Prayer is a great gift to man. Whoever cultivates prayer will delight in it and will sense the fragrant blossoms, the sweetness and the honey of Grace. He will be worthy union with God, of becoming one with God, of having theosis in the soul, of becoming god by Grace.
The Grace of God, that comes with the sweetest name of Jesus, softens the soul. The world could be upside down, and inside a person there is meekness, self control, peace and a spiritual state of great delight.
when thoughts and our problems choke us and we are oppressed by everything, we should say to ourselves, “Come here, let’s go on a little walk. I’ll show you around Paradise. Come and see the magnificence of God!”
Do you know what you are going to be deprived of if you don’t bring your mind to the magnificence of God?
You will be deprived of seeing the angels! You see that the holy angels have order, and they each have different garments. Some angels’ wings are gold; other angels have wings of light – some green, some blue, others are red- all different. Man’s eye can not get enough of the magnificence of the wings of the angels in Heaven!
What is going on in Heaven is unspeakable! Oh how the devil keeps us occupied with all the earthly things here, and he deprives us of the splendor of Heaven.”
The compassion of God is like the ocean, like the heavens. God does not say, “why did you sin?” but instead, “why didn’t you get up?” He forgives us for everything: it is enough that we repent as soon as we understand we have made a mistake. Are we not human? We fall. However, we must get up. Christ loves us so much!”
O Word supreme in love, who with the Father and the Spirit hast created all things visible and invisible in Thy wisdom past speech, grant that we may spend the season of the joyful Fast in profound peace.
Matins: Tuesday in Cheesefare Week
This past week of Meatfare and this present week of Cheesefare offers Orthodox Christians a wonderful occasion to clean our pantries of leftover meat, dairy and eggs as we ease into the strictness of the Fast – when, through the effort of Lent, we also clean the pantry of our hearts. During the forty day fast we forgo heavy and clogging meals, seeking instead our nourishment from lighter and more cleansing plant-based sustenance. All of this fasting fare is, of course, fortified with the Lenten services and soul-restorative calories found as the faithful graze within the beautiful spiritual pastures Lent.
Throughout these past weeks, our Mother the Church, has shepherded, taught and nudged the faithful closer and closer to the bounds of the Great Lent. It is through these weeks of preparation that the aspiration of this Great Fast has been made clear once again – that it is not the rigidity of dietary restrictions (to which we are certainly called to adhere), but rather the grace of an inner change of heart.
Genuine fasting has as an essential ingredient the relationships of family and community. Isn’t it pleasant when brothers dwell in unity… we are not saved alone. A wise retired priest told me once that being in family and community can be likened to a satchel of sharp jagged rocks. Through the jostling of life we rub each other, sometimes the wrong way, with our sharp edges. Friction happens – but through time and forgiveness, those rocky edges become smooth and mellowed. Forgiveness Vespers seeks to erode those jagged edges of relationship.
And so it is, that this Sunday, the Orthodox Christian Lenten journey is ushered in with love and forgiveness.
How appropriate that the first flavor of this awesome labor of fasting is found in a feast… the blessed taste of forgiveness – that given and received – during the Vespers of Forgiveness this very weekend. These past weeks of the humility of the Publican, the faithful perseverance of the woman at the well, the coming to his senses of the Prodigal – a return to the Father – these intend to soften hearts.
Great Lent is a walk of joy, an annual journey of the faithful body of Christ.
Does it really come as any great surprise that the faithful rejoice in this Fast with gladness? For truly, to savor even a crumb off of Lenten tables laden with fasting, reminds us that we are blessed, we are blessed, we are so very richly blessed!
In the Bible the food that man eats, the world of which he must partake in order to live, is given to him by God, and it is given as communion with God. The world as man’s food is not something “material” and limited to material functions, thus different from, and opposed to, the specifically “spiritual” functions by which man is related to God. All that exists is God’s gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man’s life communion with God.
It is divine love made food, made life for man.
God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation:
“O taste and see that the Lord is good.”
When a person has God in his soul he is careful not to speak ill of anyone, not to sadden anyone. This is the Grace of God. It stays with you, it protects you so you don’t sadden your brother, so you don’t embitter him, treat him badly, or speak unkindly to him. The Grace of God does all this. It sweetens the soul, making it delicate as air, filling it with kindness, good manners, and good behavior.
Every day, as we awake – starting from today – we need to make a new beginning to do what must be done, to do that which avid desires. Every time we fall, we will get up, we will fall again and we will get up again. Let us not lose our hope and our faith in God.
“Just as we regularly eat in order to maintain the body so the soul should constantly be filled with prayer. The one who prays feels divine blessedness and has the help of God. If we had something previous and we lost it we would turn over the whole world to find it. This is how we must pursue the name of God.”
O come ye faithful, let us work the words of God in light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, let us cast away from ourselves every unjust writing against our neighbor and not put a stumbling block as an occasion for his falling on the way.
Friday Vespers : First Week of Great lent
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