Preparing for Great Lent

31 January 2012
What is the Great Lent all about anyway? And why should we care? Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in his book, "Great Lent" Journey to Pascha, leads us through reflection, his own experience and the wisdom of the Church Fathers, Scripture and Tradition into an understanding of why we need to make this journey every year.
"Repentance, we are told, is the beginning and the condition of a truly Christian life. Christ's first word when he began to preach was: "Repent!" (Matt. 4:17)."
The Greek word for "repent" means literally to "turn back or turn around in another direction." Another way to look at this would be to say, to get on the right track, to go in the right direction.
What though is the right direction and how can we come to know it and then as importantly to seek and find it?
Schmemann writes: "Above all, Lent is a spiritual journey and its destination is Easter, "the Feast of Feasts." What we celebrate he says is," the new life, which almost two thousand years ago shone forth from the grave, has been given to us who believe in Christ. And it was given to us on the day of our Baptism, in which, as St. Paul says, we "were buried with Christ . . . unto death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead we also may walk in the newness of life." (Rom. 6:4). Thus on Easter we celebrate Christ's Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us."