Canon of St. Andrew of Crete

Monday of the First Week

Ode 1

A Helper and a Protector has become salvation to me.
This is my God, Whom I will glorify.
God of my fathers
I will exalt Him for in glory was He glorified.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

MONDAY OF THE FIRST WEEK OF GREAT LENT

True fasting is putting away evil deeds

St. Basil the Great

The meaning of fasting consists not simply in refusing meat and dairy products, but most importantly in profound self-knowledge, repentance, and the struggle with the passions. “Let us tear every unrighteous union,” the Church hymns call to us on these days. “If we refrain from meat but devour our neighbors, this is a mockery of the fast,” says patristic wisdom. The true meaning of the fast is clearly revealed in one of the stichera: “Let us abandon bodily passions, and grow the gifts of the soul…” “The Springtime of repentance” is what people in the Church call the time of Great Lent.

THE FIRST WEEK OF GREAT LENT: ADVICE FROM PASTORS

The first week of Great Lent is a time of special prayer and strict abstinence. During the first four days—from Monday to Thursday—the Great Canon of Repentance of St. Andrew of Crete is read in nearly every Orthodox Church.

Lenten service in Sretensky Monastery. Photo by M. Rodionov, Pravoslavie.ruMany Orthodox Christians live in cities, have jobs with long hours, long commutes, and many other things to do. All this leaves its mark on our spiritual life. Some simply do not have the time or strength to participate in all the Lenten Church services. Pravoslavie.ru asked a number of pastors of the Russian Orthodox Church to say a few words about what they see as the most important thing that a Christian should do during the Forty Days Fast, to suggest something from their own experience, and to help those caught up in daily cares to determine a spiritual program—the maximum and the minimum—for these days. OrthoChristian.com has selected a few of these answers to present in English translation.

THE BEGINNING OF GREAT LENT

St. John of Shanghai

St. John of ShanghaiThe doors of repentance are opening, Great Lent is beginning. Every year Great Lent is repeated, and each time it brings us great benefit if we spend it as we should. It is a preparation for the life to come and, more immediately, a preparation for the Bright Resurrection.

Just as a stairway is built into a tall building in order to enable one, by climbing the steps, to easily reach the top, so too, the various days in the year serve as steps for our spiritual ascent.

OUTSIDE OF EDEN

Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher, characterized the human situation in terms of “being thrown into the world”. Thrown into the world, literally headfirst, we eventually crawl to our feet, and begin to ask, “Where in the world are we? What time is it?” We spend the rest of our lives trying to find out. Our answers to those questions are to be found in the season of Great Lent. Cheesefare Sunday, the last preparatory Sunday before the start of Lent, recalls Adam’s Expulsion from Paradise, “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:23-24).

Cheese Fare Sunday

Bulgakov, Handbook
On this Sunday the Holy Church focuses on the memory of the exile of our ancestral parents from paradise for disobedience and intemperance in order that through misfortune it more evidently emphasizes the importance of the presented ascetical effort for all, and in the loss of the blessedness of paradise it specifies a subject, worthy of repentance and tears. The example of the ancestral parents shows us the whole weight of sin and its fatal consequences and teaches us to avoid intemperance as the beginning and the source of sin, and to turn to repentance, as to the unique means of deliverance from the anger and judgment of God. "Adam was cast out", sings the Holy Church on this day,

Cheese Fare Week

Bulgakov, Handbook

This week received its name because the holy Church, gradually leading believers into the ascetical deeds (podvig) of the holy Lent, with the approach of Cheese Fare Week puts them on the last step of the preparatory abstinence by prohibiting the partaking of meat and permitting the partaking of cheese and eggs, in order to accustom them to avoid pleasant foods and without grief to enter the fast. In popular speech it is called butter week or shrove tide (maslianitsi) week. The holy Church calls it "the light before the journey of abstinence" and "the beginning of tenderness and repentance". Such a meaning of Cheese Fare Week is detailed and explained in its Divine services. Especially the canons and the stichera of these Divine services contain the praise of Lent and the representation of its saving fruits. During this week the Divine services enter into a closer relation with the Divine services of the Holy Forty Day Fast as the time of the latter approaches. Thus, the holy Church, highly honouring the time of the Holy Forty Day Fast as a sacred time for cleansing and immensely important for the Christian, with truly wise foresight and by sequence directs everything to lead us to "the most precious days of the Holy Forty Day Fast", cleansing us beforehand to prepare us for the fast and repentance.

Sermon on Cheese-Fare Sunday, the Remembrance of Adam’s Expulsion from Paradise

Archimandrite John (Krestiankin)

Translation by Nun Cornelia (Rees) 

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! 

The quickly flowing river of time rushes on to eternity. Only the Holy Church and God’s feasts stop this motion momentarily, as if counting the time. And our entire life, from our birth to departure from it, is reflected in this yearly cycle; it reminds us and calls to us, “Know yourself, look inside yourself, O man. Who are you, how do you live, and what awaits you ahead? You are rushing headlong with this flow of time to timelessness, to eternity.” So it is every day, every year. 

Sermon on the Last Judgement

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh 

5 March 1989 

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost

This is the Sunday of the Last Judgement. A day will come when all of us will stand before God, each person bringing his own harvest and, as the Book of Revelation tells us, every kingdom, every nation bringing its glory and also its shame. 

On that day the time for faith will be over, because faith is certainty about things unseen, and on that day, in the blinding glory of God, we will see; we will see Him as He sees us, we will know Him as He knows us. And the time for hope will be over, because hope is expectation, and on that day all things will have been fulfilled; it will be the eighth day, the last day, the last day of time, the last day of becoming; it will be the first day of eternity. 

Vespers on Sunday Evening,

with the Rite of Forgiveness from the Triodion