Sunday, March 27, 2011

Understanding the Lenten Season


I don't remember where I found this quote, but I like it. I'm trying to understand Lent better and this helped.


“As we begin it,” he writes, “as we make the first step into the ‘bright sadness’ of Lent, we see — far, far away — the destination. It is the joy of Easter, it is the entrance into the glory of the Kingdom. And it is this vision, the foretaste of Easter, that makes Lent’s sadness bright and our lenten effort a ‘spiritual spring. [...] Paradoxically, Easter necessitates Lent. “For we may then understand,” says Fr. Schmemann, “that the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order 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.”

1 comment:

Leslie said...

"bright sadness"...love that. I've been reading Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross and it is very much helping me in focusing on this Lenten season in a way I haven't before. I think I am going to write this quote inside the cover.