IN NOVEMBER, we have two principal festivals and the beginning of the the Nativity Fast in preparation for Christmas. The two festivals are, of course, that of the Synaxis of the Bodiless Powers ( 8th /21st) and that of the Entry into the Temple of the All-holy Theotokos (21st November / 4th December). The latter is counted among the Twelve Great Feasts of the Church Year, and we have dedicated our main article to it in this issue.

Although it is not numbered among the Twelve, the feast of the Angels is especially important for each and every Orthodox Christian because, among the myriad hosts of the heavenly intelligences that we celebrate on this day, there is included our own Guardian Angel. We call upon him in our morning and evening prayers to protect us, guide us, instruct us and keep us from all harm. We should therefore make every effort to celebrate this festival as a thanksgiving for his ministry towards us and for his aid in the matter of our salvation. Because our life has become centred on this world and its concerns, we are apt to forget the ministry of the Angels in the working out of our salvation. We often fall back into a kind of Protestant spiritual world view, relying on faith (often rather weak and frail) and an attempt at moral rectitude. We fail to see our salvation being being worked out within and through the whole Church. Spiritually we become like computer geeks, who “live” solely through their internet connections, but never have personal relations with anyone and flee them or even find excuses to avoid them. Such solitary occupations have ever been foreign to an Orthodox understanding of our life in the Church, even for those who, through a special calling, lived as solitaries and hermits. Though they were outwardly alone, their solitude was not some kind of religious geekishness, but rather an attempt to join more fully in the life of the heavenly Church and an expression of their love for the fellow members of the Church here on earth. Few of us will ever reach their perfections, and indeed few of us even try, but we can and should lift up our eyes and behold the greater compass of the Church. This feast gives us a splendid opportunity to do so.

The Nativity Fast lasts forty days and so begins annually on 15th / 28th November. This is the day after the feast of the Holy Apostle Philip and so the fast is often popularly referred to as St Philip’s Fast. Because this fast falls in the Winter and they appreciate that we need nourishment, the Fathers have appointed that the dietary regulations are not as strict as those of Great Lent, as you will see in studying the calendar insert this month and next. However, we should as ever join food-fasting to trying to increase and deepen our prayer life, more regular attendance at church, spiritual reading to nourish our minds, abstaining from worldly pleasures, marital relations and unnecessary travelling, so that we make a space in our lives to draw closer to God.