O Christ our God, in the beginning of this holy fast, grant me the tears of regret to wash away the stain of my passions, so that I may come to truly see your love for me. Help me to yearn for Your presence in my life. Help me to do all within my power to allow Your Spirit to guide my comings and goings, gradually transforming me into a Temple. Help me to believe that I have been make in Your image and instill in me the desire to do all in my power to become like unto Your likeness by my imitation of Jesus, Your anointed one. As I request Your help, O God, I offer my praise to You, Who I know to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not only now but forever and ever. Amen.
O Gracious God, help me, while fasting bodily, to also fast in spirit. Help me to see where I need to make Your love and kindness present in my world. Drive out from my heart all self-centeredness and help me to integrate into my life the attitudes and behaviors of Jesus, the Christ. Help me, as I fast, to come to a deeper awareness of the meaning and purpose of my life and to understand that You have willed that I live this earthly existence in order to come to know, love and serve You. Help me to bring the healing of Your love to those who cross my path in life. As I request Your help, O God, I offer my praise to You, Who I know to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not only now but forever and ever. Amen.
O Merciful God, I truly believe that You have called me to be a living icon of Your presence in the world. I know that I have frequently failed to represent you to my world. I ask You to help me during this time of the Great Fast to grow in my ability to allow Your presence to be felt in my world by the way that I treat others. Help me to be aware of when I fail to truly be Your vehicle to touch the hearts and lives of others so that I might know what to do to change. I desire to be a living icon of You and ask Your help in accomplishing this. As I request Your help, O God, I offer my praise to You, Who I know to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not only now but forever and ever. Amen.
O Good One, I bow in worship before Your most pure image, truly begging forgiveness for my stumblings. I truly believe that You chose of Your own free will to ascend upon the cross in the flesh in order to help me understand that You modeled for mankind how to live this earthly life. Your actions as man, which I think about during this Great Fast, are meant to help me know and believe that there is a way to live this earthly life that can help me come to an understanding of its meaning and purpose. I know You are with me in life. As I request Your help, O God, I offer my praise to You, Who I know to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not only now but forever and ever. Amen.
O Master, Who are infinite in Your divine nature, You condescended in these latter days to become incarnate and finite. In assuming a body like mine, You accepted the limitations of mankind and showed me that it is possible to live a life of love and concern for others. You showed me, through the struggles You encountered in life, that it is possible to love, even when hated, and to forgive, even when wronged. You showed me how to live so that I might truly grow to be God’s child. Help me to show my thankfulness by imitating You. As I request Your help, O God, I offer my praise to You, Who I know to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not only now but forever and ever. Amen.
O Lord Jesus Christ, Who surpass all understanding, You have given forth light from the Father since all eternity. I truly believe that You, as God incarnate, have shared with me Your Good News about this earthly life. You have shown me how to unconditionally love others, despite how they treat me. You have taught me, by Your very life, the necessity to forgive others who wrong me so that I might be free to love more completely. You showed me how to live and die with nobility and grace. Help me to understand what You have revealed. As I request Your help, O God, I offer my praise to You, Who I know to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not only now but forever and ever. Amen.
Heavenly Father, help me to tame my flesh during this time of the Great Fast by acts of self-denial and penance so that I may be able to open my heart and mind to You, my loving God, and begin to experience Your presence in my life and world. Help me to understand that the challenges life delivers me are meant as opportunities for me to more completely learn how to love and trust You, my loving God. Give me the strength and courage to use this time to grow in my understanding of life, Your precious gift to me. As I request Your help, O God, I offer my praise to You, Who I know to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not only now but forever and ever. Amen.
O Mother of God, through you, in the Incarnation, the indescribable Word of God became describable; for through the divine goodness, the Word spoken from eternity became an image. May we, who believe in salvation, clothe ourselves in the same image both in word and deed. –Kondak
On the very first weekend of the Great Fast, our Church commemorates the restoration of the veneration of Icons, or Holy Images. Iconoclasm is a term meaning “image breaking,” referring to the very extreme opposition to the representation of the human figures of Christ, the Mother of God and the Saints and the veneration of these images. This transpired in the Byzantine Empire during the period from approximately 724 to 842. Iconoclasm emerged under Emperors Leo III (717-741) and Constantine V (741-775) and the iconoclastic council of 754. This movement was checked at the seventh ecumenical Council at Nicaea (787) and the total restoration of icons and the final extinction of iconoclasm took place between 815-842. The restoration of the practice of writing and venerating icons took some time.
