Orthodox and Western Easters are at their maximum separation this year: five weeks. Therefore, while the Westerners approach Holy Week, today is the beginning of Great Lent in the Eastern calendar. Orthodox Easter will fall on May 1st.
For Orthodox Christians Lent is associated with a rigorous regimen of fasting. According to the canons, we are to abstain from meat, fish, dairy products, wine and olive oil, as well as reducing our overall consumption of food. Fasting is not, however, the whole of our Lenten duties.
Thus, the Mother Church, exercising wise care, established the period of the Fast so that we may all remember our duties emanating from our holy Baptism, and may understand that we are by definition contenders and athletes taking part with the grace of honor in the various sacred exercises: forgiveness of one another, fasting, prayer, charity, patience in sorrow and hardships of life, perseverance in pain, and the offering of brotherly love to one another.
Fasting relieves the body from unneeded weight; it empowers prayer, humbles the sense of one’s worth, and opens up the gates of repentance. Physical “repentance” strains and exercises the body, but it also constitutes a clear demonstration of our self-knowledge that we are sinners and fallen people, and that in repentance we ask God humbly to bring us back to life. It is a confession and prayer in which the body partakes as well.
Charity sanctifies fasting and makes our prayer more agreeable to our Merciful God. Our patience in illness, pain and sorrow leads us to the footprints of the holy Martyrs and secures for us tremendous gifts and wreaths from our Lord. Our act of forgiving all who have harmed and hurt us in any way, and our love for all, seal our genuineness as Christians and render us emulators of Christ. The frequent study of the Holy Scriptures, the teaching of the Fathers and the lives of Saints give our spirit necessary food, which we need so that we fight well and until the end. [Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, “Catechetical Homily on the Occasion of Great and Holy Lent, 2005”]
Further reading: Demetrios, Archbishop of America, “Encyclical for Great and Holy Lent, 2005”
Fr. Patrick Reardon, “Orthodox Christian Lent, Prayer, Fasting, and Baptism”
blogs4God, “Clean Monday Ortho-Blog Cache”
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