These Saving Days

Our 2025 Daily Lenten Journey comes to an end today with a review of why it all matters. We have been fasting for weeks now. We have been diligently making our prostrations in front of our icons. You may not have been paying attention, but it was all for a our salvation.

I saved my favorite Great Lenten prayer for our final post in our Daily Lenten Journey. This prayer, offered at the end of the Presanctified Liturgy beautifully expresses our ‘reason for the season’ and all the effort we make during Great Lent.

Almighty Lord, You have created all things in wisdom. In Your inexpressible providence and great goodness You have brought us to these saving days, for the cleansing of our souls and bodies, for control of our passions, in the hope of the Resurrection. After the forty days You delivered into the hands of Your servant Moses the tablets of the law in characters divinely traced. Enable us also, O benevolent One, to fight the good fight, to complete the course of the fast, to keep the faith inviolate, to crush underfoot the heads of unseen tempters, to emerge victors over sin and to come, without reproach, to the worship of Your Holy Resurrection. For blessed and glorified is Your most honorable and majestic name, of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forevermore.

These are saving days, no matter what the ‘fasting skeptics’ want you to believe. Sure, it is not a sin to eat meat every day during Great Lent. It may not be a sin, but it also doesn’t help us meet our goals. This prayer expresses three great purposes of Great Lent.

Great Lent is “for the cleansing of our souls and bodies.” Our fasting accomplishes more than learning how to cook without eggs, dairy and olive oil. When we use our bodies as a “living sacrifice” (Romans 12.1) to God, our bodies benefit. Get a blood test and you’ll see the benefit.

Great Lent is “for control of our passions.” We simply cannot learn to say ‘no’ to sin unless we learn to say ‘no’ to food and ‘yes’ to prayer. Our passions are ultimately a link between our bodies and souls. When we use our minds to control what we eat, sin is easier to defeat.

Great Lent gives us “the hope of the Resurrection.” If you are not ‘tired’ of fasting and looking forward to the Resurrection, maybe you should ‘beef up’ your fasting. The coming joy of Pascha should be calling to us by now. I won’t lie. I’m already looking forward to the celebration.

Spending forty days preparing for God’s blessings isn’t new. Moses spent forty days on a mountain waiting for God’s promise. (Exodus 24.18) Christ was in the desert for forty days prior to beginning His public ministry. (Matthew 4.1-2) What do we get for the past forty days?

The main reason our 2025 Daily Lenten Journey focused on prayer was because we always need to be reminded how to communicate with God. I pray you noticed that not one single prayer we featured ‘was about’ asking God for things, but for salvation. What did we learn?

I pray we learned to control our passions. I pray we learned to cleanse our souls and bodies. I pray we learned to hope for the Resurrection. I pray the past forty days have been a blessing for you and helped you grow closer to Christ.

We end our Daily Lenten Journey on Prayer asking God to “enable us to fight the good fight and complete the course.” It has all been for our salvation. I hope you were happy praying we us for forty days.

Our next journey is Holy Week. Have a blessed Holy Week and a joyous Pascha.