such a fast is in Canon 5 of the Council of Nicaea (325), where it is treated as something familiar and established, not as an innovation on the part of the Council. By the end of the fourth century the observance of a forty-day fast seems to have been the standard practice in most parts of Christendom, but in some places—possibly including Rome—a shorter fast may have been kept.

This forty-day fast, found in evidence from the fourth century onwards, differs somewhat in scope and character from the one-week fast of the pre-Nicene period, and the precise relationship between the two is not easy to determine. It has been suggested that the forty-day fast was originally connected with Epiphany rather than Easter; but the evidence for this seems inconclusive. It is, however, clear that whereas the pre-Nicene fast was specifically a Paschal observance in preparation for Easter, the forty-day fast was connected more particularly with the final preparation of the catechumens for the sacrament of Baptism or ‘illumination’. In the weeks before their baptismal initiation, the candidates underwent a period of intensive training, with daily instruction, special services and fasting. The existing members of the church community were encouraged to share with the catechumens in this prayer and abstinence, thus renewing year by year their baptismal dedication to Christ. So the forty-day fast came to involve the whole body of the faithful, and not just those preparing for Baptism.

Lent, as we know it, is thus the result of a convergence between these two elements—between the six-day pre-Nicene fast, which was directly in preparation for Easter, and the forty-day post-Nicene fast, which originally formed part of the training of candidates for Baptism. It was natural that these two elements should become fused into a single observance, for they both have the same endpoint—the night of Holy Saturday. The Paschal vigil on this night, in celebration of the death, burial and rising of Christ, was for obvious reasons chosen as the occasion for administering Baptism; for this sacrament is precisely an initiation into the Lord’s Cross and His Resurrection (see Rom. 6:3–4).

Today in most parts of the Church there is no organized catechumenate, and it is customary to administer Baptism on many other occasions besides the night of Holy Saturday; yet the baptismal significance of Lent has still a living importance. For every member of the Christian community, Lent is a time of spiritual training and renewed illumination. It is a time to realize afresh that, by virtue of our baptismal initiation, we are crucified, buried and risen with Christ; it is a time to reapply to ourselves the words of St. Paul, ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me’ (Gal. 2:20). It is a time for us to listen more closely to the voice of the Spirit in whom we were sealed at our Chrismation, immediately after our ‘burial’ in the baptismal waters.

The choice of the number forty for the days of Lent has obvious Biblical precedents. The people of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness (Exod. 16:35); Moses remained fasting for forty days on Mount Sinai (Exod. 34:28); Elijah abstained from all food for forty days as he journeyed to Mount Horeb (3 [1] Kgs. 19:8). Most important of all, Christ fasted for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, tempted by the devil (Matt. 4:1).

But how are the forty days to be computed? In the fourth and fifth centuries, the manner of reckoning varied. Some kept a fast of six weeks, some of seven or even eight. Three points arose:

(a) Is Holy Week included in the forty days, or treated as a distinct and additional period?

(b) Is Saturday regarded as a day of fasting?

(c) Are the forty days reckoned continuously, including Saturdays and Sundays? Or is Sunday excluded from the calculation, and Saturday also, if this is considered not to be a day of fasting?

Divergent answers to these three questions account for present-day differences between the Western and the Orthodox Lent. At Rome Holy Week was included as part of the forty days, Saturday was regarded as a day of fasting, but in calculating the number forty all Sundays were excluded from the reckoning. This produced a six-week fast of six days in each week, constituting a total of thirty-six days. To make up the full measure of forty days, four further days of fasting were then added at the beginning, with the result that Lent in the West commences on a Wednesday.

At Constantinople, on the other hand, Holy Week—together with the Saturday of Lazarus and Palm Sunday—was not regarded as part of the forty-day fast in the strict sense. At Vespers on Friday evening in the sixth week, immediately preceding the Saturday of Lazarus, the distinction between the forty days and Holy Week is very clearly marked in the existing text of the Triodion:

Having completed the forty days that bring profit to our soul,

We beseech Thee in Thy love for man:

Grant us also to behold the Holy Week of Thy Passion…

At Constantinople and in the East generally, Saturdays, with the one exception of Holy Saturday, were not considered days of fasting. But in reckoning the number forty it was the custom to count continuously, including Saturdays and Sundays in the calculation. Thus the forty days began on the first Monday in Lent and ended on Friday in the sixth week; then came Lazarus Saturday, Palm Sunday and Holy Week, which, while distinct from the forty days, were treated as part of the Lenten Fast in the broader sense. In this way the forty days and Holy Week together constituted a fast of seven weeks. So it is that Lent begins on Ash Wednesday in Western Christendom, while commencing in the East two days earlier on Monday.

Christians in the Greek East, however, while as a rule counting the forty days continuously, have sometimes chosen to exclude Saturday and Sunday from the calculation. With Holy Week included in the reckoning, this resulted in a seven-week fast of five days in each week, adding up to thirty-five days. But since Holy Saturday is a day of fasting, this also was included, bringing the total number of days to thirty-six. As we have seen, the West before the addition of the four preliminary days likewise had a thirty-six day fast, although computed in a somewhat different manner. In both East and West this number of thirty-six has been given a symbolical meaning. Just as the Israelites dedicated to God a tithe or tenth of their produce, so Christians dedicate the season of Lent to God as a tithe or tenth of the year. The part is offered in token of the whole: by rendering back to God a tenth of what He has given to us, we call down His blessing upon the remainder and acknowledge that all material goods and all moments of time are a gift from His hand. This notion of Lent as a tithe or first-fruits of the year is not much emphasized in the existing text of the Triodion, but it is mentioned in the Synaxarion for the Sunday of Forgiveness.

(3) The Completion of the Pattern. In Constantinople from the sixth or seventh century onwards, there arose the practice of adding, before the seven weeks of the fast, an eighth or preliminary week of modified fasting. In our translation of the Triodion, we have termed this the ‘Week before Lent’; it is often styled ‘Cheese Week’ or the ‘Week without Meat’, because during these days meat is forbidden but cheese and other dairy products are permitted. This preliminary week was added, among other reasons, from the same motive as led to the addition of four extra days at the start of Western Lent: so as to make up the full number forty. In the West, a six-week fast of six days in each week left four days missing from the requisite total. At Constantinople, on the other hand, the days of Lent were (as we have seen) reckoned continuously, and so there was no need of a further preliminary period to produce the total of forty days. But Christians in Palestine calculated in terms of eight weeks, with five days of fasting in each week (no special account being taken of Holy Saturday for the purposes of this reckoning); and so they needed an additional week at the beginning of Lent. The observance of ‘Cheese Week’ in the existing Triodion represents a compromise between the Constantinopolitan and the Palestinian practice: for ‘Cheese Week’ is to be considered part of the fast, and yet it is not fully within Lent.

During the sixth-eleventh centuries, the season of pre-Lenten preparation was gradually expanded to include three other preliminary Sundays: the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, ten weeks before Easter; following it, the Sunday of the Prodigal Son; and then the Sunday of the Last Judgement immediately before the beginning of ‘Cheese Week’. Together with the Sunday of Forgiveness at the end of ‘Cheese Week’, this makes four preliminary Sundays in all. In this way the full pattern of the Lenten season was completed. The Triodion, as we now have it, opens with the latest Sunday to be added, that of the Publican and the Pharisee.

THE RULES OF FASTING

Within this developed pattern of Lent, what precisely do the rules of fasting demand? Neither in ancient nor in modern times has there ever been exact uniformity, but most Orthodox authorities agree on the following rules:

(1) During the week between the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee and that of the Prodigal Son, there is a general dispensation from all fasting. Meat and animal products may be eaten even on Wednesday and Friday.

(2) In the following week, often termed the ‘Week of Carnival’, the usual fast is kept on Wednesday and Friday. Otherwise there is no special fasting.

(3) In the Week before Lent, meat is forbidden, but eggs, cheese and other dairy products may be eaten on all days, including Wednesday and Friday.

(4) On weekdays (Monday to Friday inclusive) during the seven weeks of Lent, there are restrictions both on the number of meals taken daily and on the types of food permitted; but when a meal is allowed, there is no fixed limitation on the quantity of food to be eaten.

