In my first post I contrasted the inward-looking, penitential attitude of the Prayer of St. Ephrem with the outward-looking Rite of Forgiveness of the Sunday before Great Lent, suggesting that the first prepares for the second.  The repentance of Lent, represented by the Prayer of St. Ephrem, is meant to soften our heart to prepare for the union of all in Christ at the Resurrection, which is anticipated by the Rite of Forgiveness.

The repentance of Lent comes upon us with a vengeance during first week of Lent with the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete.  An enormous poem of 250 verses built on the nine biblical odes, the Great Canon is divided into four parts which are recited during a compline (evening) service on the first four days of Lent.  The whole thing is then recited on Thursday of the fifth week.

From first verse to last, the Great Canon exhibits unremitting repentance.  The author addresses alternately either to “my soul,” lamenting its sinfulness and encouraging repentance, or the God or Christ, pleading for forgiveness. The first two verses of Monday’s installment will suffice as examples:

Where shall I begin to lament the deeds of my wretched life?

What first-fruit shall I offer, O Christ, for my present

lamentation? But in Thy compassion grant me release from

my falls.

Come, wretched soul, with your flesh, confess to the Creator

of all. In future refrain from your former brutishness, and

offer to God tears in repentance.

The author then goes through the Bible taking all the major biblical figures as models to be either emulated or rejected.  Again from the first ode:

Having rivaled the first-created Adam by my transgression, I

realize that I am stripped naked of God and of the

everlasting kingdom and bliss through my sins.

Alas, wretched soul! Why are you like the first Eve? For you

have wickedly looked and been bitterly wounded, and you

have touched the tree and rashly tasted the forbidden food.

The place of bodily Eve has been taken for me by the Eve of

my mind in the shape of a passionate thought in the flesh,

showing me sweet things, yet ever making me taste and

swallow bitter things.

Adam was rightly exiled from Eden for not keeping Thy one

commandment, O Savior. But what shall I suffer who am

always rejecting Thy living words?

As the Canon is usually performed, each verse is punctuated with a partial or full prostration and the refrain “Have mercy on me, o God, have mercy on me.”  You can watch the Canon being performed in a parish here and, with higher production quality but in Russian and Old Church Slavonic, at a monastery here (at one of the, if not the, oldest monasteries of ancient Rus’, the Monastery of the Kievan Caves; the Canon proper begins at about 12:30 in the video).

What are we to say about the flood of repentance?  Only that as we enter into it we keep the end in view.  That, ultimately, it cannot be only about "my" soul and salvation, but must be about all of us together.