ΘΕΟΤΟΚΕ ΠΑΡΘΕΝΕ , χαῖρε , Κεχαριτωμένη ΜΑΡΙΑ , ὁ Κύριος , μετά Σοῦ · Εὐλογημένη Σύ ἐν γυναιξί , καί εὐλογημένος , ὁ καρπός τῆς κοιλίας Σου · ὅτι Σωτῆρα ἔτεκες, τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν ..
ΔΟΞΑ CΟΙ ! ΔΟΞΑ CΟΙ ! ΜΗΤΕΡ ΤΟΥ ΘΕΟΥ ΔΟΞΑ CΟΙ ! ΠΑΝΑΓΙΑ ! ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΟΥΝΤΕΣ ΠΡΟΣΚΥΝΟΥΜΕΝ CΟΙ , ΜΗΤΕΡΑ ΤΟΥ ΥΨΙΣΤΟΥ ΥΠΕΡΕΥΛΟΓΗΜΕΝΗ ΘΕΟΤΟΚΕ !!! --- ὙΠΕΡΑΓΙΑ ΘΕΟΤΟΚΕ, σῶσον ἡμᾶς, τήν ἐκκλησίαν σου, τήν ποίμνην σου, τούς μοναχούς σου, τό ὄρος σου,τά ἔθνη σου, τήν νεολαίαν σου, τόν λαόν, καί χώραν ταύτην καί τόν κόσμον σου ἅπαντα. Ἀμήν ---Ἡ ΠΑΝΑΓΙΑ, νά εἶναι :βοηθός, ὁδηγός, ἰατρός, συνεργός, ἀρωγός, ἀγωγός, φωτισμός,στηριγμός, ὁπλισμός, στολισμός,πλουτισμός, χορηγός, κάθε θεϊκῆς ἀγαθότητος στήν ζωήν σας.

Τρίτη 4 Μαΐου 2021

Give me that stranger

 

Give me that stranger


   When Joseph saw the sun hiding its own rays and the veil of the Temple being rented in two at Savior’s death, he presented himself to Pilate and implored him saying· 

 give me that stranger ,  who from childhood as a stranger, became strange to this world· 

give me that stranger ,  whom people of his race filled with hate, kill as a stranger· 

give me that stranger ,  whose strange death, looks strange to my eyes·

give me that stranger ,  whom Hebrews because of envy , estranged Him from the world· 

give me that stranger ,  to hide Him in the tomb, for as a stranger has nowhere to lay His head· 

give me that stranger ,  who knows how to take in the poor and the strangers · 

give me that stranger , whom His Mother saw dead and cried out · 

O!!! My Son and my God  !!! , though my heart is broken, and pain pierces my soul seeing you dead , yet I take courage hoping in your resurrection, and I magnify You· 

So, with these words the prominent beseeching Pilate, he   was granted the Savior’s Body, and he wrapped it in the linen with spices and laid in the tomb with fear and due respect Him who grants to all , life eternal and the great mercy .

 

 

   We sing this marvelous Troparion as a doxastikon, at the procession of the Epitaphios, along with the Doxology, in the service, before the dismissal of Great Saturday’s service.  

 

   We don’t know whether the author of this Troparion, when he was writing that real diamond and gold of our hymnology, if he could actually realize, think, imagine how many times it would be sung, it is sung and it will be· 

How many eyes would be filled with tears · 

How many teardrops would run down· 

How many souls would be moved· 

How many people would love Christ more · 

How many people would realize the divine magnitude through it· 

 

Saint John the Theologian and Evangelist says:...

...He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him... (John, 1, 11) ...

 

 Through the word of the Lord, all were made ....

....all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made ....( John 1,3). ...

 

  He.... spoke and they were made, He commanded and they were created ....( psalm  148, 5).

 

  For all things are Your servants...we admit in the Troparia…

And yet .....earth showed its malice· we, the people, showed our cruelty   · 

 

   He came to His own, on earth that He made, and the earth  showed Him from the very beginning what is awaiting Him.

 

   Jesus had nothing to call His own, only the Cross afterwards· He was born in a cave ... for there was no room for them in the inn ...· 

  There was no room for the Creator of the universe to be born· there was a place for Herod, for Herodias, for dances, for feasts, for revelries and songs, for iniquities and for criminals , and yet for the Maker of all visible and invisible, there was not even a small room· He was a stranger· 

 

   There was only one place that the Hebrews gave Him willingly: that is Golgotha,  where they crucified Him.

