Preparing for Pentecost

In the spirit of our "Holy Week & Pascha for the Domestic Church" guide, here are some ideas for celebrating the great feast of Pentecost in your domestic church! Even though many of you may now be able to return to celebrating the Divine Liturgy and other services at your parish, there are still plenty of things that you can also do at home to incorporate the celebration of the feast into your daily life and therefore to enjoy a richer experience that permeates your whole being! Isn't that the gift of the Holy Spirit?--to be "everywhere present and filling all things!" May the Holy Spirit fill you with joy!

Decorate!

• The color used in the Byzantine Tradition for Pentecost is green, the color of new life. Cut some greenery from your yard and decorate your icon corner, or even your dining room and/or other places in your home. Let these leaves remind you of the abundance of life that the Lord wishes to give us in Him, beginning now and continuing into eternity. Keep the decorations until the Saturday following Pentecost.

Pray!
Basic:

• This Saturday evening, if Vespers is not offered at your parish or if you are unable to attend, pray a portion of Vespers, including the Old Testament readings, in your icon corner.  Great Vespers Booklet      Propers for Pentecost
• On Sunday morning, attend Divine Liturgy at your parish OR pray along with a live-streamed Liturgy OR pray Typika in your icon corner.   Typika Service       Propers for Pentecost
• On Sunday evening, pray one or more of the Kneeling Prayers (p. 17, 20 & 24), while kneeling in your icon corner. During the Paschal season, we do not kneel (in celebration of the Resurrection), but on the evening of Pentecost we may kneel again as we humbly welcome the gift of the Holy Spirit and enter back into a greater asceticism because we haven't reached our own final resurrection yet!

Advanced:
In addition to the above:

• Pray the full Vespers service with propers for Pentecost.
• On Sunday morning, pray Pentecost Matins, or a portion of Matins, before Divine Liturgy or Typika.   Matins Service       Propers for Pentecost (much of the music is difficult, so feel free to straight chant or recite)
• You may also continue to use the propers for Vespers and Matins for your prayer during the whole week.

See our Holy Week & Pascha guide for more information and tips about praying at home.

Celebrate!

• Each day this week, in addition to your daily routine of prayer, sing the Pentecost Troparion (Divine Liturgy propers p. 2) to begin your prayer before meals. The Feast of Pentecost continues until Saturday afternoon. 
• Another hymn we can sing again (we refrain from singing it during the Paschal season and Ascension in anticipation of Pentecost), is Heavenly King (Divine Liturgy propers p. 1). It is good to begin our daily prayers with this prayer to the Holy Spirit, because we can't pray without the action of the Holy Spirit within us!
• Get creative! Here is a fun idea for some cookies to make to remind you of the powerful fire of the Holy Spirit who inflames our hearts with love for God and each other! They are sugar cookies made with a heart-shaped cookie cutter, cut in half. Make yellow and red frosting and blend together in the middle of the cookie.

Share!

• Share photos of your celebration of Pentecost with others, or tell other families/couples/individuals about your feast. If you are on Facebook, share photos on the Facebook group The Domestic Church, Byz-y at Prayer.

Learn More!

• Visit God With Us Online to learn more about the Sundays, feast days and prayer of our Church.

The gift of monastics during the pandemic

Below is a beautiful letter by a bishop in Italy to monastics (in particular, fully cloistered ones) during this pandemic time. In actuality, it is a letter to everyone, pointing out the profound and timely lessons that monastics can teach us by the witness of their lives.

Before we get to the letter, here is a link to some videos and other resources for the Sunday of the Man Born Blind, and here is a quote from the liturgical typikon arranged by Fr. David Petras:

"Jesus anointed the eyes of the Man Born Blind, and he was enlightened, professing Jesus to be his Lord. He is an image of our baptisms, when we are enlightened out of darkness by the anointing of the chrism of the Holy Spirit. We remember the salvation of the Man Born Blind and our own enlightenment as we close the Feast of the glorious Resurrection of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ."

A letter by Bishop Aiello of Avellino:

Monastics’ gift to Italy

Letter to the nuns and monks:

We turn to you, sisters and brother monks, to ask for your prayers, to support your raised arms, like those of Moses on the mountain, in this time of particular danger and unease for our communities: by your persistent prayerful intercession, we acquire resilience and future victory.

You are the only ones who do not move a facial muscle in the face of the rain of decrees and restrictive measures that rain on us these days because what we are asked for, for some time you have always done it and what we suffer you have chosen.

Teach us the art of being content living  with nothing, in a small space, without going out, yet engaged in internal journeys that do not need planes and trains.

“Give us your oil” to understand that the spirit cannot be imprisoned, and the narrower the space, the wider the skies open.

Reassure us that you can live even for a short time and be joyful, remember that poverty is the unavoidable condition of every being because, as Don Primo Mazzolari said, “being a man is enough to be a poor man”.

Give us back the ability to savor the little things you who smile of a blooming lilac at the cell window and greet a swallow that comes to say that spring has come, you who are moved by a pain and still exulted by the miracle of the bread that is baked in the oven.

Tell us that it is possible to be together without being crowded together, to correspond from afar, to kiss without touching each other, to touch each other with the caress of a look or a smile, or simply … a gaze at each other.

