Great and Holy Monday

God willing, each day this week I will post some online resources for the following day. I will do this a day early each day in part to help you to prepare and in part for the very practical reason that the daily Matins services are normally "anticipated," that is, served the evening before. Monday Matins, for instance, is in most places served Sunday evening.

Tomorrow is Holy Monday. Here is how S. V. Bulgakov explains what we commemorate on this day:

In the Divine service for this day the Holy Church invites the faithful to walk with Christ, to be crucified with Him, to die to the pleasures of this life for His sake in order to live with Him. Through mystical contemplation drawing together the events of the Old and New Testaments, she shows us the future innocent suffering of the Savior in the Old Testament prototype of the chaste Joseph, whom the envy of the brothers innocently sold and humiliated, but later was restored by God. "Joseph," it says in the Synaxarion, "is the prototype of Christ, because Christ also becomes an object of envy for persons of the same race, the Jews, and is sold by the disciple for thirty silver coins, is confined in a gloomy and narrow pit, a tomb, and, having risen from it by His own power, reigning over Egypt, i.e. above any sin, and in the end conquers it, rules over all the world, will through His love for man deliver us by the bestowal of the mysterious wheat and to eat the heavenly bread, His own Life-bearing Flesh." From the events of the Gospel the Holy Church recalls the drying up of the barren fig tree. According to the mind of the Holy Church, the barren fig tree represents a Jewish assembly, in which Jesus Christ did not find true fruit but only the hypocritical shadow of the law which convicted and condemned it. But this fig tree as well represents any soul which does not yield the fruit of repentance, and is why the Holy Church also calls to us: "The fig tree was withered up because it was unfruitful. We should fear the same punishment, O brethren, and bring worthy fruit of repentance to Christ, who grants us great mercy". Besides the narration about the drying up of a fig tree, the Matins Gospel will edify us this day with a parable told by the Savior about the unrighteous vinedressers who first killed the servants of their lord who were sent for the grapes, but later even the son of the lord. In this parable, representing the nearest paradigm of the hardness of the Jews, who before slew the prophets, and with coming to earth of the Son the God crucified even Him, it is impossible not to also see the terrible condemnation for Christians boldly breaking the commandments of the Apostles and the Holy Fathers, and in this way continuing to crucify the Son of God through their sins (Refer to the note on page 544). In the Gospel reading in the liturgy the Holy Church recalls the fate of the apostate Judaic people even to end of the world, as they were described before by Jesus Christ. The faithful are motivated by the description of great and various afflictions and signs of the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the age amidst evil through magnanimity, impartiality, patience, spiritual prayer and vigil and are comforted in the promise of the Savior about the spread of the gospel throughout the world but “for the elect's sake those days will be shortened" (Mt. 24: 14, 22).

Liturgical service:

• Triodion service, translated by Fr Ephraim.
• Triodion service, translated by Holy Myrrbearers Community.
• Triodion service in Greek and Slavonic.
  

Scripture readings:

• Matins: Matthew 21: 18-43.
• Sixth Hour: Ezekiel 1: 1-20.
• Vespers: Exodus 1: 1-20; Job 1: 1-12.
• Presanctified Liturgy: Matthew 24: 3-35.
  

From the Fathers:

• St Augustine, Homily on the parable of the fig tree.
• St Ephraim the Syrian, Sermon on Joseph the Most Virtuous.
  

Other articles:

• Fr Alkiviadis Calivas, Great Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
• Fr Alexander Schmemann, Holy Week - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday: The End.
• Bishop Alexander (Mileant), The Barren Fig Tree.
  
• Fr Victor Potapov, The Barren Fig Tree.
  

For many more Holy Week links, see here. See also my post from last year here.

It should also be noted that, according to the Typikon, all four Gospels (up to John 13:31) are assigned to be read during the Hours on Great and Holy Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (the readings are divided up differently in different places). This practise is normally fulfilled only in monasteries, although in some parishes at least one Gospel is read in its entirety during these days. Many priests and spiritual fathers do advise laymen to read at least one Gospel in full during Holy Week.