On Bright Friday, that is, the Friday after Pascha, the Orthodox Church commemorates The Life-Giving Spring of the Most Holy Theotokos. Though I had heard of the monastery by that name, it seems I had never paid attention on Bright Friday before to get the backstory; this year I heard about it twice. The story of a miraculous pool of water and how it was rediscovered is well told here.
I also learned that women with the name Zoë might have been named for this feast of the Theotokos. Zoë means life in Greek. In his Prologue of Ohrid St. Nikolai Velimirovich relates the story of a St. Zoë and her family, who were slaves in the second century. On the same day’s entry St. Nikolai’s homily is on this pertinent scripture from Jeremiah:
Be amazed at this, O heavens, and shudder with sheer horror, says the Lord. Two evils have my people done: they have forsaken Me, the source of living waters. They have dug themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water.
From the homily:
The Source of living water is the Lord Himself: inexhaustible, copious and sweet. The cistern is every man’s work which is performed in opposition to God and God’s law, and from which men expect progress, happiness and satisfaction for their hunge
r and thirst….
….O Lord, Immortal Source of every good that the heart of man can desire and the mind of man can imagine, have mercy on us sinners and unworthy ones. With Thy powerful right hand, turn us away from our godless and vain works and quench our thirst with Thy sweet and living water.
Whether in her womb, or in a pool of healing waters, or in her example and exhortation to “Do whatever He tells you,” it is the life of the Lord Himself that His mother offers us.
This concludes my alphabetical posts. As in the first I acknowledged that Christ is Alpha and Omega, the first and last — according to the Greek alphabet — so here at “Z”, the last letter of our alphabet, we find that He is Zoë, Life itself.
We often sang the last verse of this hymn as a Doxology in The Presbyterian church in which I grew up. I didn’t know until recently that it is composed of many more stanzas of exhortation, including “Wake up!”, which one might speak to one’s soul to good effect. On those mornings when I’m slow to get moving and my thoughts start sinking precipitously, I would do well to use this song to stir up my spirit.
The Cape Violet or Nodding Violet Streptocarpella seems to have everything it needs now, in order to be happy. I have the larger, original one that Mrs. Bread gave me as a little start, and its daughter that I grew from a branch that I accidentally broke off.
Gladsome Lights 