(a) On weekdays in the first week, fasting is particularly severe. According to the strict observance, in the course of the five initial days of Lent, only two meals are eaten, one on Wednesday and the other on Friday, in both cases after the Liturgy of the Presanctified. On the other three days, those who have the strength are encouraged to keep an absolute fast; those for whom this proves impracticable may eat on Tuesday and Thursday (but not, if possible, on Monday), in the evening after Vespers, when they may take bread and water, or perhaps tea or fruit-juice, but not a cooked meal. It should be added at once that in practice today these rules are commonly relaxed. At the meals on Wednesday and Friday xerophagy is prescribed. Literally this means ‘dry eating’. Strictly interpreted, it signifies that we may eat only vegetables cooked with water and salt, and also such things as fruit, nuts, bread and honey. In practice, octopus and shell-fish are also allowed on days of xerophagy; likewise vegetable margarine and corn or other vegetable oil, not made from olives. But the following categories of food are definitely excluded:

(i) meat;

(ii) animal products (cheese, milk, butter, eggs, lard, dripping);

(iii) fish (i.e. fish with backbones);

(iv) oil (i.e. olive oil) and wine (i.e. all alcoholic drinks).

(b) On weekdays (Monday to Friday inclusive) in the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth weeks, one meal a day is permitted, to be taken in the afternoon following Vespers, and at this one meal xerophagy is to be observed.

(c) Holy Week. On the first three days there is one meal each day, with xerophagy; but some try to keep a complete fast on these days, or else they eat only uncooked food, as on the opening days of the first week.

On Holy Thursday one meal is eaten, with wine and oil (i.e. olive oil).

On Great Friday those who have the strength follow the practice of the early Church and keep a total fast. Those unable to do this may eat bread, with a little water, tea or fruit-juice, but not until sunset, or at any rate not until after the veneration of the Epitaphion at Vespers.

On Holy Saturday there is in principle no meal, since according to the ancient practice after the end of the Liturgy of St. Basil the faithful remained in church for the reading of the Acts of the Apostles, and for their sustenance were given a little bread and dried fruit, with a cup of wine. If, as usually happens now, they return home for a meal, they may use wine but not oil; for on this one Saturday, alone among the Saturdays of the year, olive oil is not permitted.

The rule of xerophagy is relaxed on the following days:

(1) On Saturdays and Sundays in Lent, with the exception of Holy Saturday, two main meals may be taken in the usual way, around mid-day and in the evening, with wine and olive oil; but meat, animal products and fish are not allowed.

(2) On the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March) and Palm Sunday, fish is permitted as well as wine and oil, but meat and animal products are not allowed. If the Feast of the Annunciation falls on the first four days of Holy Week, wine and oil are permitted but not fish. If it falls on Great Friday or Holy Saturday, wine is permitted, but not fish or oil.

(3) Wine and oil are permitted on the following days, if they fall on a weekday in the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth week:

First and Second Finding of the Head of St. John the Baptist (24 February)

Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (9 March)

Forefeast of the Annunciation (24 March)

Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel (26 March)

Patronal festival of the Church or Monastery

(4) Wine and oil are also allowed on Wednesday and Thursday in the fifth week, because of the vigil for the Great Canon. Wine is allowed—and, according to some authorities, oil as well—on Friday in the same week, because of the vigil for the Akathistos Hymn.

It has always been held that these rules of fasting should be relaxed in the case of anyone elderly or in poor health. In present-day practice, even for those in good health, the full strictness of the fast is usually mitigated. Only a few Orthodox today attempt to keep a total fast on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday in the first week, or on the first three days in Holy Week. On weekdays—except, perhaps, during the first week or Holy Week—it is now common to eat two cooked meals daily instead of one. From the second until the sixth week, many Orthodox use wine, and perhaps oil also, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and less commonly on Mondays as well. Permission is often given to eat fish in these weeks. Personal factors need to be taken into account, as for example the situation of an isolated Orthodox living in the same household as non-Orthodox, or obliged to take meals in a factory or school canteen. In cases of uncertainty each should seek the advice of his or her spiritual father. At all times it is essential to bear in mind that ‘you are not under the law but under grace’ (Rom. 6:14), and that ‘the letter kills, but the spirit gives life’ (2 Cor. 3:6). The rules of fasting, while they need to be taken seriously, are not to be interpreted with dour and pedantic legalism; ‘for the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’ (Rom. 14:17).

THE CONTENTS OF THE TRIODION

Within the book of the Great Fast, the Lenten Triodion, two constituent elements may be distinguished: first, the cycle of the Psalter and the other Scriptural readings; and secondly, the cycle of liturgical hymnography—of canons, stichera, sessional hymns and the like.

The Psalter and the Scriptural Readings. These are of inestimable importance, for Lent is an annual return to our Biblical roots. It is, more specifically, a return to our roots in the Old Testament; for during Lent, to a far greater degree than at any other time of the year, the Scriptural readings are taken from the Old Testament rather than the New.

This emphasis upon the Old Testament is evident, first of all, in the more prominent place assigned to the Psalter during Lent. Instead of being read through once, as in other weeks of the year, during Lent it is read in its entirety twice each week. Our Lenten aspirations are concentrated in the words of the Psalms that our Lord Himself learnt by heart as a child and used in His own morning and evening prayers. The centrality of the Psalter is particularly evident at Mattins on weekdays in Lent, when nearly half the service is taken up by readings from the Psalms, while the Canon is much shorter than at other seasons. During the Canon itself a particular prominence is likewise given to the Scriptures of the Old Covenant; for the Old Testament Canticles are sung in full on weekdays in Lent, instead of being greatly abbreviated or omitted altogether, as at other times of the year. This serves as a reminder of the original form of the Canon, which in the early period consisted of Scriptural Canticles with no more than a short refrain between the verses from the Bible.

The increased use of the Old Testament is also evident at other Lenten Offices besides Mattins. On weekdays there are additional readings from the Psalter at the First, Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours. In place of the Epistle and Gospel appointed for the Liturgy on each day during the rest of the year, there are on Lenten weekdays three Old Testament lessons, one read at the Sixth Hour and the other two at Vespers. But on Saturdays and Sundays in Lent, since on these days the full Eucharist is celebrated, Epistle and Gospel readings are appointed in the usual way. The Epistle readings in Lent are mostly taken from Hebrews, and the Gospel readings from Mark; in both cases they are arranged in a carefully devised sequence.

The scheme of Old Testament readings in the Triodion was perhaps worked out between the fifth and the seventh century. The three daily lessons are taken from the three main categories of Old Testament literature—from the historical books, the prophets, and the Wisdom literature—according to the following pattern:

(1) Historical books (i.e. the Pentateuch) at the first lesson in Vespers:

Genesis (in the six weeks of Lent)

Exodus (in Holy Week)

(2) The prophets at the Sixth Hour:

Isaiah (in the six weeks of Lent)

Ezekiel (in Holy Week)

(3) Wisdom literature at the second lesson in Vespers:

Proverbs (in the six weeks of Lent)

Job (in Holy Week)

As well as representing the various categories of Old Testament literature, these books have also been chosen because of their appropriateness to Lent:

(1) Genesis describes the fall of man and his expulsion from Paradise, which is a dominant motif throughout the Triodion. The later chapters of Genesis tell the story of Joseph, who in his innocent sufferings serves as a ‘type’ of Christ.

(2) In the lessons from Exodus, Moses foreshadows Christ, the Old Passover anticipates the New, and the crossing of the Red Sea prefigures the redemptive death and the rising of the Saviour.

(3) The book of Isaiah begins with an appeal for repentance and fasting.

(4) The readings from Ezekiel speak of God’s glory—the glory that is also manifested through the Cross and Resurrection: ‘Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him’ (John 13:31).

(5) The ethical instruction in Proverbs reminds us that Lent is a time for moral effort: to repent is not merely to experience certain emotions but, on the level of practical conduct, to alter our way of life with the help of God’s grace. If we find the readings from Proverbs dull and look for something more ‘dramatic’ and ‘exciting’, this shows that we want to run before we have learnt to walk.

(6) The patient sufferings of Job and his final vindication point forward to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.

