A reflection from after Pre-Sanctified Liturgy at St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, on the Second Wednesday of Great Lent.
Photo: Larry Keller/Getty Images. A seed if it fall into the ground and dies will not be alone, the Bible tells us.
Since springtime is now upon us in central Pennsylvania in this first part of Great Lent, and we remember how the word Lent means Spring, we may consider what happens when a grain of corn falls into the earth to die, so that it may rise again. This is our work in God’s grace this Lent.
Jesus Christ tells us, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but, if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24)
In Mark we read what has been called the Parable of the Growing Seed, which concludes, “First the Blade, the the Ear, then the Full Corn in the Ear” (4:28). It describes how the earth brings forth the fruit of vegetation even when we sleep unknowingly, as an analogy to our faith and redemption in Christ.
St Ambrose of Milan wrote of this, “While you are asleep, O man, and without your being aware of it, the earth of itself is producing its fruits.”
So it can be in our souls.
The Church Fathers expressed special awe for Moses’ prophetic account of creation in Genesis on the third day, when the vegetation came forth at God’s command before the creation of the sun.
“Let the earth bring forth herbs,” wrote St. Basil the Great. “And in the briefest moment of time the earth, beginning with germination in order that it might keep the laws of the Creator, passing through every form of increase, immediately brough the shoots to perfection. The meadows were deep with the abundant grass; the fertile plains, rippling with standing crops, presented the picture of a swelling sea with its moving heads of grain. And every herb and every kind of vegetable and whatever shrubs and legumes there were, rose from the earth at that time in all profusion.”
How miraculous the growth that God set in motion on the earth at creation, and sustains to this day. How much more wonderful and beautiful also is our growth toward redemption and resurrection lived and symbolized in Lent.
When I was a boy I received much from my close friendship with my grandfather. He had grown up on a farm in the city of Chicago and retained a love for gardening, especially for raising flowers. He would come over to our small backyard in the city and help with a garden there. I learned from him to tend my own garden. How wonderful it was to plant the seeds and see the small sprouts arise then into larger plants with flowers and vegetables and fruit.
So Creation also shows us lessons about the sustaining grace of God in this Lenten springtime of our souls.
The Church fathers tell us that the work given to Adam of “tilling” and “keeping” the garden of Paradise involved prayer and watchfulness. They tell us that the tilling was prayer, and the keeping is the keeping from evil thoughts after prayer. Paradise still exists according to the tradition of the Church, although we do not usually see or experience it. The Fathers compared it a hollow mountain that surrounds us living within it on the earth.
St. Maximus the Confessor taught us that the Uncreated logoi or Divine “thought-wills” energizing creatures preexist in God from eternity. These logoi of the one Logos, or words of the Word, are distinct from the creatures themselves, however. The creatures (of which we are one kind) are “brought out of non-being into being” by God in time, and in cycles of growth and death and for man resurrection (Ambigua 7).
As created men, we have the freedom to choose growth in Christ or not. But He gives us the Uncreated logoi of grace (the words of God) to articulate the divine energies of God for our growth, the grace that works so wondrously in our rising, like leaven, God willing. Such are the good seeds sown in the Parable of the Sower by Jesus Christ, Who is the Good Sower. Emptying ourselves in growth in that grace, we empty ourselves in Christ.
But to do so, we must humbly die to our old self like the corn of wheat that falls into the ground, reach to the light like the young sprouts, and drink in the living water of Jesus Christ from our baptism, and feed on the Body and Blood with which He gives us, as we grow as Christian souls and fulfill the grace of the logoi. Thus with the help of the Second Adam and by the intercession of His Mother the Second Eve, we pray to grow into the maturity that even our Forefather Adam and Foremother Adam lacked when they partook too early of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, disobediently and without the maturity to handle that knowledge well.
When we engage in that Lenten “death to the world,” we will know ourselves as not alone, as the Pre-Communion prayers tell us, not just dead in the ground by ourself, but always in relation with Jesus Christ, and with Him in relation with the Holy Trinity. We are with God not in essence, but in the uncreated energies of the Trinity that directly express the Three-in-One love of the author of Creation. We empty ourselves in Christ Who knows the Father. He puts us in relation to the Father through Him. He also opens up to us the gifts of the Holy Spirit in His Church.
The Garden of Gethsemane was such a great way station for our salvation because there Jesus Christ shed tears and sweat blood for our sins, as His human nature in complete accord with His divine nature said to the Father, “Not My will but Thine be done.” That happened in a garden in a dark time, but not long before our Lord re-opened the garden of Paradise to the Wise Thief at His Crucifixion, and to the Righteous of the Old Testament in His Harrowing of Hell.
To us when during Lent at the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy like today, when the Royal Doors swing open and His Body and Blood come forth for the Communion of the faithful, amid the darkened atmosphere of repentance and fasting during Lent, He still offers us an advance glimpse of our re-entry to the garden of Paradise in the Pascha joy awaiting us.
In this Great Fast may our sorrow grow also into joy, the Cross become our bright sorrow, and Lent be the blooming springtime of the garden at Pascha, by the most wondrous and beautiful Uncreated Grace of God the Good Sower of our salvation.
Amen