Holy Week
Fr. Nicholas Krommydas, April 16

Soon Holy Week will find us drawn to experience the final days of Christ’s life here on earth. Those final days of suffering will once again be remembered culminating with the Feast of Feasts, the Resurrection of our Lord. It is comforting to know that Christ’s victory over death signals a triumph over our greatest enemy and greatest fear…death.     
For us as Orthodox Christians, such an extraordinary event is marked not by a date on a calendar or by a reward that we receive at the end of Lent. It is seen in the assurance, definite and absolute, in our hope of the victory of light over darkness. It is seen written on the faces of our loved ones who remind us of life’s greatest gift and of promises yet to be realized while we are still here. It is the light of the Resurrection that punctuates all that is beautiful both here on earth and that which is yet to come.
And all of this is possible because of Christ, the Son of God, who so loved us that He spread His arms on the Cross so that we did not have to pay such a high price. It is in His arms that we will feel the warmth and safety of His embrace from all that will separate us from His love and from the kingdom promised to each of us as His heirs.     
How different our life would be if we remembered and committed our lives to such a loving Lord! So where do we begin and what shall we do to be faithful sons and daughters of the Most High? There’s no better time to start than now when we are closer to Christ’s true message of unconditional love and sacrifice made manifest in the glory of His Resurrection.     
Hear the words of St. Gregory Nazianzus who summarizes Christ’s ministry as an invitation to become God as He became man as a point of departure and new beginning.Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. Let us become Gods because of Him, since He for us became man. He took upon Himself a low degree that He might give us a higher one. He became poor, that through His poverty we might become rich (II Cor. vii.9). He took upon Himself the form of a servant (Phil. ii.7) that we might be delivered from slavery (Rom. Viii. 21). He came down that we might rise up. He was tempted that we might learn to overcome. He was despised that we might be given honour. He died that He might save us from death. He ascended to heaven that we who lie prone in sin may be lifted up to Him.     
Let each one of you give all to Him: offer all to Him Who gave Himself in exchange for us: as the price of our Redemption (Mt. xvi. 22; xx.28). But should anyone come to understand this mystery in Christ, and that what He did He has done for him, he shall give nothing unless he gives his own self.     May the remainder of this Holy Season become an opportunity for self-evaluation and personal sacrifice so that we may give that which is most precious that being nothing less than our whole self.     
Wishing you a spiritually rewarding Lenten Season and a blessed Holy Week,               
Yours in Christ’s Service,
Fr. Nick