Judas is tragedy. But the harlot is hope. The one tries to barter a little more life by wasting the Source of life. The other throws away all that's left of her life out of longing for a new beginning. In Judas the old world, the cruel world of fate closes in and consumes. In the woman, alone of all those that day in Simon's house, the new dawn of freedom begins to arise.
Keep us from tragedy's false promise of noble despair, the lie revealed in Judas, broken on the ground beneath the hanging tree.
Give us instead, O Lord, the harlot's hope, the saving sadness of another Tree and a Body broken, not for itself, but for love.
The Aposticha of Matins:
Today Christ comes to the house of the Pharisee and a sinful woman draws near and flings herself at his feet, crying, ‘See one who has been drowned by sin, without hope because of her deeds, yet not rejected with loathing from your goodness, and give me, Lord, forgiveness of my evil deeds and save me’.
The harlot spread out her hair for you, the Master; Judas spread out his hands to the lawless: she to receive forgiveness, he to receive silver. And so we cry to you, sold and who set us free, ‘Lord, glory to you!’
A woman foul-smelling and defiled drew near, pouring tears upon your feet, O Saviour, and proclaiming your passion. ‘How can I gaze upon you, Master? For you have come yourself to save a harlot. You roused Lazarus from the tomb after four days, raise me who am dead from the deep. Accept me in my misery, Lord, and save me’.
Rejected because of her life, well-known because of her ways, she approached you carrying sweet myrrh and crying, ‘You, who were born of a Virgin, do not cast me out, who am a harlot. Joy of the Angels, do not despise my tears; but, Lord, as I repent, accept me, whom you did not thrust from you when I sinned, through your great mercy’.
Glory. Both now. Tone 8.
By the Nun Kassiani.
Lord, the woman who had fallen into many sins, perceiving your divinity, took up the role of myrrh-bearer, and with lamentation brings sweet myrrh to you before your burial. ‘Alas!’, she says, ‘for night is for me a frenzy of lust, a dark and moonless love of sin. Accept the fountains of my tears, you who from the clouds draw out the water of the sea; bow yourself down to the groanings of my heart, you who bowed the heavens by your ineffable self-emptying. I shall kiss your immaculate feet, and wipe them again with the locks of my hair, those feet whose sound Eve heard in Paradise at the cool of the day, and hid herself in fear. Who can search out the multitude of my sins and the depths of your judgements, my Saviour, saviour of souls? Do not despise me, your servant, for you have mercy without measure’.
