Christopher's Hallmark's

The Recursive Grift

2026-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

New Book!</h1>

Blurb</h2>
My first book The Recursive Grift is coming out soon.
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The Recursive Grift

2026-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

My first book The Recursive Grift is coming out soon.

Now

2026-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

Building this website!
In Zola.

The Scroll whereon the Finger of God Inscribed His Word

2025-09-26T01:04:27+00:00

Thank you Father and Brothers for inviting me to speak this evening. When Phil asked me to give this talk two topics came into my head. Ultimately though, I decided against the title Exploring the Dog-Headed Icon of St Christopher as it would probably appeal to too small a niche, especially for those not named Christopher.
Now, at these dinners, as you know, Father Gabriel has a custom where he asks us all to answer a particular question. I suppose if the question were asked of me, “What is your favorite Marian title?” (And this is why asking icebreaking questions is better left to Father than me.) But if someone were to ask me that, after demurring a bit and quoting the words of the Archangel Gabriel from the hymn ( Awed by the Beauty ), “By what name shall I call her? I am lost and bewildered.” I would probably tell you The Scroll whereon the Finger of God Inscribed His Word.
These words come from the Friday Lenten service. In the 7th Ode of the Akathist Canon we hear:

The ends of the earth do praise and bless thee, and cry out unto thee: Hail, pure Maiden, scroll on which the finger of God did inscribe His Word; do thou now implore Him, O Theotokos, to write down thy servants in the Book of Life. </blockquote>
When I first heard these words, they struck me profoundly, and I’ve meditated upon them since. Now, as an aside, I have to tell this story about ‘meditation’. Some years ago I was working as a claims adjuster for an auto insurance company. If you called in to report a claim on your car, I was the first person you talked to (assuming you properly navigated through the labyrinthine voice prompts). At one point I was working second shift, and many of the calls that came in after 9 o’clock in the evening were rather interesting. One night, a young man called in who seemed a bit spaced out. He reported that he found his car was broken into and his backpack was missing. I inquired about the value of the backpack and contents and he told me. “I don’t know, I told the police maybe $100.” After a pause, “Y’know if I think about it, maybe $200.” A little while later in the call as I was collecting other information, he circled back to the value of the stolen contents. “Man, that bag’s possibly worth over $300, if I meditate upon it.” At this I was all ears; I wanted him to teach me the secret of this meditation where I could triple the value of my possessions. Alas, for him those valuables were gone. But for us, we have such a wealth in the hymns and services of the Church that we can easily triple their value to us if we spend some time in meditation upon them.
In the Church, everything we say about the Virgin Mary is in relation to her Son, Jesus. Indeed the first praise of the Theotokos was by St Elizabeth who pronounced “blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” and called her “the mother of my Lord” (Lk 1.42-43). Our icons show her pointing to Christ and our Theotokia (hymns to the Blessed Virgin) sing about Christ.
For example, from the Theotokia for the Resurrection, in the Vespers service:

Tone 4 David the Prophet who became through thee, O Theotokos, the grandparent of God, before time sang of thee in praise, and shouted to Him who worked wonders through thee, saying, The queen did rise on Thy right; for God hath shown thee to be a Mother bringing forth life, in that He was willing to appear incarnate from thee without father, renewing the creation of His likeness , corrupt with suffering, in order to find the sheep lost in the hills, and carry it on His shoulders, and offer it to the Father, and add it, through His will, to the heavenly hosts , and to save the whole world; for He is the reigning Christ, Possessor of rich and Great Mercy. </blockquote>

Tone 6 Who shall not beatify thee, most holy Virgin? Who shall not praise thy birth-giving, free of travailing and pain? For the only Son rising timelessly from the Father, Himself did become incarnate from thee in an inexplicable way. He, Who while God by nature, became for our sakes Man by nature, not divided into two persons, but known by two natures without mixture or confusion. To Him, O noble and most blessed one, plead for the salvation of our souls. </blockquote>

Tone 8 Verily, the King of heaven, for His love to mankind, did appear on earth; and with men did He deal; for He took unto Himself a body from the pure Virgin. And from her did He issue in the adopted body, He being one Son, dual in Nature, not dual in Person. Wherefore, do we confess, preaching the truth that Christ our God is perfect God and perfect Man. Therefore, O Mother who hast no groom, beseech thou Him to have mercy upon our souls. </blockquote>
Let us now consider the Scroll. What were scrolls made from?
Parchment, and were does parchment come from?
Animal skins, which brings to mind the garments of skin God gave Adam and Eve when he expelled them from Paradise. As with every Biblical theme, this one begins in Genesis. Some of the Fathers (St Gregory of Nyssa) explain the garments of skin as our mortality. Humanity was expelled from Paradise lest we eat of the Tree of Life, and be like the demons confirmed in death, unable to repent. This mortal flesh, God the Son took in the incarnation, the enfleshing, from the Virgin. For, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, the Son was made like us in every respect, in order become a merciful and faithful high priest (Heb 2.17).
Yet parchment is not merely an animal skin; it must be transformed in order to receive writing. Before cellphones were common, many of us remember making notes on our hands, which was prone to smearing and even in the best of circumstances washed away in a few days. In antiquity, making parchment from skins was a long involved process. The skins were soaked in fermented vegetable solutions to remove the hair from the pelt; this took a few days and the skins would need be frequently agitated or stirred so the solution would fully penetrate the pelts. Then the material was stretched out in a frame and worked over with a sharp knife to remove any remaining imperfections such as spots with hair or oil that might imped the absorption of the ink. In this process, the structure of the material is changed from animal skin to parchment which allows it to receive and bond with the ink.
So for several thousand years, God worked with humanity’s garments of skin by giving the Torah and the Prophets, appointing guardian angels, and leading us back to him by the works of the saints. Through God’s work, in the fullness of time, he formed the Theotokos, the Scroll which could be inscribed with God’s own Word. But the Blessed Virgin Mary is also our Great Example, for she shows us what we can become in Christ through Great Mercy. We also are to receive the Word of God; indeed St Paul calls us the body of Christ (1 Cor 12.27, Eph 4.12, etc.). Our Brotherhood is named after St Joseph of Arimathea who cared for the body of Christ. God is working within us so that we too would receive his Word. Remember also that our Lord elevated human nature in his Incarnation, particularly his Passion, where he was given vinegar to drink and stretched out upon the Cross.
Being transformed is admittedly, a long, rather difficult process. But there is no salvation without struggling against our passions. If anyone tells you of a shortcut to holiness, they are either clueless, dishonest, selling you something, or some combination of the three. When we ask God to bestow a virtue or remove a vice, he does not magically grant the virtue to us or whisk the vice away from us, but gives us opportunities to learn. Met. Anthony Bloom tells the story of St Philip Neri. Philip was easily irritated and often quarreled with his brothers. One day he was distraught over this and went to church and fell down at the icon of Christ and implored him to remove his anger. With hope, he walked out of the church. But he immediately met one of his brothers, who had never angered him before, but this time said a cross word to Philip. Philip told him off, but the next person Philip met was another man who had always been kind to him and ‘a source of consolation’ to him. Yet even this man spoke gruffly to Philip. At this Philip ran back to the church agitated and cast himself before Christ and prayed ‘O Lord, have I not asked you to free me from this anger?’ And he heard the Lord answer, ‘Yes, Philip, and for this reason I am multiplying the occasions for you to learn.’
Let us now turn to the phrase, ‘The finger of God.’ Where do we see that phrase in the Scriptures?
In Exodus, the Ten Commandments were written with God’s own finger. The Prophets point to a new covenant which will be internal and not external to God’s people. For example the Prophet Jeremiah says,

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:31–33 ESV) </blockquote>
When we think of the handwriting on the wall in the Prophecy of Daniel, we think rightly of judgement. What is the purpose of judgement?
The Apostle gives a similar analogy of God as a Craftsman, when he discusses the Potter having the right to make the clay into what he desires: “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?” (Rom 9.20-21). In this he references the several passages in the Prophet Isaiah and a rather lengthy one from Jeremiah.

