Synaxis of the Holy Archangel Gabriel
Great Fast Dy 40
Sixth Hour – Isaiah 66:10-24; Presanctified – Genesis 49:33-50:26; Proverbs 31:8-31
Abstention from meat and foods that contain meat. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Read Isaiah 66:10-24
From Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh will come to worship me.
At the end of the season of Great Fast, we come also to the end of the reading of Isaiah. While it ends on a high note – the seeming restoration of right worship of Jerusalem brought about by the arrival of the Lord – it stands in stark contrast to the rest of the lections. Lent ends in death. Jacob dies. Joseph dies. Lazarus is long overdue in the tomb.
Joseph promised relief from the famine in Canaan, but respite in Egypt would not last long. Egypt will become a place of enslavement when a Pharoah comes to power “who knew not Joseph” and the deeds he once performed for the tribes of Canaan and the kingdom of Egypt alike.
Joseph is considered one of the noblest exemplars throughout the whole Old Testament. Nevertheless, the human ability to untangle ourselves from our mess is finite power. We need a saviour.
Enter Holy Week. Christ’s walk to Calvary parallels the reading of the Exodus. If indeed all flesh is to come and enter into continual worship. It will take supernatural ability of human flesh capable of performing this act. Joseph, as good as he is, will not able to make this work. The flesh of his progeny cannot unslave themselves. It will take Moses, called forth and empowered by God who revealed himself in the burning bush, to lead Egypt through from bondage to slavery, from death to life.
Christ is the new Moses. As the God-man, he takes on flesh, bringing the entire human nature into union with the divine. Being “like us in all things save sin” he is able to bring human flesh into perfect worship with God.
Holy Week is the time to enter into this mystery and to bring our own weak, human flesh beyond the stopgap of Joseph. United to the saving power of Christ, prophecy is performed and fulfilled in our midst, as Christ recreates the heavenly Jerusalem on Earth as it is in heaven through his resurrection. In the light of the cross, death, and resurrection of Christ, true worship can happen, assisted by divine grace.