Liturgical Life

The Divine Liturgy, sacraments, feasts, fasts, and the rhythms of the Church year

  • Remember Me: The Good Thief and the Last Word on Repentance

    ByJobin

    *Remember Me: The Good Thief and the Last Word on Repentance*
    _Movement V, Post 2 | Seeking Theosis_

    🕯️ The Faces of the Fast series began on the first day of Great Lent with Adam sitting outside the gate of Paradise.

    The gate had just closed behind him. He sat in the dust. He wept. And God had compassion on him.

    Today, Holy Saturday, the Lenten portion of the series ends.

    It ends with a man dying on a cross asking to be remembered. And being told by the man dying beside him that today he will be in Paradise.

    The gate that closed on Adam is opened again. Not for a patriarch or a prophet or a person of demonstrated virtue. For a dying thief. With hours left. Asking for the most human thing in the world.

    Remember me.

    We began with the gate closing. We end with it opening.

    That is the whole of the Gospel in the arc of a Lenten series.

    The last Lenten reflection is on the blog today. Short because Holy Saturday is a day of silence. But the silence is not empty.

    Tomorrow the stone moves.

    Χριστὸς Ἀνέστη. Christ is RIsen. That is where all of this has been going. 🕯️

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    She Stood There: The Theotokos at the Foot of the Cross

    ByJobin

    She Stood There: The Theotokos at the Foot of the Cross

    🕯️ Thirty-three years before Golgotha, Simeon held the infant Jesus in the temple and said to Mary:

    “A sword will pierce through your own soul also.”

    She did not know then what the sword would look like.
    Today she knew.

    St. John Chrysostom says the sword was real. The pain of watching her son crucified was not spiritualised away or made bearable by some special divine protection. She felt what any mother would feel. The theology of the Incarnation does not exempt the Theotokos from human suffering. If anything it intensifies it. Because she knew, with a clarity no one else had, exactly who it was dying on that Cross.

    She knew He was the Son of God.

    And she stood there watching the Son of God die.

    And she did not leave. Not until He gave her somewhere to go.

    Good Friday reflection on the blog. On the Theotokos at the foot of the Cross. On the sword that was promised and the standing that received it.

    She stood there. And today we stand with her.

  • Wrestling Through the Night: Jacob and the God Who Wounds to Bless

    ByJobin

    *Wrestling Through the Night: Jacob and the God Who Wounds to Bless*
    _Faces of the Fast – Movement II, Post 3_

    🕯️ He went into the night self-sufficient and strategic.

    He came out limping.

    Jacob wrestled with God at the ford of the Jabbok all night long. And as dawn was breaking the mysterious wrestler touched the socket of his hip and wrenched it out of joint.

    With a dislocated hip Jacob was still holding on.

    *_”I will not let you go unless you bless me.”_*

    The wound and the blessing came from the same encounter. They could not be separated. He crossed the river into the morning carrying both of them together.

    Now stand that image beside what we are remembering this week.

    The risen Christ appears to His disciples and shows them His hands and His side. The wounds are still there. The Resurrection did not erase them. It transfigured them. The wounds of Good Friday are present in the glorified body of Easter Sunday. Still real. Still visible. Now luminous.

    Jacob’s limp and the wounds of the risen Christ are the same testimony in two different moments of salvation history. The blessing and the wound came from the same night. The glory and the marks came from the same Cross.

    Holy Week reflection on the blog now. On Jacob. On Gethsemane. On what it means to hold on through the darkness when you have run out of everything else.

    Full reflection on Seeking Theosis:

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    Feast of the Annunciation to the Mother of God – March 25

    ByJobin

    Feast of the Annunciation – March 25

    The Creator of the universe asked a teenage girl for permission. He sent an angel. He spoke through words. He waited for a response.

    Mary said: “Behold the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.”

    And the Word became flesh. In her womb. Nine months before Bethlehem. The road from the manger to the Cross began in this room. On this day. With this yes.

    St. Ephrem: heaven and earth heard the yes simultaneously. The angels from their side. Creation from ours. And the Word began His journey from the throne to the manger.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

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    The God Who Sees the Unseen: Hagar in the Wilderness

    ByJobin

    🕯️ When was the last time you felt truly seen?
    Not noticed. Not assessed. Not judged.
    Seen. By name. In the actual place you were standing.
    Hagar was a servant woman in the wilderness with nowhere to go. And God found her at a spring and spoke her name before He said anything else.
    She gave Him a name in return. El Roi. The God who sees me.
    New Lenten reflection on the blog. On the God who sees into every wilderness. Every margin. Every place where a person sits feeling invisible.