So it becomes apparent that the Old Testament lessons have not been chosen fortuitously, but each has its place in the all-embracing unity of the Triodion.

The Liturgical Hymnography. The non-Biblical material in the Triodion was composed over a period of nearly a thousand years, extending from the sixth to the fifteenth century. Three main strata can be distinguished:

(1) The Beginnings (sixth-eighth centuries). Probably the most ancient existing element is the daily cycle of the troparia of the prophecy, said before the lesson at the Sixth Hour. These are very simple in form, being little more than a rhythmical paraphrase of some text from the Bible. Almost equally ancient is the Akathistos Hymn, probably the work of St. Romanos the Melodist († c. 560). Somewhat later in date is the most ancient of the Canons, the Great Canon by St. Andrew of Crete (c. 660–c. 740), apparently composed towards the end of his life—he refers many times to his old age—and intended by its author as an expression of personal devotion rather than for public liturgical use. At the end of the eighth century Andrew, known as ‘Piros’ or ‘the Blind’, monk of the Lavra of St. Sabas, composed a cycle of idiomela, two for each weekday in Lent, one sung at the aposticha in Mattins and the other at those in Vespers; the cycle was expanded and completed by Andrew’s contemporary and fellow-monk, Stephen the Sabaite (725–807), the nephew of St. John of Damascus. These idiomela, which are usually appointed to be sung twice, are exceptionally rich in doctrinal content, summing up the whole theology of the Great Fast, and they deserve to be studied with particular attention.

Among other authors, dating from the sixth to the eighth century and represented in the Triodion, are St. Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem († 638), St. John of Damascus (c. 680–c. 749), and St. Kosmas of Maiuma (c. 685–c. 750). Almost all the hymnographers belonging to this first stratum are linked with Syria or Palestine, and most of them are associated more especially with the Lavra of St. Sabas outside Jerusalem.

(2) The Formative Period (ninth century). During this century, the chief centre of activity shifts from Palestine to Constantinople, and within Constantinople to the Monastery of Studios, then at the height of its influence. It was ninth-century Studite monks who not only gave to the Lenten Triodion its present structure, but also themselves composed the greater part of its contents. This book, and likewise the Pentekostarion, are substantially the product of Studite editorial work. They bear the mark in particular of the two brothers St. Theodore the Studite (759–826) and St. Joseph the Studite, Archbishop of Thessalonica (762–832). St. Theodore composed the second canon for weekdays in Lent, and his brother Joseph the first. These canons vary in content according to the day of the week: on Monday and Tuesday they are devoted to repentance; on Wednesday and Friday, to the Cross; on Thursday to the apostles; on Saturday, to the martyrs and the dead.

Other ninth-century writers whose work is found in the Triodion are St. Theophanes Graptos (778–845), St. Joseph the Hymnographer (c. 816–c. 886), the Emperor Leo VI the Wise (reigned 886–912), and the poetess Kassia or Kassiani, who spoilt her chances of marrying the Emperor Theophilos (829–42) through the pertness of her repartee, and subsequently became a nun. She is the authoress of a celebrated hymn at Mattins on Great Wednesday, ‘The woman who had fallen into many sins…’.

(3) Further additions (tenth–fifteenth centuries). Although the basic structure of the Triodion was completed in the ninth century, many further additions were made during the five subsequent centuries, yet without altering the general pattern articulated by the Studite redactors. Manuscript Triodia surviving from the eleventh century show that there was at that time a wide variety of local usages, but from the twelfth century onwards there is growing uniformity. Among the more notable writers from this third stratum are Simeon the Logothete, known as ‘the Translator’ (tenth century), author of the Lamentation of the Theotokos used at Compline on Good Friday; John Mavropous, Metropolitan of Euchaita (eleventh century), author of the two Canons to St. Theodore on Saturday in the first week; and Patriarch Philotheos of Constantinople (fourteenth century), author of the office in honour of St. Gregory Palamas on the second Sunday.

Surprisingly, some of the best loved elements in the Triodion are also the most recent in date. The three troparia sung at Sunday Mattins after the Gospel reading, ‘Open unto me, O Giver of Life, the gates of repentance…’, ‘Guide me in the paths of salvation…’, and ‘As I ponder in my wretchedness…’, do not appear in this position before the fourteenth century, although the texts themselves are probably more ancient. The Enkomia or ‘Praises’, sung at Mattins on Holy Saturday, are found for the first time in manuscripts of the fourteenth or fifteenth century.

The manuscript Triodia contain much additional material—canons, idiomela and stichera—not included in the printed Triodion that is now in use; and many of these unpublished texts are of a high standard artistically and spiritually. Thus the existing Triodion, rich and complex though it is, represents no more than a selection from a greater whole.

In its origins a monastic service book, reflecting more particularly the observances of the Studite brotherhood, the Triodion came in time to be adopted also by the parish churches. This process, whereby the ancient ‘cathedral’ rite was gradually replaced by the ‘monastic’ rite, had already begun in the twelfth century and was more or less complete by the fourteenth. Whatever the merits of the ‘cathedral’ rite—and there are many today who favour its revival in a modified form—there was nothing absurd or spiritually inappropriate in the adoption of the monastic Triodion by the parish churches. For the texts in the Triodion are addressed, not to monks only, but to every Christian; and the path of contrition and fasting along which it guides us has universal validity.

THE INNER UNITY OF THE TRIODION

The Triodion possesses an inner coherence and unity that are not at once apparent. Why, for example, should St. Theodore the Recruit be commemorated on Saturday in the first week, the holy ikons on the first Sunday, and St. Gregory Palamas on the second? What special connection have these three observances with the ascetic fast of Lent? Let us consider briefly the pattern which links into a single whole the different commemorations during the ten weeks of the Triodion. We shall not enter into details, but shall simply seek to indicate the place of each observance in the general structure of Lent.

(1) The Pre-Lenten Period. (a) The Sunday of Zacchaeus. One week before the Triodion enters into use, there is a Sunday Gospel reading which looks forward directly to the coming fast—Luke 19:1–10, describing how Zacchaeus climbed a tree beside the road where Christ was to pass. In this reading we note Zacchaeus’ sense of eager expectation, the intensity of his desire to see our Lord, and we apply this to ourselves. If, as we prepare for Lent, there is real eagerness in our hearts, if we have an intense desire for a clearer vision of Christ, then our hopes will be fulfilled during the fast; indeed, we shall, like Zacchaeus, receive far more than we expect. But if there is within us no eager expectation and no sincere desire, we shall see and receive nothing. And so we ask ourselves: What is my state of mind and will as I prepare to embark on the Lenten journey?

(b) The Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee (Gospel reading: Luke 18:10–14). On this and the following two Sundays, the theme is repentance. Repentance is the door through which we enter Lent, the starting-point of our journey to Pascha. And to repent signifies far more than self-pity or futile regret over things done in the past. The Greek term metanoia means ‘change of mind’: to repent is to be renewed, to be transformed in our inward viewpoint, to attain a fresh way of looking at our relationship to God and to others. The fault of the Pharisee is that he has no desire to change his outlook; he is complacent, self-satisfied, and so he allows no place for God to act within him. The Publican, on the other hand, truly longs for a ‘change of mind’: he is self-dissatisfied, ‘poor in spirit’, and where there is this saving self-dissatisfaction there is room for God to act. Unless we learn the secret of the Publican’s inward poverty, we shall not share in the Lenten springtime. The theme of the day can be summed up in a saying of the Desert Fathers: ‘Better a man who has sinned, if he knows that he has sinned and repents, than a man who has not sinned and thinks of himself as righteous.’

(c) The Sunday of the Prodigal Son (Gospel reading: Luke 15:11–32). The parable of the Prodigal forms an exact ikon of repentance in its different stages. Sin is exile, enslavement to strangers, hunger. Repentance is the return from exile to our true home; it is to receive back our inheritance and freedom in the Father’s house. But repentance implies action: ‘I will rise up and go…’ (verse 18). To repent is not just to feel dissatisfied, but to take a decision and to act upon it.

