Byzantine, Texas

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the Great Fast

Posted on 8:45 AM by Unknown
(EP) - By the Mercy of God Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch

To the Plenitude of the Church
Grace and Peace be with you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
together with our Prayer, Blessing and Forgiveness

Beloved brothers and sisters, children in the Lord,

The holy fathers, who arranged everything in an orderly manner, instituted a period of ascetic discipline and spiritual purification for forty days prior to the great feast of the Lord’s resurrection. This ascetic rule assumes the form of a limitation on foods through fasting, but especially an abstinence from evil. The saintly hymnographer characteristically emphasizes that a genuine and favorable form of fasting for God is the estrangement from wrongdoing, control of the tongue, alienation from anger, separation from evil desires, including gossip, deceit and swearing, restoration of justice, disengagement from passionate thoughts, fervent confession, cleansing of the conscience, “which there can be nothing more difficult,” refraining from “harmful passions, from envy and hatred, indeed from every wickedness,” shunning of “the mind’s perversion,” admission of transgressions. For “the Judge is close, at the door,” and he tries hearts and minds, since “He is everywhere present and fills all things.” (Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete)

The aim of bodily ascesis is the purification of the mind and its concentration on the love of our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, as well as on the love of our fellow human beings, which constitutes the evidence that we are disciples of the One who loves them. This love must be tangible, resulting in some sacrifice for them on our part. For love without offering the necessary material and spiritual goods to those whom we love is but an empty word. This is particularly true in our age of great moral and financial crisis, when those of us who can are obliged to offer assistance to our fellow human beings with gladness, love and respect. Only then will our joy in the Lord’s resurrection be complete, when our support for the least of His brothers, our own brothers and sisters, is complete. According to the honorable words of St. Basil the Great, “the man who loves his neighbor as himself possesses no more than his neighbor…thus, as much as your wealth increases, so much does your love decrease” (Homily to the Rich, PG 31.281B)...
Complete article here.
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • Bp. Vasilije of Tuzla and Zvornik and the sex scandal
    Bishop posing with Belgrade stripper Dejan Nestorovic Belgrade ( Radio Free Europe ) - The Serbian Orthodox Church has approved the resignat...
  • The Theophany of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
    Theophany of our Lord, Troparion, Tone 1 When Thou, O Lord, wast baptized in the Jordan,/ the worship of the Trinity was made manifest;/ for...
  • “Let us at least die like Christians!”
    From the Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church's website , a rather stirring story on Christian death from the book Everyday Saints . I can ...
  • Pseudo-Cyril of Alexandria on the Eucharist and the Godhead
    From the blog Roger Pearse , a post on how a modern opinion gets conflated with a patristic source. A correspondent has written to me with a...
  • Of Copts and unicorns - μονοκερωτων
    From the blog On Coptic Nationalism, a post entitled Coptic Unicorn: It's Symbolism . The very prominent Coptologist, Alin Siciu, has re...
  • Palm Sunday in Ottowa
  • Harry Potter: an Orthodoxy story?
    ( Moscow News ) - Harry Potter, the world’s most famous child sorceror, is to become an Orthodox Christian figure, in a play written by a pr...
  • Egyptian police abet rioting Muslims vs. mourning Christians
    Cairo ( AINA ) - A media representative for Egypt's Catholic bishops echoed concerns that police sided with Islamic extremists who attac...
  • OCN responds to sacrilegious SNL skit
    ( OCN ) - The Orthodox Christian Network has asked for a public apology from NBC for airing an offensive skit which depicted Jesus as a reve...
  • UK Copts want to accept Chalcedonians by confession
    ( British Orthodox ) - The Synod of the British Orthodox Church has submitted a recommendation to the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Patr...

Categories

  • books (2)

Blog Archive

  • ▼  2013 (500)
    • ►  August (47)
    • ►  July (73)
    • ►  June (51)
    • ►  May (95)
    • ►  April (71)
    • ▼  March (63)
      • How it should be done: St. Innocent Church in Maco...
      • St. Philotheus and the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas
      • The whys on dating Pascha
      • OCMC in "urgent" need of your help
      • Met. Tikhon, OCA Council provide update on Met. Jonah
      • Yale - Lux et veritas.
      • Watertown, MA church robbed
      • Parousia when?
      • On the Assembly of Bishops Committee for Youth
      • Death of the branch theory
      • Man wants to remarry, gets govt. involved
      • Curtains and the Presanctified Liturgy
      • Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
      • Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts in Moscow
      • Iconodules the new iconoclasts?
      • Met. Tikhon at Sunday of Orthodoxy service in DC
      • Pan-Orthodox Vespers, the American experience
      • Holy Cross Monastery - a story of survival
      • President Barack Obama visits Church of the Nativity
      • Met. Tikhon welcomed at Rome’s Russian Orthodox Ch...
      • EP invites Pope to travel with him to Holy Land
      • Reading The Scriptures in an Orthodox Manner
      • Cypriot Church in the trenches with government
      • Pope of Rome to Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, et al.
      • Chalcedon 28 - controversial barbarian lands
      • Update on internecine discord in Ukraine
      • Orientale Lumen Conferences scheduled
      • Orthodox delegations in Rome for papal inauguratio...
      • The UK: canary in the coal mine.
      • A video on the bright line of division
      • Kristen Stewart explains St. Patrick's Day
      • Ten Lenten tips
      • Who’s Who of The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete
      • Notes from OCA synodal spring session
      • Want some Lenten resources?
      • School of Liturgical Chant launched in Chicago
      • Ecumenical Patriarch to attend papal inaugural mass
      • Is rejection of same-sex relationships Orthodox?
      • Antioch and Jerusalem at odds over Qatar
      • The Two Chairs of Peter
      • On papal fervor
      • Pithless Thoughts responds to OCN's SNL appeal
      • OCN responds to sacrilegious SNL skit
      • First Maronite elector ever for Pope of Rome
      • "How Medicine is Destroying Pastoral Care"
      • Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the Great Fast
      • Oriental Orthodox respond to John X of Antioch's o...
      • The Copts in Jerusalem
      • Want to see how un-Christlike you are? Try raising...
      • The Last Judgement
      • Jurisdictional webmasters meet at St. Vlad's
      • On Orthodoxy and a new Pope of Rome
      • Things Jesus never said
      • OCF: Making a difference in New Orleans
      • Moscow Times: The Interior of a Church
      • This video makes me uncomfortable
      • On the Ancient of Days icon
      • “Let us at least die like Christians!”
      • St. Emmelia Orthodox Homeschooling Conference
      • Flowers continue to bloom in Arab Spring
      • Resurrection of our Lord Chapel in Dachau Camp
      • "A Journey of Faith" - Growing the Church in Kenya
      • Pastor and laity - "Blurred Lines"
    • ►  February (56)
    • ►  January (44)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile