Days before the commencement of Holy and Great Lent, the Orthodox Christian Lenten period lasting for a total of 48 days until Easter Sunday, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All-Holiness Bartholomew I, issued his pastoral guidance and spiritual exhortations to the faithful on the occasion.

Monday, Feb. 23, marks Clean Monday on the Orthodox ecclesiastical calendar, the commencement of Great Lent. The day is also known as “Shrove Monday” in some countries.

In his message, His All-Holiness referred to the season of “fasting and repentance, spiritual vigilance and walking with the Lord,” one that culminates in the “veneration of His glorious Resurrection.”

The Ecumenical Patriarch, the primus inter pares of the world’s Orthodox Patriarchs, stressed that the aim of every Christian is to become “worthy of his own passage from earthly things to ‘what no eye has seen and no ear has heard and what has not entered into the heart of man’ (1 Corinthians 2:9).”

The believer is called to make use of the opportunity offered by Holy and Great Lent in order to “realize the depth and richness of our faith as a ‘personal encounter with Christ.’”

The Ecumenical Patriarch continued: “…the experience of our faith is ‘unique’ and ‘deeply personal’ as a freedom granted to us by Christ, yet at the same time it is essentially ‘ecclesial,’ an experience of ‘shared freedom.’”

He also underscored that the encounter with Christ is called to bear fruits of genuine love. “This most authentic freedom in Christ,” he notes, “is expressed as love and practical support for our specific neighbor, as described in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37) and in the passage of the Final Judgment (Matthew 25:31–46), as well as respect and care for the world, through a Eucharistic approach to creation.” Therefore, “freedom in Christ has a personal and holistic character, which is particularly highlighted during Holy and Great Lent, through the understanding of ascetic practice and fasting.”

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All-Holiness Bartholomew I, officiating at a blessing of the waters service.

This ascetic effort does not center on punishment, deprivation, or a demonstrative and ultimately self-centered piety. His All-Holiness clarifies that “Christian freedom, as existential authenticity and fullness, is not identified with a dark asceticism, with a life without grace and joy, ‘as if Christ had never come.’” On the contrary, it is always oriented toward the Resurrection, which at Holy Pascha constitutes the culmination of the Lenten journey.

A showy asceticism is itself an expression of the same egoism that the Christian struggles to overcome during Holy and Great Lent. According to His All-Holiness, fasting—the most visible characteristic of this sacred period—“is not simply ‘abstinence from food,’ but ‘renunciation of sin,’ a struggle against self-centeredness, an exodus of love from oneself toward the brother in need, a ‘heart burning for all creation.’” He emphasizes that “the holistic character of spirituality is nourished by experiencing Great Lent as a journey toward Pascha and as a foretaste of ‘the freedom of the glory of the children of God’ (Romans 8:21).”

His All-Holiness cites the late Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon, who had noted: “As we enter Holy Lent, what awaits us at the end is the vision, the wonder, and the experience of the Resurrection—the preeminent experience of the Orthodox Church. Let us journey toward this vision and experience, but not without having received and offered forgiveness; not with fasting only from meat and oil; not with a sense of hypocrisy, but with divine freedom, in spirit and truth, in the spirit of truth, in the truth of the spirit.”

In concluding, Bartholomew stressed that “…this is “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” to which His All-Holiness referred and which Holy and Great Lent gives us the opportunity to experience more deeply in our personal lives. May all Orthodox Christians, as well as every person who wishes to taste this freedom, make use of this opportunity and embrace it from now on.”