LENTEN ENCYCLICAL OF HIS EMINENCE, METROPOLITAN EPHRAIM

Our entrance into the sacred stadium of the Great and Holy Fast is a unique occasion for us to re-dedicate ourselves to the spiritual rejuvenation of our souls. Recently someone showed me an article entitled "How to Age Thirty Years in Three Weeks." The information provided by the article’s author was short and simple: If you want to age quickly, all you have to do is go to bed and do nothing! By doing nothing for that small space of time, a person’s health will deteriorate dramatically; it would be as though he had aged thirty years. "The lesson is obvious," says the author, "inactivity leads to physical decline. Exercise, on the other hand, slows the aging process."

How appropriate, then, that all our spiritual writings liken fasting and all the other practices and disciplines of the Church to a contest in the stadium. Our spiritual exercises — especially those of the Holy and Great Fast — are meant to strengthen the well-being and rigor of the soul. They sharpen our spiritual senses. They ward off the plagues of temptations. They increase our soul’s stamina and resistance to the various spiritual infections and diseases that are rampant in our society.

But the physical fast is only the doorway to other greater and more subtle achievements in this realm. As one writer noted, it is a good thing to abstain for forty days from the superfluity of certain foods and habits that we should have given up long ago. But there are other spiritual daily fasts as well that offer even greater rewards. We could all strive to abstain from the sweetness of revenge, from the stinging herbs of resentment, from the sharp spices of gossip, from the bland cereals of complacency, the heady sauces of vanity, the strong stimulants of anger, the rich meats of wantonness, and the mind-numbing wines of self-pity.

No one can become an accomplished athlete without training. Likewise, no one can be a true Christian without spiritual exercise, affliction, and pain of heart. The trouble with many so-called Christians today is that they expect to get to the Promised Land without first going through the wilderness. They want the prize, but not the contest. They want the wages, but not the labor. They want the reaping, but not the sowing. They want the joy and the glory of the Resurrection, but not the affliction and the shame of the Cross.

The spirit of Christianity, my beloved Orthodox Christians, is a spirit of asceticism, a spirit of constant struggle; it is a heroic spirit. Removing these traits from Christianity is equivalent to cutting its heart out.

"Therefore," as the Holy Apostle Paul exhorts us, "let us endure hardship, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. No one who wages war entangles himself with the affairs of this life, so that he may please Him Who has enlisted him as a soldier. . . . Think about what I am saying, and the Lord will give you understanding in all things" (cf. II Timothy 2:3-4, 7).