“It is our whole faith that by His own death Christ changed the very nature of death, made it a passage, a “Passover,” a “Pascha”—into the Kingdom of God, transforming the tragedy of tragedies into the ultimate victory.”
Such a gift and assurance of resurrection life has potential to “radically alter our attitude toward everything in this world.” We take the gift and as a consequence, look at the world through eyes clear with the light of God’s kingdom dwelling within us. This is no Pollyanna claim from an über-motivational speaker; Christ himself insisted that the kingdom is at hand and within us.
But let’s face it—most of us find it impossible to maintain a constant awareness of new life in Christ. Duties, distractions, deadlines, distresses worm their way into everyday experience, eating holes through our noblest desires to live in holy synergy with the Holy Trinity. How can we help but forget from time to time what life is really meant to be? And once we forget, we screw up and fall short of God’s glory for us. Instead of walking in the newness of life for which Christ was raised, we slog along in “oldness” of life.
Lent is a time the Church devotes for us to make our way out of the old and back into the new, “to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, so that we may repent and return to it.” It is a time when we give the Holy Spirit a prolonged chance to roll back the curtain of memory on why we bother to call ourselves Christians. Then as we arrive at the actual day the Church celebrates Jesus’ Resurrection, with amnesia lifted, we heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation
All quotes taken from A. Schmemann, Great Lent, pp. 12-13.
So often we think of Lent as a time of penance and self mortification. The Orthodox position [at least as it is in theory] is that we seek to recover what is lost in the Fall -- a return to our roots in Eden. I am reminded of Paul Recoeur"s "second naiveté."
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