The Struggle of Great Lent – Ι

Elder Ephraim of Arizona 

At this time we’re entering the great spiritual arena of the blessed Great Lent. Holy and Great Lent is a time of compunction, for repentance, for tears, for a change in ourselves, for a new stage in the spiritual life. Like an affectionate mother caring for her children, us Christians, the Church has designated this time of Lent as dedicated to the struggle, in order to help its children fight harder, to purify themselves, draw closer to God and to counted worthy of celebrating the great day of the radiant Resurrection. 

Great Lent, the Welcome Time

Metropolitan of New Smyrna, Symeon 

“Behold the welcome time, 

Behold the time of repentance; 

Let us reject the works of darkness 

and take up the weapons of light”. 

Apostichon at Vespers on the Sunday of Cheese-Fare. 

Time has always had a special significance for people, but from a Christian point of view it has acquired incomparably greater value. Time is now sacred. It’s been sanctified, because our Lord entered it through His incarnation and lived within it as God and Human. Christ’s coming into the world makes it clear that the “fullness of time has come” (Gal. 4, 4), that “the time has been fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark, 1, 5). 

PREPARING FOR LENT

Lent is preceded by preparation of the week (Sunday), and Week.Order of services and of the preparation week of Lent is set out in the Lenten Triodion. It begins with the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee and ends on Holy Saturday, covering the 70-day period.

Precede Lent - Lent - Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, the week and the Week of the Prodigal Son, week, Week of Meat-fare (meat otpustnaya) Week and Week of Cheesefare (raw-otpustnaya, cheese, carnival).

HOMILY SIX - TO ENCOURAGE FASTING

by Saint Gregory Palamas 

INCLUDING A BRIEF WORD ON THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD

THE INVISIBLE SERPENT, the originator of evil, is inventive, versatile and extremely skillful in contriving wickedness. He has means to hinder our good purposes and actions as soon as they begin. But if he fails to prevent them initially, he sets up other devices by which he can render them useless once they are underway. If he is unable to make them worthless when they are half way to completion, he knows other tricks and ways to invalidate them even once they are finished, and makes them a source not of reward but of harm to all but the most careful. First of all he points out how laborious and difficult to accomplish virtue is. In this way he fills us with laziness and despair, as though we were attempting difficult and impossible things and were therefore incapable of putting our intentions into action. Then he engenders disbelief in the rewards which God has promised to those who struggle.