Alive from the Dead: Homilies on Great Lent

By Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou of Essex

During Great Lent, the pure Church reminds us that in this present world we are ‘strangers and sojourners,’ that on the earth of corruption we have ‘no continuing city’. Creating the appropriate spiritual conditions, it offers us the privilege to walk, even in our small measure, the way of the Lord, which leads through death to the fulness of indestructible life. The purpose of Great Lent is to give us a small taste of death, to find our deep heart, and thus to prepare us to enter into the living Presence of the Risen Lord. Each Sunday of this period is like an especial feast. The atmosphere in the bosom of the Church is stirred up and filled with sorrowful joy. The desire for the Bridegroom Jesus weaves the bright garment of the soul so that we may enter, bearing crowns, into the Pascha of our Lord and God. Although the Resurrection of Christ took place once and for all, it is mystically repeated in the souls of the  faithful by the power of the Holy Spirit. We imitate ‘as much as possible’ the sufferings, the virtue, the love, the Cross of the Lord, and He grants us the spoils of His victory: eternal life and immortality.