Fr. Tom Soroka: [Welcome] to Ancient Faith Today. This is Fr. Tom Soroka, and I’m so glad that you’re with us this evening. We’ll be taking your calls in a bit at 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346. John will be answering your calls, so please make sure to turn the show volume off before you come on air. You can also join us in the chatroom which is now open by going to ancientfaith.com/live. Another way to connect with us is to go to facebook.com/ancientfaithtoday, and place your question in the thread for tonight’s show. Finally, you can also send us an email at aft@ancientfaith.com. So let’s get started.

Orthodox Christians around the world are preparing themselves, God willing, for the Great Lenten season which begins this year on Monday, March 2. The purpose of Lent, or the Great Fast, is to restore our relationship with God through the various means that the Church presents to us as beneficial to our spiritual life. It is a pilgrimage that we undergo as a community, taking us to the feast of feasts: Holy Pascha. But Great Lent, no matter how well it might be presented by our local parishes, is ultimately most beneficial to those who personally engage in it. We have to individually be able to take up the challenges of fasting, prayer, almsgiving, confession, extended Church services, silence, spiritual reading, and whatever else might be helpful to us. It might look different for every person, but the fact remains that it’s up to us to engage in our lenten effort.

And that’s tonight’s topic: How can we best prepare ourselves for and participate in the Great Lenten season? Tonight we are truly honored to have His Grace, Bishop Alexis of Bethesda, Maryland, as our special guest, and to guide us through this conversation. Bishop Alexis was consecrated exactly one month ago today, January 25, 2020. He’s been blessed by the holy synod of bishops of the Orthodox Church in America to be an auxiliary to His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon, overseeing stavropegial institutions. After spending ten years as a monk at St. Tikhon’s Monastery in eastern Pennsylvania, His Grace went to live at the Monastery Karakallou on the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos in Greece, where he was ordained to the holy priesthood. That monastery was founded in the 11th century. Later, he was transferred to assist at a nearby women’s monastery and parish, and eventually completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Thessaloniki, On Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Theology.

So with that, we’d like to welcome His Grace, Bishop Alexis. Your Grace, welcome to Ancient Faith Today.

His Grace, Bishop Alexis of Bethesda: Thank you. It’s good to be here with you.

Fr. Tom: Could you please give us your blessing? We’re so happy that you’re here.

Bishop Alexis: May the Lord God bless you and keep you all.

Fr. Tom: I’m so happy that you’re here tonight, because, as we get closer to the first day of Lent, we need this guidance. It’s so important for us to understand where we’re going and the specifics about how Lent works and what it’s about. But before we get to that topic, I really would like our audience to get to know you a little better. So if you could, please, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, and especially how you came to embrace Orthodox Christianity.

Bishop Alexis: Sure. Well, I’m basically someone who longs for Christ, strives to follow Christ, and I’m the self I desire to be when I remember Christ. I’m now 55 years old, so my background is rather full, rather varied, but let me try to speak about it in a way that might be of interest to the listeners. Life is full of decisions, and I’ve made some good decisions, some bad decisions, but what really matters, I think, are to recognize those moments in which God is beckoning, and to respond to them appropriately. There have been times when I’ve been at the crossroads of a choice, and at that crossroads, by the grace and mercy of God, I chose to follow what made my heart a bit wider, a bit more full of light, a bit more hopeful. And those were the best decisions I’ve made. Sometimes it was a moment in a bookstore in my college years when I picked up Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Lossky’s The Mystical Theology of the Orthodox Church, both of which, they took my mind and heart captive with really the beauty, the wisdom, and especially the humility of holy Orthodoxy. Sometimes it was large decisions. When I was faced with the decision of going to graduate school in chemistry or in religious studies, I chose religious studies. Or it was the decision of going to St. Tikhon’s Monastery during my Christmas break when I was completing my master’s degree at the University of Chicago. And my decision to remain there for about a decade, which upset my parents at the time. Of course, now they accept it all. Or then there was my decision to go to the Holy Mountain and immerse myself in what I understood to be the most authentic monastic life. And finally my decision to come back to the land of my birth after 23 years in Greece in order to serve the Church as a bishop.

There’s always a kind of certain sense that one is doing God’s will. The horizon opens, the heart softens, and kind of a peace almost descends from on high. I’d just like to encourage everyone that when you feel that pull, when you sense that call from God, is to just run with it. We only have one life, and we all want it to somehow count; we want it somehow to be an offering to God, and there are precious moments that come, times when “it is time for the Lord to act,” and when that time comes, we each need to start the Liturgy, to say, “I am the servant or the handmaiden of the Lord,” and just go wherever God in his love and mercy might take us.

