Mission Monthly – May 2000

Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent

To my beloved family in Christ, “Christ is Risen!” The joy of Pascha is upon us and by the grace of God our “thirst” has been quenched and our “hunger” satisfied. The “bright sadness” of our lives, hopefully, has once again entered into our Lord’s supreme victory over our greatest enemies, the devil and death. The darkness of the devil’s deception is annihilated in the brilliance of God’s glory, once and for all filling all creation with the profound silence of the empty tomb! “Nothing has been said and everything has been said,” remarked one theologian, as we now stand, like Israel of old having passed through the Red Sea, on the far shores of freedom watching the waves of God’s glory crash in upon Pharaoh’s charioteers of sin, injustice and oppression. Beloved, Christ is risen and we are free. Like Israel of old, having spent forty years in the desert of purification, our forty days of lent have brought us to the edge of the heavenly Canaan, yearning to hear the words of our Lord spoken to the penitent thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise!” Beloved, Christ is risen and the gates of paradise are once again open that the faithful may enter. Oh, that this great salvation would be our one and only desire!

Sadly, like Israel of old we are a stubborn and ungrateful people, grumbling at every inconvenience, complaining at every hardship, doubting at every trial, rushing for every blessing, resisting at every sacrifice, running to every passion, fearing the ways of God, building the idols of the mind. Today, however, is not the day to dwell on the work that still remains. “You will always have the poor with you,” as we will always have the work of repentance and salvation. Today is the day that we measure the work that has, by the grace of God, been accomplished. Not in terms of production or quantity or the accomplishment of “formal obligations,” but in terms of the full measure of satisfaction that only comes to a heart open and soft from a “thirsting” and “hungering” after righteousness. Our communion with God begins again and again by submitting to His Word and work (liturgy) in obedience, humility and love. It begins in baptism and the “putting on” of Christ, by dying with Him and thereby rising with Him. It begins by living the Resurrection of Christ each and every moment, each and every day. It begins in the word of the Cross, “It is finished,” by dying to ourselves in Christ and to the world of sin and death, that our spiritual blood shed in war with the devil may add to the rising rivers of freedom leading all creation back to its Creator and the harbor of paradise.

“Arduous” was a word recently used by a newcomer to Orthodoxy describing the rigors of Holy Lent. Beloved, Israel of old was tempted to return to the slavery of Egypt. How much more must we be willing to fight to keep the great gift of freedom received in the death and Resurrection of our Lord. Christ is risen and we are free! Let us live our freedom not to the glories of the world or of ourselves but to the Glory of God. Let us be faithful to our “obligations,” by wielding the weapons of virtue, prayer and fasting, only heightened during the days of lent, for the whole of our lives, disciplined not by the force of rule but rather by the force of love! Let us soften our hearts, opening them to the work of the Holy Spirit that our “hidden ‘thirst and hunger’ for communion with God” may be more deeply revealed. As lights to the world let us boldly proclaim by word and by deed, with angels and before man, “Christ is risen!”