 

  He, who made the leading light, the sun, and the stars , Who enlightens and hallows everyone who comes into the world, ...the true Light ..., was born and He encountered the light of this world for the first time,  in a cave· 

He was laid in a foreign, strange place, in a manger made for animals  · 

He was swaddled in borrowed swaddling clothes· 

The cave was alien· and yet in that foreign place the inviroment  was not tranquil and peacful, neither the days He spent there .

   And still, later on He is the One who will make us His fellow diners, 

...A feast given by the hospital Master, and immortal meal…  

 

  Herod's mania breaks out· Christ is exiled, not only in a foreign country,  but most of all in a hostile one· in Egypt· a stranger a foreigner there, a refugee. When He returns, they settle in an unfamiliar city· Nazareth ·

 

  He spends His childhood in a strange city, in a hostile inviroment.

He had no place to be called His, and later, when His Disciples were asking Him :...Lord,  where do you stay? ... He was answering...come and see.... and ...the Son of man, has nowhere to lay His head...

He was poorer than the birds of the sky.

 

   He never got anything to be His, He didn’t even have the money to pay taxes to the Romans, and for that reason, Peter performed that strange fishing. He was crossing the lake on Peter’s boat, and on other boats belonging to others · He entered Jerusalem, sitted on a borrowed colt· in a room that was not His, on the upper dome , He kept the Passover· He was buried into a grave, into a place that was not His.

 

  Jews could have their own private tombs · but He didn’t· He was buried into an other’s grave, the one that was prepared for Joseph from Arimathea .

 

  A Joseph was protecting Him, Joseph the Betrothed of the MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS AND EVER VIRGIN MARY  .

 

   Another Joseph buries Him, the one from Arimathea· 

 

 And another Joseph prefigures Him, which is to say Joseph the blessed and noble. ( son of patriarch Jacob ).

 

   He had always been the great STRANGER, but never ESTRANGED from us. 

 

He embraced all people, ...He passed along benefitting and healing all infirmities...· He was calling the babes embracing them....

...let the little children come to Me, and don’t forbid them....

He started preaching in the Temple, when He was twelve years old· He was sitting among the presbyters answering to their questions and queries.

 

   He was walking along with those walking to Emmaus, in another form, as a stranger to them  · 

 

   Where there was pain, tears and unjustice in people He was involving Himself showing compassion and sympathizing with them....

......don’t cry.... 

.....Jesus wept...

 

  He looked for those misled· He went to seek the publicans, He ate with them. He who is more resplendent than the sun, tolerated the sinners condescendingly. He accepts the mourning of the woman of Canaan, the Tax-collector’s sigh, the widow’s coin, the prodigal son’s return, the confession of the criminal, Peter’s tears, whom He rescued some times back with His own hand, extending His divine hand over the waves. He rescued him at that time from a human wreck, that of the body. And afterwards, He delivered him from a spiritual wreck, that of the soul, using the rooster’s crow and His glance · 

 

  He came as the great benefactor, yet He remained the great stranger. 

His era did not accept Him, priests and scribes , law and society crucified Him  · 

 

  He was judged and was convicted unjustly, by unjust people. He who is the only Just, who will come to judge justly all those just and unjust ones. 

 

  We witnessed Him being born in a strange way... Now that we have seen a strange birth... and the next verse of Salutations exhorts us, to become strangers to the world.... like sojourners and staying here for short.

 

   For us, all the things of the world should be strange, so that the Creator would be the only one familiar to us. But we have upset that balance as well. We have made all the wordly things familiar to us and we estranged and alienated ourselves from our Maker.  

 

   He arrived as a stranger, He lived as a stranger, He remained a stranger, as a stranger He walked, as a stranger He led His life....

Since the very first day, to the very last one on the Cross...

and two strangers , but also familiar to Him and daring disciples, they took the most immaculate Body down from the Cross, they did the Apokathelosis, giving a rest to that haggard and full of wounds God-man’s Body...

 

   That is the scene that the Holy hymnographer has in mind, and he depicts it in his hymn, eternalizing that magnificent picture.

 

  Joseph armed himself with courage, a sacred courage as the Holy Evangelist says:  ....taking courage , he went in to Pilate and asked for ...

 O!!! blessed courage!!!

O !!! intension dear to God !!!

O !! fullness of love !!!

O !!! divine thought !!! 

O !!! steps of eternity !!!

O !!! glorious voice!!! 

O !!! blessed hands!!!

