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The “Standing of Mary”—that is what the service is called at the threshold of Christ’s Passion. The life that we live is tasteless; it has no salt. We know everything beforehand, we plan and calculate everything. In such a life there is no miracle of a meeting with God, no repentance about which we heard today in the life of St. Mary of Egypt. It seems to us that this happened sometime in the distant past… But how could something like this happen today, in the modern world? How could it happen personally to me, when I already know and understand everything, and it seems that God is somewhere far away? That’s just the thing—God is near—it’s we who are far away! And that is why it is so important for us to receive the drops of spiritual dew that the Church offers us today—the full reading of the Great Canon of Repentance of St. Andrew of Crete and the Life of St. Mary of Egypt. This wondrous service should strengthen us. We are used to living only commensurate with our own experience, and we do not dare to talk about the struggle with and victory over sin, which is beyond human strength. But we believe that there is God and the grace of the Holy Spirit, strengthening and restoring one who repents. We hear the words of St. Simeon the New Theologian about how true repentance restores childhood in a person. Truly a miracle can take place in the life of every person. But today we see a different picture: arguments over who is right and who is wrong, rude words, offenses, criticism, self-pity—there is no awareness of our own guilt before God. In our repentance we see not Christ but simply a man, a priest, and human conversations begin, words are spoken in which there is not the beauty of repentance. After all, repentance is our change, our transformation by the Lord.
I would like very much for us to learn to stand in church, for us to learn to participate in the services, in Christ’s Mysteries, in which the soul is renewed. The soul should continually receive grace-filled help in order to wage war with the world of sin and temptation. May God grant that during the remaining time before Pascha we would not lose the spirit—a drop of which there is in us after all. It is easy to lose the spirit—for one word, for one thought, for one offense, for one judgment a person loses his connection with God. This is a terrible state. We need to be vigilant, we need to be attentive about how we look, how we talk, how we walk—everything in a person should be beautiful, spiritual. We came to church not only in order to look at the icons of the saints and contemplate the beauty of their relationships. The light of Christ shines in all the saints. But we ourselves must become saints, so that in coming into contact with holiness, we would be capable of preserving this holiness in our hearts and sharing it with our neighbors.
So much love, so much care, so much divine mercy pours out on each one of us! So many times have we already touched the immortal Source of Life, the Chalice of Christ! Why are we so often a leaky vessel that loses this grace? Passions, depression, despair, murmuring come to us, and all this becomes a wall beyond which we do not see our neighbor, we do not see God. We have to continually break down this wall. St. Seraphim of Sarov carried stones on his back and said, “I am wearing out what wearies me”. We have to constantly remember that the enemy is right next to us. We must not trust ourselves, but seek God’s help, God’s blessing on every step of our life.