Why does our Church commemorate the restoration of icons on this first weekend of the Great Fast? I believe for several reasons.
First, the imaging of Christ, in particular, reaffirms His actual, historical existence. Christ is the image of God in human form. So our commemoration of this event in history supports our faith in Jesus as the incarnation of our invisible God and that God became incarnate for the sake of sharing with us how we should live. The fact that we can image Jesus makes Him real.
Second, the images of the Mother of God and the other saints also tell us that they were real people who, by their lives, demonstrated that it is possible to live like Jesus lived.
Third, this commemoration also reminds us that we are made in God’s image and likeness – we are called to be the living icons of God in our world today. The season of the Great Fast is all about growing spiritually so that we more and more represent – image – God in our world.
Finally, the icons we use and venerate bring to mind the persons that we use as models for our lives and remind us that the people they represent are alive in another dimension – icons keep alive our memory of them (In a similar fashion we keep photographs of people we love in our homes).
Do you have an icon in your home? Icons can truly be wonderful reminders of the meaning and purpose of life!
As I expressed in the last installment of this article, the Eastern Church sees God as preeminently LOVE. This means that God, Who revealed Himself to be a community of Persons (i.e., Father, Son and Holy Spirit) wishes to give Himself to us. Why? Because love is, in essence, the giving of oneself completely to the other. True love is expressed through the gift of self to the beloved. Jesus is God’s gift of Himself to us through the Holy Spirit. We recognize this gift through faith. St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans: The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. As Irenaeus, a saint from the second century has expressed it, we are touched by the two hands of God which are Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
If Jesus promised, as St. John reports in his gospel, that He and the Father would come and dwell within us, we can experience this living presence by increasing our awareness of God’s presence in our life and world. If Jesus taught, as again reported by St. John, that eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, gain this knowledge by living as Jesus lived. We can gain insight into the chief revelation made through Jesus that the Trinity lives in each and every individual follower of Christ. God became a man so that we might come to understand the meaning of life and, in understanding it, might come to know God. This is an ongoing, life-long process, which, because life is immortal, truly an eternal process.
Christianity was meant by Jesus to be a living experience of abiding in and loved infinitely by our Triune God Who is, in truth, a community of love. The great insight of Christianity is that since God is a community of love, so too must we find God within a community of love which, hopefully, is the Church.
During the past several weeks I have been presenting ideas about the Letter of Paul to the Hebrews. Within its late first-century historical context, the language of Hebrews is thoroughly subversive. It subverts the foundation of temple theology – the claim that reconciliation with God is only truly possible through the temple. The author argues that what we see in Jesus means that the need for temple sacrifice is over with. Where there is forgiveness of these sins, there is no longer any offering for sin. Hebrews is about the end of the system of sacrifice, not about its reestablishment in Christian doctrinal form.
The metaphorical meaning of its presentation of Jesus as high priest and sacrifice is radical: God, through Jesus, has taken away whatever you think separates you from God. The once for all sacrifice has been made. The system of requirements is over with. This meaning is confirmed by the author’s use of “new covenant” language from Jeremiah (31:31-34). He refers to the passage more than once (8:8-13; 9:15-20; and 10: 9-18). The new covenant is written in minds and hearts, not in a list of requirements. It is about knowing God, who remembers sins no more.
I would encourage you to both read Hebrews and Jeremiah. It will make these statement much clearer.
After the multichapter exposition of Jesus as great high priest and sacrifice, Hebrews 11 speaks about faith. It begins with a definition: Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. This is a wonderful definition of faith. After this definition, Paul continues with a litany of Jewish heroes of faith: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the people of the Exodus, Rahab and others whom the author says he doesn’t have time to describe. His examples of faith combine trust, obedience and hope – the desire for a better country, a homeland, a city whose architect and builder is God.
Chapter 11 with these words:
The world was not worthy of them [the Jewish heroes of faith]. They wandered about in deserts and on mountains, they dwelt in caves and in holes of the earth. Yet despite the fact that all of these were approved because of their faith, they did not obtain what had been promised. God had made a better plan, a plan which included us. Without us, they were not to be made perfect.
Think about this! God made a better plan that included us!