Remind us that a word is important if it is reflected upon, ruminated within the heart for a period of time, leavened in the soul’s recesses, seen blooming on the lips of another, called a low voice, not shouted or cutting because of hurt.

But, even more, teach us the art of silence, of the light that rests on the windowsill, of the sun rising “as a bridegroom coming out of the bridal room” or setting “in the sky that tinges with fire”, of the quiet of the evening, of the candle lit that casts shadows on the walls of the choir.

Tell us that it is possible to wait for a hug even for a lifetime because “there is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embraces,” says Qoelet. President Conte said that at the end of this time of danger and restrictions we will still embrace each other in the feast, for you there are still twenty, thirty, forty years to wait …

Educate us to do things slowly, solemnly, without haste, paying attention to details because every day is a miracle, every meeting a gift, every step a step in the throne room, the movement of a dance or a symphony.

Whisper to us that it is important to wait, postpone a kiss, a gift, a caress, a word, because waiting for a feast increases its brilliance and “the best is yet to come”.

Help us understand that an accident can be a grace and a sorrow can hide a gift, a departure can increase affection and a distance that can finally lead us to encounter and communion.

To you, teachers and masters of the hidden and happy life, we entrust our uneasiness, our fears, our remorse, our missed appointments with God who always awaits us, you take everything in your prayer and give it back to us in joy, in a bouquet of flowers and peaceful days. Amen.

Reflections for the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

Enjoy these two reflections:

1. Video reflection from Bishop Milan and resources for prayer at home

2. Reflection from Sr. Petra:

You ask her for a drink—not because You need anything from her (even in Your humanity:  presumably Your disciples would soon return with drink, as well as food)—in order to open the dialogue between you, to gently entice her heart to open to Yours.  You are here initiating…

She responds to Your request for a drink with some bewilderment:  It doesn’t make sense socially or religiously for You to speak to her.  In inviting us—to pray, to respond to our vocations, to seek union—we also feel the dissonance between our view of the world (and of ourselves) and what You’re doing.

You lead her further…  “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.”  You’re opening before her another way, another path:  her response to Your request could be like a doorway.  You’re offering a quenching to her thirst that goes beyond this world, deeper than the desires of mere flesh.  You’re letting a ray of Your identity penetrate her darkness—begging her to ask the question:  Who are You?

She responds accordingly, curious in her thirst.  How will You do this, having nothing with which to draw water?  Are You greater than Jacob?  She wants, needs, further revelation and reassurance before she opens herself to You.  The burden of action is back on Your shoulders.  She responds, but You must direct this encounter.

And yet, for all Your leading, Your reply isn’t really an answer to her questions.  “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  You’ve gently lifted her desire heavenward.  For a moment, she forgets her puny, earthly questions.  You’ve danced with her into the realm of the Spirit.

She responds from a heart moved beyond worldly constraints.  Eyes off herself, no longer weighing You against logic, her heart cries in eager hope, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw!”  She wants freed from more than the inconvenience of drawing water:  She aches to be free of the shame that enfolds her as she walks to the well alone in the heat of the day, in order to avoid the condemnation of the “respectable” women.

Knowing the throbbing wound behind her request, You go there, knocking on the door behind which her shame crouches.  “Go, call your husband and come here.”  You aren’t playing with her, or tricking her into confessing for legal necessity.  You are moving to open her capacity to receive You, this gift You are.

“I have no husband.”  She can’t bring herself to unveil the painful truth.  At that point, such a confession is beyond her ability to utter.  And so—You do it for her, relieving her of the burden:  “You are right…”  And You speak the terrible truth of her deeds:  they take form between you.  This must be; there is no other way to union. 

She tries to deflect this solid history, to remove herself—her heart—from the conversation.  “Lord, I perceive You are a prophet.”  Then she turns to the shield of theological controversy, a vain effort to cover her spiritual nakedness.  She implies a concrete, external question (where is the proper place to worship?).  Is she also trying to robe herself in the illusion of respectability?  See, she seems to say, I care about such things!  Perhaps she’s also trying to distance herself from You in self-protection, by bringing to the fore all the deep divisions between you, Jewish Man, and Samaritan woman.

You move through that strategy as though through a spider’s web, guiding her back to the heart of this whole exchange, to Your Heart for her:  to worship, the restoration of man’s union with God.  “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth…”  You reply to her query as though, yes, worship has significance even for her, fallen as she is.  Once more, she retreats.  “I know that Messiah is coming; when he comes, he will show us all things.”  As though to say, I don’t need to deal with this now.  Let it wait for another day.

The urgency of Your love—the Truth—pierces her last defense.  Heedless of the shame that bound her minutes before, she rushes into town, bearing witness.  Many come to believe in You because of her testimony—because You sought her in love, pursuing her gently yet inexorably.  You are not rebuffed by our resistance.  Again and again, You move to woo Your bride.  Locked in our prisons of shame, pain, and sin, we can’t reach You, we can’t seek You.  So You seek us.  You knock on the door of our cells and offer the key of love—love unto death, Love that trampled Death, the jailer of our souls.

When I feel the lie that it all depends on me, remind me, Lover of Mankind, that You’ve taken the lead, You’re taking the lead, and You’re leading me back to the Garden where we may drink deeply of Love.