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Christ is in our midst, my dear readers!
Now we have entered the time of Great Lent, not through the ceremonial gates of our achievements, but through the narrow door of deep perplexity. We stood in the half-light of the church, and the very first sounds of the Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete shattered our habitual self-confidence with a single question: “Where shall I begin?”
In daily life we are accustomed to being effective. We know how to plan our affairs, how to solve problems, how to appear respectable. But here, before the face of Eternity, all this “organization” falls apart. Saint Andrew places upon our lips words that may seem like weakness, but are in fact the greatest honesty: We are at a dead end.
We look at the knot of our life—at tangled resentments, old habits, the masks that have grown fast to our faces—and we realize that we do not even know which thread to pull in order to begin to untie it. And this state—this “sacred bewilderment”—is the most important gift of this evening. As long as we imagine that repentance is merely a checklist to be “completed” in forty days, we have not yet touched its depth. True repentance begins where our human plans for self-improvement come to an end.
Consider the astonishing, almost impossible logic that Saint Andrew reveals to us. Usually we think: “First I will correct myself, purify myself, accomplish some spiritual feat, and then God will forgive me.” But the Canon says the opposite. We cry out: “Lord, grant me forgiveness now, because without it I have no strength even to begin to weep for my sins.” Here forgiveness is not a reward at the end of the road. It is the foundation upon which the whole road is built. We ask for mercy as for “spiritual oxygen,” without which we would simply suffocate in our own weakness.
Without Christ, our self-knowledge would turn into barren self-condemnation. We would simply drown in the awareness of our imperfection. But our weeping is different. According to the holy fathers, it is “joy-creating.” Why? Because we cry out not into emptiness, nor to ourselves, but into the Face of the Merciful God.
My dear ones, do not be troubled today by your dryness or by the fact that you do not feel the proper contrition. Let this honest bewilderment be your “beginning.” If you do not know where to begin—begin with trust. Today we make the most important existential reversal—we cease to be judges of ourselves and become supplicants. We let go of the attempt to be “good” in our own eyes and simply fall at the feet of the Savior. We say: “Lord, I am entangled, I am poor, but Thou art Compassionate. Thy mercy is greater than my falsehood.”
Before us lie forty days of pilgrimage. This is not a time of tormenting inspection of our baggage; it is a time of returning Home. Let the cry of the Canon become our inner compass. When it seems to you that Lent is passing in vain, that you are not changing, that sin is stronger than you—remember this first evening. Remember that we began not with a triumphant shout, but with a plea for help.
Our path leads from the awareness of our poverty to the boundless riches of God’s love. May the Lord grant us the strength not to search within ourselves for the “right words,” but simply to be here, before Him, in this saving silence. And in our weakness, may His strength be made perfect.
