Our Holy Mother Matrona of Thessalonica
Great Fast Day 33. Abstention from meat and foods that contain meat. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Read
Proverbs 17:17-18:5
“The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters; the fountain of wisdom is a gushing stream.”
In this time of quarantine, we are asked to limit our words and enter into a time of hesychasm, the silence of the heart. From there in the quiet, tender, presence of our God. We can renew a relationship with not just the running waters of our one words, but the gushing stream of the eternal word.
Read the scriptures. Whether we are Old or New Calendar, we are around the feast of the Annunciation. It is a feast of the Good News. One of the important features of the hymnography is revealing between the space of the words between the Mother of God and the Angel Gabriel. The canon is composed as a dialogue, imaginatively exploring the thoughts and feelings of the two biblical characters. This poetry can only come about through an attentive look at God’s word. The fruits of the hymnographer’s labour are for our benefit. We see the Mother of God, all too human in her questioning. She is for us the great example of what humanity can become when we are filled with grace. We see the Angel Gabriel possessed by fear, much the same sense of awe that he has before the throne of God, where all the heavenly hosts attend shielding their faces from God’s fearsome glory. God’s loving-kindness approaches us, humans, with that same reverence. To miss this point means to miss much. Hence, returning to the fountain of wisdom is a gushing stream. Let us open our mouths and at least attempt to take in a drop or two.