Accompanying Christ during Holy Week
Accompanying Christ during Holy Week
The
Lord goes to a voluntary passion. We must accompany Him. This is the
duty of anyone who confesses that by the power of Christ’s passion he
has become who he is now, and of anyone who hopes to receive something
which is so great and glorious, that it could not even enter one’s mind.
How must one accompany Him? Through reflection and sympathy. Follow the
suffering Lord in thought; and in your reflection extract such
impressions as could strike your heart and bring it to feel the
sufferings which were borne by the Lord. In order to better accomplish
this, you must make yourself suffer through perceptible lessening of
food and sleep, and an increase in the labour of standing and kneeling.
Fulfil all that the Holy Church does, and you will be a good
fellow-traveller of the Lord to His sufferings.
St. Theophan the Recluse
