By Fr. Dionysios Tampakis
What Triodion, what Diodion!*
The Triodion is also a spiritual Diodion, the only one which you don't pay, but rather pays you with spiritual money and spiritual fruit.
It is also a "forbidden" book, since various delinquent personalities can be found within it.
It begins with the Publican (an arch-thief and hustler of taxes in those days) and passes through the notorious prostitute of the streets (as was Mary of Egypt) and ends with an arch-mobster bandit who left no human untouched.
The Book of the Triodion begins with the Publican sighing "God be merciful with me the sinner" and ends with the "Remember me Lord in Your Kingdom" of a branded bandit on a cross.
As such it provides for inciting "forbidden" activities, since it showcases and promotes the Law of God's Love, which takes into account illegitimate and illegal behavior in a procedural human culture, where the concept of Forgiveness and Repentance are lacking.
For the code of human criminal procedure the Thief on the cross was the worst scum of a good society. For Christ and His Kingdom however he was the first and official guest of Paradise.
So let the Triodion this year be for us a Diodion of Paradise.
* Diodion is ancient Greek for "passage through", but in modern Greek it is used to describe a toll-booth of a highway.