O!!!  hallowed feet!!!

O !!! burning heart !!!

O !!! godly strength !!!

O !!! cherubic eyes !!!

O !!! seraphical palms!!!

O !!! angelic power!!!

Being young in the spirit, though old aged in the body, he throws back the social post ,

he preserves the values,  he arms himself with bravery , 

he obtains faith instead of a spear , 

love instead of a shield , 

braveness instead of a sword,

and he paces forth. Though he has instable feet and trembling knees because of age, the elder goes straight ahead to meet Pilate and attain the permission to unnail Lord’s Body.

 

   Taking courage  he went in to Pilate, and asked for the Boby of Jesus, moving and softening that hard heart of the ruler with these words:.... 

  Give me that stranger, what do you need the body of the one that you convicted unjustly?

 

give me that stranger, who from childhood, since he was a child was a stranger among His own people,  among the people that He sanctified.

 

give me that stranger, who is a stranger to you and to Hebrews, whom the people of His own race killed, with the consent of yours, as if He was a rejectable stranger· 

 

give me that stranger , whose strangeness I am amazed to see ·

 

give me that stranger to you, whom Hebrews estranged as a stranger from His own people · 

 

give me that stranger , to bury and hide in a tomb as a stranger. Him, who knows how to take in and embrace with love the strangers ·  

 

give me that stranger, who as a stranger,  doesn’t have a place to lay His head · 

 

give me that stranger , whom seeing His PURE and MOST UNDEFILED Mother, with a painful and bleeding heart, and a deeply sorrowful soul, cries out in tears :..my sweetest Child, why do you suffer and endure all these for the salvation of man, my heart griefs seeing your crucifixion, yet the world rejoices, but I take courage hopping in your resurrection. I magnify Your Passion, I praise in hymn your Burial with your Resurrection crying aloud, Long suffering Lord, glory be to you....

 

   And with these words, he defeats the tough ruler and he grands him the Body. He rushes like a thirsty deer to Golgotha, renewed in the spirit, in the likeness of a cherubic appearance, in order to be there in time before sun sets, and pay the least tribute of honor and respect, as the last expression of the humane race, which accepts the divine Passion.

 

   The movements are... dear to God, in fear and trembling...

....let all mortal flesh keep quiet,  giving no though to things of the earth.... the eyes are lowered, the tears are streaming down, the breathing becomes slow and quiet, following the rhythm of the movements, stable hands , but also shaky due to the noble and sacred ministry, the strength is archangelic, the morale high. A divine decision and purpose, a heavenly work, Burial of the Master, the tomb will cover the life of all. And he rolls a stone to protect the Stone of live.

He uses mixture of myrrh and aloe. Together with Nicodemus they bury Jesus, as the custom of the Jews is to bury, so that He will descent to Hades’ chambers, to brake the power of death, to shatter the copper gates and the iron bars and arose those who where captured there from the ages.

 

The Great Stranger, but our Savior.

Stranger to the Jews, Savior of all believers and of those who will belive in Him.

 

 He remained a Stranger troughout the centuries, and unfortunately,  even today and for most of us, he is still a stranger, since we don’t know His voice.   

 

  We don’t accept Him as a Good Shepherd,  but we flee from Him....

 

He rose from the dead, breaking the bonds of death, and yet as if we are His enemies we scatter away. But may we listen to the voice of the good Shepherd and may He put us in the spiritual sheepfold, which is unapproachable to wolves.

 

   Τhat Troparion is known as :

When Joseph saw the sun...

or ...Give me that stranger ...

 

It is the Troparion which is sung less times in the services than any other else, despite its beauty and importance, and the depth of its meanings·  in the parishes it is never sung  · it is only sung in the Holy Monasteries, at the process of Epitaphios.

 

   It is a poem of the scholar Georgios the Acropolite,  written in the 12th century. He composed its melody as well, and then he handed it to the Church almost at the same date when the Lamentations entered into the liturgical worship.

 

 

We wish that the meanings of that hymn will touch our souls and our hearts, and may we consentrate on the Lord steadfastly , so that He will not be a Stranger to us, but our Lord, our Savior and Redeemer. Through the intercessions of our MOST-BLESSED,  GLORIOUS SOVEREIGHN LADY THEOTOKOS and EVER-VIRGIN MARY, and may we all through Her supplications become familiar to Christ. Amen. May it be so.

 

In the mission, Easter of 2021 .

Christ is risen..

Truly the Lord is risen, 

evloghite .

 

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