Exactly that is why we have a recurring preparatory period of forty days and forty nights before Good Friday and Easter starting on Ash Wednesday in every year.
In our always-busy-with-something-else mindset we often lose focus and heart in our dealings with this world. However if in our hearts we have a strong longing not for the world, but for the world to come, then we should not or maybe we will not ever lose focus and heart.
According to the ancient sages, once upon a time there was a fox. In the well known story, he became very hungry. He had a chance to eat healthy vegetables, nuts and roots. But no, he thanked. Then the crow offered him some French cheese.
It was a little green and a little blue, that is for sure. Thanks, but no, he said.
Then, by the owner who befriended him, he was invited for a dinner in the Kentucky Fried Chicken. But no, he thanked, he wanted something else.
He craved for grape. The waiter brought him a green grape. No. The waiter brought him red grape, no. The waiter brought him a cubic shaped and a rainbow color grape. No. Finally, as in a dream, he saw a golden vine, heavily loaded with something like diamond grape, though hidden behind thorny bushes.
It was impossible to get it, but through a very, very tight hole, a hardly visible breach in the thorn wall. He tried to get in, but he was just to big to push himself through. He tried hard, and even harder, and almost died hard trying it, wounded from the thorns, he gave up the attempt to cross it by force.
"What should I do?" he asked.
"I will pray and I will fast to figure out what to do" he told himself.
And he had been praying and fasting for seven days and seven nights meanwhile he was stuck in the thorny entrance. At the end he became so slim, that he could have easily entered the circle of the bushes finding the so much desired diamond grape on the golden vine.
The great holidays of the church year, which were designed as special vehicles to receive blessings through them, are gems and diamonds on a golden vine.
We have to put everything aside, all desires and wishes must aim the holy city built on the top of the mountain of God.
As Jesus told the disciples, in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 13: 44-46:
‘The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it."
In the Lenten season we got 40 days and forty nights to remember that the prophet of God, Moses spent exactly that time to receive the Ten Commandments.
Likewise, Jesus spent forty days and forty nights in the desert to repel the Ego of the Man. Neither Moses nor Jesus ate bread, thus fasting must be somehow a part of our commemoration.
Although the sick and the people with issues must ask their doctors what they can or are allowed to do the regarding fasting practices, where fasting is a special form of prayer, and fasting is still an important part of our prayers.
We remember lest we forget. However we do Lenten preparations not only to not forget the Prophet Moses and the Christ, but because following them, we are climbing too the highest mountain of the universe where the Tree of Life stands in the Garden of Eden.
There are a lot of parallel signs regarding Moses and Jesus, Jews and Christians.
It is still amazing how the people of Israel were able to effectively transmit the divine revelation they received on the Mount Sinai more then three thousand years ago to their Sons and Daughters making it a written and an oral tradition which says that we,
the Israelite nation, the Jews, after God rescued us from slavery and from the chasing Egyptian army, we saw the presence of God in the desert with our own eyes and we heard with our own ears that God gave us the Ten Commandments.
Since then, generations after generations even in the exile they celebrate the receiving of the revelation being gathered as a whole nation at the Mount Sinai.
Not on the same way, but similarly, the Apostles of Jesus stated that we had seen the Lord Jesus dying on the cross, and we saw him after he had been resurrected from the dead, and we saw with our own eyes when he ascended into the Heaven.
Thus we know to whom we are praying in the Lenten season of this very year of 2020, because: If we fall, Jesus will help us, if we are sick or weak, Jesus will keep us, if we are sad, Jesus will comfort us, if we are joyful, Jesus will celebrate with us, if we die, Jesus will give us an eternal new life, as he promised it on his very cross described in the Gospel of Luke 23: 39-43, when it happened that :
‘One of the criminals who were hanged, railed at him, saying,
“Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying,
“Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?
And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in the Paradise.”
Lenten is a recurring season in every year, prepares us to receive the Blessings of Good Friday and Easter in every year.
However and eventually the whole life should be and will be filled with the Spirit of the Lenten, which radiates humility, humbleness, compassion, empathy, self-restraint, modesty, prayer, fasting, knowledge and wisdom, which all focus on the written revelation of God, that is the word of God, the Holy Scriptures, and focus on the living Word, that is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father by the Holy Spirit, who died and was resurrected, ascended into Heaven, until he comes again. May his kingdom come, may God be praised by every soul. AMEN.