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. </blockquote>

Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ‘Thus says the LORD, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.’ </blockquote>

“But they say, ‘That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’” (Jeremiah 18.1–12 ESV) </blockquote>
The analogy of the Potter making clay into pottery is not to teach some notion of predestination or so we can scrutinize the mind of God. (As if we do that as creatures!) No, in this passage we see that if the Lord shapes disaster or hardship against a people it is meant to lead them to repentance. If the people turn from their evil and repent, God will not bring them to destruction. God works all things for the salvation of those in Christ, leading us to repentance and life.
So let us now turn to the end of the stanza. What is the result of receiving, being written on with the Word of God? What do we ask the Blessed Theotokos for? We ask her to implore God to write us in the Book of Life. We are written on with God’s Word to be written in the Book of Life. To be in the Book of Life, then, is to have the Word written upon us; it is nothing else than to be in Christ. In the flesh received from the Virgin, Christ renewed human nature, and he is still renewing it in his body today. As St Paul says,

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5.16– ESV) </blockquote>
So then, how do we allow God to craft our garments of skin into parchment to receive his Word and be written in the Book of Life? In a word: repentance. We need to be in the Scriptures. The Church provides us with readings for each day of the year. Likewise we need to be in prayer. And we need to be in the Church services. Our text tonight comes from the Friday Lenten service. And I don’t know if you’ve peeked ahead at the next page on your calendars, but the Triodion starts on Feb 13. We have a great opportunity in Lent to become saturated in the Scriptures, prayer, and the services and thereby be stretched. By this we are being prepared to receive the Word of God. (As you know, Preparation is a major theme in the Church. We are given Lent to prepare for the Truth of Pascha. And we are given the Triodion to prepare for Lent. Likewise, to receive Christ in the Eucharist, we have Orthros before the Divine Liturgy, and Vespers the evening before that.) Furthermore, do these things with intention and meditate on the words you are reading, saying, and hearing. And lastly, in this light perform acts of mercy and almsgiving. For God has given us the riches of his grace in Christ, having lavished them upon us, in order to unite all in him, whether in heaven or on the earth (Eph 1.3-14). Let us lay aside all earthly care: that we may receive the King of all. Alleluia.

Introduction to the Divine Liturgy for Newcomers

2025-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

PDF Version</a>
Introduction</h2>
Brothers and Sisters, Christ is in our midst.
St Nicholas Cabasilas begins his Commentary on the Divine Liturgy with these words:

The essential act in the celebration of the holy mysteries is the transformation of the elements into the Divine Body and Blood; its aim is the sanctification of the faithful, who through these mysteries receive the remission of their sins and the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven. </blockquote>
I was asked to say a few words today introducing the Divine Liturgy. When I taught a series on this two years ago, I had five introductory lessons that together took about an hour and a half to deliver, but today I’ll try to compress that into 10–15 minutes. To this end, let’s focus on the basic questions we learned to ask in grade school, why, what, who, where, and when. My goal today is not to provide comprehensive answers, but to further draw you into the Mystery.
Why</h2>
Why do we gather each week to celebrate the Divine Liturgy? In St Nicholas’ quote, it is for our sanctification, to fit us for heaven. Call to mind Isaiah chapter 6, where the prophet is mystically taken up into the throne room of God.