On this and the next two Sundays, after the solemn and joyful words of the Polyeleos at Mattins, we add the sorrowful verses of Psalm 136, ‘By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept…’. This Psalm of exile, sung by the children of Israel in their Babylonian captivity, has a special appropriateness on the Sunday of the Prodigal, when we call to mind our present exile in sin and make the resolve to return home.

(d) The Saturday of the Dead. On the day before the Sunday of the Last Judgement, and in close connection with the theme of this Sunday, there is a universal commemoration of the dead ‘from all the ages’. (There are further commemorations of the dead on the second, third and fourth Saturdays in Lent.) Before we call to mind the Second Coming of Christ in the services on Sunday, we commend to God all those departed before us, who are now awaiting the Last Judgement. In the texts for this Saturday there is a strong sense of the continuing bond of mutual love that links together all the members of the Church, whether alive or dead. For those who believe in the risen Christ, death does not constitute an impassable barrier, since all are alive in Him; the departed are still our brethren, members of the same family with us, and so we are conscious of the need to pray insistently on their behalf.

(e) The Sunday of the Last Judgement (Gospel reading: Matthew 25:31–46). The two past Sundays spoke to us of God’s patience and limitless compassion, of His readiness to accept every sinner who returns to Him. On this third Sunday, we are powerfully reminded of a complementary truth: no one is so patient and so merciful as God, but even He does not forgive those who do not repent. The God of love is also a God of righteousness, and when Christ comes again in glory, He will come as our judge. ‘Behold the goodness and severity of God’ (Rom. 11:22). Such is the message of Lent to each of us: turn back while there is still time, repent before the End comes. In the words of the Great Canon:

The end draws near, my soul, the end draws near;

Yet thou dost not care or make ready.

The time grows short, rise up: the Judge is at the door.

The days of our life pass swiftly, as a dream, as a flower.

This Sunday sets before us the ‘eschatological’ dimension of Lent: the Great Fast is a preparation for the Second Coming of the Saviour, for the eternal Passover in the Age to Come. (This is a theme that will be taken up in the first three days of Holy Week.) Nor is the judgement merely in the future. Here and now, each day and each hour, in hardening our hearts towards others and in failing to respond to the opportunities we are given of helping them, we are already passing judgement on ourselves.

(f) On Saturday in the week before Lent (‘Cheese Week’), there is a general commemoration of all the ascetic saints of the Church, both men and women. As we set out on the journey of the Lenten fast, we are reminded that we do not travel alone but as members of a family, supported by the intercessions of many invisible helpers.

(g) The Sunday before Lent. The last of the preparatory Sundays has two themes: it commemorates Adam’s expulsion from Paradise, and it is also the Sunday of Forgiveness. There are obvious reasons why these two things should be brought to our attention as we stand on the threshold of the Great Fast. One of the primary images in the Triodion is that of the return to Paradise. Lent is a time when we weep with Adam and Eve before the closed gate of Eden, repenting with them for the sins that have deprived us of our free communion with God. But Lent is also a time when we are preparing to celebrate the saving event of Christ’s death and rising, which has reopened Paradise to us once more (Luke 23:43). So sorrow for our exile in sin is tempered by hope of our re-entry into Paradise:

O precious Paradise, unsurpassed in beauty,

Tabernacle built by God, unending gladness and delight,

Glory of the righteous, joy of the prophets, and dwelling of the saints,

With the sound of thy leaves pray to the Maker of all:

May He open unto me the gates which I closed by my transgression,

And may He count me worthy to partake of the Tree of Life

And of the joy which was mine when I dwelt in thee before.

Note how the Triodion speaks here not of ‘Adam’ but of ‘me’: ‘May He open unto me the gates which I closed’. Here, as throughout the Triodion, the events of sacred history are not treated as happenings in the distant past or future, but as experiences undergone by me here and now within the dimension of sacred time.

The second theme, that of forgiveness, is emphasized in the Gospel reading for this Sunday (Matthew 6:14–21) and in the special ceremony of mutual forgiveness at the end of Vespers on Sunday evening. Before we enter the Lenten fast, we are reminded that there can be no true fast, no genuine repentance, no reconciliation with God, unless we are at the same time reconciled with one another. A fast without mutual love is the fast of demons. As the commemoration of the ascetic saints on the previous Saturday has just made clear to us, we do not travel the road of Lent as isolated individuals but as members of a family. Our asceticism and fasting should not separate us from our fellow men but link us to them with ever stronger bonds. The Lenten ascetic is called to be a man for others.

(2) The Forty Days. The two preceding Sundays, of the Last Judgement and of Forgiveness, together constitute—albeit in reverse order—a recapitulation of the whole range of sacred history, from its beginning-point, Adam in Paradise, to its end-point, the Second Coming of Christ, when all time and history are taken up into eternity. During the forty days that now follow, although this wider perspective is never forgotten, there is an increasing concentration upon the central moment in sacred history, upon the saving event of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, which makes possible man’s return to Paradise and inaugurates the End. Lent is, from this point of view, a journey with a precise direction; it is the journey to Pascha. The goal of our journey is concisely expressed in the closing prayer at the Liturgy of the Presanctified: ‘… may we come uncondemned to worship at the Holy Resurrection’. Throughout the forty days we are reminded that we are on the move, travelling on a path that leads straight to Golgotha and the Empty Tomb. So we say at the start of the first week:

Let us set out with joy…

Having sailed across the great sea of the Fast,

May we reach the third-day Resurrection of our Lord.

Let us hasten to the Holy Resurrection on the third day…

While our journey proceeds, as travellers we regularly call to mind how far we have progressed:

As we begin the second day…

Let us now set out with joy upon the second week of the Fast…

As we start upon the third week of the Fast, O ye faithful,

Let us glorify the Holy Trinity,

And joyfully pass through the time that still remains…

Weaving garlands for the queen of days

—the day, that is, of the Lord’s Resurrection. So we continue:

Now that we have passed beyond the middle point in the time of the Fast,

Let us hasten eagerly towards our journey’s end…

So may we be counted worthy to venerate the divine Passion of Christ our God,

And to attain His dread and holy Resurrection.

During each week of Lent, our faces are set towards the objective of our journeying: the Saviour’s suffering and triumphant Passover.

The forty days’ journey of Lent recalls in particular the forty years in which the Chosen People journeyed through the wilderness. For us, as for the children of Israel, Lent is a time of pilgrimage. It is a time for our liberation from the bondage of Egypt, from domination by sinful passions; a time for progress by faith through a barren and waterless desert; a time for unexpected reassurance, when in our hunger we are fed with manna from heaven; a time when God speaks to us out of the darkness of Sinai; a time in which we draw near to the Promised Land, to our true home in Paradise whose door the crucified and risen Christ has reopened for us.

The Weekdays of Lent. A characteristic ethos is given to the weekdays of Lent by the frequently repeated prostrations, used especially in conjunction with the Prayer of St. Ephraim, ‘O Lord and Master of my life…’. Brief, sober, yet remarkably complete, this prayer takes us to the very heart of what Lent means.

Another distinctive feature of Lenten weekdays is the Liturgy of the Presanctified, celebrated according to present practice on each Wednesday and Friday, but at one time on every weekday of Lent. Strictly speaking, the term ‘Liturgy’ is a misnomer, for there is no eucharistic consecration at this service; it is simply the office of Vespers, followed by the distribution of Holy Communion from elements consecrated on the previous Sunday. The full celebration of the Eucharist, being always a festive and triumphant event, is felt to be inconsistent with the austerity of the weekday Lenten Fast; and so already in the fourth century it was laid down that there should be no complete celebration of the Liturgy during Lent except on Saturday and Sunday. But so as to enable the faithful to receive communion on weekdays in Lent—for in the ancient Church it was normal to communicate frequently, and in some places even daily—the order of the Presanctified Liturgy was devised.

Many moments in the Presanctified Liturgy recall the period when Lent was a time of final training before the reception of Baptism, the sacrament of light or ‘illumination’. Thus between the two Old Testament lessons, the priest, holding the censer and a lighted candle, blesses the congregation, saying: ‘The light of Christ shines upon all’; and, following the Litany for the Catechumens and their dismissal, there is during the second half of Lent an additional Litany ‘for those who are ready for illumination’. Each time we take part in the Liturgy of the Presanctified, we should ask ourselves: In a world that is increasingly alienated from Christ, what have I done since last Lent to spread the light of the Gospel? And where are the catechumens in our Orthodox churches today?

On Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent, as indeed throughout the year, the normal hymns to the Mother of God known as ‘Theotokia’ are replaced by ‘Stavrotheotokia’, that is, hymns referring both to the Cross and to the Theotokos, and describing the Mother’s grief as she stands beside the Cross of her Son. Through these hymns, we are made conscious of the Blessed Virgin’s participation in our observance of Lent.

Let us now consider the sequence of the forty days in greater detail.

(a) The First Week of Lent: Monday to Friday. At Compline on the first four days of Lent, the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is read, divided into four sections; on Thursday in the fifth week it will be read again, this time in continuous form. With its constant refrain, ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, have mercy upon me’, the Great Canon forms a prolonged confession of sin, an unremitting call to repentance. At the same time, it is a meditation on the whole body of Scripture, embracing all the sinners and all the righteous from the creation of the world to the coming of Christ. Here, more than anywhere else in the Triodion, we experience Lent as a reaffirmation of our ‘Biblical roots’. Throughout the Great Canon the two levels, the historical and the personal, are skilfully interwoven. ‘The events of the sacred history are revealed as events of my life; God’s acts in the past as acts aimed at me and my salvation, the tragedy of sin and betrayal as my personal tragedy.’ The appeal of the Great Canon is very wide: the Scots Presbyterian Alexander Whyte found it ‘the very finest thing; the thing, at any rate, that I most enjoy in all the Office-books of the Greek Church’.

(b) Saturday in the First Week. After the penitential fasting of the first five days of Lent, Saturday and Sunday are kept as feasts of joyful thanksgiving. On Saturday we commemorate the Great Martyr Theodore Tyron or Tiro, ‘the Recruit’, a Roman soldier in Asia Minor, martyred in the early fourth century under the Emperor Maximian (286–305). Here may be seen at work a rule applied by the Church since the fourth century: as the full Liturgy cannot be offered on weekdays in Lent, saints’ memorials which in the fixed calendar occur during the week are transferred to Saturday or Sunday. So the memorial of St. Theodore, whose feast falls on 17 February, has been transferred to the first Saturday. The texts for the day in the Triodion make frequent reference to the literal meaning of the name Theodore, ‘Gift from God’.

There is a specific reason why St. Theodore has come to be associated with the first week of Lent. According to the tradition recorded in the Synaxarion, the Emperor Julian the Apostate (reigned 361–3), as part of his campaign against the Christians, attempted to defile their observance of the first week of Lent by ordering all the food for sale in the market of Constantinople to be sprinkled with blood from pagan sacrifices. St. Theodore then appeared in a dream to Eudoxios, Archbishop of the city, ordering him to warn his flock against buying anything from the market; instead, so the Saint told him, they should boil wheat (kolyva) and eat this alone. In memory of this event, after the Presanctified Liturgy on the first Friday, a Canon of intercession is sung to St. Theodore and a dish of kolyva is blessed in his honour.

But, quite apart from this historical association of the Great Martyr Theodore with the first week of the fast, it is also spiritually appropriate that he should be commemorated during these days. The Great Fast is a season of unseen warfare, of invisible martyrdom, when by our ascetic dying to sin we seek to emulate the self-offering of the martyrs. That is why, in addition to such commemorations as that of St. Theodore on the first Saturday, there are also regular hymns to the martyrs on all the weekdays of Lent. Their example has a special significance for us in our ascetic efforts during the Great Forty Days.

(c) The Sunday of Orthodoxy. The sense of joy and thanksgiving, already evident on the Saturday of St. Theodore, is still more apparent on the first Sunday in Lent, when we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy. On this day the Church commemorates the final ending of the Iconoclast controversy and the definitive restoration of the holy ikons to the churches by the Empress Theodora, acting as regent for her young son Michael III. This took place on the first Sunday in Lent, 11 March 843. There is, however, not only a historical link between the first Sunday and the restoration of the ikons but also, as in the case of St. Theodore, a spiritual affinity. If Orthodoxy triumphed in the epoch of the Iconoclast controversy, this was because so many of the faithful were prepared to undergo exile, torture, and even death, for the sake of the truth. The Feast of Orthodoxy is above all a celebration in honour of the martyrs and confessors who struggled and suffered for the faith: hence its appropriateness for the season of Lent, when we are striving to imitate the martyrs by means of our ascetic self-denial. The fixing of the Triumph of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday is therefore much more than the result of some chance historical conjunction.

The Triodion gives the text of a special ‘Office of Orthodoxy’ (not translated in this volume), which is held at the end of Mattins or, more commonly, at the end of the Divine Liturgy on this Sunday. The Office celebrates not only the restoration of the holy ikons but, more generally, the victory of the true faith over all heresies and errors. A procession is made with the holy ikons, and after this extracts are read from the synodical decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787). Then sixty anathemas are pronounced against various heretics dating from the third to the fourteenth century; ‘Eternal Memory’ is sung in honour of the emperors, patriarchs and fathers who defended the Orthodox faith; and ‘Many Years’ is proclaimed in honour of our present rulers and bishops. Unfortunately in many parts of the Orthodox Church today this impressive service has fallen into disuse; elsewhere it is performed in a greatly abbreviated form.

Before the Triumph of Orthodoxy came to be celebrated on the first Sunday, there was on this day a commemoration of Moses, Aaron, Samuel and the prophets. Traces of this more ancient observance can still be seen in the choice of Epistle reading at the Liturgy (Hebrews 11:24–6, 32–40), and in the Alleluia verse appointed before the Gospel: ‘Moses and Aaron among His priests, and Samuel among them that call upon His Name’.

(d) The Second Sunday. Since 1368 this Sunday has been dedicated to the memory of St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica (1296–1359). This commemoration forms a continuation of the feast celebrated on the previous Sunday: St. Gregory’s victory over Barlaam, Akindynos and the other heretics of his time is seen as a renewed Triumph of Orthodoxy. In the earlier period there was on this day a commemoration of the Great Martyr Polycarp of Smyrna (+ c. 155), whose feast was transferred from the fixed calendar (23 February). This commemoration, like that of St. Theodore, underlined the connection between Lenten asceticism and the martyr’s vocation. The second Sunday also takes up the theme of the Prodigal Son as a model of repentance, with the first of the two Canons at Mattins being devoted to this parable.

(e) The Third Sunday (the Sunday of the Cross). On this day the service of Mattins concludes with the solemn veneration of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross; the ceremonies are closely parallel to those at the feasts of the Exaltation of the Cross (14 September) and the Procession of the Cross (1 August). The veneration of the Cross on this third Sunday in Lent prepares us for the commemoration of the Crucifixion which is soon to follow in Holy Week, and at the same time it reminds us that the whole of Lent is a period when we are crucified with Christ: as the Synaxarion at Mattins says, ‘Through the forty-day Fast, we too are in a way crucified, dying to the passions’. The dominant note on this Sunday, as on the two Sundays preceding, is one of joy and triumph. In the Canon at Mattins, the irmoi are the same as at Easter midnight, ‘This is the day of Resurrection…’, and the troparia are in part a paraphrase of the Paschal Canon by St. John of Damascus. No separation is made between Christ’s death and His Resurrection, but the Cross is regarded as an emblem of victory and Calvary is seen in the light of the Empty Tomb.

(f) The Fourth Sunday. On this day is commemorated St. John Climacus, abbot of Sinai (sixth–seventh century), who is assigned a special Sunday in Lent because, by virtue of his writings and his own life, he forms a pattern of the true Christian ascetic. St. John is the author of The Ladder of Paradise, one of the spiritual texts appointed to be read in church during Lent. His memorial, like that of St. Theodore, has been transferred to the movable from the fixed calendar, where he is remembered on 30 March. The first Canon at Mattins on this Sunday is based on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–5): the repentant Christian is likened to the man who fell among thieves.

(g) The Fifth Week. During this week, there are two special observances:

(i) At Mattins on Thursday, the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is read in its entirety, together with a Canon to St. Mary of Egypt; and St. Mary’s Life is also read during the service.

