The end is at hand, my soul, is at hand! But you neither care nor prepare. The time is growing short. Arise! The Judge is at the door! Like a dream, like a flower, the time of this life passes. Why do we bustle about in vain? (Fourth ode of the Canon of St. Andrew) AS WE SAW IN CHAPTER TWO, the central theme of Lent is repentance. This theme is at the heart of
CLEAN WEEK Let us joyfully begin the all-hallowed season of abstinence; and let us worship with the bright radiance of the holy commandments of Christ our God, with the brightness of love and the splendor of prayer, with the purity of holiness and the strength of good courage. So, clothed in raiment of light, let us hasten to the Holy Resurrection on the third day, which shines upon the world with the glory of eternal
Knowing the commandments of the Lord, let this be our way of life: let us feed the hungry, let us give the thirsty drink, let us clothe the naked, let us welcome strangers, let us visit those in prison and the sick. Then the Judge of all the earth will say even to us, “Come, O blessed of My Father; inherit the Kingdom prepared for you.” (Doxastikon of the Lity, Vespers of Meatfare Sunday) ANOTHER
In vain do you rejoice in not eating, O soul! For you abstain from food, but from passions you are not purified. If you have no desire for improvement, you will be despised as a lie in the eyes of God, you will be likened to evil demons who never eat! If you persevere in sin, you will perform a useless fast; therefore, remain in constant striving so as to stand before the Crucified Savior,
Open to me, O Giver of Life, the gates of repentance: for early in the morning my spirit seeks Your holy temple, bearing a temple of the body all defiled. But in Your compassion cleanse it by Your loving-kindness and Your mercy. (Troparion of Matins, Sunday of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee) IF THERE IS ONE CENTRAL THEME TO LENT, it is without doubt repentance. The season of the Triodion begins with the above
Introduction THERE IS MORE TO LENT THAN FASTING, and there is more to fasting than food. This principle lies at the heart of the Lenten Triodion, the main hymnbook of Orthodox Lent. For the Orthodox Church, Lent is without doubt the richest and most distinctive season of the ecclesiastical year. The Lenten services, the spiritual lessons of the Triodion, and the biblical readings for the season invite us to simplify our lives and to immerse
The heart of the Christian ascesis is the struggle with our unconscious motivations. If we do not recognize and confront the hidden influences of the emotional programs for happiness, the false self will adjust to any new situation in a short time and nothing is really changed. If we enter the service of the Church, the symbols of security, success, and power in the new milieu will soon become the new objects of our desires.
All of us lead lives so filled with the demands of work and family that little time is left to us to cultivate the garden of our soul. In our preoccupation with the ceaseless business of life, our spirit, if not completely forgotten, is often sadly neglected. When we do find the time to look at ourselves honestly, we soon discover that the spirit of the world has gradually and imperceptibly eaten away at our
[The “action” of the Lenten service in us] is as if we were reaching a place to which the noises and the fuss of life, of the street, of all that which usually fills our days and even nights, have no access—a place where they have no power. All that which seemed so tremendously important to us as to fill our mind, that state of anxiety which has virtually become our second nature, disappear somewhere
For many, if not for the majority of Orthodox Christians, Lent consists of a limited number of formal, predominantly negative, rules and prescriptions: abstention from certain food, dancing, perhaps movies. Such is the degree of our alienation from the real spirit of the Church that it is almost impossible for us to understand that there is “something else” in Lent—something without which all these prescriptions lose much of their meaning. This “something else” can best
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