Great Monday
Matins – Mt 21:18-43; Sixth Hour – Ez 1:1-20
Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts – Ex 1:1-20; Job 1:1-12; Mt 24:3-35
Abstention from meat and foods that contain meat. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Read Job 1:1-12
We will be confronted at the end of this week with the death of our Lord, His descent into Hades, and His rising from the dead on the third day. Perhaps you have asked sometime in your life, or even multiple times, a very simple question: why did Jesus have to suffer so greatly for us? And this question brings the whole issue of good and evil in the world: if God is good then why is there evil in the world? We have pondered this question for thousands upon thousands of years. The reading from Job today and throughout this week will help us to understand that evil in itself has neither being, goodness, productiveness, nor power to create things which have being (see Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names, 19-21). There is something of a mystery here.
We learn from Job, and even better through our Lord’s suffering His passion and death on the Cross, that evil and suffering have a role to play in our salvation. It is never that the Lord DESIRES for His children to suffer. Rather, when evil and suffering occur (they are a result of the Fall and are still active within a creation that is being redeemed), He can cause something greater to be effected. In Christ Jesus, His suffering and death culminated in His resurrection from the dead which in turn opens the way for us to participate in the divine life of God, one in three.
As we approach the Feast of feasts, perhaps we can look at the sufferings we have endured in our lives thus far and note how the Lord has always been present to us even when it feels that He is far away.