Icons are reflections of men who have been regenerated into eternity; they aid us in uncovering and developing the beauty of holiness.
In other words, they help men attain likeness to God, following the basic principle that
“we become like that which we habitually contemplate”
(Constantine Cavarnos, Orthodox Iconography.)

Have you ever thought that everything that touches you touches Me as well? For that which touches you touches the apple of My eye.
You are dear in my eyes, precious, and I have loved you; therefore it is a particular pleasure for Me to educate you.
When temptations arise against you, and the enemy comes like a river, I want you to know–This was from Me.
Your weakness needs My strength, and your safety comes from giving Me the opportunity to fight for you. If you find yourself in difficult circumstances, among people who do not understand you, who do not take what you like into consideration, who alienate you–This was from Me.
I am God, Who arranges circumstances.
It was no accident that you find yourself in the place where you are; this is the place I have appointed for you.
Did you not ask that I teach you humility? Well, then, look: I have placed you in precisely that place, in that school, where this lesson is learned.
Your surroundings and those who live with you are only fulfilling My will...

If you are undertaking anything, before asking any other adviser, ask the advice of faith.
Appeal in the words of the Apostle: Lord, what wilt Thou have me do? (Acts 9:6).
Is what I would undertake pleasing to Thee, Lord?
If it is pleasing, bless it; if not, do not let me do what is displeasing to Thee.
And then listen to what the Lord tells you in your conscience, in your reason, in the counsels of pious and wise people and, having begun the course that you select, pray in your heart:
"O Lord, make haste to help me" (Ps. 69:1).

Here is the image for us:
In each of us Lazarus is lying dead, vanquished, and surrounded by our often hopeless grieving. But the Gospel reading just before the days of the Passion has this message: "Do not fear, I am the Resurrection and the Life. The Lord's friend that is in you, whom you consider irrevocably dead, can rise again at a single word of Mine, and indeed will rise again."
So let us enter the days of the Passion with the hope, with the certainty that we are going towards the transition from the temporary to the eternal, from death to life, from our defeat to the victory of God.
Let us enter these days of the Passion with trepidation at the knowledge of how much the Lord loves us and at what cost He gives us life.
Let us enter with hope and light in our hearts, and joy in the coming Resurrection.

Accustom yourself to pray your own prayers. For instance: it is the essence of evening prayer to thank God for the day and everything that happened, both pleasant and unpleasant; to ask forgiveness for all wrongs committed, promising to improve during the next day; and to pray that God preserve you during sleep. Express all this to God from your mind and from your whole heart.

Having completed His preaching on the earth, our Lord Jesus Christ made His triumphant entry into the royal city of Jerusalem, into the city where the true God was worshipped, a city in most ways Godly.
The Lord made this entry as the King and victor, in order to finish His service by a decisive exploit: destroying death by death; removing the curse from the human race by taking this curse upon Himself.
He made His entry into the royal city on the colt, whereon yet never man sat (Lk. 19:30), in order to restore to mankind the royal dignity which our forefather had wasted; to restore this dignity by ascending the cross.
The unbroken colt was tamed beneath the wondrous Rider.

Colt - it is an image of every person who is led by irrational desires, deprived of spiritual freedom, attached to the passions and habits of fleshly life.
This means that the person who has left his sinful life is led to the Gospels, and is clothed as if in apostolic vestments, in the most detailed and refined knowledge of Christ and His commandments.
Then the Lord seats Himself upon him by spiritually appearing to him and spiritually abiding in him, as it was His good will to promise: He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him (Jn. 14:21).
And my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him (Jn. 14:23).
The Lord’s coming is accompanied by peace surpassing words and comprehension; peace that is full of grace, and worthy of the one Who grants it—the Lord. This peace is not to be compared with the natural rest of fallen man, who may feel rest and pleasure from fleshly delights, and who may consider his own insensibility, his own eternal death, to be rest.
The Lord is seated upon the natural qualities of the person who has submitted to Him and has assimilated His all-holy teachings; and He leads that person into the spiritual city of God, the city of peace—into the Jerusalem created by God, and not by man.

