I know—I use this expression all the time. But it’s a good expression. It leads us to be inquisitive. If we don’t fully understand a word, we should research and learn. If we think we understand a word, we should dig deeper to see if there are other potential meanings that can teach us even more.
A couple of weeks ago we did Forgiveness Sunday Vespers, and in it we sang the Prokeimenon:
Turn not away from Your face from Your child, for I am afflicted. Hear me speedily, draw near unto my soul, and deliver it!
Once upon a time I was participating in a combined Lenten Sunday Vespers choir rehearsal, and as we practiced this hymn, one of the men standing near me said, “I don’t like that!” Asking what he meant, he replied, “It’s just not right to demand that God listens NOW.”
The quote may cause some to reflect on his concern, it may cause others to laugh. If we pay attention to the hymns we offer during Divine services, we come to an understanding about such an issue.
At every Divine Liturgy, at the Anaphora, when your gifts are being offered to the Lord and just before we call upon the Holy Spirit to come and change these offerings into the very Body and Blood of our Lord, we sing a hymn that we’ll repeat on Palm Sunday that uses the word Hosanna!
What does this word mean? If we research the word in our Bible study tools, we find it to be of Hebrew origin, a compound word from the two: yasha and na, which mean save and now.
Here then we find that same “immediacy” as offered in the aforementioned Prokeimenon, hear me speedily.
But the same urgency is applied in other prayers within the Church. In one of the most beautiful hymns to the Mother of God we find the phrase make haste, for we all perish. The words are preceded in the hymn with a plea for the Theotokos to have compassion on us, and they are followed by the recognition that we ask for her expeditious answer because of our many sins.
Are we placing too human demands for immediacy on God by praying in this way?
What does “haste” mean to the Timeless One? Haste only has meaning to those bound by time. It’s meaningless to God.
The prayers of this Great Fast season are crafted by the Church to help us understand the need for us to feel God’s presence near to us at all times. They’re intended to open our minds to things we have within our grasp to change, so that we may more closely conform to the plans of the Lord for us. I don’t know of a more positive message than this. I can become closer to what God created me to be, if only…. If only I can hold my tongue. If only I can hold my judgment. If only I can release what I perceive to be my money, which was never mine in the first place. If only I can love unconditionally. If only I can see Christ in others. If only I can forgive. If only I can seek forgiveness, not sarcastically, but with all righteousness.
There are too many if only’s to detail here. I know too few of my own. I’m not here to point out yours, for to do so would be judgmental on my part. But I am here to encourage us—you, me, all of us– to listen to what the Church is telling us, and to try with all our being to understand her message. Then, we will be filled with all the joy that this season was meant to bring to us, if only we were paying attention and using the opportunity to learn—from Her (the Church’s) words, and to ask for our Lord's help - NOW!
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