The joy-creating sorrow of an Orthodox Lent
Like a journey abroad to understand home, a look at what the Orthodox make of Lent brings perspective to the more familiar practices of the Western Church. The schism between the two is disastrous, but a consolation is the strong identity of the Eastern liturgies.
So anyone who wants to know what Lent is should be grateful to Kallistos Ware. This monk, now 83, born in Bath, and educated at Westminster and Magdalen College, translated into English the Orthodox service book The Lenten Triodion.
His translation from the Greek was done with Mother Mary of the Monastery of the Veil of the Mother of God at Bussy-enothe in Burgundy. Faber published it in 1978, though it is hard to think it could then have been a big seller.
The 700 pages of The Lenten
Triodion in translation present about two thirds of the liturgical offices.
They seem complicated, like any traditional ritual, like a funeral or cricket.
The chanting of prayers is a counterpart to the fasts of Lent. Orthodoxy is quite demanding about fasting. Strict observance of the first five days of Lent, for those who can manage it, allows only two meals: on Wednesday and on Friday.
Metropolitan Kallistos makes five points about fasting. First, it is for everyone, lay people as well as monks and nuns. Secondly, it is not for showing off willpower.
As an Orthodox prayer puts it: “I have no tears, no repentance, no compunction; / But as God do Thou Thyself, O Saviour, bestow them on me.”
Thirdly, fasting should be obedient – to the traditional pattern, and, if varying from it, done with the counsel of a spiritual adviser.
Fourthly, fasting should be joyful. St John Climacus called it “joy-creating sorrow”, and a prayer in The Triodion says: “Grant me tears falling as the rain from heaven, O Christ, / As I keep this joyful day of the Fast.” The Triodion is full of such striking paradoxes.
Fifthly fasting is not a rejection of God’s creation, which, as a reading on Holy Saturday emphasises, God saw as “very good”. Moreover, humankind, made in the image and likeness of God, has, in the Incarnation of Christ, who took a material body, seen him restore “the sullied image to its ancient glory, / Filling it with the divine beauty,” as it says in the kontakion (a kind of hymn) for the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the first Sunday in Great Lent, celebrating the defeat of iconoclasm and the return of icons to churches in 843.
Like fasting, which leaves an impression, some of the Lent offices are memorable for the demands they make. During the night between Good Friday and Holy Saturday is recited the longest Psalm in the book, Psalm 118 (called Psalm 119 in the Book of Common Prayer in the Church of England, which portions it out to be read over five days). A verse of praise between each verse of the psalm is sung antiphonally by the priest and the choir.
The long chant is performed in front of the Epitaphion – symbolically the tomb of Christ. It is expressed by a large piece of textile embroidered with the image of the dead Christ and placed on a holy table in the middle of the church.
The regular antiphony produces a powerful effect: “Mine eyes have failed with waiting for Thy salvation, and for the word of Thy righteousness. / Seeing Thee, my Christ, the Light invisible, hidden lifeless in the tomb, the sun trembled and darkened its light.”
Easter dawns all the more brightly for the long night of Lent.