Quo Vadis: Great Lent as Re-Turning to Him

The First Sunday of Great Lent
starts by commemorating the first miracle performed by Jesus:
turning water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee.

A common translation (NRSV) of Jn 2.3-4:

When the wine gave out,
the mother of Jesus said to him,
“They have no wine.”
And Jesus said to her,
“Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?
My hour has not yet come.”

An english Peshitta translates the last line:

"My turn has not yet come."

Layers of meaning in such a turn of events
in the words of the Word we "behold the man"
recollecting the turns and transformations of His Hour:

• the body of history and humanity that thirsts for salvation,
• His Body that suffers Gabbatha and Golgotha,
• His Mystical Body that gloriously lives in the Church and as the Church,
• His hour at Pentecost that will anoint and transform her with the Spirit anew, all within her own ongoing fiat to the promptings of the same Spirit who conceived Him in her body~
  

Just as reception of the Holy Eucharist forms the Body of Christ in us,
so too does celebration in the Liturgical Year form Christ in us,
as we are also collectively transformed into the Body of Christ:
from humble birth to the full stature
of a human life transfigured
in the Divine Light of Theosis, or Deification.

--Excerpt from Kalapurayil essay below

John 1:35 ff

The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.

Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them,
“What are you seeking?”
And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher),
“where are you staying?”
He said to them, “Come and you will see.”

John 13:36
Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?”
Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.”

In these passages
we return into the same event of the Word made flesh
that Peter asked of the Lord,
“Domine, quo vadis?”
And the Lord turns to ask each of us,
"What are you seeking, where are you going,
what do you really want?"

Armenian Lent radio podcast page:
Theologian Dr. Vigen Guroian experiences Easter as "a call to our senses." Explore his Eastern Orthodox sensibility that is at once more mystical and more earthy than the Christianity dominant in Western culture. And at this time of year and beyond, Vigen Guroian does real theology in his garden as richly as in church.

great links to excerpts from radio broadcast and texts
Armenian theologian Vigen Guroian:
professor of Theology and Ethics at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland.
His books include "The Fragrance of God" and "Inheriting Paradise."

The Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem

O Lord and Master of my life,
take from me the spirit of sloth, despondency,
lust for power, and idle talk.

Grant unto me, Thy servant,
a spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love.

O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults,
and not to judge my brothers and sisters.

Blessed art Thou unto the Ages of ages.
Amen.

Prayer of St. Ephrem for Great Lent

Saint Ephrem's Hymns on Fasting

On the Passion of the Saviour
by Our Venerable Father Ephrem the Syrian:
"One of the most interesting passages in the poem is that which describes the Holy Spirit as having come forth in the form of a dove and rent the veil of the Temple
at the moment of the Lord‘s death":

Likewise the Holy Spirit,
who is in the Father,
when he saw the beloved Son
on the tree of the Cross,
rending the veil,
the temple’s adornment,
suddenly came forth
in the form of a dove.

More texts by St. Ephrem

Hagiography of St. Mary of Egypt

by Fr. Matthew the Poor
Monastery of St. Macarius in Wadi el-Natroun, Egypt:
"The point to understand is that fasting is a divine act of life, which we receive from Christ complementary to baptism and fullness. Since its beginning the Church has been occupied with infusing into its own body the acts of Christ’s life so they would become life-giving acts to all its members." On Fasting by Matthew the Poor

by St. John Chrysostom
On Fasting
Fasting is the change of every part of our life. . . Besides, we have a Lord who is meek and loving (philanthropic) and who does not ask for anything beyond our power. Because he neither requires the abstinence from foods, neither that the fast take place for the simple sake of fasting, neither is its aim that we remain with empty stomachs, but that we fast to offer our entire selves to the dedication of spiritual things, having distanced ourselves from secular things. If we regulated our life with a sober mind and directed all of our interest toward spiritual things, and if we ate as much as we needed to satisfy our necessary needs and offered our entire lives to good works, we would not have any need of the help rendered by the fast.

by Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev
Christ the Conqueror of Hell
The Descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern and Western Theological Traditions

The Liturgical Year as a Transforming Parousia
excerpts of essay by Joseph Kalapurayil, posted at St. Gregorios IOC, San Francisco.

Just as reception of the Holy Eucharist forms the Body of Christ in us,
so too does celebration in the Liturgical Year form Christ in us,
as we are also collectively transformed into the Body of Christ:
from humble birth to the full stature of
a human life transfigured in the Divine Light
of Theosis, or Deification.

By following this cycle of the Church Liturgical Calendar, we can get into the rhythm and flow of the Christian story, to experience it, to learn it, to re-live it through the telling and the doing.

Far from being simply a calendar, the liturgical year in the life of the Church is the life of Christians living in community as brothers and sisters - in awareness of God's kingdom, remembering the entire communion of Prophets, Apostles, Saints and all of God's people on Earth and in Heaven, being renewed by God's saving love, helping one another, witnessing Christ's good news, and waiting for the fullness of the coming Kingdom according to God's timing...

In entering and participating in these eternally present events, we are changed; we are transformed. This allows us to proclaim with Saint Paul:
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.(Gal 2:20)


But, there is a certain order to the Church’s presentation of the Gospel teachings and the primary events of our Sacred History.

Sacred word and image comes alive in these services, offering the participant the greatest encounter with our Living Tradition.

All this effort culminates in the ultimate goal of the Christian and the dynamic essence of the Liturgical Year: a means to bring about our UNION WITH CHRIST.

The Church invites us, through our participation in the Liturgical Year, to re-live the entire life of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We enter union with our Lord: in His Nativity, His growth in Nazareth, His ministry, passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. ‘Each liturgical feast renews and in some sense actualizes the event of which it is a symbol; it takes the event out of the past and makes it immediate. The liturgical year is, for us, a special means of union with Christ.’

Just as reception of the Holy Eucharist forms the Body of Christ in us, so too does celebration in the Liturgical Year form Christ in us, as we are also collectively transformed into the Body of Christ: from humble birth to the full stature of a human life transfigured in the divine light of Theosis, or Deification. This is the path of sanctity, the path of sainthood.

See Also
Observing Great Lent essay by J. Kalapurayil

The Mystery of the Waters
Creation and Recreation:
The Blessing of the Waters in Theophany
reveals the sacramental cosmology of the New Aeon,
from Genesis into the Jordan Baptism of the Lord

Great Lent: The Crown of the Year
St. Ephrem Mission's Lenten blog post, with a link to "Great Lent: The Journey to Pascha"
the classic text by Fr. Alexander Schmemann

See especially pages 31-33ff regarding the "Bright Sadness"
of the Lenten Journey returning into the freedom and beauty we are made for~
and pages 34ff on the Prayer of St. Ephrem
at the heart of all the Lenten Services in the Church