Fr. Tom: Wonderful. That’s wonderful. Would you say that your assurance that you were in God’s will, that you were pursuing God’s will was that peace that you were feeling? How would you discern that?

Bishop Alexis: It was peace. It was peace and a certain joy, a certain expectation, without really knowing it. When I decided to come back to America… And I had always told myself, “You never go back in life; you only keep going forward.” So there’s lots of things I’ve told myself, and they’ve almost all been wrong, so… [Laughter] But I’m back at St. Tikhon’s and happily so.

Fr. Tom: Well, we are very grateful for that. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your work now that you are a bishop and you are representing His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon, through are what are called the stavropegial institutions. So maybe what you could do is to tell us a little bit about what your main duties are going to be to the extent that you know them at this point, and also just for people [who] are not aware of that rather large word: What is a stavropegial institution?

Bishop Alexis: Okay, well, you know I was consecrated, as you mentioned earlier, about a month ago, and becoming a bishop changes a priest in much the same way that becoming a priest changes a deacon and becoming a deacon changes a layman. There’s something that happens at the consecration, and I felt it visibly when I communed the priests. Before, they were brother-priests; now they were just very precious beloved sons. So for any bishop, caring for the priest is really an important duty. St. Nektarios, in his book on being a bishop, his [Mathima] Poimantikis, which only exists in Greek, he talks about a bishop that his first call and his first aim is actually to make peace abundant in the Church, to pray for peace, and to be a representative of the Prince of peace. In whatever function a bishop has, bringing peace to the Church, not simply “peace be unto all” that the priest [says], though the bishop of course repeats in every liturgy, but to bring peace to whatever work there is.

Now, stavropegial institutions, they’re institutions that are directly under the primate of an Orthodox church. In the case of the Orthodox Church in America, the stavropegial institutions are St. Vladimir’s Seminary, St. Tikhon’s Seminary, and three monasteries, monastic communities: that of St. Tikhon’s, the Holy Myrrhbearers, and of New Skete. So I am to assist His Beatitude in the oversight of these institutions. I am to travel for external relations. I am to assist the chancery operations. Basically, to make hierarchical visits on his behalf as well.

Fr. Tom: That’s wonderful, and we need this episcopal guidance and this peace in our Church, of course. As you know, Your Grace, the Church is going through some turmoil, not particularly the OCA, but the Church as a whole, with the schism between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Church of Constantinople. So thank God that we have bishops like you that are focused on bringing peace to us. We’re very grateful for that and for your ministry and for your presence this evening.

I want to remind all of our listeners: 1-855-AF-RADIO. Please call in. His Grace is here to take your phone calls and your questions. 1-855-237-2346. Let’s get to the first question, and let’s start at the beginning, about Great Lent. So the big question, of course, Your Grace, is: What is the purpose of Great Lent? So this lenten season of Great Lent comes around to our lay people every year, and since you’ve been in Greece for so long, you might remember how things in America. Things come at you very, very quickly. People have very busy lives, and here comes this Great Lenten period. What is the purpose of it? As Orthodox Christians, what are we to make of it? What are we to get out of it? And how does this lenten preparation help us prepare for Pascha? Tell us a little bit about what the purpose of Great Lent is.

Bishop Alexis: Well, the purpose of the holy 40 days, or as St. Athanasius would call them, the holy and glorious 40 days, is to fast as Christ did in the wilderness, to pray as Christ did in the wilderness, and to turn to Scriptures and the writings of the holy Fathers for guidance as we go through temptations. St. Ignatius the God-bearer writes that “in Lent we imitate the way of life, the politia of the Lord.” St. John of Damascus refers to it as “the tithe of the year,” and it’s really the time that… in terms of the ultimate aim, of course, is union with Christ, union that comes through a changed life. St. John Chrysostom, when he refers to Lent, he calls it a spiritual baptismal font. One can see that just as before baptism there is the commitment, one renounces Satan, one does everything to be united with Christ, so the aim of Lent is really to prepare oneself for holy Pascha, to receive the Lamb of God on that blessed night as worthily as we possibly can, which means having given as much as we can give to Christ.

