Today on Great and Holy Tuesday we serve the final service (by anticipation) of Bridegroom Matins for Holy Wednesday. In addition to other beautiful hymns such as Behold the Bridegroom (see Sunday’s post) this service includes the one known as an exapostelarion and entitled Thy Bridal Chamber.
This is the text (in the translation used in our parish reader’s packets distributed by email):
Thy Bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, And I have no wedding garment that I may enter, O Giver of light, enlighten The vesture of my soul, and save me.
This, along with the Gospel readings and other hymns, has a strongly eschatological element. We have completed the Forty Days of fasting to prepare ourselves to encounter the crucified and risen Lord of our salvation, yet now especially, perhaps, we realize how unprepared we are. We “have no wedding garment.” This is an allusion, of course, to the gospel reading of the wedding banquet to which the Master calls all, but at which one careless guest appears without a proper garment (Matt. 22:8-14). That garment is repentance.
May our Lord who is merciful grant to us even now at the eleventh hour that garment of humility, gratitude, love, and awe that comes through repentance!