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Great Lent

1st Sunday of Great Lent: Sunday of Orthodoxy

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This Sunday, March 21, is the 1st Sunday of Great Lent and the Sunday of Orthodoxy. On this Sunday we commemorate the restoration of the holy icons in the Church during the 9th century. Far from being a mere historical marker, this day celebrates the fact that:

in the last times you [O Lord] willed to become incarnate and so finite; for when you took on flesh you made all its properties your own. So we depict the form of your outward appearance and pay it relative respect, and so are moved to love you; and through it we receive the grace of healing, following the divine traditions of the apostles..
from Vespers for the Sunday of Orthodoxy

The Gospel reading for the Sunday of Orthodoxy is John 1:43-51.

After the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great we will celebrate this day with a procession with icons and the Rite of Orthodoxy. Covid-19 precautions will be followed.

Procession with icons on the Sunday of Orthodoxy
Procession with icons on the Sunday of Orthodoxy (2019)

Lenten Reading

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Looking for a good and meaningful book to read during this coming Lent? Look no further than our own parish library! Here are 5 books that can be checked out now:

  • First Fruits of Prayer
  • Defeating Sin
  • How to be a Sinner
  • Great Lent
  • Meditation

About these books:

How to Be a Sinner by Peter Bouteneff (SVS Press)

We call ourselves “sinners” in much of our church life. Yet the sinner identity—when done right—brings peace of mind, a clear conscience, and love for others. Addressing topics like guilt, shame, and self-care, this compassionate guide will help you reflect on your life in surrender to God’s mercy. Written by an internationally recognized professor of Orthodox theology, this book will speak to you wherever you find yourself.
How to Be a Sinner at SVS Press

The First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Journal through the Canon of St. Andrew by Frederica Mathewes-Green (Paraclete Press)

Join Frederica Mathewes-Green on a guided retreat through an ancient Orthodox text. Regardless of your denominational background, First Fruits of Prayer will bring to life the prayer experience of first millennium Christianity through immersion in this poetic hymn, an extraordinarily beautiful work that is still chanted by Christians around the world each Lent. It weaves together Old and New Testament Scriptures with prayers of hope and repentance and offers ancient ways of seeing Christ that still feel new today.
The First Fruits of Prayer at Paraclete Press

Defeating Sin: Overcoming Our Passions and Changing Forever by Fr. Joseph Huneycutt (SVS Press)

Defeating Sin will help readers better understand the disease that troubles the human soul. Fr Joseph David Huneycutt arms readers for spiritual warfare by giving them the tools to help them repent, to turn away from the passions and toward the virtues, and to make a thorough confession.
Defeating Sin: Overcoming Our Passions and Changing Forever at SVS Press

Great Lent by Fr. Alexander Schmemann (SVS Press)

This revised edition of Fr Alexander Schmemann’s Lenten classic examines the meaning of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, the Prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian, the Canon of St Andrew of Crete, and other neglected or misunderstood treasures of Lenten worship. Schmemann draws on the Church’s sacramental and liturgical tradition to suggest the meaning of “Lent in our life.” The Lenten season is meant to kindle a “bright sadness” within our hearts. Its aim is precisely the remembrance of Christ, a longing for a relationship with God that has been lost. Lent offers the time and place for recovery of this relationship. The darkness of Lent allows the flame of the Holy Spirit to burn within our hearts until we are led to the brilliance of the Resurrection.
Great Lent at SVS Press

Meditations for Great Lent: Reflections on the Triodion by Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou (Ancient Faith Publishing)

The Lenten Triodion exhorts us, “Let us observe a fast acceptable and pleasing to the Lord.” Using hymns from the Triodion and the Scripture readings appointed for the season, Meditations for Great Lent shows us how to make our fast acceptable: to fast not only from food but from sin; to fast with love and humility, as a means to an end and not an end in itself. Keep this gem of a book with you to inspire you for the Fast and to dip into for encouragement as you pursue your Lenten journey.
Meditations for Great Lent at Ancient Faith Publishing

Great Lent Epistle of the Permanent Conference of Ukrainian Orthodox Bishops Beyond the Borders of Ukraine

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Through prayer, repentance, fasting and simple daily kindness, we lead ourselves and our loved ones to a renewed faith in the power of God’s Love for us, a Love that is stronger than sin, death, and the devil.
Great Lent Epistle, 2021

As we prepare for the beginning of Great Lent and all of the benefits it affords us, please see the Lenten Epistle of the Permanent Conference of Ukrainian Orthodox Bishops Beyond the Borders of Ukraine which can be found here: uocofusa.org/files/Archpastoral/2021/Proclamation-EN.pdf

Click to access Proclamation-EN.pdf

Sunday of the Prodigal Son

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Tomorrow, February 28, is the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. This Sunday, the second of the pre-Lenten Sundays, highlights the love and mercy that God extends to those who repent. The Gospel reading (Luke 15:11-32) calls us to forgo the false home we’ve created and return to the Father. | Read more about the Sunday of the Prodigal Son here.

It also on this day that, during Matins, we begin to sing the sorrowful and poignant verses of Psalm 136, ‘By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept...’.

As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware writes in his introduction to The Lenten Triodion:

This Psalm of exile, sung by the children of Israel in their Babylonian captivity, has a special appropriateness on the Sunday of the Prodigal, when we call to mind our present exile in sin and make resolve to return home”.

The Meaning of the Great Fast

Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee & the Gate to Lent

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Today, February 21, we celebrate the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee and begin the use of the Triodion (the service book of the Orthodox Church that provides the texts for the divine services for the pre-Lenten weeks of preparation, Great Lent, and Holy Week).

‘Open unto me, O Giver of Life, the gates of repentance . . .’ sings the Church at Matins for the first of the four Sundays which prepare us for Lent. Indeed, this Sunday could be thought of as a gate: a gate through which we enter the sacred period which leads us on to Easter; a gate which opens into that atmosphere of repentance, to that life of repentance which Lent should bring to each one of us. But we must remember that the word “penitence” or “repentance” is a translation of the Greek gospel term metanoia: and that this means “change of spirit”. Much more is involved than the observance of some kind of outward repent ance. What is asked of us is radical change, renewal, conversion.

The Year of Grace of the Lord: A Scriptural and Liturgical Commentary on the Calendar of the Orthodox Church by Fr. Lev Gillet