Since yesterday was the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord, today’s synaxis commemorates Sts. Simeon and Anna, at the Vespers for the feast, we hear*:

... “Symeon the priest received the Lord of all, come down from heaven.”  Just as the
Prophet Isaiah received the live coal and did not burn, but was purified and became a prophet, so
also the righteous Symeon received the live coal Christ from the Panagia** and did not burn, but
was purified, according to the saying: “Behold He has touched your lips and pardons your transgressions and purifies your sins.”   (quoted from Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos, The Twelve Feast of the Lord,   Esther Williams*** (tr), p. 87, thank you Father Thomas)

I remember hearing this at Vespers a couple of years ago, and it made me stop in my tracks.  How often do we honestly remember the awe and splendor God commands, and assess how we approach him? Do we do it with fear and trembling, or blithely and potentially in a harmful way?

This dovetailed with my fabulous and awesome Church School Co-teacher’s lesson about Communion that she taught on Sunday – she brought in one of the prosphora loaves she baked****  for church  - and ended with the thought, “you are what you eat.”

We are what we eat, may we become purified and pardoned, and not partake unto our judgment and condemnation. Lord have Mercy.

*how’s that for a sentence that encompasses three Liturgical days?

**Greek word for the Mother of God.

***no, not THAT Esther Williams

****and a reminder plug for Jane’s fabulous book 

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