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    Lenten Reflection – Day 30 of the Great Lent

    ByJobin

    Day 30 of the Great Lent – Mark 5:2-20: Sitting, Clothed, and in His Right Mind
    The most broken person in the Gospels. Living among the dead. Naked. Screaming. Cutting himself with stones. A legion of demons. No chain could hold him. No one could help.

    Christ crossed the sea. Stood in front of the most dangerous, most broken, most hopeless person in the region. And said: come out.

    The man was found sitting. Clothed. In his right mind.

    No one is too far gone. There is no graveyard Christ will not enter. There is no legion He cannot command. The Man in the boat is coming.
    For our Journey today
    – Stop Running
    – Let the Stones Fall
    – Go Home and Tell
    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

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    Lenten Reflection – Day 27 of the Great Lent

    ByJobin

    Day 27 of the Great Lent. Train, Do Not Punish. 1 Corinthians 9:25–27.
    The fast is not a punishment. It is training. The athlete does not hate his body. He trains it. He disciplines it not because the body is evil but because the body is powerful and must be directed.
    St. Basil the Great: the faster does not hate food. He loves God more. The fast is the alignment of body and spirit. Both pulling toward the same finish line. Toward the same crown.
    Today, change the language of your fasting. From “I have to give up” to “I am training for.” From “I cannot eat” to “I am learning to want something more.”
    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

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    Lenten Reflection – Day 26 of the Great Lent

    ByJobin

    Day 26 of the Great Lent – Luke 17:1-10 – We Are Unprofitable Servants
    Twenty-six days. More than half the fast. We have been working hard. Fasting. Praying. Confessing. Giving. Some of us have not missed a single prayer.

    And today Christ says: you are an unprofitable servant. You did your duty.

    Sounds harsh. It is freedom.

    Because if our obedience earns nothing, then our failure costs nothing. God’s love for us today is exactly the same as it was before the fast began. Not one degree warmer because of our twenty-six days. It has nothing to do with our performance. It has to do with His nature.
    For our journey today:
    – Say it out loud “We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.”
    – Forgive the seventh time
    – Release the claim
    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

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    Lenten Reflection – Day 25 of the Great Lent

    ByJobin

    Day 25 of the Great Lent: Matthew 19:16-26 – “What Do I Still Lack?”
    The rich young ruler had kept every commandment since his youth. He did not steal, lie, cheat, or dishonour his parents. By any external measure, he was a good man.
    And he knew something was missing. “What do I still lack?”
    Jesus told him: sell everything and follow Me.
    He went away sorrowful. He could not let go.
    St. Ephrem: the command was not about money. It was about the heart’s deepest attachment. The “ruling love” that sits on the throne of the heart and will not yield.
    Twenty-five days of fasting. What is the one thing you have been protecting?
    For our journey today
    – Name the one thing
    – Bring it to the Cross
    – Do not go away sorrowful

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

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    The Promise and the Long Wait: Abraham and Sarah

    ByJobin

    *Faces of the Fast series* – _The Promise and the Long Wait: Abraham & Sarah_

    🕯️ God took Abraham outside in the dark. “Look up”, He said. “Count the stars if you can.”

    Abraham was old. Childless. Twenty-five years into a promise that had not yet been fulfilled. He looked up at the sky and chose to believe.

    Not because the evidence supported it. Because he had chosen to orient himself toward the One who had spoken rather than toward everything that contradicted it.

    The fourth reflection in Faces of the Fast is now on the blog. We move into Movement II of the series today.

    On Abraham and Sarah. On the long wait. On the laughter that was not the last word. On what it means to stand under the stars and say: I believe.

    It is a reflection for anyone who has been carrying something for a long time and has not yet seen it fulfilled. For anyone in the middle weeks of Lent when the freshness has worn off and the destination still feels distant.

    The One who made the promise is the same One who pointed Abraham to the stars.

    _Walking from Eden to the Upper Room. One biblical face at a time._ 🕯️