I think perhaps the most important Sundays of Lent are actually not within Lent, but outside Lent: the first three Sundays, where we learn about humility, we learn about repentance, and we learn about love. The three hymns that we sing at the beginning of every matins, I think, keep those Sundays very much alive. The first one: “Open unto me, O Giver of light, the gates of repentance…” that’s one. Or, “Early in the morning my spirit seeks thy holy temple…” Well, that immediately makes us think of the Publican and the Pharisee who went up to the temple early in the morning to pray. The troparion which follows, “Open unto me the gates, O Giver of light, the gates of repentance…” Then we have: “Guide me on the paths of salvation, O Theotokos…” which is, of course, the Prodigal returning back to his father, his father’s home. Then the third one: “I ponder on my wretchedness, on the many things I have done, and tremble at the fearful day of judgment…” brings us back to the judgment. So these three themes—that we’re all publicans in need of humility, we’re all prodigals in need of repentance, and we will all one day stand before a just Judge—these themes kind of keep us on the track of proceeding through Lent in a way that will lead towards our own sanctification.

Fr. Tom: So ultimately what you’re saying—let me try to summarize that—is that these intensified activities of prayer and fasting and almsgiving and so forth are meant to focus us toward that, like you said, renewal of our baptism, that preparation for holy Pascha, but also ultimately becoming holy. I guess the question really, though, is: Why now? Why does it happen before Pascha? Why don’t we do this in June? What is it about Pascha that makes it so imperative that we undergo these spiritual exercises at this particular time? What is the connection between that intense desire to develop our holiness and the celebration of the holy Pascha?

Bishop Alexis: Of course, Holy Week, Pascha, that’s the very center of the Christian faith. It’s the most important time, the holiest time of the year. To prepare ourselves to enter into that, that paschal mystery, we need to really look inward at ourselves. We need to repent. We need to be in a state where we’ve been quiet as much as possible, so that we can really be present there with the Lord. There’s no… Anything that’s very, very important, it begins… One prepares for it. It’s almost like with athletics, there’s training, and Great Lent is the training that is necessary in order to get the most that we possibly can out of Holy Week so that it will touch us, because we will have been hungry, which will enable us to understand, of course, our Lord’s time of thirsting on the cross. We will try to be kind and loving to people that may sometimes insult us, may sometimes speak badly of us. We will be able, again, to look towards our Lord for that. All of the practices of Great Lent really enable us to live the events of Holy Week to walk with our Lord as he is coming to his voluntary Passion.

Fr. Tom: I love that. I love that idea of preparing ourselves not just for the Pascha but for the Holy Week. That’s such a beautiful thought. Thank you for that. Thank you.

Let’s talk a little bit. You’ve mentioned the preparatory Sundays. Of course, we’re finishing those now. Then, as we enter into the Great Lenten period, beginning on Monday, March 2, we will then visit these Sunday gospel readings as well as the themes for the various saints or events that we are encountering in the Great Lenten season. For instance, the first Sunday of Orthodoxy we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The second Sunday is St. Gregory Palamas. The third Sunday is the precious Cross. The fourth Sunday is St. John who wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent. The fifth Sunday is St. Mary of Egypt. Help us understand how these commemorations came about and how they help us in our lenten effort. What can we learn from these various Sundays? I know I threw a lot at you; there’s a lot of information there, but these Sundays of Lent, how do they help us in our lenten effort?

Bishop Alexis: I think one place to start is: What is a Sunday to a Christian? On Mount Athos, the fathers would always be extra happy when it was Sunday, and they would say there is a double grace on Sunday. It’s the Lord’s day. The Lord is present there. It’s resurrectional. Grace is present in a certain way. On Athos it would be visible, even in the countenances of the fathers, when Sunday came. That principle applies for the entire year, so during Great Lent the Sundays are periods of a special refreshment for the Christian struggler. We of course have the icons, the triumph of icons, which are of course a great consolation for us, just being able to go pray before the icon. We may be too tired to do anything else, but we can always venerate an icon. We can always venerate an icon and ask for the saint’s prayers or that of the Mother of God or simply just falling down before Christ. The Sunday of Orthodoxy, of course we learn that confessing the truth will lead to our triumph in Orthodoxy, that we don’t have to be afraid to confess the truth. Whatever we go through, the victory has already been done.

The next Sunday, the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, well, of course, he’s the great champion of hesychastic prayer. We get the great lesson that Christ is always with us. We can always pray to him. We can always say, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” And that, for a monk and for every Christian, is an incredible consolation. He’s as near as that simplest of thoughts. He will, as St. Gregory Palamas would say, to the Mother of God, “photisomati to skotous; enlighten my darkness,” that the Mother of God will enlighten our darkness if we call out to her.

Sunday of the Cross, of course the cross… It’s almost like we rest under the shade of the cross on that Sunday. For us, it’s been transformed by Christ’s saving passion into that weapon of peace, to a source of great strength. And we know that sometimes making the sign of the cross before we drive, before we engage in any work, it sanctifies what we are doing, and it’s of course our seal; it’s our boast. That Sunday, of course, gives us encouragement.

The Sunday that follows it, of course, [is] St. John Climacus. We’re told there is a ladder that ascends to heaven, the ladder of the virtues, and people just like us have climbed it and have reached places that they never dreamed they could reach. Reading The Ladder, I mean, there’s criminals, there’s convicts, there’s people that have committed every possible sin—St. John Climacus had such a wide knowledge of human beings, their frailties, how the passions can affect us in many ways, and yet one can get through all of that. One can get through all of that with humility, with repentance, with love, with all the rungs of the ladder that are described in that truly, truly wonderful work.

Then the final Sunday of course is St. Mary of Egypt. Doesn’t matter what we’ve done. Doesn’t matter what mistakes we’ve done. There’s nothing that we could possible do that can hinder us from repenting, from turning to Christ, and from leading a life that’s pleasing to him. So the last thing that the Church holds up for us is this notorious prostitute who was really even, in many ways, worse than a prostitute, who had become, through her repentance, through her love for Christ, through her humility, into a woman of great, great purity and holiness that was such that the Abba Zosimas, when he saw her, he had never seen such virtue in all of Palestine. If that’s possible for someone who had been completely lost in the clutches of sin, then there’s a lot that’s possible for us if we just turn to Christ.

Fr. Tom: What incredibly encouraging words. Thank you very much, You Grace.

I want to remind all our listeners: 1-855-AF-RADIO. Feel free to call in with any questions that you might have for His Grace, Bishop Alexis. 1-855-237-2346.

Your Grace, I want to follow up just on one thing that you said. Something occurred to me, and myself as a priest, I will sometimes hear this struggle of people. Given that you have been a monastic for a long time, you lived in Greece, and you also oversaw a parish church, talk to us about, for instance, these, in the themes that you just spoke about—St. Gregory Palamas with hesychasm, St. John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, this book was originally written for monastics; St. Mary of Egypt, tremendous ascetical effort—help lay people—help us lay people—understand why is there this emphasis on monasticism, these monastic virtues and the monastic ascetical effort? How do we as lay people try to relate to this? Is it held up to us as an ideal, or is there something else there? The relationship between monasticism and laypeople—can you help us understand that?

Bishop Alexis: Well, if you think about: What is monasticism? Monasticism involves the monastic tonsure in which one takes the vow of poverty, the vow of chastity, of virginity, and the vow to remain faithful in one monastery and obedient to one’s last breath. In a sense the monastic vows are, however, a repetition of the baptismal vows, in which one is going to forsake Satan and be completely united to Christ. In the Orthodox Church and plenty of Fathers, of course, monastic, have said there is only one spirituality. There is not a lay spirituality and a monastic spirituality. There’s one spirituality.

For a monastic, it’s a little easier; it’s not harder. It’s easier for a monastic than a lay person; that’s true. For a monastic, fasting is never an issue, because there’s only going to be fasting meals. There’s not going to be temptations of that nature. Going to pray, well, that’s going to be easy; the services are already laid out. Which is why I really believe that a lay person that fasts really consistently and strives to fast well, a lay person that makes the effort to take the time out to come to Presanctified Liturgies, to be there on Sunday has a greater reward and a greater blessing from God than a monastic will, for whom it’s already all laid out.

But St. Gregory Palamas, in fact, he has one beautiful homily where he takes the monastic vows and shows how they all apply to those who are of the laity; it’s just at a different level. Instead of chastity, of course, it’s faithfulness in marriage. Instead of being without possessions, it’s in terms of being someone who gives alms. St. John Climacus talks about the angels being the examples or the models for monks, and monks being the models for lay people. I’ve known in Greece lay men and lay women who have really had great, great virtue, and some of whom have lived basically like monks. Of course, I’ve known monks that would characterize themselves as unmonastic monks. I think it’s a mistake to look at monks as something foreign from, say, the lay man. They have it a little easier. They’ve made one hard leap, and that leap’s not easy: to leave the world.

Fr. Tom: [Laughter] It doesn’t seem that way from my side! It seems much harder!

