OCA Chancery
Syosset, New York
To the Venerable Hierarchs, Reverend Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America
Dearly beloved,
I received the image of God and did not know how to keep it. God put on my flesh to save this image and to make the flesh immortal. He offers us a new covenant much more wonderful than the first (Saint Gregory the Theologian).
These words of Saint Gregory the Theologian express in a succinct manner the very purpose of Great Lent. All of us are aware that we are entering a period of preparation culminating in the celebration of the Lord’s great and holy Pascha. Historically, these days leading to the Resurrection also marked the final stage in preparing catechumens for their baptism.
If we are to understand and experience Great Lent as a time of preparation—then we must also accept it as a time of transition—a time of change and reorientation. Too often this change and reorientation are reduced to liturgical and dietary changes that do not have a deep or lasting impact on our spiritual growth and development as Orthodox Christians. For this reason the words of Saint Gregory, taken from one of his Paschal orations, provide a solid basis for what the Church calls us to enter. These words instruct us to approach the coming weeks of fasting as a time for rediscovering the true self—the self that is made in God’s image and likeness. God has created us in His image and we have rebelliously covered it with sin. God has given us life with Himself and we have chosen another path—the path that has led to human alienation and death.
As a time of transition and reorientation, Great Lent points to the crucified and resurrected Christ who, as the New Adam, shows us the undistorted and immortal image of God. But to possess this undistorted image requires each of us to undergo a personal death that frees us from the bondage of sin and mortality. Thus, our attendance at the additional services and our fasting efforts, intensified during Great Lent, cannot be reduced to external actions. The ascetical life we are now called to make our own must stem from a willing and unrestrained response of love to the Lord.
In asking for your forgiveness I call you to join me on the path of renewal as pilgrims who have been called by Christ Jesus into His new and eternal covenant which is more glorious and wonderful than the first.
With love in Christ,
+ THEODOSIUS
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada