NOTES for Mar 1:35-44

“I am willing; be cleansed.” These are very important words, central to Great Lent. The request to be cleansed forms part of the appointed recitation of the principal prayer of Great Lent, the Prayer of Saint Ephrem the Syrian: “O God, cleanse me, a sinner,” twelve times with bows from the waist. “Cleanse me.” We cry out to the Lord, but sometimes so frantically that we do not hear what He says in reply. Yet one must pray very quietly — with inner quiet — in order to hear the Lord answer us in the words of today’s Gospel: I am willing; be cleansed. And because we cry out so frantically, because we do not hear His “I am willing; be cleansed” in response, we assail all kinds of Lenten restrictions with the same energy. But let us recall the hymn from as early as the week before Meatfare Sunday: In vain do you rejoice, O soul, that you abstain from food, while you remain uncleansed from the passions (Wednesday of Meatfare Week). We must hear that the Lord Himself desires our cleansing. Then the fast will truly become for us “joy and glad festivity” (Zech 8:19), truly a “spring,” as Father Alexander Schmemann says in his commentary on Great Lent (“The Lenten spring has dawned,” sticheron at Vespers on Wednesday of Meatfare Week), because it will be a mystery of love between God and me, a mystery in which our mutual desire is fulfilled.