2013 Catechetical Homily of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for the beginning of Great Lent

+ B A R T H O L O M E W By the Mercy of God Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch 21/3/13 To the Plenitude of the Church Grace and Peace be with you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ together with our Prayer, Blessing and Forgiveness Beloved brothers and sisters, children in the Lord, The holy fathers, who arranged everything in an orderly manner, instituted a period of ascetic discipline and spiritual purification for forty days prior to the great feast of the Lord’s resurrection. This ascetic rule assumes the form of a limitation on foods through fasting, but especially an abstinence from evil.