Daily Journey Through the Great Fast With the Early Churchنموونە

The last week of the Great Lent completes our heavenly journey and turns our focus to Christ’s life-giving death and Resurrection. The readings this week, the end of the procession, point to the hope of salvation and the Resurrection. The word “Pascha” means ‘passover’ and in the Great Lent, Holy Week, and the Feast of Resurrection, we pass over from sickness to health, from the dryness of a spiritual desert to overflowing springs of living water, from apathy to a divine zeal, from a dying ember to a raging fire, from darkness to light, and from death to life.

This week, as we near the end of the Great Lent, we look back and see where we began and where God has brought us. He has, by His grace, made us the 5th living Gospel “written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.” [2 Corinthians 3:3]. We are living epistles, testifying of His salvific work on the Cross. We are His witnesses to His love and His mercy. All our actions should always witness to Him, so when people see our good works they see Christ in us and not us.

To be a witness is to have a personal experience or knowledge of an event. To be His witness we must have first seen and heard Him. How can we expect our neighbors or loved ones to turn to the Lord, accepting Him, if we have not first turned to Him and accepted Him? How can we witness of Him to others, telling them of how sweet His love is, if we did not first personally “taste and see that the Lord is good”? [Psalm 34:8]. Meet Him at the Cross, witness His love for you, meditating on His love He showed you, choosing to die in your place, so that by His death you may have eternal life. Continue in the Great Commission of the Lord as a believer, instead of choosing to be “out-of-commission”.

Let us continue in this last week of Great Lent and through Holy Week, repenting of our sins, praying, asking and allowing God to open the blindness of our hearts and spiritual eyes, so we can see with pure divine eyes of our hearts His love for us, thereby readying ourselves to become witnesses to His salvation and love. “For you will be His witness to all men ofwhat you have seen and heard.” [Acts 22:15].

“Even on the Cross He did not hide Himself from sight; rather, He made all creation witness to the presence of its Maker.” [St. Athanasius the Apostolic, 5th century Patriarch of Alexandria and a “doctor of the Church”]