Bishop Alexis: It’s the first decision that’s hard. After that, it’s not quite so… A good monk, it’s a happy life. It’s a blessed life. It’s a carefree life. A monk has the freedom to pray. A monk has the freedom to not worry about finances or anything else. He knows God will take care of him, and he just seeks that one thing needful. Those moments when he really has it in his hands, in his heart, he’s already in paradise.

Fr. Tom: I love that.

Bishop Alexis: But that paradise is just as open to a lay man. And everything that a monk can do and can achieve, a lay person with the appropriate struggle, with the appropriate love for Christ, can have. St. Mary of Egypt was a lay woman; she wasn’t a monastic.

Fr. Tom: Yes, right. Thank you so much for that. I love that you said that there are no separate rules for monastics versus lay persons in terms of the fasting and so forth, because often I think there is that temptation when some of our parishioners might look at the West and say, “Well, why don’t we have a lay rule?” The monastics, they have the opportunity to do all of these things, but I love that you re-emphasize that we have one rule in our Church and we are all to achieve that one rule.

Bishop Alexis: It means we’re all brothers and sisters, too.

Fr. Tom: Not just churches.

Bishop Alexis: Right. It means there’s not separation, but there’s unity, which is very important. The monks aren’t separate from the lay men, but we’re both walking together, struggling together, looking towards Christ together. I love it.

All right, we’re going to a break right now. We’re at the bottom of the hour. We’re going to come right back. We are talking about Great Lent with His Grace, Bishop Alexis of the Orthodox Church in America, Bishop of Bethesda. We’re going to be back in a few minutes to continue our discussion of Great Lent. Don’t go away.

Fr. Tom: We’re back with His Grace, Bishop Alexis, Bishop of Bethesda, and we’re talking about Great Lent. Your Grace, let’s continue this conversation about the lenten struggle and the lenten effort. Often what happens is, when people are undergoing Great Lent, you can kind of make a chart, and the first few days you’re really doing very well, and the fasting is going well and the church attendance and the prayer, and all of these increased, intensified activities. And then, by the end of the week or maybe one or two weeks in, the struggles begin. The intensity begins to wane. So what are the greatest struggles that everyone, obviously, lay and monastic—what are the greatest struggles to overcome during the lenten season, and what should we be aware of while we’re undergoing the lenten fast to make sure that things aren’t in our way and hindering our efforts? Help us; give us some advice in that area.

Bishop Alexis: Now I think discouragement is a huge, huge problem. During the lenten struggle, we may find that our mind starts to wander a bit more, temptations seem to be greater. We may become irritable. Part of that is a humbling experience, and if we accept that, well, yes, we are very much sinners in need of Christ’s help, it will help. Sometimes it’s useful to really just make an effort to do it even when we don’t want to do it, because we love Christ. I remember when I was a monk on Mount Athos. We would have vigils that would be literally twelve-hour vigils, and I would myself fall asleep in the stall, even standing up. I spoke to my abbot at the time, and I said, “I am just so tired. I mean, I fall asleep. Sometimes I’d just like to go back to bed.” He said, “Well, isn’t it worth getting tired for Christ’s sake?” And that was enough. That solved that problem. So, yeah, there’s going to be temptations, there’s going to be difficulties, but it’s worth it if it’s an offering for Christ. So I would simply just encourage the faithful, especially to not leave the holy services behind, to make it to especially the Presanctified Liturgies, because it’s really the days Monday through Friday which have really the sense of Great Lent. Again, there’s also the prayer of St. Ephraim which is said at least six times every day, saying it several times a day, for those whose knees will allow it, with prostrations, is a wonderful reminder of what we’re actually trying to do in Lent in terms of putting off the old man and putting on the new.

Fr. Tom: If we are undergoing those spiritual efforts and let’s say we fail at it—we miss our prayer rule or we eat something that we said we weren’t going to eat or whatever that was that we did not accomplish—should we take that as a failure and then just stop? Or how do we deal with the actual breaking of that ascetical effort? What do we do after that happens?

Bishop Alexis: Two things. One, we prepare for confession, and sometimes some of the fathers would actually keep notes. So prepare for confession. And then second: That was a few moments ago; I’m making a new choice. I am going to do what I know is pleasing in the sight of the Lord. Forgive me; I’m starting again. As many times as we fall, just as many times we can get up. But it’s important to get up immediately and not to languish. There’s no reason to languish. The past is done. Whatever we’ve done, we can’t change it, no matter what… There’s no way we can change it, but we can change the present. We can in the present be in communion with God, and we can in the present say, “Yes, I’m a publican again, but, yes, I can be justified again by humility.” At the end, humility is so very important. Keeping the fast… Of course, it’s said that the devil fasts perfectly, but to no avail.

