It’s Never too Late to Make a Beginning (Mid-Lent Self Pep Talk)

Rembrandt: Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.

It’s never too late: not for fasting, not for prayer, not for conquering our passions. The spiritual clock never passes the “eleventh hour” until the day our soul departs from our body. That is what I have been reminding myself lately.

 Sometimes I look back on my life, particularly on the last several years of being an Orthodox Christian and sigh: “What did I do?” I ask myself dejectedly. “How could I let my spiritual life slip away from my control? How could I have loosened my grip on the zeal I once had for Christ?” And in those moments I need to remind myself – scold myself into remembering – that repentance, true, honest, ugly repentance can bring us to heights of holiness read about in the lives of the saints.

I can’t go back and change the past. I can’t undo the knots I have tied in my heart, or the harmful thoughts I have knit into my mind unless I turn toward Christ with tears, with longing to change, and conviction to struggle against my bad habits, my negligence, my self-created environment of sin and anger.

Great Lent is a joyful and difficult time in the Orthodox Liturgical year. It is the long sought for time period of reflection, the challenging time of abstinence, and the perfect time for repentance. I regret that I have allowed myself to become slothful in regards to my spiritual life, but regret only gets us as far as Judas, who regretted he betrayed Christ, we need to follow St. Peter’s example and change. Otherwise I will merely fulfill the words of Abbess Thaisia, the spiritual daughter of St. John of Kronstadt, who said:

We fast from foods, yet with the soul and mind we take pleasure in forbidden fruits in various forms. We keep vigil, but our mind is weighed with earthly cares. We stand in prayer and psalmody, and our thoughts wander in all directions. We have come to the spring of Love, and in our hearts we often carry “the evil-smelling deceit” of Judas (Sticheron, Holy Thursday), “who with a kiss, as with a sign of love, betrayed his Master and Lord,” the Saviour of light and life, Whom he had once approached precisely to become His disciple and follower.

I need to turn around, face my sin, my laziness, my negligence, and with the help of God change my thoughts, words, and actions so that I keep the Great Fast inwardly as much as outwardly. This Great Lent I’ll be contemplating the following words sung on Holy Tuesday long before I arrive there in hopes that I will have, by then, made a beginning: O Saviour, I have gone astray still count me worthy of this joy, in Your great mercy!