1. I feel great joy and as if I am being overwhelmed by a great, warm wave of hope. The beauty sometimes seems so exquisite that I long to stop the service right then and there and just think for a little while, and try to hold onto this wonderful feeling of clarity and purpose. Sometimes, even after the moment passes, there is a residual feeling of great joy that follows me intangibly for a long while.

2. Immediately, a strong desire wells up within me to shout out the truth I just felt, even though I cannot think of any words to shout! I have learned something beautiful, and profound, and want to share it with everyone, like the best news I have every heard. Sometimes I wish that there could be some way that our minds could be linked, and I could share the full meaning of this moment with my loved ones.

3. Then I feel great sadness, because I am unable to share this moment. I do not have the competence needed to put my feelings into words (although I have tried on many occasions). I also feel a deep sadness that so few heard this good news. The vast majority of Orthodox churches serve only Vespers and a significant portion have no Saturday services, and the majority of Orthodox Christians attend evening services sporadically or rarely. A great event just occurred, and hardly anybody noticed it! A great tree fell in the forest, and its mighty sound was not heard by those who were not there to witness it.

4. Throughout these distracting sad feelings, I feel great hope. It only takes one verse, one moment to change a person permanently. We do not know when the moment will come. Perhaps I will be changed by this moment. Perhaps I will, with some power not my own, be able to transmit something of this change to my loved ones, my flock. Certainly God will not abandon us, and there will be other moments, for myself and my loved ones, in which the prayer we hear will strengthen our souls, making them more steadfast, more zealous, more compunctionate and resolute, and less proud and sleepy.

I am also convinced that although one moment can change a person (like Mary of Egypt, for example), the usual course for us sleepy ones is hear thousands of prayers  in order for a few to seep though in a special way, and these moments prepare us for life-changing moments. We need quantity because our prayer is of low quality! I fret because too many of my loved ones, in the course of their lives, will miss thousands upon thousands of prayers that I feel they need.

There is always a chance that I will be counted as an Evangelist, merely by serving the service, because someone heard something that permanently changed them for the better. This is my prayer for all of my flock at every service.

How does one put into words that which cannot be spoken?

This sticheron seems to me to brilliantly illumine the intimate connection between our weak flesh, and the uncreated Godhead. God became man! We cannot meditate upon this enough.

Tonight, my flesh feels much stronger because I know that Jesus Christ completely assumed the same flesh I have, and changed it. I live with the certain knowledge that indeed, “harsh is death”, and I feel this “sting of death” daily as I witness my flesh doing things I don’t want it to do, and unable to do things I want it to do. I feel profound weakness, but this will be overcome, because of Christ’s complete subsuming of my flesh and His subsequent complete uniting of Himself to death, then destroying it, making a way for my flesh to defeat death.