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” </blockquote>
When we come into the presence of God, we must be cleansed. Yet God himself provides the cleansing. The prayers, hymns, and Scripture readings of the Liturgy are the culmination of our weekly preparation. These gifts prepare us for the reception of Christ himself, in in the Great Gift of Holy and Mystical Communion. This is also why the catechumenate period is so long in the Church, for to come into the presence of the Living God is fearful and dangerous (Hebrews 10.31). Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? (Isaiah 33.14) Yet God himself has provided a way that we can live with him, “thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7.25)”
What and Who</h2>
So, what then is the Divine Liturgy, that God has given the Church in Christ? And who celebrates the Mystery? The climax of the Liturgy is the Thanksgiving sacrificial meal of the Eucharist. We are called to “Lay aside all earthly cares that we may receive the King of Glory.” All the prayers, hymn, and readings increasingly prepare us to partake of Christ and participate in his sacrifice.
The Eucharistic Sacrifice</h3>
To understand what sacrifice is, let us review the Scriptures. In the Scriptures, sacrifices are always meals of a people with their God. We often think of slaughter and killing, but this emphasis is a later unhelpful development. The sacrifices of the Old Testament were shared hospitality whereby Israel would commune with God. A sacrifice requires the participation of God and of his people.
Note that the elements of the Eucharist are food, bread and wine. Just as physical food essential to sustain life and strengthen those who eat of it, the Eucharist is spiritual food to sustain our Life in Christ. While grain and grapes are given by God, grown with his sunlight and rain, it takes human labor in order to transform them into bread and wine. This cooperation of humans with the Divine is especially suited for the Eucharist; it points to our whole life being offered to God as sacrifice. The transformation of grain into bread and grapes into wine involves crushing the raw material—reminding us of our sanctification and death to sin—and uniting many individual elements into one loaf or cup—reminding us of the union we have in Christ.
The Gospels rely on the image of the Passover/Pascha in describing the sacrifice of Jesus. In the Old Testament Pascha, God judges the gods of Egypt, displaying his power over them, and rescuing his people (Exodus 12.12). In anticipation and celebration of this event, the children of Israel are given a meal that defined them and their covenant with God. The prophets continued the theme and compared the return from exile in Babylon to the Exodus. Ezra ensured the returned exiles kept the Pascha. In anticipation of Jesus, the prophet Jeremiah received a vision of a new covenant between God and his people (Jeremiah 38/31.31–34).
In light of this, Jesus gave the Eucharist to his disciples before his death telling them to keep it as the sacrifice of the New Covenant. When we celebrate the feast of the Eucharist, having properly prepared, we receive Christ and are united to him in his kingdom. We participate in the one sacrifice he offered for our salvation; this is not a historical reenactment but a remembrance, a reintegration into the work of God. Just as God rescued Israel in the Old Pascha, Christ in the New Pascha defeated sin, death, and the Devil and rescued us from their grasp. He did this in a most unexpected way, through entering death on the Cross. Death could not hold the Author of Life and Christ defeated it from within. As St John Chrysostom says in his Pascal Homily,

Hades took a body, and face to face met God! It took earth and encountered heaven! It took what it saw but crumbled before what it had not seen! “O death, where is thy sting? O hades, where is thy victory?” </blockquote>
Where and When</h2>
Having been rescued from the realm of Death and Hades, the answer to where and when the Divine Liturgy occurs is perhaps obvious. We are in the heavens—the Kingdom of God—with Christ and his ministering angels! The is revealed in the opening words “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” And how we enter the Kingdom is unveiled in the first corresponding action: the priest makes the sign of the Cross with the Gospel Book signifying that we only approach and enter the Kingdom by the Cross. Consider the icon of Extreme Humility. The title on the Cross is “The King of Glory” reflecting St Paul’s words that the demonic powers did not know wisdom of God for had they understood it, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2.6–8) Jesus is revealed as Lord and King, not because he came in a display of power and wealth, but because he came as a poor lowly servant, identifying with his people and suffering death for them and at their hands.
We are made aware of the Cross through the preaching of the Gospel, which is God’s good news of salvation. In first century Greek, the word referred to a specific type of good news. When a king, governor, or military general would be received in a city, he had his messengers proclaim his gospels or good tidings detailing his accomplishments, the enemies he defeated, and what was expected of those now hearing these tidings. The proclamation of Christ’s Gospel shows us both what Christ accomplished and how we are to respond, in essence it shows us our great salvation. Therefore, the Gospel Book is enthroned on the altar as it proclaims Christ our Saviour.
Moreover, in the dialogue before the opening of the service, the deacon says to the priest, “It is time for the Lord to act.” This is taken from Psalm 118(119).125 where the next line is, “for they have scattered your teaching.” But God makes all things beautiful in his time, setting the longing for eternity in the hearts of humans (Ecclesiastes 3.11). In his time, God is calling us back to be refashioned in him. In the Divine Liturgy we ascend from earth to the heavens and are taken from chronological time into the eternal age. Both the time and space (after a fashion of speaking) of heaven has entered into our time and space. As Father Gabriel often says, “In the Liturgy, the there becomes here and the then becomes now.”
Conclusion</h2>
So in the Liturgy we find ourselves at the throne of God like the prophet Isaiah. When we behold the throne of Christ, we see it is the Cross upon which is written “The King of Glory”. The Eucharist flows from this vision. Our union with Christ is union into his death and resurrection. While this begins in your baptism, the fuller realization takes your entire life. In as far as are united to Christ and die to ourselves we are able to receive his kingdom and be renewed after his likeness. And at our departure from this world we are able to fully sing the funeral hymn with our mourners:

O thou who of old didst create me from nothingness, and didst honor me with thine image divine, but because I transgressed thy commandments hast returned me again unto the earth from which I was taken: Bring me back to that likeness, to be reshaped in that pristine beauty. </blockquote>
This is the Holy Mystery of the Eucharist, it transforms sinners into saints, sanctifying them and granting them the inheritance of Christ, making them members of his body in the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us then live our whole lives unto God as a sacrifice, participating in his actions and bringing his peace to a fallen world.
Let us conclude with the prayer of the deacon:

O Christ, great and most holy Pascha, O Wisdom, Word and Power of God: Grant that we may more perfectly partake of thee in the never-ending day of thy Kingdom. </blockquote>

The Dormition and our Falling Asleep

2025-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

PDF version</a>
Introduction</h2>
A large part of the human experience is coming to realize we have an expiration date, and we do not know when it is. This is echoed in much of human literature, and the Psalms often meditate upon this. For example, Psalm 38 requests, “O Lord, make me know my end / and what is the measure of my days / let me know how fleeting I am!” Every time we participate in the Liturgy, we pray “that we may complete the remaining time of our life in peace and repentance…[for] a Christian ending to our life, painless, blameless, peaceful, and a good defense before the fearful judgement of Christ.” Right after this petition, we call to mind “our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary”
Our Most Blessed Lady shows us in her Dormition how to approach death. She offers us aid to die to ourselves so that our death may be a new beginning — one where we are refashioned by Christ.
The Tradition of the Dormition</h2>
Let’s start with a short account of Mary’s death, which I’ve adapted from the Dormition Matins:

That the world-saving Maiden died is no marvel,
Since, after the flesh, the world’s Maker died also.
God’s Mother liveth forever, though she died on the fifteenth.
The Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary and revealed to her that within three days she will find rest and exit this life. She returned to her home with great joy, desiring in her heart once more to see in this life, all of the Apostles of Christ. The Lord fulfilled her wish and all of the Apostles, borne by angels in the clouds, gathered at the same time at the home of St John on Zion. After seeing them, the Theotokos peacefully gave up her soul to God without any pain or physical illness. The Apostles took the coffin with her body from which an aromatic fragrance emitted and, in the company of many Christians, bore it to the Garden of Gethsemane to the sepulcher of her parents, Saints Joachim and Anna. Only the Apostle Thomas was absent, according to God’s Providence, in order that a new and all-glorious mystery of the Holy Theotokos would again be revealed. On the third day, Thomas arrived and desired to venerate the body of the Holy All-pure one. But when the Apostles opened the sepulcher, they found only the winding sheet and the body was not in the tomb. That evening, the Theotokos appeared to the apostles surrounded by a myriad of angels and said to them: “Rejoice, I will be with you always.” </blockquote>
The Theotokos, Our Great Example</h2>
In her death as in her whole life, our Lady, the Theotokos is our model for steadfast faithfulness to God. The archdiocese’s theme for the conferences this summer was “let it be to me according to your word.” While this is recorded of Mary during the Annunciation, she did not only say this then, but lived her whole life according to this principle. She is full of grace, fully cooperated with God at all times from her youth to her death. Mary uniquely heard the Word of God and kept it as we hear in the Gospel reading of the feast.
At the Lamentations we sing “In a grave they laid Thee / O my Life and my Christ / and now also the Mother of Life / a strange sight both to angels and men.” Death came to her as it does for us all, as St John of Damascus sang, “If her Fruit, whom none may comprehend, on whose account she was called a Heaven, submitted of his own will to burial as a mortal, how should she, who gave Him birth without knowing a man, refuse it.” She so identified with her son, that the feast of her Dormition strongly resonates with Paschal themes. She exemplifies how to live and die, being united to Christ. The Wisdom of Sirach says remembering our death is a great aid to living righteously. As we reflect on our death, let us remember hers and strive to imitate her, for she points us to the Way which is Jesus.
The Theotokos, Our Great Protection</h2>
But to die the death we request in the Liturgy, painless, blameless and peaceful with a good defense before the fearful judgement seat of Christ, we need to truly die the death we were baptized into. We need to learn how to die to this world, and to our sinful selves. Not once, but daily, throughout our whole lives. We must learn that the comforts and pleasures sin offers us are shallow and hollow. Instead by God’s grace we need to embrace a new way of living in the Resurrection, deep and hallowed, for this is true life and Joy. We begin this new life by taking up our cross and following Christ. We can start with simple things, praying our daily prayers, reading Scripture, showing compassion, and frequent confession. A life of self-denial is crafted in moments and not obtained in one instance.
Our Lady is our indefatigable ally in our Christian life. Because Mary fully embraced Christ, she is able to help those who struggle in this life. She is able to banish the devils that impassion us and calm the passions which bedevil us. As we just sang in the paraklesis service:

