Bridegroom Orthros (Matins):
Making Ready for Christ the Bridegroom
“Behold the Bridegroom cometh at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find awake. But he whom He shall find neglectful is verily unworthy. Beware, therefore, O my soul, that you do not fall into a deep slumber and be delivered to death and locked out of the Kingdom. Watch instead and cry aloud: Holy, holy, holy art Thou, O God, through the intercessions of the Theotokos, have mercy on us.” (Troparion in Tone Eight)
This hymn, one of the most beautiful in the entire Orthodox Christian year, best summarizes the theme of Holy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Throughout the hymnography of these “Bridegroom Orthros” services, we are constantly reminded that Jesus will once again return to earth and judge it. We have to be ready, alert and awake not just for this dread Second Coming, but for His Resurrection we will celebrate later in the week. We will not be worthy for that either, if we do not constantly prepare ourselves by maintaining the fast, repenting of our sins, and constantly praying and worshipping the Lord. Fortunately, the Church gives us this week with special, daily services to meet all of those mentioned needs.
We celebrate Bridegroom Orthros in a dark church after sunset to let that remind us that the Light of the world will not be with us for a time (as He dies on the Cross to descend into hell to conquer death). Christ will also come not at a time we plan, but a time that He plans when we least expect it. In monasteries, Bridegroom Orthros is served on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at around 1:00 a.m. Since practically all parishioners cannot gather at that late hour, the Church has mercifully moved Bridegroom Orthros start times to the night before at around 7:00 p.m.
Bridegroom Orthros of Holy Monday (served on Palm Sunday evening) commemorates an Old Testament hero and a famous Gospel story: Joseph the son of Jacob (see Genesis chapters 37-40) and the withering fig tree (Matthew 21:18-43). Joseph endured many trials and tribulations which prefigured Christ’s same suffering as a man on earth. Joseph was the most beloved son of his father, which aggravated his eleven older brothers so much that they plotted to kill him. Eventually, they sold Joseph into slavery for twenty pieces of gold, and Joseph’s father mourned. He comes under the ownership of Potiphar in Egypt, and Potiphar’s wife tries unsuccessfully to seduce him, and then he is imprisoned. Yet after all these sufferings, Joseph remained faithful to God, Who made him ruler over Egypt. God glorified Joseph, just as He glorified His Son on the Cross. We remember Joseph in the Kontakion, among other hymns, on this day:
While Jacob mourned for the loss of Joseph, his brave son was seated in a chariot and honored as a king. For he was not enslaved to the lust of the Egyptian woman; wherefore, he was glorified by God, who sees the secrets of the hearts and grants to them an imperishable crown.
Joseph bore fruit with the sufferings and virtues that God gave him. We are expected to do the same, as evidenced in the Gospel reading on Holy Monday. Jesus spots a fig tree that did not bear any fruit, so He withered it right before His Disciples’ eyes. The chief priests and elders in the temple questioned Jesus for this act and all His teachings. After relating other parables, Jesus finally admonished them, saying that if they did not bear fruit, “The Kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it” (Matthew 18:43). In other words, if we, like the wicked chief priests and elders, do not yield the fruit and good words God has enabled us to produce, our lives will be taken from us, we will never meet the Bridegroom, and the Kingdom will be given to others who are more deserving.
Bridegroom Orthros of Holy Tuesday (served on Holy Monday evening) is when we “meet the Bridegroom Christ” like the ten virgins did in the Gospel of Matthew (25:1-13). Though this Gospel passage is not read in this service, we are reminded of it in the service’s hymnography. The women were invited to the wedding feast and needed to be ready. Only half filled their vessels with oil and the others grew lazy and left them empty. The ten virgins fell asleep, but awoke to at midnight to hear that the bridegroom was coming. The five who were prepared marched with the bridegroom into the wedding feast while the others searched frantically to buy oil. They arrived at the wedding feast to find the door was shut and they were left out.
Orthodox Christians have a choice: to be numbered among those who are prepared for the Bridegroom (the Lord), and those who are not. As it says in the Sessional Hymn, sung in Tone Four:
Brethren, let us love the Bridegroom, trimming our lamps with care, so that we shine brilliantly with the virtues and right faith. Thus, like the wise virgins of the Lord, we may be ready to enter with him into the wedding feast; for being God, the Bridegroom grants on all imperishable crowns.
Our lamps are our souls and bodies. They have to be kept pure and bright so that we may be accounted worthy to enter “the wedding feast”, which is the Kingdom of God. Once we do enter, we shall celebrate with Him forever. However, if our souls and bodies are not ready for the Next Age, we will find the gates to Heaven closed to us, and we will be shut out of the Kingdom forever. We never know when the Bridegroom is coming for us, so we have to be constantly ready with the tools of salvation the Church hands to us.
