Great Lent: A School of Repentance Part 1

Great Lent: A School of Repentance.

by Alexander Schmemann.

GREAT LENT

THE TIME OF REPENTANCE

"Brethren, while fasting bodily, let us also fast spiritually; let us loosen every bond of injustice; let us destroy the strong fetters of violence; let us tear up every unjust writing; let us give bread to the hungry and let us welcome the homeless poor to our houses, that from Christ our G.o.d we may receive the great mercy."

(=Stichira, Wednesday of the First Week=)

We are approaching again the Great Lent--the time of repentance, the time of our reconciliation with G.o.d. Repentance is the beginning and also the condition of a truly Christian life. "Repent!" was the first word of Christ when He began to preach (Matt. 4:17). But =what is repentance=? In the daily rush of our life we have no time to think about it, we simply take it for granted that we must go to confession, receive absolution, and then forget all about it until next year. Yet there must be a reason why our Church has set apart seven weeks as a special time of repentance and calls each Orthodox Christian to a special spiritual effort. And this reason must obviously concern =me=, =my= life, =my= faith, =my= members.h.i.+p in the Church. I must try to understand it, to follow as much as I can the teachings of my Church, be Orthodox not only by name, but in life itself. What then is repentance?

Great Lent gives the answer to this question. It is indeed a =school of repentance=, to which each Christian must go every year in order to refresh the understanding of his faith. It is a wonderful pilgrimage to the very sources of Orthodoxy, a rediscovery of a truly Orthodox way of life. Let us try to make these forty days as meaningful, as deep, and as rich, as possible.

In this brief explanation of Lent we shall deal with:

--the preparation for Great Lent,

--the Lenten wors.h.i.+p of the Orthodox Church,

--the Orthodox teaching on fasting, prayer and other spiritual efforts prescribed during Lent.

SUNDAYS OF PREPARATION

Three weeks before Lent proper begins we enter into a period of =pre-Lenten= preparation. It is a constant feature of the Orthodox tradition of wors.h.i.+p that every major liturgical event--(Christmas, Easter, Lent)--is announced and prepared in advance. Knowing our lack of concentration, the "worldliness" of our life, the Church calls our attention to the seriousness of the approaching event, invites us to meditate on its significance. Thus, before we can =practice= Lent, we are given its meaning.

This preparation includes four consecutive Sundays preceding Lent, each one of them dedicated to some fundamental aspect of repentance.

1. Humility

(Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee)

On the eve of this day (i.e. on Sat.u.r.day at Vespers) the liturgical book of the Lenten season--the =Triodion= makes its first appearance and texts from it are added to the usual liturgical material of the weekly Resurrection service. They develop the first major theme of repentance: =humility=.

The Gospel lesson (Luke 18:10-14) teaches us that humility is the condition of repentance. The parable of the Publican and Pharisee pictures a man who is always pleased with himself and who thinks that he complies with all the requirements of religion. He is proud of himself and self-a.s.sured. In reality, however, he has falsified the meaning of religion. He has reduced it to external observations and he measures his piety by the amount of money he gives to the temple. Religion is for him a source of self-admiration. The Publican humbles himself and humility justifies him before G.o.d.

"Let us avoid the high-flown speech of the Pharisee"--says the Kontakion of the day--"and learn the majesty of the Publican's humble words."

2. Return to the Father

(Sunday of the Prodigal Son)

The Gospel reading of this day (Luke 15:11-32) gives us the second theme of Lent and repentance: that of the =return to G.o.d=. It is not enough to acknowledge sins and to confess them. Repentance remains fruitless without the desire and decision to change life, to go back to G.o.d, to begin the movement of ascension and purification. We must realize that we have lost our spiritual beauty and purity and we must want to recover them: "... I shall return to the compa.s.sionate Father crying with tears: Receive me as one of Thy servants." At Matins we sing Psalm 137: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.... If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning." The Christian remembers and knows that he has lost communion with G.o.d, the peace and the joy of His Kingdom, the purity of the new life. For he was baptized, introduced into the Body of Christ, but his sins have driven him away from G.o.d. Repentance, therefore, is this desire to return to G.o.d, a movement of love and trust: "I have wickedly strayed away from Thy Fatherly glory, and wasted the riches Thou gavest me among sinners. Then do I raise the prodigal's cry unto Thee, O Bountiful Father, I have sinned against Thee: take me back as a penitent, and make me as one of thy hired servants...."

