Fools for Christ’s Sake

During Lent, we hold, on Wednesday evening and Friday morning, a communion service that we call the Presanctified Liturgy. Like every communal service, this cannot be carried out by the priest alone. He needs brethren to participate in carrying it out, among them at least, a chanter, a reader, and an altar servant. I know many priests who are now insisting on holding the service on both days, despite the difficulty of holding it on Friday in the cities. The utmost importance of the service is that it indicates that we are striving by the grace of God. The young people in our parish, the chanters, the readers and the servants, take turns attending the Friday service. Last Friday, we were in need of an altar servant. The altar servants on this day are well known, two engineers and a dentist, all of whom apologized for an emergency in their work. The chanter, who is an engineer as well, covered both roles. What is eloquent in our Antiochian Church is that the Orthodox Youth Movement (MJO) has made the educated people in the world to be “fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Corinthians 4:10)!