Orthodox Lenten And Paschal Calendar - 2013

[Apotheoun]

The old calendar continues to be observed by most of the Orthodox world, and by Eastern Catholics living in their canonical territories.  Below are the Julian Calendar (O.C.) dates for the Byzantine Lenten and Paschal Cycle for 2013. 

[Apotheoun]

THE MEANING OF THE GREAT FAST: The True Nature of Fasting

By Mother Mary and Bishop Kallistos Ware

 

 

‘We waited, and at last our expectations were fulfilled’, writes the Serbian Bishop Nikolai of Ochrid, describing the Easter service at Jerusalem. ‘When the Patriarch sang “Christ is risen”, a heavy burden fell from our souls. We felt as if we also had been raised from the dead. All at once, from all around, the same cry resounded like the noise of many waters. “Christ is risen” sang the Greeks, the Russians, the Arabs, the Serbs, the Copts, the Armenians, the Ethiopians one after another, each in his own tongue, in his own melody. . . . Coming out from the service at dawn, we began to regard everything in the light of the glory of Christ’s Resurrection, and all appeared different from what it had yesterday; everything seemed better, more expressive, more glorious. Only in the light of the Resurrection does life receive meaning.’ 1

 

This sense of resurrection joy, so vividly described by Bishop Nikolai, forms the foundation of all the worship of the Orthodox Church; it is the one and only basis for our Christian life and hope. Yet, in order for us to experience the full power of this Paschal rejoicing, each of us needs to pass through a time of preparation. ‘We waited,’ says Bishop Nikolai, ‘and at last our expectations were fulfilled.’ Without this waiting, without this expectant preparation, the deeper meaning of the Easter celebration will be lost.

 

So it is that before the festival of Easter there has developed a long preparatory season of repentance and fasting, extending in present Orthodox usage over ten weeks. First come twenty-two days (four successive Sundays) of preliminary observance; then the six weeks or forty days of the Great Fast of Lent; and finally Holy Week, Balancing the seven weeks of Lent and Holy Week, there follows after Easter a corresponding season of fifty days of thanksgiving, concluding with Pentecost.

 

Each of these seasons has its own liturgical book. For the time of preparation there is the Lenten Triodion or ‘Book of Three Odes’, the most important parts of which are here presented in English translation. For the time of thanksgiving there is the Pentekostarion, also known in Slav usage as the Festal Triodion. 2  The point of division between the two books is midnight on the evening of Holy Saturday, with Matins for Easter Sunday as the first service in the Pentekostarion. This division into two distinct volumes, made for reasons of practical convenience, should not cause us to overlook the essential unity between the Lord’s Crucifixion and His Resurrection, which together form a single, indivisible action. And just as the Crucifixion and the Resurrection are one action, so also the ‘three holy days’ (triduum sanctum) – Great Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday constitute a single liturgical observance. Indeed, the division of the Lenten Triodion and the Pentekostarion into two books did not become standard until after the eleventh century; in early manuscripts they are both contained in the same codex.

 

What do we find, then, in this book of preparation that we term the Lenten Triodion? It can most briefly be described as the book of the fast. Just as the children of Israel ate the ‘bread of affliction’ (Deut. 16: 3) in preparation for the Passover, so Christians prepare themselves for the celebration of the New Passover by observing a fast. But what is meant by this word ‘fast’ (nisteia)? Here the utmost care is needed, so as to preserve a proper balance between the outward and the inward. On the outward level fasting involves physical abstinence from food and drink, and without such exterior abstinence a full and true fast cannot be kept; yet the rules about eating and drinking must never be treated as an end in themselves, for ascetic fasting has always an inward and unseen purpose. Man is a unity of body and soul, a living creature fashioned from natures visible and invisible’ , in the words of the Triodion; 3 and our ascetic fasting should therefore involve both these natures at once. The tendency to over-emphasize external rules about food in a legalistic way, and the opposite tendency to scorn these rules as outdated and unnecessary, are both alike to be deplored as a betrayal of true Orthodoxy. In both cases the proper balance between the outward and the inward has been impaired.