Those who will not be ready are the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians and all those of that age and this one who behave viciously like them, not believing in God but in themselves. In the Holy Tuesday Gospel lesson (Matthew 22:15-23:39), these three groups question Jesus to try and trick Him into embarrassing Himself. He answers their foolish questions about collecting taxes and multiple marriages, then exposes them for who they are, and chides them:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor do you allow those who would enter to go in…. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold! Your house is forsaken and desolate” (Matthew 23:13, 37-38).
The rulers of the synagogue were famous for telling their people how to live and behave properly, without applying their own teachings to their own lives. By this, those leaders prevented the followers how to meet God and be reconciled to Him. The leaders, and those like them, will be the ones tasting the eternal fire.
Bridegroom Orthros of Holy Wednesday (served on Holy Tuesday evening) commemorates the anointing of Jesus by a harlot (prostitute) with fragrant oil in anticipation of His upcoming death on the Cross (Matthew 25:6-16). The disciples who sat around Jesus at the table of Simon the Leper completely missed the significance of this act, saying that the oil could have been sold for a high price and the proceeds could have gone to the poor. Jesus chided them, not because of their honest intention, but because they still did not realize—in spite of all that Jesus taught them—that He was days away from being crucified and buried. This virtuous act took place on Holy Wednesday, which is why the Orthodox Church memorializes this day as a day of fasting all year round.
Other Gospel accounts show a woman who not only anoints Jesus’ head with this fragrant oil (spikenard), but also His feet. In the Gospel of John (12:3) Mary, the sister of Martha, even anointed Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. But then Judas Iscariot, the disciple who would betray Jesus, asked why the oil would not be sold for a high price and given to the poor. But John the Evangelist realized that Judas did not care for the poor, but only the money, because he used to take from the money box (12:6). Everyone saw his greedy intention. Nevertheless, Jesus again instructed His disciples in the same fashion of the Oikos Hymn:
The prodigal woman suddenly appeared chaste, despising the works of shameful sin, and the lust of the body, reflecting upon her great disgrace, and the condemnation of punishment, that harlots and prodigals will endure. Of them I am the first and I am dismayed, but foolishly I persist in my evil habits. But the woman who was a prostitute, filled with fear, and ran crying to the redeemer: O Lover of mankind and merciful One, deliver me from the mire of my deeds.
Once again, Jesus revealed how He was being prepared for His death, how we, like the disciples, must embrace and minister to the poor, and that this act like all of others of love and mercy will lead to forgiveness of our sins.
Fortunately, this woman prepared Jesus for his upcoming Crucifixion, which He preaches about one last time in the Holy Wednesday Gospel (John 12:17-50). Jesus is the grain of wheat that dies and produces fruit (John 12:24), thus signifying His death that will free us from sin and give life to the world. From this passage, we get the tradition of offering boiled, sweetened wheat (kollyva or amma) at Memorial/Trisagion services, which affirms God’s promise that, though we die, we will again rise to life with Him. Jesus also acknowledges one last time that His sole purpose on this earth is to die for it to save it, so that His Name is glorified (John 12:27-29). Jesus affirms that, even though He wrought great works, teachings and miracles while walking among us, there will still be those who will not believe, thus fulfilling the Prophecy of Isaiah (6:10 and 53:1, as found in John 12:37-41).
The Bridegroom Orthros services of Holy Week draw to a close with the gorgeous hymn of Kassiani the Nun, who again relates the harlot’s anointing of Jesus:
“O Lord, the woman who had fallen into many sins perceived Thy divinity and received the rank of the ointment-bearing women; and with mourning she brought myrrh to Thee before Thy burial. She said: Woe is me, for I am surrounded with a gloomy and moonless night, full of lustful passion. Accept the fountains of my tears, for Thou gatherest into clouds the water of the sea. Incline to the groaning of my heart, for in Thine inexpressible self-abasement Thou hast bowed the Heavens. I will kiss Thy most pure feet and wipe them with the locks of my hair, those feet whose sound Eve heard at dusk in Paradise, and hid herself in fear. Who can search out the multitude of my sins and the depth of Thy judgments, O Savior of my soul? In Thy boundless mercy despise me not, Thy handmaid.” (Sung in Tone Eight)
We, too, are to anoint Jesus in this same way, full of charity and humility not just to the Savior, but to all His people. We repent of our sins with tears and honesty, so that we can receive forgiveness and unity in Christ, and walk with Him honorably on the path to His Crucifixion. We always keep in mind the famous Exaposteilarion Hymn of all three Bridegroom Services:
I behold Thy bridal chamber richly adorned, O my Savior; but I have no wedding garment to worthily enter. Make radiant the garment of my soul, O Giver of Light, and save me. (Sung in Tone Three)
We pray that, throughout this week, our wedding garments—our souls—will be purified so that the Lord, the Giver of Light, will save us and bring us into His wedding feast, the Heavenly Kingdom.