Introduction On Great and Holy Friday the Orthodox Church commemorates the death of Christ on the Cross. This is the culmination of the observance of His Passion by which our Lord suffered and died for our sins. This commemoration begins on Thursday evening with the Matins of Holy Friday and concludes with a Vespers on Friday afternoon that observes the unnailing of Christ from the Cross and the placement of His body in the tomb.
INTO THE DESERT OF HUMAN HISTORY, and even here, in to the modern deserts we shape and inhabit, at a time when the poor and needy—their tongues parched with thirst—desperately seek life-sustaining waters, the Holy One pours out rivers and fountains. He places the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive along their banks, and he sets together the cypress, the plane, and the pine. He is with us in our poverty, and he
INTO THE DESERT OF HUMAN HISTORY, and even here, in to the modern deserts we shape and inhabit, at a time when the poor and needy—their tongues parched with thirst—desperately seek life-sustaining waters, the Holy One pours out rivers and fountains. He places the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive along their banks, and he sets together the cypress, the plane, and the pine. He is with us in our poverty, and he
I am thirsty for light My God, I am thirsty for light. I beg for light. I find myself in such confusion, I walk in such a fog, that I have an urgent need of Your enlightenment. My ideas are indescribably confused. You see what a mess I am inside. Have pity on me. I have studied in such an undisciplined way, God. I listened with a kind of curiosity that almost bordered greediness. I
I don’t know how to pray My God, I don’t know how to pray. Yet I so deeply feel in myself the need for prayer. I want to pray. Hour by hour the intense longing to talk with You altogether comes over me. The longing to come into contact with You, the Ineffable and Unfathomable. But I lose the words. I cannot piece together what I mean. My thoughts become confused. So often I don’t
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