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Dear Friends of Saint Dumitru Monastery,

Our Lord instructs us to fast with a peaceful and joyous countenance (cf. Matthew 6:16-17). At the same time, Great Lent begins with the expulsion of Adam from Paradise. One way of resolving the tension between these two states is to remember that, as the hymns of the Church convey, in this world, in “the valley of weeping”, God planted another, rational paradise: the Mother of God (“The Fashioner of heaven and earth showed thee, O Theotokos, on earth to be a rational and spiritual paradise”) and, by extension, all the saints. Whenever we approach the Mother of God and the saints with humility and modesty, we acquire grace, we enter paradise.

And above all, in place of the tree of life in paradise (cf. Genesis 3:22-24), He planted His Cross, “The Tree of Life in all truth, planted on the Place of the Skull, through which the King of the ages wrought salvation”. But for the Cross to not be for us a curse, but a path toward Life, we need to approach it, in particular, and all of Great Lent, with repentance and humility.

At the beginning of Great Lent, we would like you to take to heart two words from two contemporary saints.

The first word is from Elder Arsenie Papacioc: “If you endure your cross with love, not forcedly, this is a symptom of an authentic humility, meaning the Holy Spirit is within you.”

The second is from Saint Sofian Boghiu: “If God, in His great love, allows us to taste of suffering, so that we also may participate in His suffering, this is a great blessing for our own purification and salvation. How could you revolt? Ought we prevent Him from guiding us to salvation by His means? Ought we teach the Lord how to conduct Himself toward us? I do not become troubled in the slightest on account of suffering, when He sends it to me. It is very necessary for me and I am very grateful toward Him.”

We ask your forgiveness for all that we have erred and we entreat the merciful God that He may plant repentance and humility in our hearts, so that the Great Lenten journey may be, for each of us, a journey toward Life.

In Christ, our Lord and Savior,

The Abbot of Saint Dumitru Monastery
Archim. Ieremia with the brotherhood

PS. The Lenten service schedule of our monastery can be found in the Liturgical Schedule section of our website.