the essence of Lent (how can we try and express it) in the most concise and accessible manner?

Translated from Bulgarian

Bishop Fotii of Triaditza

Speech Before the Rite of [asking] Forgiveness

Cheese-fare Sunday

February 26 (13 OC), 2012

Firstly, beloved, let us thank the Savior for bestowing upon us this year as well to stand at the threshold of the Holy and Great Lent [fast], before the doors of repentance. Over the years there have formed and layered up habits in each one of us – habits of perceiving and spending the time of the Lenten period. Usually, these habits are very superficial and relate to the performance of our church duties – [namely] down-limiting food, more frequent confessing and Holy Communion, which is certainly needed and very essential – but it is alarming that during this period, too, our lives continue to run – in [its] essence, internally, in our mind and in our heart within that same [river-] bed it keeps running in to begin with. And our lives run, alas, mostly in the mainstream [river-bed] of multi-concerns, vanity, selfishness... Let me not continue to enumerate. Useful and utterly needful is for us – whenever we stand on the threshold of the Holy and Great Lent – to try and ponder within ourselves on what is the meaning of the fast, what is its sense, how have we spent the Lent thus far. We need to deepen and constantly update our understanding of the essence of Lent. How can we try and express it in the most concise and accessible manner? Through prayer, fasting and charity during the Great and Holy Lent we should exert more and more [new] efforts to get off our self-closed “self” as the center of our attention. We should again and again strive [make efforts] to rediscover our relationship with God and with neighbor. We should – through prayer, fasting and charity – strive to make ever greater the space in our heart that is [may be] besprinkled by our communion with God and with neighbor according to the holy evangelical God-man Christ’s commandments. Seen in this way, how really shallow our ideas, concepts of the fast are, and how semi-mechanically, basically speaking [seen in essence] casually, superficially we spend its time and fulfill our ecclesiastical duties, if we may call them so, although the term is highly incorrect, speaking [seen] in essence because word goes not of any duties [that are] outward in respect to the core of our life but of a way of thinking, [and] feeling, a way of living that brings us closer to God and to our neighbor.

How few of us associate the concept of the fast with acts of charity with opening up to our neighbor, to his needs? How few of us feel the need of God’s mercy for oneself and at the same time feel another need related with this need – to bestow charity? In whatever way and with what they can. It is quite natural for that charity to find a material expression – if this indeed is within our capacities. In case we have no capacity to actively support our neighbor in his want, what is preventing us from bestowing on him charitable thoughts and compassionate feelings? We are prevented by our complacent, self-closed in itself “me” [ego], which finds endless excuses to remain deaf and blind to the pain of our neighbor, to the want of our neighbor. 

Each one of us – to have sensed to some degree how much he needs the mercy of God – will naturally become willing to bestow mercy himself, and mercy – as a condition – most of all – of our heart, as our heart’s disposition and willing for us to bestow mercy – finds an expression –– and an easy one, simple expression in forgiveness. If we cannot forgive, if something from within prevents us from forgiving, this again is our self-glorifying, self-closed in itself “me” [ego]. Sometimes it all sinks [deep] into reasoning, analyzing what our neighbor does, of his qualities, his behavior – and in result to these reasonings, to this analysis – we convince ourselves that it is not so simple to bestow forgiveness. Led by an earthly logic we reach the conclusion it is very difficult to bestow true forgiveness, and even if we do so once in a while, we very easily revert to where we started from, i.e. go back to the prison cell of our “me” [ego]. And here is what St. Ap. Paul teaches us in his epistle to the Christians of the Asia Minor city of Colosse: “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, ...: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” (Col. 3:12-13). I.e. we should forgive one another as God-man, the Savior Lord Jesus Christ forgives the sins of each of us. We can never learn to forgive thus even in the smallest measure, unless we have at least sparks of life in Christ, with Christ. If we view both Christ and His teaching, and our neighbor – if we watch [out] for how and whence? – we watch non-free, watch as prisoners through the small window of the prison cell, called “me” [ego] – then our life will be a painful circulation; then we shall oppressed by the feeling we are treading the same place over and over again and everything would repeat as if in a painful cycle. We can be free only – and alone – in Christ. We can be free only and alone when the law of Christ becomes our breath, were this even in the smallest degree. We can be Christians in spirit and truth only when we try again and again to put a new beginning; [when] again and again we try to renew your each and every thought, feeling and desire [of ours], to renew them through the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is the core of every single word of Christ. And so, in His mercy, in His love for mankind may Christ the Lord vouchsafe us to spend with real benefit for our souls the time of the Great and Holy Lent and for us to bow also to His glorious, salvific, and life-giving Resurrection. Amen.