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Dear Friends,

What are your favourite Eastern Lenten devotions?

What would you recommend to people who would like to enter more deeply into the Eastern experience of Lent/the Great Fast?

Alex

Dear Alex:

Hands down, the Liturgy of the Presanctified. Combining the beuty of Vespers with the re-creation of the world through the reading of Genesis, Proverbs (and, later, Job), the penitential bringing of insense to the spine-tingling that happens when we sing (in a nice meaty forte):

"For herein enters the Lord of Glory"

I call it the Bethoven's 5th of services - relentless. It grabs hold of you and doesn't let go.

Yours,

hal

Sorry, unintentional double post.

Dear Alex,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

You posed an interesting question about parish activities during the Great Fast.

We observe the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on Wednesday and Friday evenings. On the six Fridays of the Great Fast the parish offers a Lenten Dinner in the parish center. Attendance at these dinners is very large and fills the hall with several hundred people in addition to those �taking out�. The result is that attendance at the Presanctified Liturgy is much higher.

We have also been holding sessions on Sundays for parishioners. The focus is adult spirituality, and usually involves the theme of that week of the Great Fast. The two deacons would prepare and lead the sessions.

We are at the early stages of building a new church. Prior to the hectic schedule of recent holidays, we had been saying the Akathist to the Mother of God on Sundays after liturgy for the intention of the new church. I would expect that to resume, possibly after the Great Fast.

May your journey through the Great Fast be one of great reflection.

Deacon El

This may sound rather minimalist, but on a *personal* devotion level, I find it rather fundamentally *ahem* "useful" to try to be sure to pray the prayer of St. Ephrem thrice daily - with prostrations where & when possible. It tends to re-adjust head and heart....


On a *public* level, oh yeah, Presanctified!!!!!!!!!!!


Sharon

Dear Father Deacon El,

A parish Lenten supper on Friday evenings - that is PURE GENIUS!

I'll bring it up at our committee meeting!!

Oh, yes, the devotions are good too . . .

Alex

''

The Canon of St Andrew is my favorite. There is nothing like th.e feeling of attending it on Clean Monday and making the prostrations

Dear Brian,

I guess the Canon of St Andrew could be said frequently during Lent, could it not?

Alex

Brian, I also love the Great Canon. We are taking Great Compline this year in the first week with portions of the Great Canon.

Yes, Alex, it most certainly could be taken in portions with Great Compline any weeknight of the Great Fast, all of it on Wed. night of the fifth week.

Or Monday night this year!

The happy coincidence of the Annunciation falling on the Fifth Thursday is a cause of much rejoicing here. When you only have a humble mission and not a full-blown church, it can be like wandering in the desert. Every church in the area is apparently in use on Wednesday's in Lent. Last year we had to pray Matins / Great Canon in a cleaned out garden shed - but enough icons and enough prayers and the most humble location can become a holy place.

-- Ed

Mark 15:15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas; and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified."

I use a light whip to represents those stripes he received on our behalf. I also sleep on the floor for as long as I can, knee in prayer long into the night and eat only one meal a day with.

THE TRIODION

Great Lent has its own liturgical book--The Lenten Triodion. It contains hymns and biblical readings for every day of the lenten season beginning with the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee and ending with Vespers of Great and Holy Saturday. The hymns of the Triodion were composed in the main part after the virtual disappearance of the Catechumenate (i.e. adult baptism and the necessity of preparing candidates for it). Their emphasis, therefore, is not on Baptism but on repentance. Unfortunately very few people today know and understand the unique beauty and depth of this lenten hymnography. The ignorance of the Triodion is the principal cause of the slow transformation of the very understanding of Lent, of its purpose and meaning-a transformation which took place little by little in Christian mentality and reduced Lent to a juridical "obligation" and a set of dietary laws. The real inspiration and challenge of Lent is all but lost today and there is no other way toward its recovery but an attentive "listening" to the hymns of the Triodion.

It is significant, for example, how often these hymns warn precisely against a "formal" and, therefore, hypocritical understanding of fasting. As early as Cheese-Fare Wednesday, we hear:

In vain do you rejoice in not eating, O soul! For you abstain from food, but from passions you are not purified. If you have no desire for improvement, you will be despised as a lie in the eyes of God, You will be likened to evil demons who never eat! If you persevere in sin, you will perform a useless fast; Therefore, remain in constant striving so as to stand before the Crucified Savior; or rather, to be crucified with the One who was crucified for your sake!

