First fast day after Meat Fair Sunday…..

This Morning as I awoke and got the kids ready for school I made my coffee and realized I had put creamer in it. At first I was like, dang I already broke fast. However I have this great little app on my phone. My parish priest had suggested to help remind me of the fast days and various other Orthodoxy things. Now, like I said in my previous blog post; fasting in orthodoxy does not mean not eating at all. You can still eat its just you have a limited menu. I looked up today’s fast day and realized I could eat everything but meat which includes chicken and other birds. However it does not include fish. So come to find out I was OK.

So in Alexander Schmemann’s book, which I am only reading a chapter a day since I have to also read other books on orthodoxy. He talks about the 5 weeks leading up to lent; he then talks about lent itself . He refers to Lent as “the bright sadness”. The sadness being sin and the brightness referring to the act of repentance through the forgiveness of god. He also talks about what the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian is referring to, which is a spiritual renewal.

I learned that Lent isn’t just meant for the Catechuman but also for the already baptized Christians. He mentions that Christians have fallen away from participating in the Lenten tradition. It was meant to bring us back to remind us in essence of who we are and our roots as Orthodox Christians. During Lent we sing the hymns of the martyrs because they gave up their literal lives because they believed and loved god so much.

So getting back to the fasting parts of this journey, I did go to the grocery store and buy some fish to kind of get me through the week. Also just a side note, I am the only Orthodox Catechuman in my house of 5. However my husband is going to attempt the fast as much as he can with me along with my kids.

For lunch today my kids ate left over ham soup and I ate some fish with rice. I am not going to be to strict with the little one’s since they are growing and they are not fans of the fish. My husband doesn’t like fish all that much ether so I will meat (see what I did there) them half way. Which just means I will make lunch with fish for me and eat more dairy and rabbit food at dinner.I will make them a heavier meat dish at dinner tonight. Something that they can have as left overs during this week. Since I have Monday School at church tonight It will probably be a pot roast. Also Monday school is on the Chatichumen so that will be very interesting for me.

I should note in this blog that I live in smaller city and our parish is also small. I am not sure yet if we do all the services of vespers, etc. I will inquire about that at a later date. I am also going to attempt to attend all the services of Lent as well. Here is to the journey and prayers for anyone else who is also starting on this Lenten Journey.

Here is the link to some of the sites I go to for information…..

https://oca.org/

Daily Readings App for iphone is the app I use with all the fast days and prayers in it. It also has some other great things included.

Journey through Lent

If you would have told me six month ago that I would be opting to fast and become a catichuman I would have probably very kindly said not some very nice things. I am not going to get into to many details about that in this blog. As it has been said by some, “all in good time”. I will tell you I have been attending every Sunday since just after all Hallows Eve. I will also inform you that I chose to take this path for various personal spiritual reasons and will also get into those in later blogs.

I decided to write this blog and will probably be doing a shorter YouTube vlogg about it as well. We shall see how much time I have for that. As a catichuman it was suggested by my parish Priest to read certain books. One of them being, Great Lent Journey to Pascha by Alexander Schmemann. I have talked to a few of the other individuals that go to the same church I do and asked their opinion on fasting and Lent and got a lot of the same response which was, that It is indeed hard to fast. Now I have to explain that an Orthodox fast is not the same as a Later Day Saint (Mormon) fast. The Later Day Saint fast is no food except maybe water. Orthodox fast varies from day to day. Regularly certain days of the week are fast days. Sometimes they say no meat and sometimes they say no dairy or wine or oil, etc. However through Lent it gets a little more intense for about 40 days. Also to be clear Orthodox Lent is not like Catholic Lent where you give up one vise for the duration of Lent. In Orthodox Lent you fallow a fast and abstain from certain types of foods on certain days of the week

According to Alexander Schmemann’s book it starts with 5 Sundays before and he refers to it as the preparation for Lent. These 5 Sundays have names and stories from the Bible to correlate with them. We have hit Meat Fair Sunday today and next week will be week 5, which is Cheese Fair Sunday. Then Lent starts and the fasting actually starts after today.

So wish me luck on my journey and I have no idea what information I am going to give but it starts tomorrow so I have till then.