Our Venerable Father Martinian.
Great Fast Day 2. Abstention from meat and foods that contain meat. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Sixth Hour – Isaiah 1:19-2:3. Vespers – Genesis 1:14-23. Proverbs 1:20-33.
Read Isaiah 1:19-2:3
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
“If you are willing and obedient…but if you refuse and rebel…” This is humanity’s perennial dilemma, from the beginning of our history, both collectively and as individuals. And the Church gives us this Lenten Fast as a way to help us make the correct decision, to submit to God’s loving will instead of continuing to rebel against Him.
That decision doesn’t require that we transform ourselves overnight, changing from sinners into righteous men and women in the flash of an eye. That would simply be impossible. No, we are like the city that Isaiah describes: silver corrupted with base metals, like wine that has been watered until it has lost all potency. This is where God is willing to meet us: in all our sin and imperfection. He will burn away the alloy, so that only silver is left. Almost certainly, it will be a difficult process – rejecting sin and adhering to virtue almost always is. But that process of purification is the only real way we will be restored to the image of God that we lost in the beginning.
What’s more, its worth it. All the nations, Isaiah says, will come to Zion – and when they come, they will receive instruction in the word of the Lord. To walk in the paths of the Lord is to have life, and to have it to the full. This is what God is inviting us to: via repentance (which is a lifestyle, rather than a momentary decision), we will open ourselves more and more to Him, to his righteousness and judgement, and the end result will be better than we could possibly imagine.