Othling Pastels

For the early church, Lent was just the opposite of a dreary season of restriction and self-torture. It was understood as an opportunity to return to normal life – the life of natural communion with God that was lost to us in the Fall. This perspective is clearly expressed in Eastern Orthodox liturgy and theology: “In the Orthodox teaching… the world was given to [Adam and Eve] by God as ‘food’ – as a means of life… In food itself God… was the principle of life. Thus to eat, to be alive, to know God and be in communion with Him were the one and same thing. The unfathomable tragedy of Adam is that … he ate ‘apart’ from God in order to be independent of Him… because he believed that food had life in itself and that he, by partaking of that food, could be like God, i.e., have life in himself.” (Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy)

…Lent is derived from a Saxon word meaning “spring.” In the early church, Lent was viewed as a spiritual spring, a time of light and joy in the renewal of the soul’s life. It represented a return to the “fast” that Adam and Eve broke: a life in which God was once more center and source, and the material world was again received as a means of communion with God. This return to authentic human life was made possible by the Incarnation.

-excerpts taken from Marjorie Thompson’s book, Soul Feast