The Great Forty Days

As often happens, Lent began this year a few days earlier in the western rite than it did in the Orthodox. But all Christians who follow the Gregorian calendar are now, I think, keeping Lent. My first experiences of Greece, 39 years ago, are inseparable from my first experiences of Orthodox Lent, Holy Week and Easter. Those celebrations, in 1984, impressed and, indeed, overawed me, forming indelible memories and sparking what has proved a lifelong interest in Orthodoxy and in the ecumenism of eastern and western Christianity.

Each year, I love tracking the – sometimes similar, sometimes starkly contrasting – customs and traditions marked by Christians of the Orthodox and western rites. Carnival, taking place in the three weeks before Lent, is not important here in the UK, but over the years I have celebrated it in Catholic lands and in Greece. While I was still eating meat (I became a pescatarian several years ago), Τσικνοπέμπτη / Tsiknopempti, which takes place in Greece on the second Thursday in Carnival, was always a great joy: a feast to be enjoyed with friends around a brimming table. ‘Tsikna’ in Greek denotes the smell of roasting or grilling meat and 'Pempti' is Thursday, so the closest equivalent in western Christianity to this day of feasting is Mardi Gras (‘Fat Tuesday’), known to English tradition as Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday, which happens on the eve of Lent, when traditionally the last eggs and dairy products were eaten before the start of the great fast. 

 

Kites flying on the edge of Philopappou Hill, Lent 2022

Last year, I celebrated the start of Lent twice: doing Ash Wednesday, the start of western Lent, here in Scarborough and Καθαρά Δευτέρα / Kathara Deftera (‘Clean Monday’), the start of Orthodox Lent, in Athens. The weather in Athens on that day was fine and I watched the traditional kite-flying on Philopappou Hill, before having an equally traditional seafood lunch on Mercouri Square in Petralona. This year, I was able to mark the start of Lent only once: on Ash Wednesday, when I took part in the Sung Mass at my local parish church of St Martin’s on the Hill, Scarborough.

 

The liturgical and musical traditions of Lent are profoundly moving, in whatever rite one celebrates. For Anglicans and Catholics, the singing of the Lent Prose (‘Hear us, o Lord, have mercy upon us’) or of Allegri’s great setting of Psalm 51 (‘Miserere mei, Deus’ / ‘Have mercy on me, o God’) and the imposition of the ashes of the previous year’s palms are signs that one has passed out of ordinary and into sacred time. When I was serving as ambassador in Athens, I tried always to go at least once or twice every Lent to hear the singing of the great Χαιρετισμοί της Θεοτόκου, the Salutations to the Mother of God, which are sung sequentially every Friday in Lent, until the whole is performed on the fifth Friday in Lent as the ΑκάθιστοςΎμνος / the Akathist Hymn, the 'hymn for which no one sits’. The glories of our musical and liturgical traditions in Lent are magnificent scene-setters for the great outpouring of words, music and devotion in Holy Week.

 

All of these rites, traditions and practices help us, I think, to mark out sacred time and to keep Lent properly. The Anglican rites for Ash Wednesday are very clear about what is required. We are encouraged ‘to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word’. I owe my own understanding of the practice of fasting to my Greek Orthodox friends, whose discreet and careful Lenten habits impressed me greatly when I was living in Athens. Fasting and self-denial are not only, of course, practices for the disciplining of the self; they are supposed also to lead to ‘almsgiving’, the practice of looking after and taking care of others. Above all, Lent as a preparation for Holy Week and Easter is an annual opportunity to meditate closely on the life of Christ, to align ourselves deliberately and in conviction with what the faith requires of us. We are fortunate indeed if we are able to do this as members of an active congregation, a worshipping community. To all who are observing Lent this year, I wish you a Holy Lent: Καλή Σαρακοστή. 

 

John

3 March 2023