Gleanings from Orthodox Christian Authors and the Holy Fathers

lent

2 Entries

Money! Money! Power! Honor! These are the temptations which, unfortunately, many people are unable to resist.

This is the source of all the disputes, disagreements and divisions among Christians.

This is the root of people's forgetting the "one thing needed" which is proposed to us by the true Christian faith and which consists of prayer, acts of repentance, and sincere, unhypocritical charity to our neighbors. The Holy Church always calls us to this, but especially now, during the Great Lent! What is required of us Christians is not some kind of "exalted politics," not lofty phrases and hazy philosophy, but the most humble prayer of the Publican: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!", acts of repentance, and doing good to our neighbors, which proceeds from a pure heart.

And it is for the practice of all of this that the Church has established the Great Lent! How powerfully, colorfully, graphically, and convincingly, with what ardent inspiration is all of this spoken of in the divine services of Great Lent!

No one anywhere has such a wealth of edification in this regard as do we Orthodox in our incomparable Lenten services, which, to their shame, the majority of Orthodox in our times do not know at all. Archbishop Averky of Syracuse (of Blessed Memory)

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O Almighty Lord, who hast made all created things in wisdom, and by Thine inexpressible providence and great goodness hast brought us to these all-holy days, for the purification of body and soul, for the controlling of carnal passions, and for the hope of the Resurrection; who, during the forty days didst give into the hands of Thy servant Moses, the Tablets of the Law in characters Divinely traced by Thee; Enable us also, O Good One, to fight the good fight; to accomplish the course of the Fast; to preserve inviolate the Faith; to crush under foot the heads of invisible serpents; to be accounted victors over sin; and uncondemned to attain unto and adore Thy Holy Resurrection. For blessed and glorified is Thine all-honorable and majestic Name: of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts Gregory the Great (Gregory Dialogos), Pope of Rome, 590-604

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