February 20-26 Discussion Questions
The Lenten Worship
- What are the characteristics of lenten worship that serve to soften our hearts to experience the realities of the spirit and hidden thirst for communion with God?
- What is bright sadness? How is it expressed in lenten worship?
- Why, and in what ways, is the emphasis of lenten worship on repentance?
- How are sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk related? With what consequence?
- How are chastity, humility, patience, and love related? With what consequence?
- Why does Schmemann consider prostrations the lenten rite par excellence?
- Why are the scripture readings for Lent from the Old Testament; specifically, Genesis, Proverbs, Isaiah, and Psalms?
- What would the recovery of The Lenten Triodion make possible?
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March 4, 2011 at 3:47 pm
February 20-26 Discussion Questions
Posted February 20, 2011 by Judith
Categories: Great Lent, Journey to Pascha
The Lenten Worship pp. 31-44
1. What are the characteristics of lenten worship that serve to soften our hearts to experience the realities of the spirit and hidden thirst for communion with God?
Our spiritual fathers and sacred writers have created a very special atmosphere during lent for the believers to become active participants. They have adorned the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts with a beauty all it’s own that stirs the spirit to “hunger and thirst for communion with God”. During these seven weeks of Lent we are drawn to God through our personal and communal participation in fasting and repentance to see and feel God’s presence in our bright sadness. God desires to touch each of us, if we are willing to reach out to Him’
2. What is bright sadness?
There is a certain sadness, a longing within one’s soul for God. The services are longer, the vestments that are worn are darker in color, more repetions in prayer and prostrations, a monotony in the time we stand and a sadness of spirit overcomes us. Even in all of this, God awakens in us the hope of all hopes, Christ and the empty tomb, the resurrection. Jesus is doing in us and to us what He did centuries ago. He is creating from all of this a new hope, a new creation, a new man in each of us today’ We are sad for what we have placed upon him, our sins, but He has placed within us a new brightness, a new life, a new hope.
How is it expressed in lenten worship?
Through each of the Liturgy’s movements we are touched, by the sounds, the duration of time, our prostrations, our alleluia’s; but God will take us into His very presence, if we let Him.
Quote: “My soul has desired Thee in the night, O God, before dawn, for Thy judgements are a light upon the earth. ‘Sad brightness’: the sadness of my exile, the waste I have made of my life; the brightness of God’s presence and forgiveness, the joy of the recovered desire for God, the peace of the recovered home.” This is how it expressed in our worship to Him.
3. Why, and in what ways, is the emphasis of lenten worship on repentance?
Lent is completely about our repentance’ It is about our need to fall before the crucified and resurrected Christ, to beg Him to forgive us for not desiring and loving Him more and more. There is no amount of anything or everything that we could do that can bring us justifiably before God; only Jesus can make that boast before His Father. It is through our repentance that we may fall down prostrate before God’ Due to what Christ does for us during Lent we are forgiven, loved, brought into the very presence of the Father’
4. How are sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk related?
These are the four negative objects of repentenance.
With what consequence?
Sloth is the disease of lazieness and passivity of our entire being it always pushes us down in spirit not up’ It is the root of all sin as it poisons spiritual energy at it’s source. It is the dissipation and brokeness of our vision and energy towards God.
Faint-heartedness brings about a state of despondency. It reduces everything in life to a negative and pessimistic state of existence. It is the greatest danger to the soul; the suicide of the soul when man is possessed by it. Causes us to not see the light and to desire it.
Sloth and despondency comes to fruition in lust for power.If my life is not oriented to God and eternal values, then I become lord of my own life and try to fill all of my own selfish desires. I become the center of my world, my needs, my ideas, my desires, and my judgements. I become the center of my world not God’ I become the one in control, not God.
Idle talk is the supreme danger and the supreme gift. Jesus spoke and nature itself repsonds. Judas spoke and Jesus went to the cross’ The word saves and the word kils. Quote: “When deviated from its divine origin and purpose, the word becomes idle. It enforces sloth, despondency, and lust of power, and transforms life into hell. It becomes the very power of sin.”
5. How are chastity, humility, patience, and love related? With what consequence?
These are the four possitive aims of repentance of ST. Ephrim’s Lenten Prayer.
Chastity, whole-mindedness, love of God. Christ restores this wholeness in us to His Father through our repentance and His love for us in the cross and the resurrection.
Humility is the first fruit of chastity or whole mindedness. It is the elimination of all lies in us. It enables us to see God’s majesty, goodness, and love in everything.
Patience is to those who wait upon the Lord in prayer, repentance, and love, the gift of God. The closer we come to God, the more patient we become towards all of His creation.
And the last but not least of these is love’ Love is the gift of God to man that we might love one another. That very gift of love is Christ His only begotten Son. All spiritual roads lead to …Christ…The greatest commandment is that you might love one another even as I have loved you.
6. Why does Schmemann consider prostrations the lenten rite par excellence?
Quote: “The body participates in the prayer of the soul just as the soul prays through and in the body. Prostrations, the psycho-somatic sign of repentance and humility, of adoration and obedience, are thus the lenten rite par excellence.”
7. Why are the scripture readings for Lent from the Old Testament; specifically, Genesis, Proverbs, Isaiah, and Psalms?
Genesis is the new creation and in baptism we are the new creations in Christ. It is the story of the fall and the journey of God’s chosen people towards salvation. It is the roots of the Christian understanding, of man being created in the image of God’s likeness. It discloses the mystery of the church through God’s chosen nation Israel, the covenant, the ark giving a faint glimpse of what was to come in Christ.
Proverbs is the book of ethical teachings, the moral law, and the wisdom showing us how we are alienated from our God.
Isaiah is the greatest of the prophets, read to show us the hints of salvation though the sufferings and sacrificies of the coming Christ.
Psalms are the mainstay of Liturgy holding a very unique place in our Christian worship. They express the very best of man’s prayer, repentance, adoration, and praise to God. Quote: “For the Fathers, says an exegete of their writings, only Christ and His Church pray, weep, and speak in this Book.”
8. What would the recovery of The Lenten Triodion make possible?
Great Lent has it’s own liturgical book-The Lenten Triodion. The recovery of the The Lenten Triodion would make ours the spirit not only of Lent alone but of Orthodoxy itself. It is the Paschal vision of life, death, and eternity. We can become the witnesses of the Kingdom of God having seen and tasted of it; to fight for the victory of the divine, the heavenly, and the eternal in Christ through the Paschal Lent. The Lenten Triodion encourages us in the spiritual awakening of the soul; when we embrace with completeness of heart, mind and body, the acts of repentance, of fasting, and of the resurrection. When we embrace Lent in all of it’s wonders and mysteries.
March 5, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Rick,
Your thoughtful and articulate response to the lenten worship discussion questions underscores the depth and beauty of lenten worship.
Thanks,
Judith
March 6, 2011 at 9:37 pm
Chastity, patience, humility and love are all virtues that focus on the “other”. They are virtues that place “self” last and display great compassion for ones brother. But they are extraordinary and are not automatic in our behavior, such that spiritual growth toward Christ that is able to gradually shed the fleshly passions (of which all of these have a counter part) will develop a new person within us. The consequence is that this new person is becoming more like Christ, so that when one encounters the other we are able to recognize Christ within that person and truly love the Christ within and ignore the outward appearance. It takes all of the these virtues to grow through the struggle of our metamorphosis while attaining the Divine within us.