Great Lent

POINTS TO PONDER : GREAT LENT

  • “What truly has meaning is my offering to God of my abstaining from flesh-meats and other delightful things, in order to spend more time with Him because I love Him”. See Homily : 6 March, 2005, Sunday of the Last Judgement, How to observe Great Lent.

  • “We offer our fasting, our abstinence to the Lord because of love, so that we can spend more time with Him, and less time cooking. Let us not worry about the ‘exact’ rules of everything in Great Lent. Rather, let us worry about deepening our loving relationship with the Lord. That is the purpose of everything”. [See previous homily of 6 March, 2005.]

  • “Let us be concerned about what we are doing for our brothers and sisters, and how we can be good to them. It is about precisely those things that the Saviour is going to be asking you and me at the end … “. [See previous homily of 6 March, 2005.]

  • “It is all very well to know how one ought properly to fast in a particular season. However, if the love of Jesus Christ is not at the foundation of that, if the love of Jesus Christ, and the encounter with Jesus Christ in the heart is not at the root of all of this, then, as the Apostle Paul said in his Epistle to the Corinthians, it is ‘sounding brass or a clanging cymbal’ (1 Corinthians 13:1)". See Homily : 24 September, 2005, The Example of Saint Peter the Aleut.

  • “Some people are tempted to turn the observance of Great Lent into a sort of ‘reign of terror’, one might say, where we are afraid everyday of breaking some rule about what we can or cannot eat”. See Homily : 11 February, 2007, Sunday of the Last Judgement, True Freedom in Love.

  • “The first reason I am offering a fast or an abstinence from certain foods is that I want to be pleasing to the Lord. Offering to Him this act of not eating (when almost my whole life can otherwise be pre-occupied with eating) is an attempt to take the emphasis off ‘me’, and to put the emphasis on the Lord instead, where it should be. The not-eating, and the doing of good works for people who need help and support of one sort or another, feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, and so forth, are all expressions of the love of God”. See Homily : 24 January, 2010, Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, Fasting enables the right Focus on Life.

  • “Let us ask the Lord to renew our strength, to renew our focus, to renew our hope, to renew our love. Knowing that no man is an island, let us ask Him to enable us to be an encouragement to those around us by our love, by our hospitality, by our joy, by our peace, by our stability, by our service, and by how we glorify the All-Holy Trinity”. See Homily : 27 February, 2010, 2nd Sunday in Great Lent, Encouraging one another.

  • “We have a Sunday in Great Lent given to … the reminder of this 'Ladder'. The book itself is read in monasteries throughout every Great Lent. In regard to the ladder, we do not begin stepping onto it and making progress towards Christ, who is at the top end of the ladder, unless we begin with Christ and understand that Christ, Himself, is, in effect, the whole ladder. There is no separation between ourselves and Christ in the whole course of our progress of deepening our love in Him, of becoming more and more focussed on Him, more and more mindful of Him, more and more full of His love, more and more identified with Him, and more and more like Him. He is with us at all times". See Homily : 14 March, 2010, 4th Sunday in Great Lent, Christ, Himself, is the Ladder.

  • “Acquiring the heart, the mind, the love and life of Christ is always achieved through prayer and fasting. Giving up ourselves to Him, throwing away anything that is not of Him, allowing and asking Him always to unite us to Himself, to fill us with His love, is what constitutes this progress". [See previous homily of 14 March, 2010.]

  • “May the Lord grant you the heart to increase in love, and increase in your knowledge of your real self as a beloved child of Him, who created you”. [See previous homily of 14 March, 2010.]

  • “May the Lord increase your joy as you pass through these days, and multiply your ability to serve Him. May you be a shining and effective witness of His love …”. [See previous homily of 14 March, 2010.]