This liturgical time of Great Lent offered by the Church invites us to a true pilgrimage towards Easter, a grandiose “Feast of Feasts” where are so joyfully celebrated “the putting to death of death, the destruction of hell and the beginning of a new and eternal life…”

This march is today, as yesterday, of burning relevance! To all the questions that haunt the anguished depths of humanity, the Easter event brings the ultimate and definitive answer: CHRIST IS RISEN!

Yes, through Christ and in the risen Christ, it is no longer ignorance, unconsciousness, violence, illness that have the last word but the invincible Force of a given Life that swallows up all forms of death! Through the advent of glorious matter signified by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, all created matter is already potentially saved…

Such is the faith of the Church manifested by her innumerable saints! And while, through our baptism, we are all sown with the prodigious force of this founding experience, why are we still so far from its actualization?

The drama of our life can be summed up in a single word: forgetfulness! We continue to live without referring our lives to the new Life that Christ revealed and communicated to us. In fact, we live as if He had never come! Through this forgetfulness, our life becomes “old,” petty, dark, disoriented, senseless…

This is the only true sin, the sin of all sins, the unfathomable sadness and tragedy of our Christianity, which is so only in name…

If we become aware of this, then we can understand what the reality of Easter covers and why it requires and presupposes Great Lent. It is the vigorous proposal that the Church offers us to experience a profound interior reversal and rediscover the incandescence of our Desire for God, the One Essential: a school of repentance, fasting and prayer which alone will make it possible for us to welcome Easter as the end of what is “old” in us, as our entry into the “New.”

Based on "Le grand carême" by Father A. Schmemann, SO Abbaye de Bellefontaine, n°13, p. 11-15Based on "Le grand carême" by Father A. Schmemann, SO Abbaye de Bellefontaine, n°13, p. 11-15

FOR EVERYONE, around sunrise and sunset, rediscover the attitude of Mary Magdalene at the Lord's feet and invoke His Holy Name in loving, silent contemplation (no less than twenty minutes).FOR EVERYONE, around sunrise and sunset, rediscover the attitude of Mary Magdalene at the Lord's feet and invoke His Holy Name in loving, silent contemplation (no less than twenty minutes).
 Lord and Master of my life, do not abandon me to the spirit of laziness, discouragement, domination and vain chatter!  But grant me, your servant, the spirit of chastity (integrity), humility, patience and charity.  Yes, Lord-King, grant me to see my faults and not to condemn my brother, O You who are blessed for ever and ever. Amen.Lord and Master of my life, do not abandon me to the spirit of laziness, discouragement, domination and vain chatter!  But grant me, your servant, the spirit of chastity (integrity), humility, patience and charity.  Yes, Lord-King, grant me to see my faults and not to condemn my brother, O You who are blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

Prayer of saint Ephrem