Fr. Tom: There was a question in the chatroom which is in the same vein, Your Grace, and that is: America is a very large place, and in certain areas in the country there is not a church that’s very close. What suggestions do you have for those people that may not be able to attend the church services maybe during the week due to distance? What can they do?

Bishop Alexis: Well, I know the Lenten Triodion, the daily services are translated into English. One thing one could do is get those services, read them as much as one can. I was going to talk about this about the end, but reading the psalter is very helpful. Yeah, the prayer of St. Ephraim: say it five or six times a day. Say it once and you mean it. That has a lot of power. St. Paisios used to say that one really good thought, one thought that’s really filled with light, has the strength of an entire Athonite all-night vigil.

Fr. Tom: What a beautiful thought! Twelve hours!

Bishop Alexis: Twelve hours. So if that’s the case… Of course, God is incredibly generous, and we’re very fortunate for that. We’re hardly ever that generous with anyone else, but he’s very generous with us. So even if you simply take, “O Lord and Master of my life, give to me a spirit of chastity…” We say that prayer… Unfortunately, most prayers I know them in Greek and I don’t know them in English, but if we say that prayer it will have great power. Again, I knew someone in Greece who, because of her condition, she was not able to go to church regularly. Her husband actually didn’t let her. But she would, on Sundays, she knew when the epiklesis was taking place, and she would kneel down in her kitchen and weep.

Fr. Tom: Oh my.

Bishop Alexis: Yes, she went to church. And being away from it, she was still sanctified. So even being far away from church and services, sanctification is always possible. God always does everything he can, if we just seek him.

Fr. Tom: Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that story, Your Grace. 1-855-AF-RADIO, 1-855-237-2346. We’d love to hear from some of our listeners for any questions that you might have for His Grace, Bishop Alexis.

Your Grace, I want to talk about fasting. Generally speaking, for whatever reason, when Orthodox Christians think of Great Lent, they think of fasting. At least in America, when I was growing up—my father was a priest, my grandfather was a priest, and so forth—at that particular time, there was a lot of accommodations made—I would say beyond accommodations—for fasting, and thank God there seems to be more of an emphasis on, again, using the authentic rules of fasting and the guidelines for fasting. But some people do find the fasting rules very difficult to accomplish. Some are on a different… Maybe they’re just new Orthodox Christians or they are seeking Orthodox Christianity. So how should Orthodox Christians undertake the fasting discipline during the lenten period, and are there legitimate accommodations for certain people in certain situations? Let’s talk about fasting, the letter of the law, how to fulfill that, and if there can and should be accommodations.

Bishop Alexis: Yes, that’s a good question. In terms of the letter of the law, it’s worth keeping in mind, although it’s not applied as apostolic constitutions, Canon [69], is actually: “If a bishop or priest or deacon despise the fast, except for health reasons, let him be deposed, the layman excommunicated.” That’s strong. I’m not suggesting that that be used, but it’s important to have, in the back of our minds, that, yes, fasting was, in the time of the early Church, very important and very serious. I think it’s also important to think that why we find often fasting rules difficult: there’s vegans that don’t seem to have any difficulty fasting all year long, and they seem to have a great deal of joy and peace about it.

The first principle about fasting, though, is that the fast is pathoktonos—it’s a slayer of the passions—not somatoktonos—not a slayer of the body. So accommodations can and should be made for any legitimate health issues—diabetes, anemia, debility of old age—that’s a given. And I think it’s also, if one’s invited to a meal, it’s always appropriate beforehand to say, “I am an Orthodox Christian. I keep the fasts. And as an expression of my love for Christ, my obedience to my Church, and I desire to cut off my own will in small things so that I may be able to do it for God in great things,” and people understand that. So it’s a moment to really bear witness to the faith.

Now, in an Orthodox country like Greece, the time when the fast is kept most strictly is always the first week and Holy Week. They’re the time of the greatest spiritual struggle. I, as a spiritual father in Greece, would say: Try. If there’s difficulty, I ask my spiritual child, “Come to me, and we can relax the fast as necessary, even relax it greatly for a day or so,” but it’s important that we do not choose how to fast like, say, the Roman Catholics, who might say, “Well, let’s give up chocolate for Lent,” but we aim high, we consult our spiritual father, and when we are having difficulty, we say, “I am having difficulty. I’m feeling weak. I’m feeling tired.” Ask the spiritual father. The spiritual father may say, “Yes, you can have some meat,” or milk, or whatever the spiritual father decides. It’s blessed that way, and there’s a humility in it, and one is not breaking the fast when one is doing it with the blessing of the spiritual father, who is simply helping the spiritual child who’s having a little difficulty at that particular moment.

Fr. Tom: Do you notice… It would be helpful just for those of us who have never been to Greece or a traditional Orthodox country. Do you notice that the fasting is kept a little bit more strictly among the laity, is that the case?

Bishop Alexis: Yeah, I think among those who are really… The laity who are really going to church every Sunday, they’re keeping it strictly. I know one case, it was a mother told me, who had a child with cancer in the hospital, and it was a Wednesday. The nurse gave the child a glass of milk, and the child asked for tea instead, and said, “Christ will make it as though it were milk in my body.”

Fr. Tom: Wow.

Bishop Alexis: Of course, the child was keeping the letter of the law, but there were a number of doctors and nurses who started to take fasting seriously from the confession of an eight-year-old. So, yeah, they keep it.

Fr. Tom: That’s amazing. Your Grace, there’s also a follow-up question before we go to a phone call that we have. Miranda in the chatroom is asking about digital fast, a fasting from social media or video games or television, and not to replace the food fast, she says, but in addition to it. So what is your opinion of a digital fast?

Bishop Alexis: Well, in terms of social media, I would suggest a life-long fast myself. [Laughter] But it’s important to learn to turn off one’s phone and refrain from it so that one can pray. It’s very hard when we pray, when we’re in church—it’s very easy to get distracted by this thought or what we said earlier, what we did or what we will do. Now add the possibility of picking up your phone and looking at it. That just makes the struggle that much harder. So a digital fast, not because using that technology is bad, but it simply makes our struggle that much more difficult. What we want to do is to… I mean, we want to fast, but we do want to make it as easy on ourselves as we can so that it’ll be less difficult to fail. We want to protect ourselves and really care for ourselves spiritually.

Fr. Tom: “Less difficult to fail.” Good. That’s wonderful. Your Grace, we have a phone call from Jacob from Maryland, your state that you are currently bishop in. Jacob, are you there?

Jacob: Yes, I’m here. Thanks for having me on the show.

Fr. Tom: Welcome. What is your question for His Grace, Bishop Alexis?

Jacob: Yes, Your Grace, here’s my question. So myself and others I’ve spoken to, one thing that I think is confusing for us is we’ll fast, we try to take the fast seriously, we go to the services, and we’ll say the prayers sincerely, and we’ll ask God, for example, to give us the spirit of humility. And then sometimes right after that we’ll lose our temper at somebody or something like that. So I think that can be discouraging for a lot of us.

What I’m hoping maybe you could give some clarity on is when we talk about the grace that we receive through these efforts, what does that actually look like, and what should we kind of expect in ourselves? because clearly it’s not just an instant transformation sort of thing. But what does that look like? I’ve talked to a couple people, and it’s come up in youth group, for example, where some kids don’t want to fast because they don’t necessarily see a major change. Maybe you can speak to that.

Bishop Alexis: Well, there’s already a change in being, being obedient. Obedience is a virtue. It’s true that it’s not—saying the prayers, fasting—it doesn’t change our character right away. It doesn’t mean or guarantee that we’re not going to slip, but say even taking the example of saying the prayers, fasting, and then in the next moment you get angry. Compare it with not saying the prayers, not fasting—and getting angry. In the one instance, at least we can say for myself, “I’m trying, Lord, and help me. Help me. I got angry; I don’t want to do that. Help me the next time.” And the help will come. You know, a lot of our struggles and a lot of our passions—and this may be a misunderstanding… Sometimes we think if we do this and we do that, we will fix this problem, instead of realizing that the most important thing to fix is not so much to rely on ourselves but to rely on God, to rely on his grace and his strength.

Like with, for example, anger, just try to remember God, as much… If we remember him, if we have his name—Lord Jesus Christ—on my lips, when I’m saying that prayer, it’s difficult to do some things, to at least speak in anger or to really give into any of the other passions. Once a monk on Athos told me, “Monks should never sin, but we forget.” You know, sometimes, it’s true. We do the services and do all the right things—and then we forget. So it’s simply time to remember again. It’s time to say, “Yeah, I’m still pretty far from perfect, and I probably need God even more than I thought I did.” And that’s not a bad thing.

Fr. Tom: So, Your Grace, at the beginning of Jacob’s question there, when he said that his friends say, “I fasted, and I didn’t notice any change,” is the idea then we should not be fasting to look for a change?

