He Who Comes Down
The First Sabbath of “The Great Lent” according to our Holy Church’s teachings is known as “Zewerede” to mean “He Who Comes Down.” Saint Jared’s hymn for this holiday states about The Holy Son Coming from the heavens as He vowed to the first mankind Adam and for the salvation of all human race. (Book of Tsome Deguua)
This week is the commemoration of the Lord Who Came Down from His mysterious in highness and everlasting holiness and be revealed on this vain world, in search of man by His unconditional love.
Saint Athanasius said, “For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father’s Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father–a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.” (On the Incarnation: Saint Athanasius page 6)
The first Sabbath “Zewerede” is also known as “Adam’s Week.” The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Came Down and Be Born from the Virgin Saint Mary, to search for Adam, raise him from his failure; take him out from hell and for the fulfillment of the prophecy. The Apostle Paul said, “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.” (Galatians 4:4)
This week is also known as “Hercules’s fast.” The naming is related with the finding of the Holy Cross that the Lord was crucified on. The King regained back the cross from the theft committed by King of Persia, Cyrus. Then, the people pronounced it to the King demanding justice. The King brought back the Cross onwards a battle with the Persian King. But after his triumph on the war, he faced another trial. The rule of Church on killing stated that “a person who killed shall fast his entire life.” Therefore, the people fasted the fasting King Hercules’s was order to fast by distributing the age of the King amongst themselves. In the commemoration of him, the first week is known as “The Fast of Hercules” and all Christians fast it. (Book of Ethiopian Synaxarium Megabit 10)
Though Zewerede is not included amongst the forty days our Lord fasted, the Church made order and included it amongst The Great Lent. We then fast it as an order but not by owns will.
May God’s mercy be upon us throughout this fast; Amen!