"I have squandered the essence of my Father's riches as a prodigal..."

Icon of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (source)

  

I have squandered the essence of my Father's riches as a prodigal, and having consumed them all, I have come to dwell in a desert land of evil citizens, and I am no longer able to bear to dwell with them, so I return, crying out to You, O compassionate Father: I have sinned against heaven and before You, and I am no longer worthy to be called Your son. Make me as one of Your hired servants, O God, and have mercy on me.
-Idiomelon from the Sunday of the Prodigal Son in the Plagal of the Fourth Tone

(source)

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!

Elder Symeon Kragiopoulos: Are we recipients of God’s compassion?

Icon of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (source)

  

Are we recipients of God’s compassion?

The prodigal son from the first moment realised his mistake, his failure, but he did not immediately return to his father. Instead, he tried managing to live far away from him. Stubbornly, he tried to justify himself. But when he ends up in dire need, this causes him to come back to himself, to think correctly, to repent, and to take courage, the courage to go to his father and to confess everything he feels he did against him. There is always a tendency in man to want to appear honourable before God, having the conviction that he is something. Man must be hit hard, to feel that he is unworthy of salvation.  Man ought to rely οn God, οn the Father’s compassion. Every sinner is saved by the sacrifice of Christ and not by any human virtue of his.

  

When someone passes through the misfortune of the prodigal, when he is vanquished like this and is later found in the arms of God and enjoying his love, he will never leave no matter what. He is happy, because he has found the Father. He stays and tastes of his mercifulness.

  

No matter how much we have fallen, God is waiting for us to return without justifying ourselves, so as to give us all his goods. Today’s parable shows that he who fell greatly, very greatly, is saved, because he repented. He repented and was saved.

  

And so I wonder, are we the recipients of God’s compassion?

  

Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos

Holy Hesychasterion “The Nativity of Theotokos” Publications

(source)

  

Icon of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (source)

  

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!

"By the Waters of Babylon: The Great Fast, Our Exile" by Fr. Seraphim Rose

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (source)

  

By the Waters of Babylon The Great Fast, Our Exile

by Fr.Seraphim Rose (+1982)

March 1965

This weekend, at the Sunday Vigil of the Prodigal Son, we will sing Psalm 135.1  
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion".  
In these words of the Lenten psalm, we Orthodox Christians, the New Israel, remember that we are in exile. For Orthodox Russians, banished from Holy Russia,2 the Psalm has a special meaning; but all Orthodox Christians, too, live in exile in this world, longing to return to our true home, Heaven.  
For us the Great Fast is a session of exile ordained for us by our Mother, the Church, to keep fresh in us the memory of Zion from which we have wandered so far. We have deserved our exile and we have great need of it because of our great sinfulness. Only through the chastisement of exile, which we remember in the fasting, prayer and repentance of this season,

Do we remain mindful of our Zion?  
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem..."
   

Mosaic from Ormylia Monastery: Adam and Eve eating from the tree in Paradise causing the fall, and  the Good Thief, through the Tree of the Cross, re-entering Paradise (source)

  
Weak and forgetful, even in the midst of the Great Fast we live as though Jerusalem did not exist for us. We fall in love with the world, our Babylon; we are seduced by the frivolous pastimes of this "strange land" and neglect the services and discipline of the Church whi(souch remind us of our true home. Worse yet, we love our very captors - for our sins hold us captive more surely than any human master - and in their service we pass in idleness the precious days of Lent when we should be preparing to meet the Rising Sun of the New Jerusalem, the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  
There is still time; we must remember our true home and weep over the sins which have exiled us from it. Let us take to heart the words of St. John of the Ladder: "Exile is separation from everything in order to keep the mind inseparable from God. An exile loves and produces continual weeping."
  
Exiled from Paradise, we must become exiled from the world if we hope to return.  
This we may do by spending these days in fasting, prayer, separation from the world, attendance at the services of the Church, in tears of repentance, in preparation for the joyful Feast that is to end this time of exile; and by bearing witness to all in this "strange land" of our remembrance of that even greater Feast that shall be when our Lord returns to take His people to the New Jerusalem, from which there shall be no more exile, for it is eternal.
(source)

Icon depicting the Holy Prophet David and Psalm 135 "By the Waters of Babylon" (source)

   
For a fuller commentary on this most beautiful Psalm and fitting hymn for Triodion, see the following talk by Fr. Thomas Hopko.
   

