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Topic of the Week –
Reflections on this Year’s Lent + Lenten Resources
It has now been a year since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, changing almost overnight nearly every aspect of our day-to-day lives in the modern world.
Some of us have lost loved ones…. The quarantine restrictions that have been in place… have also parted those of us still among the living from one another… Many have lost their livelihoods…
by no means the least among the tragedies brought about by this pandemic has been the loss suffered by many people of normal Church life: regular corporate prayer and worship, and regular reception of the Holy Mysteries of Christ.
Yet we know that absolutely nothing in this world happens that is not in accordance with the providence of our loving and all-merciful God. Though God does not send us temptations… nevertheless the temptations which He does allow to befall us are allowed precisely because through them we have the opportunity to find our salvation.
And though without question the COVID-19 pandemic has brought immense tragedy, at the same time it has also brought the most precious gift which this vain and fleeting life can possibly offer: the opportunity for repentance.
How many of us took the Church services –and even the Holy Mysteries of Christ– for granted, squandering countless opportunities to come and pray during the Divine Services, to confess our sins, and to receive the Holy Eucharist? …took for granted the people whom God placed in our lives…were lulled into complacency by the subtle yet ever-present lie that this life will go on forever, that the treasures we gather will never be taken from us, that the world we spend so much time building up will never fade away?
But for those with eyes to see, the pandemic has exposed this lie once and for all: everything earthly is fleeting, and every human life leads inexorably to the grave. But for the true Christian, such a revelation is not at all a cause for despair: on the contrary, it is a great and holy opportunity to turn our eyes instead toward Christ, toward the Kingdom of Heaven, toward the resurrection from the dead, and toward the eternal life and the unending and unspeakable good things which God promises to give to all those who ask. And all these promises are both found and fulfilled in precisely one thing, and one thing only: a holy life, a life offered freely from a heart given entirely unto Christ our God. It is to just such a life that Great Lent summons us. It is to just such a life that the current pandemic summons us…
Read the entire article Preparing for Lent in Time of Pandemic by Hieromonk Gabriel
Adult/Family:
Listen to Lent and the Pandemic Fallout (Feb. 28, 2021) by Father Barnabas Powell.Use this List of Lenten Resources to help prepare your family for Lent.
Preschool/Elementary:
Download Pascha at the Duckpond for free here or purchase here.
Join the animals at the duckpond as they journey through Great Lent towards Pascha. Along with them, we learn that Lent is not about the rules, but about allowing God to change our hearts through love and repentance.
Middle School:
“The disruptions of what we think of as normal life in our society in the last year should open our eyes to the reality of what it means to be human persons in the world as we know it…. physical health and social peace… are not our salvation and fall short of manifesting the blessedness of the Kingdom. Like every generation, our only true hope is in the resurrection of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ….
…we have the opportunity to use the recent disruptions in our lives to help us see the truth about our souls. Instead of placing our hope in any of the false gods commonly worshiped in our culture, we must remember the truth articulated by Solzhenitsyn: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being….” As those who bear the image and likeness of God, we have two options. We may become more like our Lord in holiness as we ascetically turn away from addiction to self-centered desire….Or we may remain enslaved to our passions….
We must pray, fast, and practice generosity this Lent in order to open our darkened hearts to the brilliant light of Christ so that we will be able to see the truth about where we stand before Him….”
Read the entire article We Need a Humble Lent in These Troubled Times
High School:
“…Instead of allowing the problems of our time to distract us from having a holy Lent, we must use them as reminders that Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world. If we somehow distort our faith into a pursuit of good versus evil according to any worldly standard, we will end up like the Pharisee, praying in vain to ourselves as we invent excuses to condemn others. But if we use our current challenges as reminders of our need for a Lord Who conquers even death itself, then we will grow in the humility of the tax collector who realized that he had nothing to hope for other than the mercy of God.As we prepare for the intensified prayer, fasting, and almsgiving of Lent, we must resist the temptation to think that anything we do will earn us a place among the good and above the evil. Thinking that way will make it impossible for us to gain any spiritual benefit during Lent, for our Lord died and rose up for the salvation of people whose slavery to sin and death was so profound that no amount of pious activity could ever set them free. Instead, we must use our Lenten disciplines to grow in the humility shown by the tax collector, who was aware only of his sinfulness and need for mercy.
If we approach Lent with integrity, we will have many opportunities to do so. When we pray, our minds will likely wander. When we fast, we will probably become obsessed with food and often irritable. When we give, we typically learn how much we trust in our own possessions and comfort.
We must pray, fast, and practice generosity this Lent in order to open our darkened hearts to the brilliant light of Christ so that we will be able to see the truth about where we stand before Him. If we do so, we will not pat ourselves on the back and condemn others as did the Pharisee. No, we will recognize that the mercy of the Lord is the only hope for people who are so weak before their passions. Then by the time we celebrate Pascha, we will have a new awareness of the unfathomable love of the Savior Who died and rose up in order to set us sinners free. Let us use the coming season of Lent to become as humble as the tax collector as we follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb.”
Read the entire article We Need a Humble Lent in These Troubled Times
A Message from Maria Spanos
I am passionate about our Orthodox Christian faith and seek to help others learn as much as they can about it. My purpose here is to share online resources that help strengthen our relationship with Christ and bind us closer to His Church. I believe they are invaluable in learning about our precious Orthodox Tradition, and are a great aid for teaching family members, friends and others about Orthodoxy. ~Maria
Two of my favorite quotes:
“A true Christian behaves in this life so that it may be a preparation for the future one and not only a life here below. In his actions, he does not think what will be said of him here but of what will be said there in heaven; he represents to himself that he is always in the presence of God, of the angels and all the saints, and remembers that someday they will bear witness of his thoughts, words, and deeds.” — Saint John of Kronstadt
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“Of all the holy works, the education of children is the most holy.”
— St. Theophan the Recluse
