Patriarch Joseph the All-Comely: A Prefigure of Christ

On Holy and Great Monday, the Byzantine Rite churches commemorate the righteous Patriarch Joseph, the son of Jacob in the Old Testament. In our churches, he is referred to as “Joseph the All-Comely,” a reference to the beauty of his deeply spiritual life. Joseph is mentioned in the New Testament by Saint Paul as an example of faith (Hebrews 11:22).

Joseph was considered the favorite son of his father. Out of envy, his brothers trapped him and threw him into a pit. In an attempt to deceive their father, Joseph’s brothers used a bloody garment to convince him that Joseph had been devoured by a wild animal. The brothers then sold Joseph as a slave to traders, who in turn sold him to the chief chef of the Pharaoh of Egypt.

Having become known for his astute ability of dream interpretation, Joseph was summoned by the Pharaoh to interpret his dreams. Impressed with Joseph’s interpretations, the Pharaoh appointed Joseph as second-in-command of Egypt (Genesis 41:41). Therefore, Joseph is frequently depicted in icons wearing the headdress of an Egyptian vizier.

In addition to honoring him, the Byzantine Rite of the Church considers Joseph as a typological precursor or prefigure of Christ. Saint John Chrysostom taught that Joseph’s suffering was “a type of things to come.” Like Joseph, Christ was betrayed and sold by a trusted source. Whereas Joseph saved his people by the distribution of grain, our Lord feeds and sanctifies us with the Heavenly Bread of His own life-bearing flesh. In certain patristic texts, Joseph’s famous coat is viewed as a symbolic representation of the diversity of peoples that would ultimately be evangelized and converted to faith in Christ.

As we remember the righteous Patriarch Joseph, may our hearts be inflamed with love and gratitude for our Savior, who suffered and arose victoriously, granting us forgiveness and salvation. And through the prayers of Saint Joseph the All-Comely, may Christ our God have mercy on us and save us!

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Reflection for Passion Week

We began this Great Lent with an eight-part series on the Lenten Prayer of Saint Ephraim the Syrian. Let us once again return to the spiritual wisdom of Saint Ephraim for a reflection as we enter Holy Week…

“Do not look for the faults of your friend. Do not repeat the shortcomings of your neighbors in your talk. You are not the judge of creation. You do not have dominion over the earth. If you love righteousness, admonish your soul and yourself. Be the judge of your own sins, and chastise your own transgressions.” — St. Ephraim the Syrian

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Why Pussy Willows on Palm Sunday?

In western Christian churches, palm fronds are traditionally blessed and distributed on Palm Sunday. But in Ukraine, Russia, and Slovakia, pussy willow branches are blessed in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholic churches.

Since there are no palm trees in Central and Eastern Europe and other trees do not leaf so early due to the harshness of the climate, only pussy willows reveal their tender catkins in time for Willow Sunday, as it is commonly called in Byzantine churches.

Traditionally people “beat” each other with the pussy willows on the way home after Liturgy. This was a reminder of the upcoming flogging that our Lord was to endure for our salvation and was superstiously considered to bestow good luck.

The pussy willow is a sign of spring and of the earth’s rebirth. It harbors leaves in itself, but does not yet put them out, and thus symbolizes that our joy from the feast of our Lord’s Triumphal Entrance into Jerusalem is not complete, but conceals in itself the approaching great joy of Pascha (Easter).

The blessed pussy willows are taken home, where they are kept reverently until the following year, when the branches are traditionally burned and replaced by new ones. In some villages, pious individuals each year stuff some of the catkins into a pillow, which will then be laid under their head in their coffin.

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Triumphal Entrance of Our Lord into Jerusalem

Following His glorious miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead and only five days before his crucifixion, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey greeted by throngs of people waving palm and olive branches. We typically refer to this day as Palm Sunday.

On this day, the prophecy of Zechariah recorded some four hundred years earlier was fulfilled:

”Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass” (Zechariah 9:9).

As Jesus entered through the city’s Eastern Gate, throngs of people greeted Him with cheers and shouts:

”Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest” (Matthew 21:9).

Only a king would be greeted this way, and the people wanted Jesus to be their king. However, most of the people did not understand what kind of king Jesus would be. They expected their king to be a great political and military leader who would free them from the tyranny of the Roman Empire. They missed Jesus’ repeated messages that the kingdom of God is not of this world.

Jesus didn’t come as an aggressive and dominating earthly king to rule by force; He came as the Heavenly King of love to rule over people’s hearts. This is equally true today as it was two thousand years ago. The kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom that reigns in the hearts of those who put their faith and trust in Jesus as Savior. May you have a blessed and spiritually edifying Holy Week!

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Lazarus Saturday

Advances in DNA testing are allowing people to uncover information about their genetic ancestry and find out where their ancestors originated. I was curious by the potential knowledge I could gain from this new generation of tests for genetic ancestry, so I contributed my sample and received my results a few months later. Some of the results were predictable, some were surprising! Through my amateur genealogical sleuthing, I have learned fascinating information about some of the courageous and strong individuals whose DNA flows in me and makes me “me”.

None of us obviously fell from the sky. Behind each of us stands an invisible army: those who gave us life, who fought and survived over hundreds of generations. We do not know all their names and may not remember or be able to identify these people who lived centuries before us. But we are the fruit of their lives, we are connected with them by a million threads, which we cannot sever from the unconscious memory of the past.