A beautiful video compiled by Fr. Seraphim from Mull Monastery with a recording of the famous Byzantine Chant version of "By the Waters of Babylon" in English, coupled with beautiful footage of the waters and countryside (source)

   

"Theology will not suit mourners, for it is of a nature to dissolve their mourning. For the theologian is like one who sits in a teacher’s seat, whereas the mourner is like one who spends his days on a dung heap and in rags. That is why David, so I think, although he was a teacher and was wise, replied to those who questioned him when he was mourning: ‘How shall I sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?‘ —that is to say, the land of passions."
-St. John of the Ladder
(source)

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (source)

  

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!

St. Paisios the Athonite: Come to your senses

St. Paisios the Athonite (source)

  
God is very near us, but also very high. In order for someone to have God bend to descend and remain with him, he must be humbled and repent. Then, the greatly-compassionate God, beholding his humility, lifts him up to the Heavens and loves him greatly. There is joy in heaven over the repentance of a sinner, says the Gospel.

God granted man a mind to contemplate his fault, to repent and to seek forgiveness. The unrepenting man is a hard thing. He is very senseless, because he does not wish to repent, in order to eliminate the small hell that he is experiencing, which leads him to something worse, eternity. Thus, he is barren of the heavenly joys on earth, which continue in Paradise, near God, with the much greater joys, eternal ones.

As long as man is far from God, he is outside of himself. Do you see, that the Gospel writes that the Prodigal Son "came to himself", saying: "I will go to my Father." In other words, when he came to his senses, when he repented, he said: "I will return to my Father." As long as he was living in sin, he was outside of himself, he was not in his right mind, because sin is irrational.

-Elder, Abba Alonios says: "If a man wishes, he can reach a divine measure from morning until the evening." What does he mean?
The spiritual life does not desire time. In one second, one can be found in Paradise from hell, if he repents. Man is responsible. He can become an angel, he can become a devil. My, my, my, what power repentance has! It attracts divine Grace. A humble thought that a man brings to mind can save him.

A prideful thought can come to his mind, and if he does not repent, death will find him, he is gone, he is lost. Of course, the humble thought must be followed by internal groaning, by internal contrition. Because the thought is a thought, but there is also the heart. The hymn says: "With all my soul and mind and heart...", I think, however, that the Abba here is thinking here of a more permenant state. It requires some time, in order for one to reach a good state.

I err, I repent, and I am forgiven that instant. If I have a struggling spirit, slowly I will achieve a more stable situation, but until then, I can be swayed.

-Elder, can an older person help himself spiritually?
Yes, barely, for when someone gets old, he is granted the strength to repent, because all illusions flee. Formerly, because he had bodily strength and nothing was difficult for him, he did not understand his weaknesses and he thought that he was in a good state. Now that he has difficulties and grumbles, he is helped to understand that he is not well, that he is limping, that he must repent. If he spiritually utilizes the little remaining years of his life, and if he uses his experience that shows that most of the years of his life have passed him by, [he learns that] Christ will not leave him, He will have mercy on him.

(amateur translation of text from source)
  

St. Paisios the Athonite, depicted together with St. Arsenios of Cappadocia and St. Euphemia the Great Martyr (source)

  

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!

The Second Sunday of Triodion - The Prodigal Son

Icon of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Icon courtesy of www.eikonografos.com used with permission)

"[The Parable of the Prodigal Son] has been called, and justly so, the Gospel of the Gospels, and it was a wise man who said that even if the Gospels were to be lost, and only the parable of the prodigal son were to remain, that alone would suffice to reveal God's infinite love for man." 
Fr. Antonopoulos, Return: Repentance and confession, Return to God and to His Church

Doxastikon of the Praises from the Sunday of the Prodigal Son - Tone 6.

Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Loving Father, I have gone far from you, but do not forsake me, nor declare me unfitted for your Kingdom. The all-evil enemy has stripped me naked and taken all my wealth. I have squandered like the Profligate the graces given to my soul. But now I have arisen and returned, and I cry aloud to you, ‘Make me as one of your hired servants, you who for my sake stretched out your spotless hands on the Cross, to snatch me from the fearsome beast and to clothe me once again in the first robe, for you alone art full of mercy.

(http://www.anastasis.org.uk/ProdigalE.htm)

Beautiful Orthodox icon of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The repenting son is depicted among the swine to the bottom right, and Christ is shown as the Merciful Father, Who descended from His Throne in Heaven, coming to earth to save the Prodigal, along with all of repenting Mankind (http://www.orthodoxy-icons.com/uploads/posts/2011-03/1301425417_icons-036.jpg)

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! Amen!