 

The second tendency is doubtless the more prevalent in our own day, especially in the West. Until the fourteenth century, most Western Christians, in common with their brethren in the Orthodox East, abstained during Lent not only from meat but from animal products, such as , eggs, milk, butter and cheese. In East and West alike, the Lenten fast involved a severe physical effort. But in Western Christendom over the past five hundred years, the physical requirements of fasting have been steadily reduced, until by now they are little more than symbolic. How many, one wonders, of those who eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday are aware of the original reason for this custom to use up any remaining eggs and butter before the Lenten fast begins? Exposed as it is to Western secularism, the Orthodox world in our own time is also beginning to follow the same path of laxity.

 

One reason for this decline in fasting is surely a heretical attitude towards human nature, a false ‘spiritualism’ which rejects or ignores the body, viewing man solely in terms of his reasoning brain. As a result, many contemporary Christians have lost a true vision of man as an integral unity of the visible and the invisible; they neglect the positive role played by the body in the spiritual life, forgetting St. Paul’s affirmation: ‘Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. . . . glorify God with your body’ (I Cor. 6: 19-20). Another reason for the decline in fasting among Orthodox is the argument, commonly advanced in our times, that the traditional rules are no longer possible today. These rules presuppose, so it is urged, a closely organized, non-pluralistic Christian society, following an agricultural way of life that is now increasingly a thing of the past. There is a measure of truth in this. But it needs also to be said that fasting, as traditionally practiced in the Church, has always been difficult and has always involved hardship. Many of our contemporaries are willing to fast for reasons of health or beauty, in order to lose weight; cannot we Christians do as much for the sake of the heavenly Kingdom? Why should the self-denial gladly accepted by previous generations of Orthodox prove such an intolerable burden to their successors today? Once St. Seraphim of Sarov was asked why the miracles of grace, so abundantly manifest in the past, were no longer apparent in his own day, and to this he replied: ‘Only one thing is lacking – a firm resolve’. 4

 

 

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[Roamin Catholic]

I like cheese

[Apotheoun]

I like cheese

Me too. I just don't eat it during Great Lent.

[Apotheoun]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET5mPSLQ0Jc

 

Video excerpts from the Presanctified Liturgy for Wednesday of the First Week of Great Lent.

 

This liturgy was celebrated at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

 

The Trinity monastery was founded by St. Sergius of Radonezh in A.D. 1345.

[Apotheoun]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa5LZKTxgKY

 

Video excerpts from the Presanctified Liturgy celebrated in Christ the Savior Sobor for Friday of the First Week of Great Fast.

[Apotheoun]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Z1qa7VhF0

 

Patriarch Kirill commemorated the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste by celebrating the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom at the Church of St. Nicholas in the Khamovniki district on Saturday of the First Week of Great Lent.

[Anastasia13]

Apo, you are such a Russophile. :)

Edited March 24, 2013 by Light and Truth

[Apotheoun]

Apo, you are such a Russophile. :)

I do like the Byzantine-Slav liturgy, and the Russian Orthodox Church is very traditional in the way that it celebrates the Divine Liturgy. Plus, the Russian Church does something that very few other Churches do . . . it posts videos of its liturgical celebrations on the internet.   :smile2:

 

I wish the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Melkite Catholic Patriarchate would post liturgies on their websites, but for some reason they have chosen not to do that (at least up to this point in time).

[Apotheoun]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGm5Llw3wPc

 

Video excerpts from the service of Patriarchal Orthros celebrated in Trinity Sobor at the Serafimo-Diveyevsky Convent.

[Aloysius]

spotted this in the beginning of the latest Simpsons episode when they were panning around Springfield on Easter Sunday:

 

 

it appears to not be accurate for 2013 though lol

 

Edited March 24, 2013 by Aloysius

[Apotheoun]

The sign should say: This is our Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas!

 

:paco:

[Apotheoun]

it appears to not be accurate for 2013 though lol

It was accurate in 2012.

[Apotheoun]

Apo, you are such a Russophile. :)

As I indicated in an earlier post the Ecumenical Patriarchate rarely posts liturgical videos on its website or youtube channel (something that the Russian Orthodox Church does practically daily), but I did find the video documentary below, which deals with the return of the holy relics of St. Gregory of Nazianzus and St. John Chrysostom to the Church of Constantinople from Rome, very interesting. The video is about a half an hour long, and contains historical information while also showing portions of the liturgical services held in order to celebrate the return of the holy relics.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXskSyAJc8

Edited March 25, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

Below is a link to the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, which is a dogmatic document chanted on the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy each year:

 

Synodikon of Orthodoxy