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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
Dear brothers and sisters! Long-awaited Lent has commenced. For some it is a time of joy: “Finally, my soul will rest from the demands of the flesh and its dominance.” For others it is an incomprehensible period: “Let’s see what happens.” And for others it is a period of fear: “How can I bear it? My bodily strength is limited!” The Church calls this season the spiritual spring. Just as nature comes back to life in spring and all its vital forces that were hidden during the winter come into bloom, so a person comes back to life during fasting, revives in repentance and springs up to life with God.
The Church as a mother which loves its children protects us from the attacks of sinful desires through fasting. Our body becomes moderate, and the desires of the flesh are suppressed. The Spirit is exalted and put first in a person’s life. Spiritual requests become of paramount importance. But in addition to protecting a person from the lusts of the flesh that are at war with him, the power of prayer that strengthens him on the path of fasting is given to him. That is why the 
Great Canon
“>Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is sung in all churches on the first four days of Lent.
At the very beginning of Lent, as the initial “tone” that defines the entire Lenten “melody”, we find this Penitential Canon. It is divided into four parts and is read at Great Compline, in the evening, on the first four days of Lent. It can be described as a penitential lament that reveals to us the boundlessness and the whole abyss of sin that shakes the soul with despair, repentance and hope. With exceptional skill, St. Andrew intertwines great Biblical images—Adam and Eve, Paradise and the Fall, Patriarch Noah and the Flood, King David, the Promised Land, and above all Christ and the Church—with the confession of sins and repentance. The events of sacred history are revealed as those of my own life, the works of God in the past as matters concerning myself and my salvation, and the tragedy of sin and betrayal as my personal tragedy. My life is shown to me as part of that great, all-encompassing struggle between God and the powers of darkness that rise up against Him.
The Canon begins with a deeply personal cry: “Where shall I begin to lament the deeds of my wretched life? How shall I begin, O Christ, to relieve my present tears?”
So, over the course of four evenings, the nine odes of the Great Canon speak over and over again about the spiritual history of the world, which at the same time is the history of my soul. The words of the Canon call me to account, for they speak of events and deeds of the past, the meaning and power of which are eternal, because every human soul, unique and inimitable, goes through the same path of trials, faces the same choice and meets the same supreme and the most important reality. The examples from the Holy Scriptures are not just “allegories”, as many people mistakenly presume, which is why they believe that the Great Canon is overloaded with names and incidents that are unrelated to them. Such people ask: “Why talk about Cain and Abel, Solomon and David, when it would be easier to say, ‘I have sinned’?” They fail to understand that the very concept of the word “sin” in the Biblical and Christian traditions has a depth and richness that “modern man” is simply unable to fathom, and that the confession of his sins is profoundly different from true Christian repentance.
Of course, to “hear” the Great Canon genuinely knowledge of the Bible and the ability to assimilate the meaning of Biblical images are required. If nowadays so many people find it boring and irrelevant to our lives, it is because their faith is not fed by the source of the Holy Scriptures, which for the Church Fathers was precisely the source of their faith. We must learn again to perceive the world as it is revealed to us in the Bible and learn to live in this Biblical world.
And there is no better way to learn this than through the church services, which not only transmit Biblical teaching to us, but also reveal to us the Biblical way of life.
That is why the Lenten path begins with a return to the “starting point”: to the Creation of the world, the Fall, the Redemption, to the world where everything speaks about God, everything reflects Divine glory, where all events that happen are directly related to God, where a person finds the real dimensions of his life, and, having found them, he repents.
The Canon of St. Andrew of Crete speaks about the fragility and instability of our life, in which we do not have time for anything, and about the ethereal nature of time. “The end is drawing near, my soul, is drawing near! But you neither care nor prepare. The time is growing short…”, time passes “like a dream”, life is ebbing: “The mind is wounded, the body is feeble, the spirit is sick, the word has lost its power.”
The Desert Fathers write about one of the worst sins—of forgetting God, not understanding oneself and the mystery of others, and the truth of beings and things. It is like a waking dream, filled with futile daydreaming, in which the soul “is scattered” and creates a double of itself. This double-mindedness is described in the Epistle of the Apostle James: A double minded man is unstable in all his ways (Jm. 1:8), falls apart, and becomes a victim of the demon. “I have wasted the substance of my soul in riotous living, and I am barren of the virtues of holiness.”
Therefore, it is very important for the awakening of the soul to attend the services of Great Compline in the first four days of Lent in order to break away from that earthly wisdom that closes us off from God and His grace. The famous Archimandrite John (Krestiankin)
“>Elder John (Krestiankin) recalled his life in a Soviet camp and said that never after that had he had such fervent prayer as at that time. Every day was like his last, for he didn’t know what was going to happen to him. This attitude uplifted his soul, and he gave himself up entirely to the will of God. Do we really need to wait for such terrible conditions to wake up?
Let’s try to understand the meaning of everything that the Mother Church gives us in services as a priceless gift. This will help us attune ourselves properly to the penitential mood that is pleasing to God. Let’s try not to miss this opportunity—the opportunity to repent to our Creator—and He, as a Father Who loves His children, will heal our souls wounded severely by sins.
Amen.
Source: Orthodox Christianity
