Posted by by Fr. Steven Kostoff (dcalvert) on 2/19/2007, 3:49 pm
Dear Fathers, Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,
This Monday morning we have awakened to the first day of Great Lent. I once again hope and pray that your lenten journey is blessed and fruitful. If so, then you will be able to celebrate a truly blessed Pascha. Over the last four Sundays, based upon the appointed pre-lenten Gospel readings, I have offered some suggestions as to how we can understand and approach the season of Lent. To briefly summarize, Great Lent is a time to:
1) focus our minds and soften our hearts;
2) respond to Christ's invitation to repent;
3) develop a healthy fear of God based upon the judgment to come;
4) overcome the demands of our egos and practice mutual forgiveness
Approaches to Great Lent are seemingly inexhaustible. St. John Chrysostom writes that there are five paths to repentance: condemnation of your own sins, forgiveness of our neighbor's sins against us, prayer, almsgiving, and humility. Of the first of these, he says the following:
A first path of repentance is the condemnation of your own sins: "Be the first to admit your sins
and you will be justified." For this reason, too, the prophet wrote: "I said, I will accuse myself of
my sins to the Lord, and You forgave me the wickedness of my heart." Therefore, you too should
condemn your own sins; that will be enough reason for the Lord to forgive you, for a man who
condemns his own sins is slower to commit them again. Rouse your conscience to accuse
yourself within your own house, lest it become your accuser before the judgment of the Lord.
We should be more than a little glad that none of this is easy, for if it were it would not be worth the "effort." Something like "no pain, no gain." The "easy" Lent is about nostalgia, cultural heritage, ethnic sensibilites and traditions, etc. All of these are the basic ingredients for a kind of "soup for the soul," to be followed by the inevitable spiritual famine once the meal is over. Our goal is to break bad habits, break out from frozen and fruitless patterns of daily existence, overcome the "flesh" and its endless desires for satisfaction, move from a self-centered to a God- and neighbor-centered mode of existence, abandon empty and meaningless goals in life, and to try and become decent human beings. If serious about Great Lent, we are struggling to untrench the entrenched. To me, at least, none of that sounds very easy! Perhaps the sacred forty-day season will allow us to make some modest inroads into these tangled areas of our lives. But even the merest of beginnings can be very significant when supported and sustained by the grace of God. We also need to balance that "negative" list of goals, with one that is "positive." And we only need to turn to the Apostle Paul and what he lists as the "fruit of the Spirit" which "is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faifhfulness, gentleness, self-control." (GAL. 5:22-23) Such fruits of the Spirit promise to transform basic decency into genuine sanctity
In the baptismal service, we pray to become "newly enlisted warriors of Christ our God." Our battle, according to the Apostle Paul, is against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, agains spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." (EPH. 6:12) Now, to go into battle effectively, one must be properly armed for the conflict. Prayer, alsmsgiving and fasting are three trustworthy weapons that arm us indeed so that we can emerge "victorious." Their organic unity and inter-dependence work in us for our "training in godliness."
I believe that the few basic points of this short meditation add up to one very clear and overwhelming truth: that Great Lent is a gift from God, in and through the Church, to all of us. It has definite "rules" and a well-worked out discipline to be practiced and respected within the context of a magnificent cycle of lenten services. And, very simply, we are exhorted to embrace and stay with this discipline as an act of obedience. That is a great and at times woefully ignored Christian virtue. But Great Lent is not so much legalistic as it is liberating. It does not bind us, but frees us. It is not an end in itself, but a means to our high calling in Christ Jesus.
May your first day and the days to follow be blessed.
Tonight we serve the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete at 7:00 p.m.
Fr. Steven C. Kostoff
Christ the Savior/Holy Spirit Orthodox Church
http://www.christthesavioroca.org
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