{"id":163026,"date":"2019-04-23T00:00:48","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T21:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/basilica.ro\/?p=163026\/"},"modified":"2019-04-23T09:55:03","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T06:55:03","slug":"great-and-holy-tuesday-matins-martyr-valerius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/great-and-holy-tuesday-matins-martyr-valerius\/","title":{"rendered":"Great and Holy Tuesday (Matins). Martyr Valerius"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
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Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday \u2013 these three days, which the Church calls Great and Holy have within the liturgical development of the Holy Week a very definite purpose.<\/article>\n
 <\/p>\n

They place all its celebrations in the perspective of End ; they remind us of the eschatological meaning of Pascha. So often Holy Week is considered one of the \u201cbeautiful traditions\u201d or \u201ccustoms,\u201d a self-evident \u201cpart\u201d of our calendar. We take it for granted and enjoy it as a cherished annual event which we have \u201cobserved\u201d since childhood, we admire the beauty of its services, the pageantry of its rites and, last but not least, we like the fuss about the paschal table. And then, when all this is done we resume our normal life.<\/p>\n

But do we understand that when the world rejected its Savior, when \u201cJesus began to be sorrowful and very heavy\u2026 and his soul was exceedingly sorrowful even unto death,\u201d when He died on the Cross, \u201cnormal life\u201d came to its end and is no longer possible. For there were \u201cnormal\u201d men who shouted \u201cCrucify Him\u201d who spat at Him and nailed Him to the Cross. And they hated and killed Him precisely because<\/p>\n

He was troubling their normal life. It was indeed a perfectly \u201cnormal\u201d world which preferred darkness and death to light and life\u2026. By the death of Jesus the \u201cnormal\u201d world, and \u201cnormal\u201d life were irrevocably condemned. Or rather they revealed their true and abnormal inability to receive the Light, the terrible power of evil in them. \u201cNow is the Judgment of this world\u201d (John 12:31).<\/p>\n

The Pascha of Jesus signified its end to \u201cthis world\u201d and it has been at its end since then. This end can last for hundreds of centuries this does not alter the nature of time in which we live as the \u201clast time.\u201d \u201cThe fashion of this world passeth away\u2026\u201d (I Cor. 7:31).<\/p>\n

Pascha means passover, passage. The feast of Passover was for the Jews the annual commemoration of their whole history as salvation, and of salvation as passage from the slavery of Egypt into freedom, from exile into the promised land. It was also the anticipation of the ultimate passage\u2014into the Kingdom of God. And Christ was the fulfillment of Pascha. He performed the ultimate passage: from death into life, from this \u201cold world\u201d into the new world into the new time of the Kingdom.<\/p>\n

And he opened the possibility of this passage to us. Living in \u201cthis world\u201d we can already be \u201cnot of this world,\u201d i.e. be free from slavery to death and sin, partakers of the \u201cworld to come.\u201d But for this we must also perform our own passage, we must condemn the old Adam in us, we must put on Christ in the baptismal death and have our true life hidden in God with Christ, in the \u201cworld to come\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

And thus Easter is not an annual commemoration, solemn and beautiful, of a past event. It is this Event itself shown, given to us, as always efficient, always revealing our world, our time, our life as being at their end, and announcing the Beginning of the new life\u2026. And the function of the three first days of Holy Week is precisely to challenge us with this ultimate meaning of Pascha and to prepare us to the understanding and acceptance of it.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday:<\/h4>\n

At Matins: Matthew 22: 15-23, 39. Condemnation of Pharisees, i.e. of the blind and hypocritical religion, of those who think they are the leaders of man and the light of the world, but who in fact \u201cshut up the Kingdom of heaven to men.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Presanctified Liturgy: Matthew 24: 36-26, 2. The End again and the parables of the End: the ten wise virgins who had enough oil in their lamps and the ten foolish ones who were not admitted to the bridal banquet; the parable of ten talents \u201c. . . Therefore be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh.\u201d And, finally the Last Judgment.<\/p>\n

3. These Gospel lessons are explained and elaborated in the hymnology of these days: the stichiras and the triodia (short canons of three odes each sung at Matins). One warning, one exhortation runs through all of them: the end and the judgment are approaching, let us prepare for them:<\/p>\n

\u201cBehold, O my soul, the Master has conferred on thee a talent
\nReceive the gift with fear;
\nLend to him who gave; distribute to the poor
\nAnd acquire for thyself thy Lord as thy Friend;
\nThat when He shall come in glory,
\nThou mayest stand on His right hand
\nAnd hear His blessed voice:
\nEnter, my servant, into the joy of thy Lord.\u201d
\n(Tuesday Matins)<\/p>\n

4. Throughout the whole Lent the two books of the Old Testament read at Vespers were Genesis and Proverbs. With the beginning of Holy Week they are replaced by Exodus and Job. Exodus is the story of Israel\u2019s liberation from Egyptian slavery, of their Passover. It prepares us for the understanding of Christ\u2019s exodus to His Father, of His fulfillment of the whole history of salvation. Job, the Sufferer, is the Old Testament icon of Christ. This reading announces the great mystery of Christ\u2019s sufferings, obedience and sacrifice.<\/p>\n

5. The liturgical structure of these three days is still of the Lenten type. It includes, therefore, the prayer of Saint Ephrem the Syrian with prostrations, the augmented reading of the Psalter, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts and the Lenten liturgical chant. We are still in the time of repentance for repentance alone makes us partakers of the Pascha of Our Lord, opens to us the doors of the Paschal banquet. And then, on Great and Holy Wednesday, as the last Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is about to be completed, after the Holy Gifts have been removed from the altar, the priest reads for the last time the Prayer of Saint Ephrem. At this moment, the preparation comes to an end. The Lord summons us now to His Last Supper.<\/p>\n

(by ALEXANDER SCHMEMANN – oca.org)<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday \u2013 these three days, which the Church calls Great and Holy have within the liturgical development of the Holy Week a very definite purpose.   They place all its celebrations in the perspective of End ; they remind us of the eschatological meaning of Pascha. So often Holy Week is considered one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[7275,10012,6567,10011,6569,6570,10010,6572,2104,6568],"class_list":["post-163026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feasts-and-saints","tag-23-april","tag-daily-saints","tag-feasts-and-saints","tag-life-of-saints","tag-lives-of-the-saints","tag-orthodox-calendar","tag-orthodox-saints","tag-saint-george","tag-saints","tag-saints-of-the-day"],"better_featured_image":{"id":234854,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":724,"height":1024,"file":"2018\/04\/sfanta-si-marea-marti.jpg","sizes":{"thumbnail":{"file":"sfanta-si-marea-marti-360x360.jpg","width":360,"height":360,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/sfanta-si-marea-marti-360x360.jpg"},"medium":{"file":"sfanta-si-marea-marti-629x890.jpg","width":629,"height":890,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/sfanta-si-marea-marti-629x890.jpg"},"large":{"file":"sfanta-si-marea-marti-724x1024.jpg","width":724,"height":1024,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/sfanta-si-marea-marti-724x1024.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"4.5","credit":"","camera":"NIKON D300","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1247060426","copyright":"","focal_length":"35","iso":"200","shutter_speed":"0.01","title":"","orientation":"1","keywords":[]}},"post":163026,"source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/sfanta-si-marea-marti.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163026\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=163026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163026\/revisions\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234854\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=163026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=163026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=163026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}