Bishop Alexis: Yeah, we shouldn’t be fasting to look for a change, but the other thing is that it’s sometimes very hard for us to judge ourselves and whether a change is taking place. I mean, I’ve been a spiritual father for a long number of years, and I’ve had spiritual children who’ve made really great advances. They’re completely different from what they were 15 years before. And yet they don’t feel like they’ve made much of a change. Unless they’re discouraged, I don’t let them know that they’ve changed too much. But it’s hard to be our own judge, and sometimes we don’t judge rightly, and sometimes we’re very, very, very, very hard on ourselves, because we put up a standard of “Why am I not St. Paisios yet? Why do I get angry and do all these things?” Well, no, I’m really at this point not in that category; I’m in another category, and it’s okay. I believe that change will take place, and I trust in God for it to take place when he wills. It’ll take place.

Fr. Tom: Thank you, Your Grace. Thank you, Jacob, for calling. That was a great question, and we really appreciate it. Your Grace, we’re almost at the end of the hour, and I wanted to just ask you really maybe one last question. I know we had a couple of questions that we wanted to talk about, but let’s combine them. What other changes—so we’ve talked about prayer and fasting and almsgiving and so forth—can Orthodox Christians make to their daily lives during the lenten period that might be helpful to them? And also, what books might you recommend that lay people might read during the lenten period that might help them to grow and be inspired in this lenten period?

Bishop Alexis: Well, have a time for reading. Again, as I said earlier, saying the prayer of St. Ephraim. They could do it, say, several times a day. Monks do it six times a day, so that’s… Getting to church as much as possible.

And as for books, I’d say the psalter, and then the psalter, and then the psalter. Outside of Lent, in monasteries, the whole psalter is read during the course of a week, and during Lent it’s read twice during a week. So for a lay man, I think reading through the psalter at least once in its entirety during the 40 days is not hard. That’s about four psalms a day, reading them only during the weekday. It’s enough to get through the whole psalter before Holy Week begins, simply reading the psalms and making them our own. The psalms express the very sentiment that the caller was expressing, about “I’m doing all this and, Lord, where are you? I’m doing all this and my enemies are around me.” The psalms express everything. According to St. John Chrysostom, those who sing the psalms are filled with the Holy Spirit. When we have God’s grace near us, we can, as the psalmist says, leap over a wall.

After that, books would be St. Dorotheus of Gaza, his Discourses are really excellent. It’s kind of a bit easier than The Ladder which does have sections that are hard-hitting even for monks. Then of course Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s Great Lent is good for thematically going through the Sundays.

Fr. Tom: Wonderful. Your Grace, I can’t thank you enough for the pastoral guidance and wisdom that you shared with us this evening, the stories. We are so grateful for your presence here today, for answering all of these questions. We do pray for you and for your ministry, that God would bless you and give you much success and that you would give peace to your priests and to those whom you are overseeing. Your Grace, thank you so much for joining us this evening.

Bishop Alexis: Thank you for inviting me, Fr. Thomas. Thank you.

Fr. Tom: We also want to thank John and Bobby for manning the calls and the chatroom and the engineering, for all the folks in the chatroom, for our callers, and for everybody that’s listening in and for those who are going to listen by podcast. We want to thank you for participating.

Here’s a few final thoughts. Our yearly great lenten journey is leading us to the apex of our faith, the holy Pascha. In this age of instant gratification, an age of flagging religious zeal, and ascetical journey of seven weeks can seem daunting, if not impossible, but don’t write it off. Don’t let the voices of doubt and cynicism dissuade you from fully engaging in what is a proven path to holiness and union with God. So approach your lenten journey with humility and with hope. If you’ve never really taken up the lenten journey in full, now is your opportunity. Take solace in the fact that there are millions of Orthodox travelers on this path with you. During your efforts, if you fall, get back up, and look to Christ who will strengthen you. If you do these things, the Pascha of the Lord will be unlike any you’ve ever experienced.

And that’s our show for tonight. Remember to like us on Facebook at facebook.com/ancientfaithtoday. Share out our program after that’s posted. Give us your feedback and contact us with any ideas or topics that you might want to hear about. Join us for the next edition of Ancient Faith Today; our topic is China, Christianity, and the Coronavirus. We’ll be speaking with a woman who spent ten years in mainland China, secretly discipling Christians under the ever-watchful eye of the Chinese Communist authorities, only to have her plans cut short by the coronavirus. Good night, everybody.