The victories of evil over good are illusory and fleeting, while the victories of good, and its very existence in the world, which is already its victory, constitute the highest reality of the universe and the common wealth of humanity.

Love for a person saves both the one being saved and the one saving.
But to spiritually save others, one must first save oneself.
If a person is drowning themselves, they cannot spiritually save those who are drowning.

Faith isn't something you can prove; it's something you show through the living essence of truth.
You can only persuade others by the sheer conviction of your own personal happiness in it, by the infectiousness of your divine delight in faith.
This is the sole means of its transmission.

The Holy Church says:
Go and learn from both the Pharisee and the tax collector. From the Pharisee, learn his actions, but do not be proud at all, for the action itself is insignificant and does not save.
Yet, remember that the tax collector is not yet saved, but is merely more justified in God's eyes than the Pharisee adorned with virtue.
Only if we proceed in this way can we expect our Great Lent to be fruitful.

Nowhere is the Most Holy Virgin Mary so blessed as in the Divine services for the feast of the Annunciation. Here she is glorified as the author of our salvation. “Today is the beginning of our salvation,” says the troparion of this feast. But the same troparion also shows us the reason why the Virgin Mary is so honored by the Church: “The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin as Gabriel announces the coming of grace.” Therefore, the Virgin Mary is glorified as the initiator of our salvation, in that she was vouchsafed to be the Mother of the Son of God and gave us the opportunity to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit to make us sons of God by grace and to inherit Divine glory here, and especially in the future age.

We call Her the Queen of Heaven, for She is the Mother of our King, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We call her the Lady because she has great power to protect us from the devil.

And through the Most Holy Theotokos, whose greatest feast we celebrate today, may we all be saved from the devil and all his servants. Amen.

Kontakion, Tone 4

Though I have transgressed, O Good One,
more than the harlot,
I have never offered Thee a flood of tears.
but, praying in silence,
I fall down before Thee,
with love embracing Thy most pure feet,
that Thou as Master mayest grant me remission of sins.
And I cry to Thee, O Saviour:
Deliver me from the defilement of my evil deeds.

The commandments are a yoke, and sins are also a burden, ─ but having compared them both, the soul feels that the yoke of the commandments is light as a feather while the burden of sins is heavy as a mountain.
So let us fearlessly take on His easy yoke and His light burden.
Thus, and only thus, we could “find rest unto our souls” [Mt. 11:29].

The highest nobility, the Divine, is manifested in love, and therefore Holy Thursday is the day when the love of God was manifested, when the Lord, anticipating the creation of the Church, indicated by what it would live, and how it would be created, from all over the whole world by faith in Jesus Christ, in that precisely He is the herald of the will of God, the Heavenly Father, and He wants us to unite with Him in the Holy Eucharist and to serve one another with love, carrying out that mission that He was the first on earth to carry out. Anyone, born on earth through the waters of Hoy Baptism, can become a Christian and walk the same path as Christ. This is the meaning of the Christian life. And anyone can choose it. It doesn’t require a broad mind, or education, or money, or glory, or any kind of riches—nothing is necessary for it. Only one thing is necessary—faith. If there is faith in Jesus Christ, then it is possible for everyone. And the Lord is ready to help every one of us on this path.

The sun emits warmth equally upon all things. But some things melt from its heat, like wax, while others harden, like clay. So too, God equally benefits all and sends down the warmth of His goodness, but some people are softened by His goodness and repent, while others become hardened and perish as, for example, the Pharaoh hardened his heart and perished, – such things are done in the world even now. O man! Do you despise the riches of God's goodness, forbearance, and patience, not understanding that God's goodness leads you to repentance (Rom. 2:4)?
Beware, man, lest you harden your heart by God's goodness, but rather be moved to repentance and consider God's patience for your salvation.

What would you now, brethren, from the ministers of the word? The Word Himself is no more!
The Word, co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit, born for our salvation, the Author of every quick and powerful (Heb. 4:12) word, is silent, dead, buried, and sealed up. The more plainly and convincingly “to show man the path of life” (Ps. 16:11) this very Word came down from heaven and put on flesh; but men would not hearken unto the Word, they tear His flesh, and lo, “He is cut off out of the land of the living” (Is. 53:8). Who then shall now give unto us the word of life and salvation?