And again on Wednesday of the Fourth Week, we hear:

Those who thirst for spiritual blessings perform their good deeds in secret; not noising them abroad in markets, but cherishing and keeping them in their hearts. For He who sees all that is done in secret, will reward us for our abstinence. Let us fulfill the fast without sad faces but ceaselessly praying in the depths of our hearts: Our Father, who art in heaven, lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.

Throughout the whole Lent, the opposition of the Publican's humility to the Pharisee's boasting and self-glorification is stressed in hymns while hypocrisy is denounced. But what then is the real fast? The Triodion answers: It is, first of all, an inner purification.

. . . Let us fast, O faithful, from corrupting snares, from harmful passions,

So that we may acquire life from the Divine Cross and return with the good thief to our initial home . .

It is also a return to love, a fight against "broken life, ' against hatred, injustice, envy:

While fasting physically, brothers, Let us also fast spiritually;

Let us loose every bit of iniquity,

Let us tear up every unrighteous bond,

Let us distribute bread to the hungry and welcome to our homes those who have no roof over their heads

So that we may receive great mercy from Christ our God.

Come, O faithful,

Let us perform the works of God in the light;

Let us walk honestly as in the day.

Let us rid ourselves of unjust accusations against our neighbors so that we place no stumbling block in their way.

Let us put aside the pleasures of the flesh so that we may increase the grace of our souls.

Let us give bread to those in need.

Le us draw near in repentance to Christ and say:

O, our God! Have mercy on us.. .


As we listen to that, how far we are from the petty and Pharisaic understanding of Lent which prevails today and which views it exclusively in negative terms, as a kind of "inconvenience" which, if we voluntarily accept it and "suffer through it," will automatically credit us with "merits" and achieve our "good standing" with God. How many people have accepted the idea that Lent is the time when something, which may be good in itself, is forbidden as if God were taking pleasure in torturing us. For the authors of lenten hymns, however, Lent is exactly the opposite; it is a return to the "normal" life, to that "fasting" which Adam and Eve broke, thus introducing suffering and death into the world. Lent is greeted, therefore, as a spiritual spring, as a time of joy and light.

The lenten spring has come,

The light of repentance ....

Let us receive the announcement of Lent with joy!

For if our forefather Adam had kept the fast,

We would not have been deprived of paradise ....

The time of Lent is a time of gladness!

With radiant purity and pure love,

Filled with resplendent prayer and all good deeds,

Let us sing with joy . . .

Only those who "rejoice in the Lord," and for whom Christ and His Kingdom are the ultimate desire and joy of their existence, can joyfully accept the fight against evil and sin and partake of the final victory. This is why of all the categories of Saints, only martyrs are invoked and praised in special hymns every day in Lent. For martyrs are precisely those who preferred Christ to everything in this world including life itself, who rejoiced so much in Christ that they could say, as St. Ignatius of Antioch while dying said: "Now I begin to live . . .". They are the witnesses of the Kingdom of God because only those who have seen it and tasted of it are capable of that ultimate surrender. They are our companions, our inspiration during Lent which is our fight for the victory of the Divine, the heavenly and the eternal in us.

Breathing one hope, beholding one sight,

You, suffering martyrs, found death to be the way of life . . .


Dressed in the armor of faith,

Armed with the sign of the Cross,

You were soldiers worthy of God!

Manfully you opposed the tortures,

Crushing the Devil's deceits;

Victors you were, worthy of crowns.

Pray to Christ that He save our souls . . .

Throughout the forty days it is the Cross of Christ and His Resurrection, and the radiant joy of Pascha that constitute the supreme "term of reference" of all Lenten hymnography, a constant reminder that however narrow and difficult the way, it ultimately leads to Christ's table in His Kingdom As I said already, the expectation and foretaste of the Paschal joy permeates the entire Lent, is the real motivation of lenten effort.

Desiring to commune of the Divine Pascha

. . . Let us pursue victory over the Devil through fasting . . .

. . . We will partake of the Divine Pascha of Christ! . . .

TRIODION-the unknown and neglected book! If only we knew that is there that we could recover, make ours once more, the spirit not only of Lent alone but of Orthodoxy itself, of its Paschal vision of life, death and eternity. Fr. Thomas Hopko. The Lenten Spring.

I love Fr. Hopko's words about the Triodion. Fr. Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory referred to it as the Lenten "guidebook" for the Paschal pilgrimage.

Which reminds me, I heartily recommend Fr. Schmemann's book "Great Lent" as a wonderful spiritual read during the Great Fast, along with St. John Climacus' "Ladder of Divine Ascent".

Yes - I discovered these last year thanks to 2 very good friends - and will be using both again this year .

Wonderful reading indeed.

Anhelyna