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
O entrust me not, I pray, to any human protection, O our Lady, holy one, but do thou accept the prayer of thy supplicant. Sorrow hath fettered me, and I am unable to endure and bear the demons’ darts; a shelter have I not, neither place to run, I, the wretched one; embattled from all sides am I, and no consolation have I but thee. Mistress of creation, protection and hope of faithful ones: turn not away when I pray to thee; do that which will profit me. </blockquote>
and

From thee is no one turned away ashamed and empty who doth run to thee for refuge, O pure Virgin Theotokos; but he asketh the favor and receiveth the gift from thee, unto the profit of his own request.
The transformation of the afflicted and the relief of those in sickness art thou in truth, O Virgin Theotokos; save thy people and thy flock, thou who art the peace of the embattled, and who art the calm of the storm-driven, the only protectress of those who believe. </blockquote>
We ask of our Lord and our Lady to ‘do that which will profit us’. But what truly profits us? I, like most people, just want comfort and to have an easy life. But this is not what the Epistles, the memoirs of the Apostles, tell us is beneficial. No, rather St Paul says in Romans 5:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faithfulness into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. </blockquote>
And St James, the brother of God, opens his letter with:

Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. </blockquote>
Apart from Christ, no one suffered more in this life than the Mother of God, who saw her Son nailed upon the Tree. Truly a sword pierced her heart, as St Simeon foretold. Therefore, let us ask her aid; she is close to us and invites us to seek for her as our Mother. As we struggle and suffer to participate in the works of God, we die to ourselves and come to know true joy in Christ. If we are faithful, we will find the tomb is not the end of our lives, but a transition into life. As we sing at Vespers, “O strange wonder, great and marvelous! For the fount of life is laid within a tomb; and the small tomb becomes a ladder to Heaven’s heights.”
Fr John Behr writes, “Death is no longer death in the way in which we knew of death before knowing Christ, the fate to which we are all bound from the moment we are thrown into this world, no matter how well we live our lives. Death is no longer the end, but a transition, a falling asleep to arise with Christ — a beginning.” (The Cross Stands, while the World Turns)
Conclusion</h2>
Returning to the Psalms and our services, we find solace and hope in the Lord. Psalm 38 asks,

“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in you.
Deliver me from all my transgressions.
Do not make me the scorn of the fool! </blockquote>
Our funeral hymns echo this truth:

O thou who of old didst create me from nothingness, and didst honor me with thine image divine, but because I transgressed thy commandments hast returned me again unto the earth from which I was taken: Bring me back to that likeness, to be reshaped in that pristine beauty. </blockquote>
We who are in Christ, who have lived faithfully, will find by his grace our end to be a Christian ending. As we give our whole life and death over to the Living God and are dissolved back into the earth, we find ourselves ready to be refashioned by him, just as in the beginning he fashioned Adam from the dust of the ground.

Appendix: Resources for Q&A</h2>
St Ignatius to the Romans, chapter 5</h3>
Now I begin to be a disciple. And let no one, of things visible or invisible, envy me that I should attain to Jesus Christ. Let fire and the cross; let the crowds of wild beasts; let tearings, breakings, and dislocations of bones; let cutting off of members; let shatterings of the whole body; and let all the dreadful torments of the devil come upon me: only let me attain to Jesus Christ.
Philippians 3:7–21</h3>
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. (ESV)
Oikos of the funeral service.</h3>
Thou art immortal, who hast created and fashioned man. For out of the earth shall we return again, as thou didst command when thou didst fashion me, saying unto me: Earth thou art, and unto earth shalt thou return. Whither, also all mortals wend our way, making our funeral dirge the song: Alleluia.