As Western Christians prepare to celebrate Easter, the Orthodox Lent is just beginning

The church is filled with golden icons of Christ and saints, each bearing the same gentle, intent expression. Men and veiled women enter solemnly, bowing and crossing themselves before the ornate images. Following a service, they will turn their gaze from the two-dimensional images to each other, fall prostrate, and implore, “Forgive me, a sinner.”

This is Forgiveness Vespers, the service that kicks off Eastern Orthodox Lent. While western Christians prepare to celebrate Easter this Sunday, Orthodox Christians have just begun the season of fasting and prayer. Because the Orthodox Church uses a different method to determine the date of Easter, Lent began the evening of March 17, over a month after Western Lent began on Feb. 14. 

“Forgiveness is what Lent is all about,” said Justin Jackson, professor of English and a deacon at Holy Ascension Orthodox Church in Albion, Michigan. “If you’re fasting, if you’re almsgiving, if you’re praying — this is all pointing us toward the forgiveness of one another because essentially our whole faith is predicated upon the forgiveness of God.”

The first week of Lent, called “Clean Week” involves prayer services and more intense fasting. Orthodox Christians spend Lent abstaining from meat, fish, dairy, wine, and oil, with lightened fasts on certain feast days and weekends, according to junior Anna Jackson, not related to Justin Jackson, vice president of Hillsdale’s Orthodox Christian Fellowship. 

“We don’t believe in separating the body from worship,” Anna Jackson said. “Fasting unites the body and the spirit in an endeavor in turning towards Christ. You’re denying yourself and turning outward toward him. I might be kind of hungry, and I might be constantly aware of that, but that also makes me aware of why I’m hungry. And if that’s because I’m trying to do something for God, then my mind is constantly turned towards him, even in the discomfort.” 

Justin Jackson said these general fasting guidelines are the ideal for the faithful. Individuals follow them as they are able, typically under the guidance of their priests who help them adjust according to spiritual and physical needs.

During the weekdays of Lent, Orthodox churches have Presanctified Liturgies. According to sophomore Deaglan Maines, a member of the OCF, this service is a vesperal liturgy in which communicants receive the “lamb,” or body of Christ, which the priest sanctifies, or consecrates, at the preceding Sunday Liturgy. 

“You don’t celebrate in a season of repentance, but the body of Christ persists throughout, so you can and should receive,” Maines said.

Orthodox Lent ends when Holy Week begins, after liturgy on Lazarus Saturday, the day that commemorates the resurrection of Lazarus. Like Clean Week, Orthodox Christians have services every day and increase their fasting practices.

“Holy Week takes you through the passion and the entombment of Christ, which is the true sabbath of Christ resting in the tomb on the sixth day,” Justin Jackson said.   

According to Anna Jackson, the Orthodox Church traditionally receives new members through baptism in a service the morning of Holy Saturday.

“On Holy Saturday, you’re not sure whether to be happy or sad because Christ is in the tomb, but he’s also destroying death,” she said. “Your friends are getting baptized into the church and receiving communion the first time, and it’s such a beautiful time.”

That night, the parish returns to a completely dark church for the Paschal Liturgy. The congregation processes three times around the church. The priest will bang three times on the church door with a book of the gospels. When the door swings open, the congregation enters triumphantly, greeted by swinging chandeliers and brilliant candles throughout the church. This time they will turn to each other and proclaim in every language they know, “Christ is Risen!”

Justin Jackson said Pascha, or Easter, is a celebration of Christ’s victory over death, “our existential foe.”

“Our Paschal troparion, which we sing for 40 days, is ‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life,’” he said. “If death has been trampled down, and Christ has transformed it into eternal life, there’s really nothing to fear.”