HCGM Church Schedules during the Great Lent
The Liturgical Cycle of the Great Lenten Period
Rev. Pavlos Koumarianos, Ph.D.
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
This week, we began the journey of Prayer of the most beautiful period of the Liturgical year: Great Lent. Thus, with prayer and fasting, the bride – the Church – began the uphill way to follow the beloved bridegroom – Christ – on the steep slope of Golgotha. This could be, in few words, the meaning and the purpose of the liturgical setting of Great Lent: through the divine services and ascetic practices, the Church taking by the hand each and every faithful guides them to an existential participation in the sacred passion of the Lord, carrying with Him the cross and sharing its weight and burden.
If the Cross of Christ was an act of absolute self-denial, an act of thorough eradication of every seed of selfishness and absolute dedication to the mystery of otherness, then, the Church guides the faithful to the same experience through the various liturgical and ascetic practices of the Lenten period. Certainly, the theme of this homily is the liturgical aspects of Lent; however, we cannot separate the liturgical from the ascetic aspects, because in the Orthodox Tradition they are so interwoven that any separation would mutilate both! Liturgy and Ascesis go together, hand in hand, in the Orthodox Tradition! Click to view the entire article
Source: goarch.org