(ii) At Mattins on Saturday, there is sung the Akathistos Hymn to the Mother of God. One of the greatest marvels of Greek religious poetry, with a richness of imagery that is the despair of any translator, the Akathistos Hymn has twenty-four main stanzas, alternatively long and short: each long stanza bears the title ‘ikos’ and ends with the refrain ‘Hail, Bride without bridegroom’, while each short stanza is termed ‘kontakion’ and ends with the refrain ‘Alleluia’. The title ‘Akathistos’ means literally ‘not sitting’, the Hymn being so called because all remain standing while it is sung. The greater part of the Hymn is made up of praises addressed to the Holy Virgin, each beginning with the salutation of the Archangel Gabriel, ‘Hail’ or ‘Rejoice’ (Luke 1:28). The Hymn passes in review the main events connected with Christ’s Incarnation, starting with the Annunciation (first ikos) and ending with the Flight into Egypt (sixth ikos) and the Presentation in the Temple (seventh kontakion).

The Akathistos Hymn, so it seems, was originally composed at an epoch when the Annunciation was still celebrated together with Christmas and had not yet become a separate festival. Perhaps at one time it was sung on 26 December, the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos. It was probably during the reign of the Emperor Justinian (527–65) that the Annunciation first began to be celebrated on 25 March; and either when this happened or else soon after—and in any case not later than 718—the Akathistos Hymn was also appointed to be sung on 25 March. More recently, perhaps during the period of the Turcocratia after the fall of Constantinople (1453), the Hymn was transferred from the fixed to the movable calendar, and instead of being sung on 25 March it was appointed for Saturday in the fifth week. The custom of singing a portion of the Hymn at Compline on the first four Fridays of Lent is more recent still: while found among the Greeks, such a practice is not part of the Slav use.

The link between the Akathistos Hymn and the Feast of the Annunciation still continues to be much in evidence: for example, most of the texts at Friday Vespers before the Vigil of the Akathistos are taken directly from the office for 25 March. The Annunciation almost always falls within the period of the Great Fast, and that is why this special office of praise to the Mother of God has found a place in the Lenten Triodion.

At the beginning of the Akathistos Hymn, there is sung a Kontakion greatly loved by the Orthodox people, ‘To thee, our leader in battle and defender…’, celebrating the deliverance of the city of Constantinople from its enemies through the aid of the Mother of God. It seems that this Kontakion was not originally part of the Akathistos Hymn, for in the Hymn itself there is nowhere any allusion to such a deliverance. Most probably the Kontakion was written by Patriarch Sergios to celebrate the escape of the Byzantine capital from the attack of the Persians and Avars in 626; in that case, the Akathistos Hymn is almost certainly more ancient than the Kontakion. Perhaps this Kontakion, and the Akathistos Hymn itself, were also sung at the thanksgiving celebrations after other deliverances of Constantinople: from the Arabs in the mid-670s, from the Arabs again in 717–18, and from the Russians (not yet converted to Orthodoxy) in 860. Understood in a broader sense, the Kontakion expresses, in the conscience of the Orthodox faithful, their sense of continuing dependence on the protecting intercession of the Holy Virgin at all moments of crisis and peril.

(h) The Fifth Sunday. This corresponds closely to the preceding Sunday: just as the fourth Sunday is dedicated to St. John Climacus, the model of ascetics, so the fifth celebrates St. Mary of Egypt, the model of penitents. Like that of St. John Climacus, her feast has been transferred from the fixed calendar, where she is commemorated on 1 April. Her life, recounted by St. Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem—it is read, as we have mentioned, on Thursday in the fifth week—sets before us a true verbal ikon of the essence of repentance. In her youth St. Mary lived in a dissolute and sinful way at Alexandria. Drawn by curiosity, she journeyed with some pilgrims to Jerusalem, arriving in time for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. But when she tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with the others, an invisible force thrust her back at the threshold. This happened three or four times. Brought to sudden contrition by this strange experience, she prayed all night with tears to the Mother of God, and next morning she found to her joy that she could enter the church without difficulty. After venerating the Cross, she left Jerusalem on that same day, made her way over the Jordan, and settled as a solitary in a remote region of the desert. Here for forty-seven years she remained, hidden from the world, until she was eventually found by the ascetic St. Zosimas, who was able to give her Holy Communion shortly before her death. Some modern writers have questioned the historical accuracy of St. Sophronios’ narrative, but there is in itself nothing impossible about such a story. In the year 1890 the Greek priest Joachim Spetsieris found a woman hermit in the desert beyond the Jordan, living almost exactly as St. Mary must have done.

On this Sunday the first Canon at Mattins is based on the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31): like the parable of the Good Samaritan on the previous Sunday, this is applied symbolically to the repentant Christian.

(i) The Sixth Week. During the services of this week, and to a still greater extent during Holy Week, the Triodion assumes the character of a historical narrative. Day by day we accompany Christ: we are with Him as He draws near to Jerusalem, as He reaches Bethany to raise Lazarus, as He enters the Holy City on Palm Sunday, as He approaches His Passion. The daily offices are marked by a sense of advancing movement and dramatic realism. Each day we call to mind, as exactly as possible, the things that must have occurred on the corresponding day during the last year of Christ’s earthly ministry.

All this is not to be seen merely as the bare commemoration of occurrences in the distant past. On the contrary, through the liturgical celebration we relive these events, participating in them as contemporaries. We are raised from the level of secular time, as measured by the clock or calendar, to the level of ‘liturgical’ or ‘sacred’ time; we are transferred to the point where the vertical dimension of eternity breaks into linear time. This transposition of past into present, of remembrance into reality, is expressed in the liturgical texts above all through the word Today. So we sing on the Saturday of Lazarus, ‘Today Bethany proclaims beforehand the Resurrection of Christ.’ ‘Today Christ enters the Holy City’, we affirm on Palm Sunday. ‘Today Christ comes to the house of the Pharisee’, we state on Holy Wednesday, ‘and the sinful woman draws near and falls down at His feet… Today Judas makes a covenant with the chief priests.’ ‘Today the Master of Creation stands before Pilate’, we say on Great Friday: ‘… Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross.’ So also at Easter Midnight we affirm: ‘Yesterday I was buried with Thee, O Christ, and today I rise with Thine arising. Yesterday I was crucified with Thee…’ We shall not understand the meaning of these last two weeks in the Triodion unless we listen to this word Today that resounds at each service. It is not a mere metaphor or an instance of poetic licence, but embodies a specific spiritual experience. All that was witnessed by the crowds in Holy Week, all the words addressed to the disciples, all the sufferings undergone by Christ—these are all to be experienced here and now by me.

(3) Holy Week. (a) The Saturday of Lazarus. This day, along with Palm Sunday, occupies a special position between Lent and Holy Week. Following the forty days of penitence which have just ended, and immediately before the days of darkness and mourning which are to follow in the week of the Passion, there come two days of joy and triumph on which the Church keeps festival. The Saturday before Palm Sunday celebrates the raising of Lazarus at Bethany (John 11:1–46). This miracle is performed by Christ as a reassurance to His disciples before the coming Passion: they are to understand that, though He suffers and dies, yet He is Lord and Victor over death. The resurrection of Lazarus is a prophecy in the form of an action. It foreshadows Christ’s own Resurrection eight days later, and at the same time it anticipates the resurrection of all the righteous on the Last Day: Lazarus is ‘the saving first-fruits of the regeneration of the world’.

As the liturgical texts emphasize, the miracle at Bethany reveals the two natures of Christ the God-man. Christ asks where Lazarus is laid and weeps for him, and so He shows the fullness of His manhood, involving as it does human ignorance and genuine grief for a beloved friend. Then, disclosing the fullness of His divine power, Christ raises Lazarus from the dead, even though his corpse has already begun to decompose and stink. This double fullness of the Lord’s divinity and His humanity is to be kept in view throughout Holy Week, and above all on Great Friday. On the Cross we see a genuinely human agony, both physical and mental, but we see more than this: we see not only suffering man but suffering God.

(b) Palm Sunday. ‘Blessed is He that comes…’: this is the feast of Christ the King—welcomed by the children at His entry into Jerusalem, and to be welcomed likewise by each one of us into our own heart. ‘Blessed is He that comes…’—that comes not so much out of the past as out of the future: for on Palm Sunday we welcome not only the Lord who entered Jerusalem long ago, riding on a donkey, but the Lord who comes again in power and great glory, as King of the Future Age. Palms and branches are blessed after the Gospel at Mattins, and held with lighted candles during the rest of the service. Although at one time the Eastern Church—like Western Christendom up to the present—used to hold a procession on Palm Sunday, this has now fallen into disuse and there is no mention of it in the existing Triodion.

Very frequently repeated at this feast is the sticheron beginning, ‘Today the grace of the Holy Spirit has gathered us together…’ It is possible to see reflected here the practice of St. Euthymios, St. Sabas and other Palestinian monks in the fifth and sixth centuries. Shortly after the Feast of Epiphany they left their monasteries to make a Lenten retreat in the wilderness, either singly or with a companion, spending the following weeks in silence and continual prayer, eating nothing but wild roots. Then, on Saturday afternoon in the sixth week of Lent, they all returned to their monasteries for the vigil service of Palm Sunday, in order to celebrate Holy Week together with their brethren. In isolated Orthodox parishes throughout the western world, something similar occurs each year. Scattered members of the parish community, living far from the church and scarcely ever able to attend the services at other times, start to appear in church at the vigil service before Palm Sunday, and as Holy Week continues their numbers steadily increase. Like the monks of ancient Palestine, we in the twentieth century can also say with truth on Palm Sunday, ‘Today the grace of the Holy Spirit has gathered us together…’

(c) Holy Week: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On the days following His entry to Jerusalem, Christ spoke to His disciples in particular about the signs that will precede the Last Day (Matt. 24 and 25); and so this forms the theme of the first part of Holy Week. In Western worship, on the other hand, the ‘last things’ are commemorated mainly during the pre-Christmas season of Advent. The eschatological challenge of the first three days of Holy Week is summed up in the troparion and exapostilarion at Mattins, both of which are repeated three times to a slow and solemn melody. The troparion, ‘Behold, the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night…’, is based on the parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt. 25:1–13); the exapostilarion, ‘I see Thy bridal chamber…’, on the parable of the man cast out from the feast because he had no wedding garment (Matt. 22:11–13). Here, presented in especially urgent terms, is the call that we have heard on many occasions during Lent: the End is near at hand; be watchful; repent while there is still time.

Each of the three days has its own particular theme:

(i) On Monday we commemorate the Patriarch Joseph, whose innocent sufferings (Genesis, chapters 37 and 39–40) prefigure the Passion of Christ. Also we commemorate the barren fig tree cursed by our Lord (Matt. 21:18–20)—a symbol of the judgement that will befall those who show no fruits of repentance; a symbol, more specifically, of the unbelieving Jewish synagogue.

(ii) On Tuesday the liturgical texts refer chiefly to the parable of the Ten Virgins, which forms the general theme of these three days. They refer also to the parable of the Talents that comes immediately after it (Matt. 25:14–30). Both these are interpreted as parables of judgement.

(iii) On Wednesday we commemorate the woman that was a sinner, who anointed Christ’s feet as He sat in the house of Simon. In the hymnography of the day, the account in Matthew 26:6–13 is combined with that in Luke 7:36–50 (cf. also John 12:1–8). A second theme is the agreement made by Judas with the Jewish authorities: the repentance of the sinful harlot is contrasted with the tragic fall of the chosen disciple. The Triodion makes it clear that Judas perished, not simply because he betrayed his Master, but because, having fallen into the sin of betrayal, he then refused to believe in the possibility of forgiveness: ‘In misery he lost his life, preferring a noose rather than repentance.’ If we deplore the actions of Judas, we do so not with vindictive self-righteousness but conscious always of our own guilt: ‘Deliver our souls, O Lord, from the condemnation that was his.’ In general, all the passages in the Triodion that seem to be directed against the Jews should be understood in this same way. When the Triodion denounces those who rejected Christ and delivered Him to death, we recognize that these words apply not only to others, but to ourselves: for have we not betrayed the Saviour many times in our hearts and crucified Him afresh?

On the evening of Holy Wednesday the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is usually celebrated in church and all are anointed, whether physically ill or not; for there is no sharp line of demarcation between bodily and spiritual sicknesses, and this sacrament confers not only bodily healing but forgiveness of sins, thus serving as a preparation for the reception of Holy Communion on the next day.

(d) Holy Thursday. On this day four events are celebrated: the washing of the disciples’ feet, the institution of the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper, the agony in the garden of Gethsemane (but the liturgical texts do not dwell much on this), and the betrayal of Christ by Judas. In certain cathedrals and monasteries, there is a special ceremony of feet-washing at the conclusion of the Liturgy, with the bishop or abbot taking the part of Christ and twelve priests representing the apostles. At the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, and at the centres of other Patriarchates and Autocephalous Churches, the Holy Chrism is blessed during the Liturgy on this day; but the rite does not take place in every year. The meaning of Holy Thursday is summed up in a text of singular beauty, repeated many times at the Liturgy, which combines the themes of eucharistic Communion, Judas’ treachery, and the confession of the Good Thief:

At Thy mystical Supper, Son of God,

Today receive me as a communicant:

For I will not speak of the mystery to Thine enemies;

I will not give Thee a kiss like Judas;

But as the thief I confess Thee:

Remember me, Lord, when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom.

(e) Great Friday. On this day we celebrate the sufferings of Christ: the mockery, the crown of thorns, the scourging, the nails, the thirst, the vinegar and gall, the cry of desolation, and all that the Saviour endured on the Cross; also the confession of the Good Thief. At the same time, the Passion is not separated from the Resurrection; even on this day of our Lord’s deepest self-abasement, we look forward also to the revelation of His eternal glory:

We venerate Thy Passion, O Christ:

Show us also Thy glorious Resurrection.

The Cross and the Resurrection, as we have seen, are aspects of a single, undivided act of salvation:

Thy Cross, O Lord, is life and resurrection…

Friday Mattins are usually ‘anticipated’ and held on Thursday evening. They take a special form, with a series of twelve Gospel readings that begins with Christ’s discourse at the Last Supper and ends with the account of His burial. In the Greek use there comes a ‘high point’ shortly before the sixth Gospel, when the priest carries a large Cross from the sanctuary and sets it up in the centre of the church. This ceremony, which originated in the Church of Antioch, was only adopted at Constantinople as recently as 1824; it is not found in the practice of the Slav Churches. Here we find the principle of dramatic representation carried a stage further than hitherto, through the use not only of words but of visible actions.

On Friday morning, the Hours take a solemn form, as on the eves of Christmas and Theophany, with an Old Testament reading, an Epistle and a Gospel at each Hour. Vespers follow, either immediately after the Hours (normal Greek use) or in the afternoon (Slav use). At the end of Vespers, as was done earlier at Mattins in the Greek use, the events of Great Friday are represented not only through words but through dramatic actions. The Epitaphion—an oblong piece of stiffened cloth on which is painted or embroidered the figure of the dead Christ laid out for burial—is carried in procession from the sanctuary to the centre of the church, and is then venerated by the faithful. There are few more moving moments in the whole of the Church’s Year. The Greek and Slav Triodia say nothing about this procession with the Epitaphion at the end of Vespers, nor about the corresponding procession at the end of Mattins on Holy Saturday. It seems that the practice of carrying the Epitaphion processionally on these two occasions originated at a relatively recent period, in the fifteenth or the sixteenth century.

In present practice no Liturgy is celebrated on Great Friday—neither the complete Liturgy (except when it is the Feast of the Annunciation) nor the Liturgy of the Presanctified. But in earlier times there was a Presanctified Liturgy on this day.

(f) Holy Saturday. On this day we celebrate the burial of Christ and His descent into Hell. At Mattins, usually held on Friday evening, the service begins with the ‘Praises’ (in Greek, Enkomia) sung before the Epitaphion in the centre of the church. The predominant note at this service is not so much one of mourning as of watchful expectation. For the time being God observes a Sabbath rest in the tomb, but we look forward to the moment when He will rise again, bringing new life and recreating the world:

Today Thou dost keep holy the seventh day,

Which Thou hast blessed of old by resting from Thy works.

