Dear Friends,

Christ is in our midst!

Please keep us in your prayers for the next 10 days as a team of 10 serves the Lord at the Hogar Rafael Ayau in Guatemala City, Guatemala.

We are a short-term team of 10 from across North America, and we hope to keep the following blog updated daily.

www.hogarafael2010.blogspot.com

You can learn about the Hogar directly at www.hogarafaelayau.org

And about OCMC Missionary work at www.ocmc.org

Thank you!

Fr John Parker
Rector, Holy Ascension Orthodox Church
Mt Pleasant, SC

Pardon my delay in writing.  I fell from my discipline.  But here is a good picture to remind us what Lent is all about.

In the last few days, we are reading from the First Book of Moses, called Genesis.  Today, we finish chapter 8 and move into chapter 9, with the following command:

 Καὶ ηὐλόγησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν Νωε καὶ τοὺς υἱοὺς αὐτου̂ καὶ εἰ̂πεν αὐτοι̂ς Αὐξάνεσθε καὶ πληθύνεσθε καὶ πληρώσατε τὴν γη̂ν καὶ κατακυριεύσατε αὐτη̂ς

The Matins and Vespers texts for the third week of Great Lent include a return to the Pig-pen, a living flashback to the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  We are not reminding ourselves that we read this parable a few weeks ago; rather, we are reminding ourselves that we are still the Son (all of us, men and women) who have wished our father dead (for that is how we receive inheritance), taken our share of the wealth of our Father’s estate, squandered it in loose and riotous living, attached ourselves by work to a most vile boss in a most vile line of work, and longed to eat from the slop with which we must feed the pigs.

Have we come to our senses yet?

Buried in Tuesday's readings from the Psalms, one hears a verse in Psalm 91 that sounds familiar—but from where?  “For he will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways.  On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone”.

It is the second temptation of Jesus Christ by the Devil, according to St Matthew:

There is something very beautifully balanced about reading from Isaiah chapters 8 and 9 today, as we begin to look towards the summit of Great Lent, the Sunday of the Cross.  Having labored in prayer and fasting, and hopefully in concrete acts of mercy and compassion now for two full weeks, we stand as if just a distance from the summit of the mountain.  We have not yet arrived, but we can see the peak.  Having stood upon that mountain many times, we can hear the echoes—echoes of the particular liturgical celebration (the Sunday of the Cross) and echoes of another mountaintop experience, the Holy Transfiguration of our Lord.

The litugical echoes are solemn and steady.  The path to them is narrow—filled with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  The path from them is even narrower—it is the very Christian life itself:  If anyone would follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me—and as the Holy Apostle Luke adds, “daily”.  The ascetical struggle to the mountaintop of lent is given to us precisely to hear this message, and to send us forth from there, “resolutely facing Jerusalem”, walking with our Lord to his own crucifixion, for the life of the world—a crucifixion which doesn’t free us from having our own; rather, by it our Lord shows us how to endure it, and with whom.

The other mountaintop experience of which we might hear echoes on this Sunday’s commemoration is that of the Transfiguration.  Peter and James and John, those closest to Christ, were invited to ascend the mountain with Christ in order to behold his glory, and in so doing, they were blessed to hear the words of the unseen Father:  “This is my beloved son, listen to him!”  This mountaintop experience, as wonderful as it was, was not a place to stay and dwell, despite Peter’s efforts to build tents for a longer sojourn.  Rather, they, like we—or we, like they—must descend the mountain, and face the Cross of Christ for its own sake, and take up our own.  This would be the content of “listen to Him.”  Keep the commandments. Or, as the Mother of God said at the Wedding in Cana to her Son and our Lord, “whatever he tells you, do it.”

If yesterday’s reading from Genesis was heavy, with “he died. He died. He died,” today’s reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, while rooted in the wars and disasters against God’s people Israel, is one of hope.  And not only hope, but it is of the three “big ones” in the early chapters of Isaiah, the first, in fact.  The other two specifically in the first chapters of Isaiah are Isaiah 9:2ff (from which we get “God is with us!  Understand all ye nations and submit yourselves, for God is with us!) and 11:1ff “there shall come a shoot from the stump of Jesse…”

Today’s reading is the famous “ask the Lord a sign, as high as heaven…”  Isaiah 7:14.

And what is the sign?  “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and call his name Immanuel” (which means, “God with us”).  While the Hebrew text (and therefore many English translations most of which are taken from the Hebrew) reads, “young woman” from the Hebrew “Almah”, the Greek OT, called the Septuagint, and translated by the Jews in the 3^rd Century BC (and certainly completed by the 1^st Century BC), reads “Virgin”—in Greek “parthenos” (after which the pagan Greek Parthenon—temple of the virgins—was named).  Parthenos means very specifically, “woman who has never known a man”.  This, the Evangelist Matthew quotes in his Nativity account.  This one of the messianic prophesies of Jesus Christ.

Thursday’s reading from the First Book of Moses called Genesis, in Chapter 5, is remarkable in many ways.  It recounts for us a number of Generations from Adam, by naming many sons, noting the birth of daughters, and listing some remarkable life-spans.

^1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. ^2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. ^3 When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. ^4 The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters. ^5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.

^6 When Seth had lived a hundred and five years, he became the father of Enosh. ^7 Seth lived after the birth of Enosh eight hundred and seven years, and had other sons and daughters. ^8 Thus all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died.

The Reading for the second Wednesday in Great Lent, from the Prophecy of Isaiah includes the following woes (Isaiah 5:8ff)

^8 Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room, and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land. ^9 The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing: “Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant. ^10 For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah.” ^

At the “Holy God” before the Epistle reading during the Hierarchical Liturgy (when the Bishop serves), he—the bishop—comes out of the altar with the cross and his candle-stick and says, “Lord, Lord, look down upon this vineyard which thy right hand has planted, and establish it!”  It is quite a moving sequence, followed immediately by the singing of “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us!” as the hierarch blesses the congregation in three phases—the center, then the left, then the right sides, as he faces them.

This particular quotation that he offers—“Look down…” is from the Psalms, Psalm 80, in fact, and appointed to be read today in the Kathismata (Psalm readings) for Tuesdays during the Great Fast.  The RSV renders the verse thusly:

Look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock which thy right hand planted.

At the “Holy God” before the Epistle reading during the Hierarchical Liturgy (when the Bishop serves), he—the bishop—comes out of the altar with the cross and his candle-stick and says, “Lord, Lord, look down upon this vineyard which thy right hand has planted, and establish it!”  It is quite a moving sequence, followed immediately by the singing of “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us!” as the hierarch blesses the congregation in three phases—the center, then the left, then the right sides, as he faces them.

This particular quotation that he offers—“Look down…” is from the Psalms, Psalm 80, in fact, and appointed to be read today in the Kathismata (Psalm readings) for Tuesdays during the Great Fast.  The RSV renders the verse thusly: