2026 Great Lent Archpastoral Message

Great Lent 2026

To the clergy, monastics, and the faithful of the Diocese of the West:

Dear fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters – Christ is in our midst!

I greet you all at the beginning of the blessed and saving Lent, the holy forty days, that the Church has set aside and consecrated in her wisdom for our salvation and renewal. It is the time for the strengthening of our piety, for the confirmation of our faith, and for the remembrance of our own identity as Christians. We are members of Christ, those who are called to be God’s children, members of his household, the people “bought with a price.”

In the First Book of Kings, we read about Prophet Elijah, in time of despair and affliction, fleeing to Mount Horeb and fasting for forty days and forty nights.   Having received the nourishment from the angel, the prophet is granted the vision of one true God in a “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12).   Our great ascetical father, Venerable Theodore the Studite (d. 826), in one of the three-ode canons that he wrote for the First Week of Lent, uses this biblical image to make clear for us, Orthodox Christians, the goal set before us in this time of fasting: “On Mount Horeb…