Monday. (Passion Week). (Mark 24:3-35). The Lord goes for a free passion. We also need to descend to Him. This is the duty of everyone who confesses that by the power of the passion of Christ he has become what he is now, and who still hopes to receive something so great and glorious that no one can even think of it. How to descend? Reflection, sympathy. Follow the suffering Lord in your thoughts, and by your meditation extract from everything such notions that could strike the heart and bring it to a sense of the sufferings endured by the Lord. In order for the latter to be accomplished more successfully, it is necessary to make oneself suffer through a sensitive diminution of food and sleep, and an increase in the labor of standing and kneeling. Do everything that the Holy Church does, and you will be a good companion to the Lord for suffering.

Tuesday. (Matt. 24:36-26:2). Now the people, the priests, and the authorities of the Jews hear the word of the Lord for the last time in the temple. And it was all-embracing; it embraced everything past, present and future.

It was enough just to listen to all this attentively in order to be convinced that He is the true Savior of the world – Christ, and to submit to His commandments and teachings. And to this day the reading of the chapters of the Gospel about all that happened on this day is the most effective means of reviving faith in the Lord, and, reviving in the Christian the consciousness of what he should be and what to expect, to stir up zeal and to show oneself to confess the Lord not only in tongue, but also in deed.

Wednesday. (Matt. 26:6-16). The Lord was silent on Wednesday and Thursday until evening, in order that evening to pour out a speech with the disciples and to the disciples, a speech similar to which there is nothing in all the writings, not only human, but also Divine. Now, at the direction of the Church, we hear only from the mouth of the Lord, so that they do not interfere with anointing Him with myrrh, because this served as a preparation for Him for death. Only death is before His eyes, the final mystery of His coming to earth for our salvation. Let us also immerse ourselves in the contemplation of this mysterious death, in order to extract from it the hope of salvation for our souls, burdened with many sins, and not knowing how to find peace for themselves from the anguish of an awakened conscience and the realization of the righteousness of God's judgment upon us, terrible and unwashed.

Thursday. The Annunciation and the institution of the sacrament of the Body and Blood. What a combination! We partake of the true Body and true Blood of Christ, the very same that in the Incarnation were received from the immaculate blood of the Most-Pure Virgin Mother of God. Thus, in the Incarnation, which took place at the hour of the Annunciation, the foundation was laid for the mystery of the Body and Blood. And now this is brought to the memory of all Christians, so that, remembering this, they should honor the Most Holy Theotokos with their true matter, not only as a woman of prayer and intercessor, but also as the nourisher of all. Children are nourished by their mother's milk, and we are nourished by the Body and Blood, which are from the Most Holy Virgin Mother of God. Eating in this way, we drink essentially milk from Her breasts.

Friday. The Crucifixion of Christ the Lord and the Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel! A new comforting combination! Gabriel foretells the birth of the Forerunner; Gabriel preaches the Gospel to the Virgin; he also probably proclaimed the joy of the birth of the Saviour; no one else proclaimed to the women about the Resurrection of Christ the Lord. Thus, Gabriel is the herald and bringer of all joy. The Crucifixion of Christ is the joy and joy of all sinners. The sinner, who has come to the sense of his sinfulness and the all-righteous truth of God, has nowhere to hide but under the shadow of the cross. Here he accepts the assurance that he has no forgiveness as long as he stands alone before God with his sins and even with tears for them. For him, the only salvation is in the Lord's death on the cross. On the cross, the handwriting of all sins is torn. And everyone who accepts this with full faith becomes a partaker of this sacrament of pardon. With the suspicion of this faith, the certainty of mercy matures, and at the same time the joy of entering into a state of mercy for all ages. The cross is a source of joy, because the sinner drinks from it by faith the joy of mercy. In this respect, he is a kind of archangel who preaches joy.

Saturday. (Romans 6:3-11; Matt. 28:1-20). The Lord sleeps in the grave with His body, but with His soul He descended into hell and preached salvation to the spirits who were there. All the saints of the Old Testament were not in paradise, although they remained in the consoling faith that they would be brought there as soon as the Promised One, in Whom they had lived, came to earth. His coming was foreshadowed by the Forerunner there as well. When the Lord descended, all those who believed cleaved to Him, and were raised up to paradise by Him. But this paradise is only the threshold of the real paradise, which is to be revealed after the general resurrection and judgment. In it, too, all the New Testament saints, although blessed, await even greater and more perfect blessedness in the age to come, with a new heaven and a new earth, when God will be all in all.

The Bright Resurrection of Christ