Do not wait lazily.

I celebrated Easter after a fashion with Mr. Glad, but with some restraint on my part, because we Orthodox are still in Lent. The other day when my Internet was down and I couldn't read recent articles, I looked through my computer documents for lenten inspiration and found this talk given in London in 1968. I find everything Met. Anthony says to be as current as God.

 

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
AN INTRODUCTION TO LENT

Contrary to what many think or feel, Lent is a time of joy. It is a time when we come back to life. It is a time when we shake off what is bad and dead in us in order to become able to live, to live with all the vastness, all the depth, and all the intensity to which we are called. Unless we understand this quality of joy in Lent, we will make of it a monstrous caricature, a time when in God's own name we make our life a misery. 

 

This notion of joy connected with effort, with ascetical endeavour, with strenuous effort may indeed seem strange, and yet it runs through the whole of our spiritual life, through the life of the Church and the life of the Gospel. The Kingdom of God is something to be conquered. It is not simply given to those who leisurely, lazily wait for it to come. To those who wait for it in that spirit, it will come indeed: it will come at midnight; it will come like the Judgement of God, like the thief who enters when he is not expected, like the bridegroom, who arrives while the foolish virgins are asleep. This is not the way in which we should await Judgement and the Kingdom.

Read the rest here.