“Whoever you are, wherever you may be,” says the Lord of Love, “my hand is resting upon you at this very moment. By this gesture, I am letting you know that I love you and that I call you for my own. I have never ceased loving you, speaking to you, or calling you. Sometimes it was in silence and solitude. Sometimes it was there, where others were gathered in my name. 

As we prepare to begin the Great Fast, here are a few important points to remember.

First, God is love, a kind and compassionate father to us. We must never forget that because love is the reason for all spiritual effort. "God does not love us because we are good, but because he is."

As we prepare to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb in Great Lent, we must learn to see ourselves in Adam and Eve, who stripped themselves naked of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise.  They entered into an existence so tragically enslaved to the fear of death that their son Cain murdered his brother Abel.  The needless bloodshed characteristic of this world of corruption, as seen in Ukraine and so many other places today, roots in our miserable addiction to our self-centered desires. They make it very easy to take offense and seek revenge against our neighbors and very hard to forgive and love them.

The word of the day is “food.”  On Meatfare Sunday, we eliminate meat from our diets as we ramp up for the Lenten Fast.  But dairy products are allowed until next Sunday, Cheesefare Sunday.  These prescriptions of Orthodox tradition might give us the wrong impression.  We might think that the focus of fasting should be on the abstinence from certain foods. But if this is our emphasis in Lent, we should reread Paul’s words in our reading of 1 Cor. 8:8-9:2.  The apostle writes, “But food does not commend us to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse” (vs. 8).  From the Lord’s teaching, we should understand that what makes a genuine fast is not the type of food we eat or do not eat.  Today we will explore what makes a true fast and what does not.

No doubt, reaching for words where few exist, the Seventh Ecumenical Council made a careful distinction between “worship” (latria) and “honor” (proskynesis or dulia). Latria, it is said, has the character of sacrifice and is due to God alone. English, perhaps among the least precise of all languages, has used the word “worship” for both concepts. Thus, certain positions within the state are addressed as “your worship.”