THE COMING MONTH, 1 

EVERY YEAR in February we have the Great Feast of the Meeting of the Lord (2nd / 15th), which commemorates the bringing of the Lord into the Temple as a forty-day-old Infant and His meeting with the aged Simeon the Righteous and Anna the Prophetess, which things are recorded in the second chapter of St Luke’s Gospel. The feast is, for obvious reasons, always celebrated forty days after Christmas, and this brings it about half-way between Christmas and the Saviour’s Passion. This also is appropriate because, although the feast celebrates an event in the infancy of our Saviour, the Elder Simeon, in his words then addressed to the all-holy Virgin, foretold the Passion and the pain that it would cause her. So this feast, which firmly belongs within the Nativity cycle of services, looks forward to the saving ministry of the Lord’s death at Golgotha and His resurrection on the third day.

This year, the Holy and Great Lent also begins in February (as it often does). It starts on Monday, 21st February / 6th March, and so within February we have three of the four Sundays, preparatory to Lent: that of the Prodigal Son, of the Dread Judgement (hence our quotes above and lead article), and that of Forgiveness.

The last of these is a particularly beautiful commemoration, for we are not only called upon to start our lenten course by forgiving each other all the hurts and offences that we have caused each other, but we also commemorate the expulsion of our forebears, Adam and Eve, from Paradise. The week preceding this Sunday is kept as one in which there is no fasting at all, except a prohibition from eating meat products. This is itself an icon of the primordial Paradise, wherein there was every delight but no carnal pleasure. For their sin, - and in asking forgiveness of each other we recognise our own sins, - Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise, and then sat over against it and lamented. That lament, that period of repentance, is the course of our Lent. It also echoes the period of sacred history during which mankind lived with the effects of the fall and in which after death his only hope was a descent into Hades. Then at the end of the Fast, we hear our Saviour’s words to the Good Thief: “This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.” Paradise is re-opened, and it is a thief who first steals in. With him, we are permitted to enter again into Paradise, as the hymns declare, and this time it is a yet more beautiful Paradise than the first as is indicated by the fact that in Bright Week there is no restriction at all regarding the foods that we are permitted by our church discipline.

Of course, the discipline of abstaining from meat products in the week before Lent is also a condescension to the weakness of our nature by the Church. Rather than insisting that we suddenly start a strict lenten (essentially vegan) diet all at once, she takes us by stages: first we give up meat, and then on Forgiveness Sunday we give up dairy and all other animal products until, seven weeks later, we break the fast with our easter eggs on Pascha. Actually, among the Greeks, seafoods (other than fish) are permitted on the fastdays, although strictly the Russians forbid this. Fish itself is permitted on the two Great Feasts that fall in the lenten period, Annunciation and Palm Sunday. Besides abstenance from foods, married couples abstain from sexual relations during the fasts (which is why one cannot marry during these days), and all Christians should abstain from entertainments and luxuries, so that they may more intensely devote themselves to those things which pertain to the period of repentance: prayer, fasting, spiritual reading and particularly the practice of the virtues. The fathers of the Church in every age also emphasise that almsgiving should be paramount in our lenten practice. By this they mean not simply token almsgiving - giving a few pounds to a charity or putting a few coins in a collecting box, but conscientious giving. One’s giving should be such that one notices that the family budget is different, and that you have to re-assess your usual spending practices. In this way you are not only helping others significantly, but by having to re-assess your spending practices you are, in a very practical way, brought to understand the purpose of the fast, which is to re-assess your life. If your almsgiving is not doing that, it is in all probability not enough.