From the Office: Special Issue:
Great Lent
Food for the Soul: Getting the most out
of Great Lent
As promised here is the another special issue of YO-Mail. We had
done two other special issues in the past and received such a positive response
about them (see the back issues at http://www.oca.org/pages/youth/yo_mail/back-issues/index.html),
we decided to do them more often.
Because Great Lent is now upon us and many of our readers may
not be near to an Orthodox parish, or are experiencing Great Lent for the first
time, or are coming to terms with their participation in the Great Fast without
their parents', we thought it might be helpful to talk a little about this
important part of our Christian lives.
As you read through the issue, take some time to think about how
you can observe Great Lent this year.
The Great Lent consists of six weeks or forty days. It begins on
Monday after Cheese Fare Sunday and ends on Friday evening before Palm Sunday.
The Saturday of Lazarus' Resurrection, Palm Sunday and the Holy Week form a
special cycle, which is not technically part of Great Lent.
The meaning and the spirit of the Great Lent find their first
and most important expression in worship. Through these divine services we, as
the whole Church, acquire a penitential spirit, and the beautiful Lenten
services more than anything else help us to deepen our spiritual vision, and to
reconsider our life in the light of the Orthodox teaching about man.
On weekdays of Lent this prayer is read twice at the end of each
service: first, with a prostration after each of its petitions, then with one
final prostration.
The prayer is:
"O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of
sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk." (Prostration)
"But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility,
patience, and love to Thy servant." (Prostration)
"Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and not
to judge my brother; for Thou are blessed unto ages of ages."
(Prostration)
Then those saying the prayer bow twelve times saying: "O
God, cleanse me a sinner."
And the whole prayer is read again with only one prostration at
the very end.
This prayer, constantly repeated throughout the services and
added to our personal prayers each morning and evening, is the simplest and
purest expression of repentance in all its dimensions, desire for purification,
desire for improvement, desire for a real change in relations with other
people. The Lenten rules of the Orthodox Church pay great attention to
prostrations, since through them the body participates in the effort of
breaking down our pride and self-satisfaction.
The Lent begins with the Great Penitential Canon of St. Andrew
of Crete. Written in the seventh century by one of hymn writers of the Orthodox
Church, this canon is the purest expression of repentance. The author
contemplates the great history of salvation, recorded in the Old and the
New Testaments and applies its various images to the state of
his sinful soul. It is a long lamentation of a Christian who discovers again
and again and again how much God has loved him, how much He has done for him,
and how little response came from the man.
The Great Canon is called to be sung and read twice during Lent:
in four parts at Great Compline on Monday through Thursday of the first week;
and again completely at Matins on Thursday of the fifth week. It is a true
introduction to Lent. It sets its tone and spirit. It gives us - from the very
beginning - the true sense of repentance.
The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts
On weekdays of Lent (Monday through Friday) the celebration of
the Divine
Liturgy is strictly prohibited (with the possible exception of
the Feast of
the Annunciation). They are called "non-liturgical"
days. The reason for
this rule is that the Eucharist is by its very nature a festal
celebration,
the joyful commemoration of Christ's Resurrection and glorification
and His
presence among His disciples.
Twice a week, however, on Wednesdays and Fridays the Church
prescribes the evening celebration of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.
It consists of solemn Great Vespers and communion with the Holy Gifts consecrated
on the previous Sunday. These days being days of strict fasting (theoretically
no eating at all: or at a bare minimum no eating from noon until receiving
Communion) are "crowned" with the partaking of the Bread of life
"so that by Thy Word dwelling in us and walking with us, we may become.. a
temple of Thine all holy and adored spirit.." (Prayer of the Presanctified
Liturgy).
While the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Saturdays of Lent are dedicated to
the memory of the holy martyr Theodore of Tyron, and the fifth is the Saturday
of the Akathistos to the Theotokos all these Saturdays are days of
commemoration of the departed. Many parishes hold Liturgies and/or
Panikhida's/Trisagions on these Saturdays.
Each Sunday of Great Lent, although retaining its primary
emphasis on the Resurrection, has its own special theme.
1. The first Sunday is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy or the Triumph of Orthodoxy. On this day we commemorate the historical event in 843 AD when icons were restored to the Churches after being banned off and for several decades. The major emphasis of this fest is the victory of the True Faith over false teachings. Having completed the first week of our Lenten efforts, we are reminded that Christ, the perfect image (icon) of God the Father, calls us to personal victory by restoring "the image and likeness of God" in which we were first created (Genesis 1:26).
2. The second Sunday is dedicated to the memory of St. Gregory Palamas, a great mystic and theologian of the 14th century, who centered his teaching on the high calling of man to deification (the process of becoming closer and closer to God) in Christ. St. Gregory teaches that by cooperating with God Who makes all things possible we can attain eternal life, behold the "Light of Wisdom", and become "partakes of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).
3. The third Sunday is the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross. At Matins the Cross is brought in a solemn procession from the sanctuary and placed in the center of the Church, where it remains for the whole week. This rite announces the approaching of the Holy Week and Christ's Passion and reminds us that, because of the sinful state of the world, the Kingdom of God comes only through the Cross. Life follows death; resurrection follows Golgotha. We hear St. Paul's words that while to those outside the Church, the Cross is a sign of foolishness, signifying death and sorrow, the Faithful look in faith and hope beyond the suffering and see the loving victory Christ achieved through the Cross.
4. On the fourth Sunday we commemorate St. John Climacus (also known as St. John of "The Ladder"). Author of "The Ladder" one of the, if not the greatest writings on spiritual life, St. John outlined the steps essential for attaining communion with God - steps which remind us that the way to God's Kingdom is full of challenges, which engage us in spiritual warfare.
5. The fifth Sunday is dedicated to the memory of St. Mary of Egypt, whose life is a most wonderful example of repentance. St. Mary was a harlot, who came to recognize her sinfulness and gave up everything in her life to bring about a change in her life. Her life's main goal became placing God's will above her own. In her person we recall Christ's words:
"Truly I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you." (Matt 21:31). She is our example that repentance is still possible for the greatest of sinners and that no amount of sinfulness can condemn us if we are willing to repent and to merge our vision with the vision of our Lord.
It is obviously impossible for many of us to go to Church every
day. Some of us are not even remotely near an Orthodox church. We still,
however, can participate meaningfully in what the Church calls "The School
of Repentance" in order to deepen our religious conscience, to increase
and strengthen the spiritual contents of our life, and to follow the Church in
her pilgrimage towards renewal and rededication to God.
The first universal precept is that of fasting. The Orthodox
teaching concerning fasting is different from that of other beliefs. It centers
around fasting being an ascetical effort. It is the effort to subdue the
physical, the fleshly person to the spiritual one. Limitations in food are
instrumental; they are not ends in themselves. Fasting is the means to
achieving a spiritual goal: dependence on and obedience to God. For Orthodox
Christians fasting implies prayer, silence, and internal disposition of mind,
an attempt to be charitable, kind, and - in one word - spiritual.
And because of this the Orthodox doctrine of fasting excludes
the evaluation of fasting in terms of a "maximum" or
"minimum." Every one must find his/her maximum, weigh his/her
conscience with the help of his/her spiritual father, and find in it his/her
"pattern of fasting." The Typicon and canons of the Church do,
however, give certain expectations to help guide us: no meat or dairy products,
no wine or oil, total abstinence from food on certain days, etc.. Regardless of
the specifics of our fast, the main requirement is that it must be a total
effort of our total being toward God.
While, we must always pray, Great Lent is the time for an
increase in prayer and also of a deepening in our prayer. The simplest way is
to add the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian to our private morning and
evening prayers. Another way is to set aside certain times of the day for a
short prayer: this can be done "internally" - at school or work, or
in the car, etc.. The important thing here is to remember constantly that we
are in Great Lent, and to be spiritually reminded of its final goal: renewal,
penitence, and closer contact with God.
We cannot be in church daily, but we can follow the Church's
progress in Lent by reading those lessons and books that the Church reads in
her worship. A chapter of the Book of Genesis, some passages from Proverbs and
Isaiah, do not take much time in a given day and help us in understanding the
spirit of Lent and its various dimensions. It is also good to read a few psalms
- either as part of our prayers or separately. Nowhere can we find such a
concentration of true repentance, of thirst for communion with God, of desire
to permeate the whole of life with faith. Finally, an Orthodox book on the
saints, history of the Church, or Orthodox spirituality is a "must"
during Lent. It can feed us with ideas and facts that are usually absent from
our "practical" and "efficient" world.
Last, but by not means least, Great Lent should include an
effort and decision to slow down our life, to put in as much quiet, silence,
contemplation, and mediation as possible. Radio, TV, newspapers, social
gatherings - all these things, however excellent and profitable in themselves,
must be cut to a minimum. This is not because they are "bad", but
because we have something more important to do, and it is impossible to do
without a change of life, without some degree of concentration and discipline.
Lent is the time when we re-evaluate our life in the light of
our Faith. This requires a very real effort and discipline.
Christ says that way to the Kingdom of God is a narrow path. We then must try
and make our life as "narrow" (focused) as possible. When we do this
God Himself enters our soul and it is this wonderful experience that
constitutes the ultimate end of Lent: the proclamation and acceptance that
Christ is Risen!
(Taken and adapted from the booklet "Great Lent" by
Fr. Alexander Schmemann and from an article on the Sundays of the Great Fast by
V. Rev. Dimitri Oselinsky.)
Have something you want to say or something you want to ask
other readers?
Send it in! We'll put it our next issue. E-Mail us at youth@oca.org.
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