The Sixth Week of Great Lent is often called “silent” and “deaf,” because the Service of the Salutations (the Akathist Hymn) is no longer celebrated and, at the same time, special emphasis is placed on silence as preparation for Holy Week. And yet, this “quiet” week may have a stronger voice than all the other weeks of Lent. It shakes us to the core, posing questions that leave no room for superficial answers: what is our mindset within the Body of Christ? Why are we here? What are we seeking?
On the Fifth Sunday, in the Gospel reading, the two disciples, James and John, ask for places of honor: “Grant us that we may sit, one at Your right hand and one at Your left, in Your glory” (Mk 10:37). This request is not simply a momentary “mistake.” It reveals a lasting human tendency: to turn our relationship with Christ into a space for self-affirmation. To approach God not in order to be saved from our ego, but to secure it religiously and clothe it with prestige.
In the prophetic readings of the week, Isaiah denounces hypocritical piety —piety that appears “religious” yet does not produce works of love. It is a piety exhausted in fasting, forms, prayers, and outward decorum, while at the same time it preserves injustice, hardness of heart, contempt for the weak, and self-centeredness. This is the tragic delusion of self-justification: a person believes he stands “correct” because he fulfills certain religious duties, while his heart remains unrepentant. Repentance, however, is not an ornament of the spiritual life; it is its center.
For this reason, the truth that “the Church is the place of the repentant” is not a simple religious slogan. It is a fundamental ecclesiological claim. The Church is not a club of morally successful people, nor a place for the self-display of the “righteous.” It is a spiritual hospital, a place of healing, where a person learns to say, “I have sinned,” to stop excusing himself, and to entrust himself to the mercy of God. If the purpose of the Church ceases to be the healing of the heart, then everything else—even sacred things—can be turned into instruments of self-affirmation.
Here, too, arise the pathologies that so often wound the ecclesial community. First: self-justification. One may encounter it among both laity and clergy, among those who have a voice and a role, but also among those who silently cultivate the thought that “we are the correct ones” and the others are “the problematic ones.” Self-justification dries up love, hardens one’s gaze, and turns the Church into a courtroom, even though Christ founded her as a place of salvation.
Second: hypocritical piety. This is the phenomenon in which spiritual life ceases to be transfiguration and becomes an image: a respectable surface that hides anger, judgmentalism, greed, and ambition. Then a person does not go to church in order to meet the Crucified One, but to “confirm” his religious identity. In this way, the Gospel is lost as an invitation to participate in the life of the Cross and Resurrection.
Third: a transactional piety with God. “I will fast so that God will give me what I want.” “I will make a vow so that I may reach my goal.” Faith becomes an exchange, and God is turned into a means. In this stance, prayer ceases to be an opening of the heart and becomes a technique. Repentance, however, is an exit from my “I want” and an entry into “Thy will be done.”
Fourth, and especially painful: the ambition for “primacy” within ecclesial life, even the desire of some clergy to climb to high positions and “lord it over” others. The Gospel is clear: “those who are considered rulers… lord it over them… but it shall not be so among you” (Mk 10:42–43). The priesthood is not a ladder of power but a cruciform ministry. When the logic of domination enters, people forget that the First is the One who washed feet, who received a slap, who remained silent before the injustice He suffered, and who ascended the wood of condemnation.
And here lies the great answer to the question, “How easy is it to lose our purpose?” It is very easy, because ecclesial life—when cut off from repentance—can become a refuge for egoism. A person can hide his lack of repentance behind rules, roles, offices, traditions, even behind words of “Orthodoxy.” But the Church does not exist to offer us an alibi; she exists to give birth to us anew.
Christ persists in showing us His humility, His love, His Passion, and His Cross as the only path that leads to the true life of the Resurrection. If we follow Him, the Church truly becomes a community of the repentant, where no one admires himself and no one despairs: all learn to say, “Lord, have mercy,” with a humble mind. And then the preaching of repentance is not distorted into moralism or into authoritarian ambition, but becomes good news: that God saves the one who acknowledges his wound and receives healing.
+ Metropolitan Nektarios of Hong Kong and South East Asia