(=Kontakion of the day=)

3. The Last Judgment

(Meat Fare Sunday)

On Meat Fare Sat.u.r.day (preceding this Sunday) the Church prescribes the universal commemoration of all her departed members. The Church is unity and love in Christ. We all depend on each other, belong to each other, are united by the love of Christ. Our repentance, therefore, would not be complete without an act of love towards all those who have departed this life before us. Repentance is primarily the recovery of the spirit of love: "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). Liturgically this commemoration includes Vespers on Friday, Matins and Divine Liturgy on Sat.u.r.day.

The Sunday Gospel (Matthew 25:31-46) reminds us of the third theme of repentance: preparation for Divine Judgment. A Christian lives under Christ's judgment. This means that we must refer our actions, att.i.tudes, judgments to Christ, to His presence in the world, that we must see Christ in our fellow men. For "inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it to Me...." The parable of the Last Judgment gives us the "terms of reference" for our self-evaluation as Christians.

On the week following Meat Fare Sunday a limited =fasting= is prescribed.

We must train and prepare ourselves for the great effort of Lent. On Wednesday and Friday the Divine Liturgy is not served and the type of wors.h.i.+p is already Lenten. On Cheese-Fare Sat.u.r.day the Church commemorates all men and women who were "illumined through fasting"--the Holy Ascetics and Fosters. They are the patterns we must follow, our guides in the difficult art of fasting and repentance.

4. Forgiveness

(Cheese Fare Sunday)

This is the last day before Lent. Its liturgy develops three themes: (a) "=the expulsion of Adam from the paradise of bliss.=" Man was created for paradise--for knowledge of G.o.d and communion with Him. His sins have deprived him of this blessed life and his existence on earth is an exile. Christ, the G.o.d-man, opens the doors of Paradise to every one who follows Him and the Church is our guide to the heavenly fatherland.

(b) Our fast must not be hypocritical, a show off. We must "appear not unto men to fast, but unto our Father who is in secret" (cf. Sunday lesson from Matthew: 6:14-21).

(c) The condition for such real fasting is that we =forgive each other= as G.o.d forgives us--"If you forgive men their trespa.s.ses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you...."

On the evening of this day, at Vespers, Lent is inaugurated with the Great Prokimenon: "Turn not away Thy face from Thy servant, for I am in trouble; hear me speedily. Attend to my soul and deliver it." At the end of the service the faithful ask forgiveness from one another and the Church begins her pilgrimage towards the joyful and glorious day of Easter.

LENTEN WORs.h.i.+P

The Great Lent consists of six weeks or forty days. It begins on Monday after Cheese Fare Sunday and ends on Friday evening before Palm Sunday.

The Sat.u.r.day of Lazarus' Resurrection, Palm Sunday and the Holy Week form a special liturgical cycle with which we shall deal in a special pamphlet.[1]

The meaning and the spirit of the Great Lent find their first and most important expression in wors.h.i.+p. Not only individuals but the whole Church acquires a penitential spirit, and the beautiful Lenten services more than anything else help us to deepen our spiritual vision, to reconsider our life in the light of the Orthodox teaching about man.

We shall briefly a.n.a.lyze the most important of the liturgical particularities of Lent.

1. The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete

The Lent begins with the Great Penitential Canon of St. Andrew of Crete.

Written in the seventh century by one of the greatest hymn-writers of the Orthodox Church, this canon is the purest expression of repentance.

The author contemplates the great history of salvation, recorded in the Old and the New Testaments and applies its various images to the state of his sinful soul. It is a long, pathetic lamentation of a Christian who discovers again and again how much G.o.d has loved him, how much He has done for him and how little response came from the man: