The week before the beginning of Great Lent has come to be known as “Cheese Week,” the days when a fast from meat has begun while allowing for the consumption of dairy products and eggs. A full description of “The Rules of Fasting” is available for some helpful perspective as we all begin to control ourselves, while not attempting to control others. The Triodion directs content for daily or weekday services for the first time. Wednesday and Friday services take up the soon to be followed weekday “fast” from the Holy Mysteries as the Divine Liturgy is not permitted to be served (as on weekdays during Great Lent - except when March 25 falls on a weekday). The order for the weekday services during Great Lent is used on Wednesday and Friday of “Cheese Week,” including the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, and full prostrations. Dark vestments are also used on Wednesday and Friday of “Cheese Week,”
Just as the season of Sundays after Pentecost ends with the Luke Gospel reading about Zacchaeus (Sunday of Zacchaeus), the Pre-Lenten Sundays come to a close with the singing of Vespers on the Sunday evening of the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (Forgiveness Sunday). This service of Vespers includes the change from bright colored vestments to the dark vestmens of Lent (weekdays often black, weekends often purple). At the close of Vespers, and a Homily from the Rector encouraging us all to engage as faithfully as we are able the demands of the soul cleansing forty days, we begin by first asking forgiveness and receiving forgiveness from each other.
The days of the first week of Great Lent (February 23-28) (often called “Clean Week” as we take up the rigor of denying ourselves) are a most rigorous effort. We seek to restore control over our basic need for food -sustenance, by remembering eating to live, rather than simply living to eat. We do so while at the same time knowing that we have been given liberty to eat without regard for what is “profane or unclean (Acts Chapter 10 - a lesson that is advanced beyond simply regarding food as unclean, to the offense before God of regarding another human as profane or unclean).”
The central source for the first week of Lent is the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. This Canon is an offering of repentance, citing many sources from the Old Testament that remind us of action to emulate (repentance), as well as the recitation of transgressions not to emulate. If Job is a prefiguring or a “type” of Christ, and both were severly tempted, how much to we prepare ourselves to stand before the tempter and not give
Feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos, March 25
Thursday of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, when in Matins the Life of St. Mary of Egypt is read in two sections as directed by the Triodion, March 26
Saturday of the Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos, March 28
Bridegroom Matins (each served the evening before)
Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts is often served in the mornings so as not to conflict with Matins
Thursday
Mystical Supper (Vespers with Liturgy of St. Basil)
Friday
Saturday