Blessed Eastern Orthodox beginning of Lent next Monday! What are your plans for Lent?What services and practices are you planning?

I don't observe Lent, and don't really understand it. I knew a lady who gave up smoking for Lent, and I wasn't too impressed because when I became Christian I gave up smoking for good. No Christian should be smoking, period.

When I worked at McDonald's a co-worker gave up french fries.

Some wouldn't eat meat, and I don't know if that was for Lent or not, or because it is taboo on Friday. I seem to recall that Catholics don't forbid it on Fridays anymore. But whatever, the reason, a Catholic co-worker was saying that they didn't understand how it was so great to give up meat when you substitute it with a fish fry. That is just as satisfying.

Anyway, I am not insulting Catholics. I just don't understand some things.

I personally only deprive myself of something if there is a reason to do so. If I have plans to go to a movie and out to eat, but then a fellow Christian is in need, I may cancel those plans and help them.

Or maybe I will not seek a fun filled life of pleasure, because I choose to use my time to do Christian activities like preaching or assisting others.

So I am all for making sacrifices, if there is a reason behind it.

And again. I am not disrespecting Catholics, only stating the way I see it, and the reason for the decisions I make in my own life.

I am someone who believes in the 66 books of the Bible, I don't accept the apocrypha and I believe that religious leaders should try to stay true to the words of the Bible and not add anything to that. Based on the 66 books, I don't see where it says anything about Lent, and in fact there is a scripture which condemns forbidding people to marry and abstain from foods. However, I have heard arguments about that from Catholics and those arguments work for them. They don't cut it for me. So I just do my thing, and let them do theirs.

Jesus fasted 40 days, Elijah fasted 40 days

and it makes sense to have a good period of time before Pascha or easter in English for preparation and life-purification

Lent is forty days and so it is biblical

Did Jesus or Elijah fast forty days in Feb- MARCH ?

wHO KNOWS? Such a concern seems utterly irrelevant to me

mOSES went up Sinai 40 days and nights(EX24:18) and fasted 40 days( Deut9:9)

AND TO BAN LENT OUT OF THIS STRANGE LEGALISM MISSES THE POINT THAT jESUS TOOK UP WITH SOME pHARISEES

The custom is to save what you would spend on such things as beef or movies or other pleasures to help the needy

The four legs of the Lenten time of repentance are: almsgiving, prayer, reflection and Bible study ( especially on repentance , the temptation of and the Passion of Christ) and fasting or abstinence ( giving something up)

Jesus did say "WHEN you fast " and not "IF you fast"

as in the West, so in the East,

there have been two( potentially and sometimes extreme but usually not) attitudes in the view of fasting and asceticism: legalism and individualism( sometimes just laxism)

The biographies of some ascetic saints like Simeon Stylites seem to glory in self-torture

and some people seem to glory in over-eating and lack of self-discipline

but there is also moderation and grace -reliance as a healthier and apostolic attitude and Cath/Orth position( as well as evangelical) in Lenten and life self- discipline and love- sacrifice

The Eastern Christian traditions and customs of fasting often emphasize abstaining from certain goodies

or pleasures

such as not eating any animal products including fish, eggs and dairy

as a sign of and prayer for inner and life conversion

See Alex Schemiemann's(SP?) Bright Darkness

my experience and study over these past 40+ years seems strongly to show me that though many Bible teachers ,leaders, clergy and groups claim to go by " The Bible Alone and Nothing But The Bible Alone" nobody actually does that or ever has done that nor ever could do that since all reading of a text is interpreting a text and all interpretations I have come across have at least an unconscious appeal to some sort of oral tradition or viewpoint ( often most creative) of some sort of teacher, pastor, governing group,"living prophet" or magisterium

In other words, they all add to the text even when they interpret it

Many Eastern Christians( Catholic, E Orthodox O Orthodox, etc) have special Lenten devotions such as The Prayer of St Ephraem, Jesus Prayer, liturgical services such as the Pre-Sanctified, Acathists,Vespers, Matins, etc or pilgrimages

Many of the practices I began one Lent I have kept now for the whole year such as reading a bit of the Bible every day ( when I was 14) or giving up alcohol ( in solidarity with an alcoholic friend who made the same promise and has kept it for well over a decade)

Why reject the Catholic/ Orthodox Christian/ Diaspora Hellenistic Jewish Canon of the Old testament and accept the Cath/ Orth/ Judeo- Christian New Testament Canon which was canonized by the Cath-Orth Synods of Carthage and Hippo in the AD 390's? One is relying on the same Apostolic Ttraditional and Church authority

Happy Lent! Repent!

Live and let live

God bless everybody!

A priest said to a bunch of kids that they should not give up basic food requirements for lent..like milk and fruit...but if they put the fruit into the milk to make a smoothie..they were committing a sin..true story.

Jesus fasted for 40 days and some Jw don't know what is fasting anyway and never could understands the ways of God.

Edit: then pray the station of the Cross, the life, death n resurrection of Christ, no meat on fridays and pray the rosary,. All will be well.