Fasts & Feasts
February 15 - March 26
The Holy and Great Fast
February21 - 1st Sunday of the Great Fast (Sunday of Orthodoxy)
27 - All Souls Saturday
28 - 2nd Sunday of the Great Fast (Palamas)
6 - All Souls Saturday
7 - 3rd Sunday of the Great Fast (Veneration of the Cross)
13 - All Souls Saturday
14 - 4th Sunday of the Great Fast (Climacus)
18 - Canon of St. Andrew of Crete
20 - Akathistos Saturday
21 - 5th Sunday of the Great Lent (Mary of Egypt)
25 - Annunciation to the Mother of God
Great and Holy Week
28 - Palm Sunday
April4 - Pascha
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Fasts & Feasts
O Savior, save me!
O Master, I have not kept Your Commandments. By my own free choice I yielded to the passions of sensual pleasure. I have stripped myself of grace. I lay wounded and naked. I pray to You, O Savior: save me!
Matins of the Fourth Sunday of the Fast
Wisdom from the Church Fathers
| Even a pious person is not immune to spiritual sickness if he does not have a wise guide -- either a living person or a spiritual writer. This sickness is called _prelest_, or spiritual delusion, imagining oneself to be near to God and to the realm of the divine and supernatural. Even zealous ascetics in monasteries are sometimes subject to this delusion, but of course, laymen who are zealous in external struggles (podvigi) undergo it much more frequently. Surpassing their acquaintances in struggles of prayer and fasting, they imagine that they are seers of divine visions, or at least of dreams inspired by grace. In every event of their lives, they see special intentional directions from God or their guardian angel. And then they start imagining that they are God's elect, and often try to foretell the future. The Holy Fathers armed themselves against nothing so fiercely as against this sickness -- prelest. Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky |