3rd Lenten Email

Life in this world is preparation for life in the age to come. The Old Testament is preparation for the New Testament. Preparation and fulfillment are the two great themes in life and Scripture. That means they must be the great themes of the Church, which encompasses all of life and is the vehicle through which God produced and protects the Holy Scriptures. As you know, Lent is the preparation for the fulfillment of Pascha. But preparation and fulfillment are not just the themes of the grandest events in life. They are the pattern of even the smallest occurrences. Is bread broken without baking? Is wine enjoyed without crushing grapes? Even within one small service that is only served during Lent we see the pattern.

In the last email I sent you I told you about the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian. Although it is prayed often by the Orthodox and eastern-rite Catholics in their private prayers, it is most beautifully framed by the evening worship service which is sometimes called the Liturgy of St. Gregory (He also lends his name to a very popular style of singing.) but which is usually called the Liturgy of Pre-Sanctified Gifts. In this Liturgy the prayer follows a hymn. The hymn is the preparation for the prayer. The prayer is the fulfillment of the hymn. And the two together are preparation for something that occurs later in the Liturgy, and the whole Liturgy is part of the preparation for Holy Week, which is preparation for Pascha. The preparation and fulfillment just goes on and on, growing in beauty at every step, until one day, if we can not see it now, we will look around us and see that we are in Heaven. And in the words of C.S. Lewis in the “Last Battle” we will continue to move “further up” and “further in” forever and ever in an eternal procession toward God.

But here and now we are talking about the hymn that prepares us for the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian - walking before running, you know. The name of the hymn is “Let My Prayer Arise”. In a darkened temple, on bended knee, clothed in swirling clouds of frankincense we sing…

“Let my prayer arise in Thy sight as incense
And the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice…”

That is merely the refrain. If you’d like to hear the whole thing but are unable to make it to any services this Lent, you can listen to the attached [to the email, not this blog post] Windows Media file. It was recorded at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in New York.