The Great Lent

The program is sponsored in part by the Belgian Tourist Office and the Embassy of Belgium in Washington, D.C. For more information on visiting Belgium (including the Abbey), you may contact the Belgian Tourist Office at:

www.visitbelgium.com

As Fr. Maxime writes in his notes, "From the earliest centuries, in all of the Churches of East and West, the paschal solemnities have been preceded by a great fast of forty days. This period, favorable to an intense spiritual and religious preparation, gave rise in the Byzantine tradition to an extraordinary liturgical development. A thoughtful progression leads from Sunday to Sunday as through successive doors (three before Lent and six properly Lenten Sundays) in a spiritual ascent to Jerusalem, the paschal city. In the course of this interior pilgrimage, the soul is purified while meditating upon its exilic condition, remembering the future universal judgment of humanity, interceding for the dead, practicing vigilance and compassion, turning away from the sordid worries of worldly life, gathering nourishment from the great symbols of faith, enlivening its desire to participate in the great mystery of Christ's redemptive sufferings to the point of being deemed worthy to become a witness to the Resurrection."