Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said “What shall I cry?”
All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; But the word of our God will stand forever. Isaiah 40: 1-8
Great Lent is a time to reflect on our mortality and fragility while realizing how much we depend on God. What can be hard to grasp is how such an immense, all-powerful God could care so much for us. How great is His love that He would send His Son to become a man and be born of a woman, to live with us, to share our suffering, and to die for our sins. He always desires to save us.
Let us pray with St Gregory:
If I were to set the Cedars of Lebanon as a scale and to put Mount Ararat on one side
and my iniquities on the other, it would not come close to balancing.
My God and Lord, let your undiminished compassion be measured for me, that I might receive your abundant grace many times greater than the magnitude of my sins,
though my wounds and injuries overpower me.
For yours is salvation, and from you is redemption, and by your right hand is restoration.
Your mercy is liberation. You give comfort. You make us forget despair.
You lift away the gloom of grief. You change the sighs of our hearts into laughter.
To you is fitting blessing with praise in heaven and on earth
from our forefathers and unto all their generations forever and ever.
Amen
Prayer 9 A, C, D
