In these first days of Lent, the Church gathers us all around the analogue to sing together the Great Canon of St. Andrew the Cretan, a text rich in symbolism and dense in meaning.

From a terminological point of view, the canon, coming from the Hebrew “qaneh”, means reed, measure, generally designating the rules of faith and Christian life of the Church’s authority, those natural laws of the Church. Liturgical canons appeared in the late 7th and early 8th centuries, largely replacing the liturgical hymns called kontakion. St. Andrew the Cretan was considered the “father of the canons”, being the first compiler of canons and the originator of this new hymnographic species in the Greek Church.

The Great Canon of St Andrew Chrysostom is so called from two perspectives: firstly, because of its breadth, since it is the only canon with 250 troparia, to which other hymnographers later added certain troparia dedicated to St Andrew Chrysostom and to the Virgin Mary of Egypt, and secondly, because of its spiritual depth, as the synopsis of the synoptic synopsis written by Nichiphorus Callistus Xanthopol suggests.

It is not known for certain why St. Andrew Chrysostom wrote the Great Canon. There are, however, opinions circulated by scholars who say that this canon was written as a form in which St. Andrew Chrysostom asks forgiveness from God for an act committed in 712, when the new usurper Byzantine Emperor Philippikos Bardanes forced certain Orthodox bishops to sign a synodal act in Constantinople, by which the decisions of the Sixth Ecumenical Council would not be recognized, and among the participants of this synod would have been St. Andrew Chrysostom, who would have signed that decree. Therefore, some Western authors have asserted that this reason was the basis for the composition of the Great Canon, but it is very difficult to prove this, because the Canon makes no reference to this aspect, and on the other hand, it is not known whether the time of the writing of the Canon was during the youth of St. Andrew, or in the period of Constantinople, or after 712, when he became Archbishop of Gortina, on the island of Crete. Personally, I believe that the hymn of St. Andrew the Cretan, by the form it took and the manner of its composition, was developed in Constantinople and from there it was transmitted throughout the Christian world.

The Great Canon is a miniature Bible

The Great Canon was developed as a penitential canon, even though it is not called a penitential canon, but is called “the great” in Christian worship. Introduced into worship since the time of St. Andrew Chrysostom, the Canon is read in the first week of Lent, divided into four fragments, and in an exhaustive version only on Thursday of the fifth week of Great Lent. It was introduced into worship at these well-defined times precisely because it has a wholly penitential content, referring to and offering biblical models of those who have done wrong but have risen in repentance.

The Great Canon is a miniature Bible. By reading the Great Canon you can get to know the whole scriptural history, through the eight songs about Old Testament characters, and the last song, the ninth, with New Testament characters.

In the service of the Great Canon, the prayer “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me” appears very often, accompanied by the worshipper’s adoration with the sign of the Holy Cross and the metanoia. There is a link between prayer, the Holy Cross and the metanoia with a special significance.

The significance is primarily spiritual. On the one hand, the Cross means suffering, it means pain, it means compassion, but on the other hand, it is the Cross that takes us further, that leads us to the Resurrection. The primordial aspect or the red thread of the Great Canon must not be understood solely in the sense of repentance; repentance in the Great Canon is transformed into Resurrection, and sorrow, that “penthos” of which the Holy Fathers speak, is transformed into joy, because in Lent man does not participate only in the suffering and sufferings of the Savior, but in communion with the risen Christ. It is precisely for this reason that the sign of the Holy Cross, the symbol that unites the earthly with the divine, the earthly with the heavenly, ultimately makes accessible the message that the Great Canon conveys to us: the encounter and union with Christ. This union, however, is made first of all by participating in our sacrifice, a sacrifice accompanied by an exclamation to ask God’s mercy, to forgive our sins, and at the same time by metanoia, which can have two great meanings: that “metanoia”, that is, change of mind, change of our own nature, our thoughts and our state of sinfulness, and on the other hand, metanoia, seen as a liturgical act, prostration before God the Creator and Savior.

The Great Canon is not long, our patience is short

In an article published in “Theology and Life” it is mentioned that the central idea of the Great Canon is not the (re)revelation of man through the Mystery of Penance, but creation seen as Eucharist.

In a central way, the Liturgy and the Great Canon lead man and creation to the way of Golgotha, where through the death of Christ death itself is put to death.

In the Great Canon, we personally experience the drama of man’s search for the true face of man, which is the Savior Jesus Christ, that man who enters the way of perfection, the way of the epaktosis, through purification from sin, through enlightenment and perfection, through the crucifixion of his own sins. The Eucharist, on the other hand, is ultimately the call of us who are children of God by grace to a full freedom that can only be lived through Christ. It is for this reason that the Eucharist and the Canon have an extraordinary value at stake: man lives truly free when he experiences divine freedom, when he no longer lives a singular life in which he finds himself at the center of the world, but lets Christ be the center of his life. The Great Canon calls creation to identification and liberation from the heavy chain of sin.

At first glance, the service of the Great Canon is notable for its length and for the spiritual mourning and mournful monologue that emerge from its texts. But it is not the Great Canon that is long, it is our patience that is short. The goal of repentance reflected in the Great Canon of St. Andrew Chrysostom is not an abstract uncovering of sins, but an overcoming of them. Man, created in the image of God, must know that repentance is the right attitude, well pleasing to the Creator, the only one capable of restoring the primordial beauty of creation. Through repentance, man heals his wounded soul, repairs his alienation from God. In repentance there is no longer the feeling of guilt, which makes the soul sorrowful, but there is the deep feeling, the living and conscious reception of divine love, which descends into the depths of the human being, into the depths of soul and body, raising the creature once more to its destined place. Repentance is the begetter and bringer of joy, for its end is communion with the Giver of life. (Alexandru Prelipcean)