For all snakes go into narrow places to slough off their old age, squeezing out of their former state and restoring youth to their bodies. In the same way you have to enter the narrow and constricting doorway; squeeze yourself by fasting and force out your corruption...

- St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 3

Worst of all, when the church speaks to the world, it
perpetuates the same false system of salvation. It is clearly heard as
saying that the world can be saved only by getting its act together.
But besides being false, that is an utterly unrealistic apologetic.
For everyone knows perfectly well that the world never has gotten its
act together and never will – that disaster has been the hallmark of
its history – and that if there is no one who can save it in its
disasters, there is no one who can save it. And therefore when the
church comes to the world mouthing the hot air that the future is
amenable to reform – that the kingdom can be built here by plausible
devices, by something other than the mystery of the passion – the
church convinces no one. Murphy’s Law vincit omnia: late or soon, the
world is going down the drain; only a Savior who is willing to work at
the bottom of the drain can redeem it. The world does indeed have a
future and the church alone has that future to proclaim. But that
future is neither pie on earth nor pie in the sky. It is resurrection
from the dead – and without death, there can be no resurrection.

- Robert Farrar Capon

The Saviour is everything for everyone everywhere

Rise up, the Resurrection has told you. For the Saviour is everything for everyone everywhere: bread for the hungry, water for the thirsty, resurrection for the dead, a physician for the sick, redemption for the sinner.

- St Cyril of Jerusalem,  Homily on the Paralytic by the Pool

Observe the great healer's skill, that he makes the cure depend upon the desire. It is because salvation comes from faith that the man was asked 'Do you want?', so that the desire might prepare the way for the miracle...

- St Cyril of Jerusalem, Homily on the Paralytic by the Pool  9

48. An elder said: "Thanksgiving intercedes for frailty before the Lord."

- Sayings [Apothegmata] of Those Who Grew Old in the Ascetic Life, Briefly Demonstrating Their Supreme Value

My purpose is to glorify the Lord, not to explain Him, knowing that I shall fall short of glorifying Him worthily, but regarding it as a work of devotion simply to make the attempt.

- St Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem, Catechesis 6:5

65. A brother asked an elder, "Until when should one keep silent?" and he said, "Until you are asked, for it is written, 'Do not answer before hearing'".

- Sayings [Apothegmata] of Those Who Grew Old in the Ascetic Life, Briefly Demonstrating Their Supreme Value

by the music of your rustling leaves

FORGIVENESS SUNDAY

O Paradise, garden of delight and beauty, dwelling place made perfect by God, unending gladness and eternal joy, the hope of the prophets and the home of the saints, by the music of your rustling leaves beseech the Creator of all to open to me the gates which my sins have closed, that I may partake of the Tree of Life and Grace which was given to me in the beginning (Vespers of Forgiveness Sunday)

Today the Church highlights the theme of forgiveness as we enter into the Lenten season. We need to understand that without mutual forgiveness there can be no spiritual change or growth. In fact, without striving to forgive and asking for forgiveness from God and one another there can be no salvation. The Lord Himself says that divine mercy will be shown only to the merciful and divine forgiveness only to the forgiving.

This Sunday also commemorates the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. The ancient, ancestral fall from grace of our first parents is the source of our own sense of exile and alienation, of the division and separation we experience in our relationships with God and one another. We have only at times a passing glimpse, a brief taste, of the paradise for which we were created and for which we long, our true spiritual home. The experience of being forgiven and forgiving -  letting go - are just such moments.

Most of us will have experienced at some point in our lives the sweetness of being forgiven. That sweetness of being forgiven, and of forgiving, really is a kind of paradise, a brief taste of heaven. It is like paradise to be in a right relationship with God -  and with one another, especially those with whom we have a difficult relationship. To shed all that is calculating and defensive and guilty and to savour a moment of relief, of honesty and openness, to have a clear conscience, is to regain - even if briefly - an almost child-like innocence and purity. It is in its own way a return to Paradise, to the presence of God, of grace, a certain wholeness and integrity, joy, peace, wonder, gratitude.

At Vespers for Forgiveness Sunday we hear the beautiful verse above. May our Lenten journey be marked by many such moments - moments when the veil is lifted and the distance that separates us from paradise - from the Lord and from one another - is diminished, moments of recognition and sweetness that point towards the true homeland our heart's desire.

Phlegethon's hot floods

Of death some tell, some of the cruel pain
Which that bad craftsman in his work did try,
When (a new monster) flames once did constrain
A human corpse to yield a brutish cry.
Some tell of those in burning beds who lie,
For that they durst in the Phlegræn plain
The mighty rulers of the sky defy,
And siege those crystal towers which all contain.
Another counts of Phlegethon's hot floods
The souls which drink, Ixion's endless smart,
And his to whom a vulture eats the heart;
One tells of spectres in enchanted woods.
Of all those pains he who the worst would prove,
Let him be absent, and but pine in love.

- William Drummond, LVII Sonnet

It was for the new man that human nature was created at the beginning,
and for him mind and desire were prepared. Our reason we have received
in order that we may know Christ, our desire in order that we might
hasten to Him. We have memory in order that we may carry Him in us,
since He Himself is the archetype for those who were created. It was
not the old Adam who was the model for the new, but the new Adam for
the old.

-  St Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ

by participation and discipline and prayer

After this the bishop says: 'Holy things for the holy.' The offerings are holy, because they have received the descent of the Holy Spirit, and you are holy too because you have been granted the Holy Spirit, thus holy things are appropriate for holy people. Then you say: 'One is holy, one is Lord, Jesus Christ.' For truly there is one who is holy, holy by nature; for though we are holy, we are not so by nature, but by participation and discipline and prayer.

- St Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogic Catechism 5.19

Whenever  Jesus appears, there is also salvation. If he sees a tax-collector seated at the counter, he makes him an apostle and an evangelist; if he is buried among the dead, he raises them; he gives sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. When he walks around the pools, it is not to inspect the buildings but to heal the sick.

- St Cyril of Jerusalem, Homily on the Paralytic by the Pool.