For Orthodox Christians, Lazarus Saturday is a type of Day of the Dead. The day of our dead, who are yet alive, because we are alive. They are in us, so the prayer offered for the reposed (panikhida) is not only intercession for them, but also a prayer for ourselves. Because these genetic connections are invisible does not mean they are unimportant. We depend on our deceased ancestors, even if we do not understand this. Our deceased loved ones do not abandon us in our troubles.

But the deceased also depend on the living. In God’s marvelous and mysterious creation, it is established that the human will is connected with the body. A person cannot repent after death, because the person has no means by which to do so. Through the power of our love, by our prayer and charity, we are able to help those who have departed. Remember, we are forever connected, and this interwoven relationship works in both directions.

Today’s holiday is for this reason especially close to our hearts, especially joyful. Before this upcoming week’s commemoration of the suffering, passion, and death of our Lord, we celebrate resurrection. To illustrate how this will occur, how the dead will rise from their graves to the sound of the voice of the Son of God, the Lord raised the four-day dead Lazarus. The feast’s hymn (troparion), which will be sung today and tomorrow, proclaims:

“By raising Lazarus from the dead before Your Passion, You confirmed the universal resurrection, O Christ God!”

—that is, it confirmed that there will be resurrection for all.

Since Lazarus’ resurrection confirmed the universal resurrection, it is said that every person is a “Lazarus” and that the burial garment is called a “Lazaroma,” thus hinting at our own resurrection from the dead at the last trumpet.

By the intercessions of Thy friend, Lazarus, and of all our holy and righteous ancestors, O Christ God, have mercy on us. Amen!

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Feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos

Commemoration: 25 March/7 April
Gospel: Luke 1:26-38

The Annunciation is a day of good news found among people all over the world that the Virgin, so believing God, so deeply capable of obedience and trust, that the Son of God could be born of Her.

The Incarnation of the Son of God is, on one hand, the suffering, affectionate, and salvific love and power of God; but at the same time, the Incarnation of the Son of God is a matter of human freedom. Saint Gregory Palamas says that the Incarnation would be just as impossible without the free human consent of the Mother of God, as it would be impossible without the creative will of God. And on this day of the Annunciation we contemplate in the Mother of God the Virgin, who with all her heart, with all her mind, with all her soul, with all her strength, managed to trust God to the end.

The good news was also truly shocking news. The appearance of an angel with the greeting: “Blessed are you among, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” did not only cause astonishment and trepidation, but also fear in the soul of a virgin who did not know her husband. How could this be?

And then we recall the difference between the wavering – albeit profound – faith of Zechariah, the father of the Forerunner, and the faith of the Mother of God. Zechariah also proclaimed that his wife had a son – naturally, despite her advanced age. And his answer to this message of God: “How can this be? This can not happen! How can You prove this? What kind of assurance can you give me?” The Mother of God poses the question only this way: “How can this happen to me as I am a virgin?” And in response to the angel that it was to be, She responds only with the words of full surrender of Herself into the hands of God. Her words: “Behold, the Servant (Handmaiden) of the Lord, may it be to Me according to your word.”

The word “servant” in our present usage speaks of enslavement. In the Old Slavonic language, a person who called oneself a servant was one who voluntarily gave one’s life and will to another. And She certainly gave her life, her will, her destiny to God, accepting in faith – that is, in incomprehensible trust – the message that She was to be the Mother of the incarnate Son of God. About Her, the righteous Elizabeth says: “Blessed is She who has believed, for it will be unto to Her as spoken by the Lord.”

In the Mother of God, we find an amazing ability to trust God to the end, but this ability is not inherent, not natural. Such a faith must be forged in oneself by the feat of love for God. A feat described by the fathers: “Spill blood and receive the spirit.” One of the Western writers says that the Incarnation became possible when was discovered the Israeli Virgin, Who with all her mind, with all her heart, with all her life, pronounced the name of God so that He became flesh in Her.

This is the good news that we now hear in the Gospel. The human race gave birth, offering as a gift to God the Virgin, Who was able in her royal human freedom to become the Mother of the Son of God, Who freely gave Himself for the salvation of the world. Amen!

Sermon of Blessed Metropolitan +Anthony of Sourozh
– translated from Russian

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Fifth Sunday in Lent: Saint Mary of Egypt

On the Fifth Sunday in Lent, the Eastern Church commemorates Saint Mary of Egypt. Her life is an amazing story, in which there is everything: crime and punishment, sin and repentance, walking on water and a grave dug together by a monk and a wild lion.

“If you go beyond the Jordan, you will find a blessed peace” – the Blessed Virgin promised the fallen woman, and she kept her word. Mary crossed over and lived the remainder of her life on the far side of the Jordan River. This crossing over the Jordan symbolizes the first step from her life of sin to the salvation of her soul. This transition from sin to salvation is uniquely experienced in the life of every believing person.

Although an obvious theme of this story is about the sin of fornication, the main focus is perhaps not sin but rather repentance. The primary message of Saint Mary’s life is in the depth and truth of repentance and the unbearably heavy spiritual struggle that accompanies it.

Mere mental or emotional remorse does not save us from sin or from the temptation or inclination to indulge again. Let us recall that Judas Iscariot was remorseful over his sin of betrayal of the Son of God, but his regret did not lead him to God. Remorse alone is not true repentance.

Repentance begins with remorse and continues with metanoia (changing one’s mind, one’s attitude, and one’s ways). If we are truly repentant, our remorse manifests in action. And God, seeing that we are earnest, blesses our efforts and grants us the gift of grace and salvation.

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