Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord, as well as with the Leave-taking of the feast of the Elevation of the Cross!

Last week we solemnly brought the Cross out into the centre of the church and performed the wonderful festive church service dedicated to the Elevation of the Cross. All week the Cross was present in the church and we continued to sing and read church hymns and prayers about it. God willing, throughout the week at home, work, or school you did not forget about this feast and at least sometimes pondered on the salvific passions of our Lord Jesus Christ and about how you personally could take up your own cross and follow after Christ. Today, on the final day of this feast, we will bring the cross back into the altar, church life will return to its usual course, and we will slowly begin to prepare for the next celebration, our parish feastday.

Of course this does not mean that we should forget about the Cross and the meaning that the death of our Saviour has for mankind. We should contemplate this not only on Holy Week before Easter or in September when we celebrate the Elevation of the Cross, but daily. Morning and evening prayers can help us remember about this every day. During our morning prayers we read the ‘Symbol of Faith’ (the Creed) in which we confess our firm faith in the incarnation, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. In the evening we read the prayer ‘Let God arise’ with hope that the sign of the cross, through our faith in the Crucified One, will protect us from our invisible enemies, who constantly endeavour to distract us from the Lord with the pleasures of this temporal life.

For the monks of the first centuries after the appearance of monasticism, it was not enough to remember the Lord twice daily. They strove to pray without ceasing throughout the course of the whole day. Along with this, these holy men and women established concrete times when they would put aside their work (usually the weaving of baskets), stand up, and sing psalms. This singing of psalms would take place at the 3rd, 6th, and 9th hours of the day, which according to our reckoning of time is around 9 am, at noon, and just before evening around 3 or 4 pm. (Later on the 1st Hour was added, which was sung after sunrise). These hours of prayer were not assigned by chance, but were tied to events from sacred history. It is natural at the beginning of the day, after resting, to turn to God in prayer. At the third hour, the monastics remembered the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, at the sixth – the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and at the ninth – the death of the Saviour on the Cross. In such a manner, the monk would remember daily and even hourly the main events tied to the salvation of the human race.

These short, very simple monastic services, which are now called the Hours, exist up to our own time. We now read them not at the times which are called for in their names, but attach them for the sake of convenience to other church services. As a rule, the First Hour is read immediately after Matins and therefore is part of the All-Night Vigil. The Third and Sixth Hours are read before Liturgy. In parishes the Ninth Hour is read on weekdays during Great Lent after the Sixth. Unfortunately, we pay little attention to these services and the psalms which are read at them. In the evening, at the end of the All-Night Vigil, the First Hour becomes the time when we extinguish the candles and try to tidy up everything so as to go home more quickly. In the morning, before the Liturgy, the hours seem to us a convenient time to venerate the icons and put up candles. In our parish there is a bad habit of coming to confession during the Hours. Of course, it would be better to stand or even sit and calmly listen to the reading of the Hours. This would be a wonderful preparation for the Divine Liturgy and Communion of Christ’s Holy Mysteries. To help you understand the Hours, I will try, throughout the next several weeks, to briefly describe in my sermons the psalms read during these short services.

Despite each of the Hours being quite short, few of us have the time or zeal to pick up the Book of Hours and to read them daily at the appointed time, but this does not mean that we cannot remember the Lord and His salvific death on the Cross throughout the course of the day. We can do this in many different ways. One could learn by heart a part of each hour, be it a psalm, the prayer, or the short troparion that is sung on weekdays of Great Lent. One could remember the Lord and those passions that He suffered for the sake of our salvation at that particular time. To do this, one does not have to abandon one’s work, studies, or domestic chores and fall down on one’s knees before the icons. All of this can be done quickly in one’s thoughts.

May the Lord God, through the prayers of the Most-Pure Virgin Mary, grant us zeal to at least sometimes (but more often than twice a year – during Holy Week and when we celebrate the Elevation of the Cross) reflect deeply upon the death of our Saviour on the Cross.

Priest Alexis