OCA Chancery
Syosset, New York
March, 2000
OCA Chancery
Syosset, New York
Dearly beloved,
One of the greatest gifts we have received is the witness of the saints who, as Saint Basil the Great writes, “in every generation were well-pleasing to God.” Among the various “categories” of saints—martyrs, confessors, evangelists, hierarchs, and monastics—we find countless ascetics, men and women who put aside the cares of this world in their desire for union and communion with the Living God. The holy ascetics, who valued the spirit and gift of repentance, pursued a life of prayer and fasting, of simplicity and austerity. And, in reading the lives of the holy ascetics, one is easily struck by the harsh conditions they often endured in pursuing the Kingdom of God.
The life of the ascetics was hardly a life of gloom, or deprivation, or harshness for its own sake. To the contrary, they sought, above all, the Light of Christ, the “Light Who is never overcome by darkness,” as we sing on Holy Pascha. They rejoiced in their heartfelt desire to repent, to bring about that personal, interior change which leads to freedom from those things which so often enslave the human spirit. They rejoiced in discovering the glory of our humanity, tainted by sin but renewed, transfigured and deified by the risen Christ. Above all, they rejoiced in the new life abundantly poured forth by Jesus Christ, Who was chosen by our heavenly Father “before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him” and through Whom He “destined us in love to be His sons… according to the purpose of His will” (Eph 1:4-5).
As a prelude to our celebration of the Holy Pascha, the glorious victory of Our Lord Jesus Christ over death and corruption, the season of Great Lent invites us to enter the ascetic pursuit with joy. Far from being a time of gloomy, tedious, or harsh routine, Great Lent is a time of joyous repentance, a time of change, a time of “bright sadness.” It is a call to control those things that we often allow to control us. It is an opportunity to “flee from the pride of the Pharisee,” to appropriate the tears of the Publican as our own, and ultimately to run with the Apostles to the empty tomb.
The ascetic practices we embrace during Great Lent—prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and personal reflection—help liberate us from those things that stand in the way of receiving the new life so freely offered us by Our Savior. But such practices are not an end in themselves; rather, they are, as Saint John Climacus reminds us, like rungs on the ladder leading us to the Kingdom of God. While we pray, we do so “in secret,” fleeing the pride and arrogance of the Pharisees. While we fast from food, we do so in order to fast from our sins and our passions. While we give alms, we do so in response to the image and presence of Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters, shunning the accolades of others. True asceticism, while intimately connected to prayer and fasting, involves the discovery of the spirit behind such practices, lest they become ends in themselves and destroy the fruits which true repentance strives to nurture.br>
As we enter the ascetic arena of Great Lent—that bright place of repentance—we are again given the opportunity to put off all that has taken our humanity away from the fountain of salvation and eternal life. Here we are joined to the Lord Himself Who, by His three-day Pascha, makes possible our personal Exodus from death to life and from earth to heaven.
Let us begin our Lenten journey in joy, committing ourselves to heartfelt repentance and personal change. And, above all, let us truly “commend ourselves and each other and all our life unto Christ our God.”
With love in Christ,
+ THEODOSIUS
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada