Follow in the Lord’s Sufferings

Monday (Holy Week). [Matt. 24:3–35] The Lord goes to a voluntary passion. We must accompany Him. This is the duty of anyone who con?fesses that by the power of Christ’s passion he has become who he is now, and of anyone who hopes to receive something which is so great and glorious, that it could not even enter one’s mind. How must one ac?company Him? Through reflection and sympathy. Follow the suffering Lord in thought; and in your reflec?

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could strike your heart and bring it to feel the sufferings which were borne by the Lord. In order to bet?ter accomplish this, you must make yourself suffer through perceptible lessening of food and sleep, and an increase in the labour of standing and kneeling. Fulfil all that the Holy Church does, and you will be a good fellow-traveller of the Lord to His sufferings.

Saint Theophan the Recluse