Great Lent

we come with nothing, we leave with nothing, this is the world.

so the Lord Jesus throughout this great Lent is teaching us to let go of the world, stop being worldly, stop being materialistic, stop being physical, stop being earthly, for the Lord's sake, begin to live heaven on earth.

Begin to live heaven on earth.

And that's why, according to our liturgical calendar, of our beloved church, today is the third Sunday of the Great Lent.

We're coming, we're entering the third Sunday, the third week.

Week one and week two, The church fathers chose the readings from the gospel according to St. Matthew, beginning with chapter 4 and then going to chapter 5 and then 6 and 7, which was last week, last Sunday.

And the enemy of the soul is greed.

The enemy of the body is lust.

of the father and the son and the holy spirit one god i mean today as you notice we celebrate the feast of the cross there are two feasts of the cross uh whoever was in vespers uh now you know everything but um i'll repeat for those who weren't here so there are two feasts of the cross one is done one is in the uh during lent and one is now the main one which was the discovery of the cross is celebrated during the time of the Great Lent.

And so because it's such a significant feast, and of course Lent is also a significant time in the church, so over time there was this development of the Feast of the Cross also being commemorated in the month of Tut, which is the month that we are in now, which also lands in a time that doesn't conflict with a fasting period.

And so you'll find that this morning, if you were here for the procession of the cross, we processed around the cross in 12 different stations, which signifies that probably at some point the procession was done outside of the church.

They were his divine eros.

As my current elder, Father Simeon, says, if you live these blessed days of Great Lent and Holy Week correctly, you experience something so powerful that you will be left with spiritual reserves for the entire rest of the year.

And I believe that this is exactly how Father Iakovos lived Holy Week, and far more so than us.

But he sacrificed it all.

This is the world.

So the Lord Jesus throughout this Great Lent is teaching us to let go of the world, stop being worldly, stop being materialistic, stop being physical, stop being earthly.

For the Lord's sake, begin to live heaven on earth.

Begin to live heaven on earth.

And that's why according to our liturgical calendar of our beloved church, today is the third Sunday of the Great Lent.

We're coming, we're entering the third Sunday, the third week.

Week one and week two, the church fathers chose the readings from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, beginning with chapter four and then going to chapter five and then six and seven, which was last week, last Sunday.

And the enemy of the soul is greed.

But the person who really feels in their heart being pulled towards Christ begins to see clearly that these earthly pleasures, even if they're not overtly sinful, can be hindrance or a distraction to our focus on Christ.

For example, you may have a person who, during the Great Fast, historically has kept simple abstinence and refrained from meat on Wednesday and Friday, but during their spiritual reading finds St. Ignatius Brancheninoff warning about the effects of eating meat and its impact on prayer.

And the person who wants to serve Christ, wants to reign with Christ, isn't going to ask, is it really necessary that I give up meat during the whole great fast? Rather, he's more excited.

He's received a teaching that can allow him to grow closer to Christ.

So he cuts out meat just for the chance to draw a little bit closer to Christ.

Hang on a second.

To go back a little bit, and you and I discussed this at Great Lent during the summer.

If that was the case of saying, let him play with a chip in his shoulder, right? Then why not just do like a courtesy offer that you know he's not going to accept in the summer to begin with? But both sides acknowledged, even before we got to where we are, that they negotiated back and forth.

You could have insulted him, which to some degree he said he was.

Fasting, my beloveds, it is not for us to focus on what we eat and what we not to eat.

In this holy church, during the Great Lent, we abstain ourselves from every dairy product.

We become vegan 100%.

And not only vegan, but we also abstain from eating, drinking for whatever hours each one can afford to actually do.

Nothing of dairy product, no fish, no meat, no milk, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Purely vegan.

Some of us, when the Great Lent approaches, they start preparing themselves mentally because they were used to the normal lifestyle every day, so now we need to change our lifestyle for 40 days.

So they start focusing so much on food they lose track what fasting is all about.

He is famed for his many writings, his generous charity, and for initiating missionary work among the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

The liturgy of the pre-sanctified gifts celebrated on Wednesday and Friday evenings during Great Lent was compiled by him.

St. Gregory introduced elements of the chanting that he had heard in Constantinople into Western church chant.

The Gregorian chant, which beautified the Western churches for many years, is named for him.