Posted on 03/06/2006 8:30:38 AM PST by x5452
06 March 2006 Lent sets in for the Orthodox believers
Moscow, March 6, Interfax - On Monday the Orthodox begin to observe Lent. It will last seven weeks and end before Easter, which falls on April 23 this year.
The Lent tradition originated in the early, still undivided Christian Church. On the first two days and the last day of Lent, the Church recommends moderation in food, avoiding meat, eggs and milk products. Expectant mothers, the sick and those engaged in hard work can keep a less strict fast.
However, the food restriction is not the only Lenten demand. As great preacher St. John Chrysostom wrote, ‘true fasting is the removal of evil, curbing of tongue, laydown of anger and taming of lusts. Let not only your lips, but also your sight and hearing and feet and hands and all the members of your body fast’.
On the eve of Lent, the Sunday of Forgiveness, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia blessed all the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church for the coming Lent. After vespers with the rite of forgiveness he led at the Church of Christ the Saviour, he called upon the faithful to reconcile with one another ‘so that you may begin the feat of fasting without a qualm’.
The patriarch himself asked forgiveness from all those whom he ‘might have offended voluntarily or involuntarily’.
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