Let us hasten to confess the mystery of the Word which shall disarm His persecutors, and restore Him to souls ready to receive Him. The Word of God is not bound by death. As a word from the lips of man dies not entirely away at the moment its sound ceases, but rather gathers new strength, and passing through the senses, penetrates the minds and hearts of the hearers; so also the Hypostatical Word of God, the Son of God, in His saving incarnation, whilst dying in the flesh, “fills all things” (Eph 4:10) with His Spirit and might. Thus when Christ waxeth faint and becometh silent on the cross, then is it that heaven and earth raise their voice unto Him, and the dead preach the resurrection of the Crucified, and the very stones cry out. “And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose” (Lk 23:45; Mt 27:51-52).
Christians, the incarnate Word keepeth silence only in order to speak unto us with greater power and effect; withdraws, that He may the more inwardly “dwell among us” (Jn 1:14); dies, that He may grant us His inheritance.

The greatness of the tomb of Christ is not diminished, brethren, by our ingratitude: The Lord remains the master of Heaven and Earth even with all our betrayals of Him. But what will happen to us if we, having lost the grace of our Baptism, don’t return to it through repentance?
Instead of interceding for us, will not the all-sanctifying Blood of the Covenant cry out against us and ask for vengeance?
Thus, let us hasten while there is yet time, to be baptized again by the tears of the true repentance; let us hasten to cleanse ourselves with the Blood of the Covenant, until it ceases to flow from the Divine wounds. He calls all day, all our lives, stretching out His hands to us from the Cross; but we pay no heed and we don’t come: There will come a time when some will call out to Him, but He won’t hear those who didn’t listen to Him. May we not be found among them!

Amen.

Today a tomb holds Him who holds the creation in the hollow of His hand; a stone covers Him who covered the heavens with glory.
Life sleeps and hell trembles, and Adam is set free from his bonds. Glory to Thy dispensation, whereby Thou hast accomplished all things, granting us an eternal Sabbath, Thy most holy Resurrection from the dead.

We cannot but see with the eyes of faith that death is nothing but a dream.
Dying is terrible for him who has lost the feeling of faith, hope, and love from his soul. But, by God’s grace, we all believe, love, and trust.
For us, therefore, this tomb, these mortal veils, and this burial shroud are bright and divinely-revealing symbols and images, as the Apostle Paul says, of the trust that, when the earthly tabernacle of our body is dissolved, we will receive there, in the heavens, a different tabernacle, a house not made with hands and eternal (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:1).

Thus, the Savior commands us from the tomb to live without the fear of death, to progress in the Christian virtues, to labor in good deeds, and to attain perfection.
Increase your inner happiness and fear neither old age nor death, for the Lord’s will is present with us in all things: evil, no matter how strong it might be, is weaker than good. As unpleasant as death may be, its influence is limited; beyond its limits, beyond the border of the grave, we have a heavenly fatherland; there will be activity and life after our hearts; this will be given us by Him in Whose honor we are now triumphantly singing funeral hymns of life and resurrection, for He said: he who believes shall have eternal life, for I am the resurrection and the life.

Troparion of the Feast

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!

Kontakion of the Feast (Tone 8).

Thou didst descend into the tomb, O Immortal, Thou didst destroy the power of death. In victory didst Thou arise, O Christ God, proclaiming Rejoice to the myrrh bearing women, granting peace to Thy apostles, and bestowing resurrection on the fallen.
Hymn of the Resurrection.

Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ, let us worship the Holy Lord Jesus, the only sinless One. We venerate Thy Cross, O Christ, and we praise and glorify Thy holy Resurrection; for Thou art our God, and we know no other than Thee; we call on Thy name.

Come, all you faithful, let us venerate Christ's holy Resurrection, For behold, through the Cross joy has come into all the world. Let us ever bless the Lord, praising His Resurrection. for by enduring the Cross for us, He has destroyed death by death.