Thou bringest all things into being and Thou makest all things new,

Observing the sabbath rest, my Saviour, and restoring Thy strength.

At the end of the service, all go with the Epitaphion around the outside of the church, singing ‘Holy God…’, exactly as they would at a funeral. And yet this is not in fact a funeral procession at all. God had died on the Cross, and yet He is not dead. He who died, the Word of God, is the Life Himself, holy and immortal; and our procession through the night signifies that He is now proceeding through the darkness of Hell, announcing to Adam and to all the dead His coming Resurrection, in which they are also called to share.

In the morning and early afternoon of Holy Saturday there follow Vespers and the Liturgy of St. Basil. Originally this service began later, in the evening, and continued into the early hours of Easter Sunday morning; but now it has been moved back, and its place taken by the existing midnight service of Easter Mattins, with the Canon by St. John of Damascus, ‘This is the day of Resurrection…’, followed by the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The more ancient vigil service, now celebrated on Saturday morning, has a strongly baptismal character, reflecting the period when this sacrament was administered on Easter night. The texts at Vespers are dominated by the three connected themes of Passover, Resurrection and baptismal initiation. Of the fifteen Old Testament readings—constituting the final stage in the teaching imparted to the catechumens before they were baptized—readings 3, 5, 6 and 10 refer directly or symbolically to the Passover; readings 4, 7, 8, 12 and 15 refer to the Resurrection; and readings 4, 6, 14 and 15 refer symbolically to Baptism. The baptismal character of the Holy Saturday office is likewise apparent in the chant sung in place of the Trisagion, ‘As many of you as were baptized into Christ…’, and in the choice of Epistle reading (Rom. 6:3–11). With the verse following the Epistle, ‘Arise, O God…’, the celebration of the Resurrection has already begun.

On Holy Saturday evening the people gradually reassemble in the darkened church while the Acts of the Apostles are read and then the Midnight Office is sung. As twelve o’clock approaches, the lights in the body of the church are extinguished. All wait in silence for the moment when the priest will come out from the sanctuary with the burning candle that symbolizes the light of the risen Christ. So the period of the Lenten Triodion closes in a spirit of intense and eager expectation. ‘Surely I am coming quickly’, the Saviour says to us (Rev. 22:20), and in our hearts we make ready to reply to the risen Christ: ‘Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!’

THE PRESENT TRANSLATION

The principles of our translation are the same here as in our previous volume, The Festal Menaion (Faber and Faber, 1969). To save space, however, we have given only the chapter and verse references for Scriptural readings and not the full text, except in the Service of the Twelve Gospels (Mattins for Great Friday).

All Psalm references are according to the numbering of the Septuagint. Verses of the Psalms are numbered as in the edition of the Old Testament published by the Zoi Brotherhood (issued with the blessing of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece: 7th ed., Athens, 1973). Where the text of the Septuagint differs significantly from the Hebrew, ‘Sept.’ is added in brackets after the reference.

For our translation we have used the Greek Triodion Katanyktikon issued by the official publishing-house of the Church of Greece, Apostoliki Diakonia (Athens, 1960). We have also consulted other Greek editions printed at Venice, Bologna and Rome, as well as the Slavonic text.

No full translation of the Triodion, so far as we know, has hitherto been published in English. The French language is better served. There exist two translations of the complete Triodion, both published in roneotyped form, the first made by an Orthodox and the second by a Roman Catholic:

(1) Jacques Touraille, Textes liturgiques orthodoxes, Série I. Le Triode du Grand Carême (9 fascicules, Paris, 1973–4);

(2) Denis Guillaume, Triode de Carême: version à I’usage des chantres (3 vols., Chevetogne, 1973).

Substantial parts of the Triodion are also to be found in E. Mercenier, La Prière des Eglises de rite byzantin, vol. ii, part 2 (Chevetogne, no date [?1949]).

In English, the following translations of material from the Triodion are known to us:

(a) The Great Canon.

(1) Lady Lechmere, The Great Canon of S. Andrew of Crete, surnamed the Jerusalemite (London, 1875).

(2) Derwas J. Chitty, The Great Canon: A Poem of Saint Andrew of Crete (published by the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, London, 1957; 2nd ed., London, 1966).

(3) Anon. [Archimandrite Lazarus Moore], The Great Canon: The Work of Saint Andrew of Crete (Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, N.Y., 1967).

(4) Sister Katherine and Sister Thekla, St. Andrew of Crete: The Great Canon. The Life of St. Mary of Egypt (The Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Assumption, Newport Pagnell, 1974).

(b) The Akathistos Hymn.

(1) Katharine Lady Lechmere, Synopsis (London, no date [?1891]), pp. 66–93.

(2) G. R. Woodward, The Acathist Hymn of the Holy Orthodox Eastern Church… done into English Verse (London, 1917).

(3) Anon., The Akathist Hymn and Little Compline (London, 1919).

(4) J. Christopher and A. Bartle, The Akathistos Hymn (London, no date [1922]; revised ed., London, no date [1923]).

(5) Vincent McNabb, O.P., Ode in Honour of the Holy Immaculate Most Blessed Glorious Lady Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary. Written on the occasion of the deliverance of Constantinople from the Barbarians, A.D. 626 (Ditchling, 1934; revised ed., Oxford, 1947).

(6) Father Seraphim Nassar, Divine Prayers and Services of the Catholic Orthodox Church of Christ (Brooklyn, 1938), pp. 702–18.

(7) Athenagoras Kokkinakis, Bishop of Elaia [now Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain], The Akathist (Los Angeles, 1954).

(8) G. G. Meersseman, O.P., The Acathistos Hymn (Fribourg, 1958).

(9) Anon., The Orthodox Prayer Book (‘Russian Day’ Committee, Wilkes-Barre, 1959), pp. 460–98.

(10) Anon. [Archimandrite Lazarus Moore], Prayer Book (Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, N.Y., 1960), pp. 270–90.

(11) Archbishop Joseph Raya and Baron José de Vinck, Byzantine Daily Worship (Allendale, N.J., 1969), pp. 967–79.

(12) Protopresbyter George L. Papadeas, The Akathist Hymn Preceded by the Brief Compline (Athens, 1972).

(13) M. Carpenter, Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist, II. On Christian Life (Columbia, 1973), pp. 297–309.

(14) Paul M. Addison, O.S.M., Akathistos Hymn to the Mother of God (London, 1975).

(c) Holy Week (the main services only).

(1) Anon., The Services for Holy Week and Easter Sunday (London, 1915).

(2) Protopresbyter George L. Papadeas, Greek Orthodox Holy Week and Easter Services (New York, 1971).

Translated material from the Lenten Triodion can also be found in Katharine Lady Lechmere, Synopsis, pp. 210–26, 281–442; G. V. Shann, Euchology (Kidderminster, 1891), pp. 260–377; I. F. Hapgood, Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church (Boston/New York, 1906), pp. 204–25; Anon., The Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified of St Gregory the Dialogist (London, 1918), pp. 80–188; Father Seraphim Nassar, Divine Prayers and Services, pp. 604–919; Archbishop Joseph Raya and Baron José de Vinck, Byzantine Missal (Birmingham, Alabama, 1958), pp. 371–455; and by the same translators, Byzantine Daily Worship, pp. 773–842. But the greater part of the Triodion—including the Canons for all ten Sundays and virtually all the weekday texts, with the exception of Holy Week—seems never to have appeared previously in English.

The translators have had the opportunity to consult unpublished translations made by the late Revd. Derwas J. Chitty and by Archimandrite Lazarus Moore, as well as some renderings in use at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, Crestwood, N.Y. We are most grateful to those who have kindly allowed us access to these manuscript versions.

We wish to express our gratitude also to all our spiritual helpers, without whom this work could not have been brought to completion. May the Lord remember them and us when He comes in His Kingdom.

Archimandrite Kallistos

26 January/8 February 1977

Translation of the Relics of St. Theodore, Abbot of the Studios Monastery.

Commemoration of St. Joseph the Studite, Archbishop of Thessalonica.