Today, on the first Sunday of Great Lent, which is also the Sunday of Orthodoxy, we hear Saint John’s account of the calling of the first disciples. Today’s Gospel tells us how Jesus called Philip and how he then went and called Nathanael, who skeptically questioned whether anything good could come from Nazareth. However, his eyes were opened when the Lord told him how He had seen him sitting under the fig tree. Jesus Christ told him: “You will see greater things than that … you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending over the Son of man.”
We read this Gospel at the beginning of Lent because it shows us where our Lenten journey is headed. In the early Church, Lent was the time in which new converts were prepared for baptism, which was referred to as illumination, for becoming Christian is about learning to see with the eyes of faith.
Most of us are already baptized and have had our eyes opened to the truth of the faith. And yet our sight tends to become darkened and we all need to learn to see with the eyes of faith. In setting out on a journey to Pascha, the great feast in which the Light of Christ conquers all darkness, we need to be able to prepare ourselves to receive that light. We need to be purified so that Christ’s light does not consume us, but rather gives us life and leads us to the vision of God.
The purpose of our Lenten discipline is to help us to enter into the depths of our own hearts, so that we may learn to see with “the eye of the heart” so that, beholding God there, we may receive life in Him.
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When he had been cleansed by fasting, great Moses saw the God for whom he longed. Eagerly follow his example, O my humble soul; make haste to cleanse thyself from evil in the day of abstinence, and so thou shalt behold the Lord who grants thee forgiveness,
for He is all-powerful and loves mankind.
From Sunday Evening Vespers on the Sunday of Orthodoxy