Words of Hope for the World Now

As these last days of winter flow by and spring draws nearer, worry about the world economy is stronger than it has been in months.  Protests are erupted, especially in Portugal, as well as other places. 

It thus seems timely to reflect on the state of the world and the state of one's own mind, for these are indeed trying times.  His Eminence Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch, offers a message for Great Lent.  The opening of this message is below.  For the full message, click on the highlighted text at the end of this post. 


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Beloved brothers and sisters, children in the Lord,




The holy fathers, who arranged everything in an orderly manner, instituted a period of ascetic discipline and spiritual purification for forty days prior to the great feast of the Lord’s resurrection. This ascetic rule assumes the form of a limitation on foods through fasting, but especially an abstinence from evil. The saintly hymnographer characteristically emphasizes that a genuine and favorable form of fasting for God is the estrangement from wrongdoing, control of the tongue, alienation from anger, separation from evil desires, including gossip, deceit and swearing, restoration of justice, disengagement from passionate thoughts, fervent confession, cleansing of the conscience, “which there can be nothing more difficult,” refraining from “harmful passions, from envy and hatred, indeed from every wickedness,” shunning of “the mind’s perversion,” admission of transgressions. For “the Judge is close, at the door,” and he tries hearts and minds, since “He is everywhere present and fills all things.” (Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete)

Message for Great Lent