The first part of Great Week presents us with an array of themes based chiefly on the last days of Jesus’ earthly life. The story of the Passion, as told and recorded by the Evangelists, is preceded by a series of incidents located in Jerusalem and a collection of parables, sayings and discourses centered on Jesus’ divine sonship, the kingdom of God, the Parousia, and Jesus’ castigation of the hypocrisy and dark motives of the religious leaders. The observances of the first three days of Great Week are rooted in these incidents and sayings. The three days constitute a single liturgical unit. They have the same cycle and system of daily prayer. The Scripture lessons, hymns, commemorations, and ceremonials that make up the festal elements in the respective services of the cycle highlight significant aspects of salvation history, by calling to mind the events that anticipated the Passion and by proclaiming the inevitability and significance of the Parousia.
It is interesting to note that the Orthros of each of these days is called the Service of the Bridegroom (Akolouthia tou Nimfiou). The name comes from the central figure in the well-known parable of the ten virgins (Mt 25.1-13). The title Bridegroom suggests the intimacy of love. It is not without significance that the kingdom of God is compared to a bridal feast and a bridal chamber. The Christ of the Passion is the divine Bridegroom of the Church. The imagery connotes the final union of the Lover and the beloved. The title Bridegroom also suggests the Parousia.
In the patristic tradition, the aforementioned parable is related to the Second Coming; and is associated with the need for spiritual vigilance and preparedness, by which we are enabled to keep the divine commandments and receive the blessings of the age to come. In addition, knowing something about the structure of the Orthros will help us to further our understanding of the use of the imagery of the Bridegroom. It has been shown that, after the so-called Royal Office and the Hexapsalmos, the first part of the Orthros, as we know and practice it today, is an earlier version of the monastic service of Mesonyktikon (Midnight Service).68 The Mesonyktikon is centered chiefly on the theme of the Parousia and is linked to the notion of watchfulness. The troparion “Behold the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night. . .” which is sung at the beginning of the Orthros of Great Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, relates the worshiping community to that essential expectation: watching and waiting for the Lord, who will come again to raise the living and the dead.
While each day has its own distinct character and its own specific commemoration, they share together several common themes.
Conflict, Judgment and Authority
The last days were especially sorrowful and gloomy. The relentless hostility and opposition to Jesus by the religious authorities had reached unparalled proportions. In the midst of this painful conflict Jesus revealed aspects of His divine authority by passing judgement on the evil plots and the false religiosity of His enemies.
The unremitting belligerency of Jesus’ adversaries was completely unmasked in the days preceding the crucifixion. The leaders of all the religious parties and factions collaborated and conspired to entrap, humiliate and kill Him. As the snares of His enemies tightened, Jesus openly foretold His death and subsequent glorification. His words were a clear declaration that His death was voluntary and lay within the framework of the divine plan for the salvation of the world. The power being exercised over Him by His enemies was granted and controlled by God (Jn 12.20). The Church commemorates the Passion not as ugly episodes caused by vile and contemptible men, but as the voluntary sacrifice of the Son of God.
Evil in all its absurdity erupted violently on the Cross, in order to destroy and dispose of Jesus and to negate and abolish His message. However, it was evil itself that was rendered fundamentally powerless and ineffectual by the sovereignty of God’s love and life. While evil assails the holy ones of God, it cannot destroy them.
The Gospel narrative recounting the events that led to the crucifixion also includes several parables and discourses in which Jesus strongly criticized the religious leaders for their disbelief, obstinacy, authoritarianism, and hypocrisy. The severe critique of the religious classes (Mt 21.28-23, 36) is another clear sign of Jesus’ authority and excellence. By preserving these sayings of Jesus, the Evangelists declare that Christ is “not only a unique teacher, but also the highest judge. He is one with authority who has the right to judge and condemn” bad and false religious faith and activity.
No disease of the spirit is more insidious, deceptive and destructive than false religiosity, which can be defined succinctly as religious legalism and exhibitionism. Jesus condemned it outright. He warned against those whose lives are measured by ceremonials rather than the holiness, mercy and love of God; and those whose evil motivations, intentions and improprieties are cloaked in the respectability of the externals of religious faith and life. False religiosity is a cruel hoax and a betrayal of authentic religious faith. The practitioners of such artificial faith shut the Kingdom of heaven against men, for they neither enter themselves, nor do they allow those who would enter to go in (Mt 23.13).71
Mourning and Repentance
The tone of Great Week is clearly one of somberness and sorrowfulness. Even the altar cloths and priestly vestments, according to an old tradition, are black. However, the liturgical assembly is not gathered to mourn a dead hero, but to remember and commemorate an event of cosmic significance: the Son of God experiencing in His humanity every form of suffering at the hands of feeble, misdirected and evil men. We mourn our sinfulness as we stand in contrite silence before the awesome, inscrutable mystery of Christ, the God-man (Theanthropos), who carries His kenosis to the extreme limits accepting the death of the ‘Cross (Phil 2.5-8).
Great Week reveals to us the utter shame of the Fall, the depths of hell, Paradise lost, and the absence of God. And so we mourn! There is no other way to deal with our rebellion and with God’s unfathomable humility and condescension except to experience the rending of the heart. It is out of this kind of mourning that true repentance is born, to be experienced as the honest commitment to the life-long process of grasping, accepting and choosing to follow the values for the Christian life.
The liturgy of the days of the Bridegroom represents the most urgent and emphatic call to such repentance (metanoia). The faithful are reminded that no sin is so great as to defy the bounds of divine mercy, for Christ gives everyone the power to slay sin and to share in His victory.
On the Cross, Jesus has a vision of all those for whom He is dying. He foresees each one of us individually, saving us through His death and by His love … He did this to allow God to enter everywhere there is human suffering, even into the abyss of death, accompanying man to the depths of suffering so as to raise him up again and bring him back to life, by lifting him up to heaven and placing him at the right hand of the Father. The Son of God dies as man so that the Son of Man may rise up again as God. The Son of God had to experience the anguish of God’s absence so that all men who die might recover the presence of God: this is salvation.
~Adapted from Alkiviadis Calivas, Great Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, “Great Lent, Holy Week & Pascha, Website of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, http://lent.goarch.org/articles/lent_mon_tues_wed.asp.
