2 Tim 3.10-15

Luke 18.10-14

The Lenten Triodion – the book of prayers that will lead us to the Fountain of Life inside the Tomb of the LORD’s Sabbath Rest – has been opened, and there comes forth the sweet fragrance of the Garden. We learn from Ben Sirach that this fragrance is the sweet smell of the Tree of Life, a fragrance like a cypress tree on the mountains of Hermon, of a rose plant in Jericho, mingled with the scent of cinnamon and of Aspalathus (a red bush whose smell relieves heartburn and nausea!), a pleasant fragrance like the best myrrh and frankincense on the Altar of Heaven. (Sirach 24.12-19).

Emanating from the Fountain of Life inside the LORD’s Tomb transfigured into a Bridal Chamber, radiating like so many sunbeams from the Tree of Life in the Garden of His Resurrection, it is the smell, dear faithful, of the Creator’s extreme humility, of the Savior’s ineffable compassion, kindness, gentleness and mercy. It is the fragrance of the invisible, uncreated, healing and life-creating energies of the Glory of God sweeter than the honeycomb (Sirach 24.20), and that fill heaven and earth and make creation beautiful and good.

It is the fragrance of the breath of that cosmic voice that goes out inaudibly from day to day and from night to night singing the Glory of God and proclaiming the artistry of His handiwork. (Ps 18/19.1-2). Even pagans of antiquity heard it; they called it the music of the spheres. It is the fragrance of the LORD, the King of Glory, that follows Him as He passes through the sea [of death], and ascends through the Great Waters [of the Firmament] (Ps 76/77.19), and enters the Ancient Doors (Ps 24.7) to His Throne at the Father’s Right Hand, carrying the lost sheep on His Shoulders (Isa 63).

His footprints are unseen says the Psalmist. But when you climbed the steps and ascended the Edenic Mountain into Christ’s Holy Church this morning, you walked in those unseen footprints, says the holy apostle Peter (1 Pt 2.22), and the fragrance of the Tree of Life settled over you as a luminous cloud moist with the dew of Hermon, the Dew of the Savior’s Holy Spirit, who would gather you into His fragrance, if you would let Him, as a mother hen gathers her chicks, and who would clothe you in the fragrance of His Robe of Light, if you would put it on.

And, when you leave the Garden of the Church this morning, here on the mystical Holy Mountain of Eden, and go back out into the odors of the desert of this world to continue your battle against the principalities and powers and world rulers of this present darkness, and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places [Eph 6.12], you will carry the LORD’s fragrance with you. It will linger in your soul like the smell of the incense lingers on your clothes. And you who have passed through the waters of death with the Savior in Holy Baptism, and who draw near in faith and in love to partake of the Tree of Life, and to drink the New Wine given to you in the New Wineskin of the LORD’s Body that has destroyed death and has transfigured the tomb of your body into a Fountain of Resurrection, you will have become yourselves, in the hidden man of your heart, a tree of life in the Garden of the LORD, fragrant in your soul with the Heavenly Spirit.

Dear faithful, St John the Baptist bears witness to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (Jn 1.29). And we read in the Apocalypse of St John the Theologian that this is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13.8). And the Psalmist sings out that when the LORD was crucified on the Cross, ‘the foundations of the world were uncovered’ (Ps 18/19.7-24). This teaches us that the world was created in the mystery of the LORD’s Cross and Sabbath Rest. That is, the foundation of the world is the extreme humility of Christ our God in His victory on the Cross.

In this mystery of Christ’s Holy Pascha the world has its beginning and foundation. In His death and burial on the Last Day, God finished His creation by becoming one with us in the foundation of our being – in the deep of our heart. And He delivered us from our bondage to the devil (Heb 2.14-15, Phil 2.5-11). He created in us a clean heart – He emptied us of death; and as He did in the beginning, He breathed into us a new and right spirit. (Gn 2.7, Ps 50/51.10)

From the Blood and Water that came forth from His corpse on the Cross (n.b., blood and water do not come forth from a corpse! When the heart stops beating, the blood clots) He ‘built’ His Bride, the Church, as He built the woman from the rib of Adam (Gn 2.21) – and creation was finished. And in the Font, in the womb of His Bride, the Church, He sowed the Seed of His Holy Spirit. When you were clothed in that Robe of Light, fragrant with all the scents of the LORD’s Garden, you were clothed in the foundation of the world. And, having united yourselves to Christ as the Bride unites herself to her bridegroom, you became fragrant with the same Holy Spirit who raised Him from the dead.

God created the world as a Holy Temple for the Great Wedding of His Son and His Bride, the Church. And, we are the Church who have been married to Christ in Holy Baptism. Having been raised from the Font, we are now walking eastward in the Light of the rising Sun, away from the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Pt 1.4) and in the way of the LORD that is taking us to the Gate of Heaven inside the mystery of His Tomb, into the mystery of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. How do we walk in the Light as He is in the Light?  By striving to put to death our love for this ‘body of death’ that stinks with the odors of death – anger, lust, greed and all the rest. For we have died in the mystery of Christ’s Holy Pascha. Our life is no longer this life of the dust of death (Ps 22.16). Our life is the life of Christ’s Holy Spirit indwelling us as in His Holy Temple in the inner sanctuary of our heart, in the root of the foundation of the world.

When, clothed in the LORD’s Robe of Light, we turn inward to descend with our mind (through prayer) into the hidden man of our heart and into the foundation of the world, into the mystery of the Lamb that was slain (Isa 53.7) – as we descended to the bottom of the Font in our baptism – we begin to smell like our LORD, the Heavenly Bridegroom. It is the fragrance of His Power, His heavenly Riches, His Wisdom, His Strength, His Honor, His Glory, His Blessing (Rev 5.12). And as we walk the way of the LORD in this new life with which He has clothed us in the womb of His Bride, the Church, as we put to death all that is earthly in us (Col 3.5f.) and begin to think, to speak, to act out of love for Him who first loved us, as we become one Spirit with Him who became bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh, we become more and more fragrant in our soul and body with the fragrance of Jesus Christ, the Tree of Life in the Garden of His Bride, the Church.

Remember that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden because they would not repent, and they became as though they were God. This explains why it was the Publican who went down to his house justified – i.e., raised to life – and not the other. It explains why it is that everyone who exalts himself will be abased; and he that humbles himself will be exalted. The world was created beautiful and good and fragrant in the extreme humility of the Lamb slain from the Foundation of the world. And we were created according to the Image of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and in the likeness of His extreme humility. The way back to the Garden, our home, is the way of the Heavenly Bridegroom’s extreme humility who, though He knew no sin, became sin for us, so that we could become the righteousness of God in Him [2 Co 5.21] and partakers of His own divine nature (2 Pt 1.4). As we clothe ourselves in Our LORD’s extreme humility, we become fragrant with the sweet fragrance of His Garden whose gates have been opened. The opening of the Lenten Triodion is the visible form of the Garden’s invisible gates opening to us, so that all who would, may take up the Cross of the Great Fast in order to enter those gates with hope and joy, and to draw near in the fear of God with faith and love to partake of the Tree of Life in the Bridal Chamber of the Bridegroom’s Holy Pascha in the never-ending Day of His Heavenly Kingdom. Amen!