Great Lent & Holy Week

The Church does not enter the fast abruptly. Three preparatory Sundays turn the heart towards repentance, and then the fast is taken up in stages: after Meatfare Sunday meat is set aside, while dairy, eggs and fish remain through Cheesefare week; after Cheesefare Sunday — also called Forgiveness Sunday, when the Church asks and grants forgiveness before the fast begins — the full discipline starts.

Lent keeps the strictest form of the rule: no meat, dairy or eggs, fish, wine or oil. Weekends soften it — wine and oil are permitted on Saturdays and Sundays — and two feasts break it more generously: on the Annunciation (25 March) and on Palm Sunday fish is permitted. Slavic practice also allows wine, oil and caviar on Lazarus Saturday. The first week, Clean Week, and Holy Week itself are traditionally kept most strictly of all, with Great and Holy Friday and Saturday observed by many as days of near-total abstinence.

The Sundays of Lent trace a path: the Triumph of Orthodoxy, Saint Gregory Palamas, the Veneration of the Cross, Saint John Climacus and Saint Mary of Egypt, before the Lord's entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The weekday services change character too — the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, the Great Canon of Saint Andrew, the Akathist to the Theotokos — so that the whole of church life, not food alone, keeps the fast.

If this is your first Lent, take heart: nobody climbs the whole ladder at once. The fast is a means, not a measure of worth. Agree a realistic rule with your priest, keep it steadily, and let the services carry you — the Church has walked this road for many centuries and knows the way.