Evening Sermon: Lord, take pity on us, exiles from Your Light

As we have stood looking upon the figure of Adam, weeping before the closed gates of Paradise, and as we have felt our first father’s longing for the harmonious world, which God created, and which is so beautifully described in Psalm 103, we have perhaps reflected interiorly that our lives have many small evenings, many dusks, in which we dread and mourn the approach of darkness.  These are moments of discouragement, moral uncertainty and even depression.  Yet, the Lord in the beautiful service that is known to us as “the evening sacrifice” is reminding us that the darkness too has a place in His sublime plan.  It is true that He did not make evil, but now that evil has entered into His creation, He permits it for the specific good of us human beings.  Herein lies the mystery of darkness.  It is a mystery because it is ineffable the way that God makes all work together unto our good.  We cannot understand darkness, because we cannot penetrate it.  Nevertheless, it is certain that the darkness stirs in us the longing for the light. 

     Adam’s exile from Paradise stirred in him the longing for reconciliation with God.  Cast out into the darkness, he longed for the light.  After him, the human race would continue to long for the return of the light (the Light of Paradise, the Eternal Wisdom, the Only-Begotten Son of God).  This longing was expressed by the Patriarchs and the Prophets, who themselves ardently desired to be healed from sin and death, and also taught the people the same ardent longing.  In our present service, the time of the Patriarchs and the Prophets is symbolized by the Great Ektenia, because in this great prayer we adopt the plaintive cry of the Prophets, which went up to God generation after generation: Lord, have mercy! Their cry was, again and again, “Lord, have mercy. See and take pity on our misery, for we are exiles from Your Light, and we wander in darkness.” When we sing the Ektenia, we try to create in ourselves that same expectation, that same desire, that animated and drove the Patriarchs, beginning with Abraham, and the Prophets all down through the ages. 

     We can profitably adopt this call, this plea, and use it anytime that we feel the onset of moral darkness in our world.  In moments of temptation, depression and discouragement, we can call out “Lord, have mercy” with the same faith, longing and hope as the Prophets.