This Sunday (Jan 18), the Church starts a five‑week spiritual preparation period structured by special Sundays and themes that invite a gradual return to repentance, humility, and mercy. These five Sundays form a catechetical path to enter the stricter fasting, penitential, and hopeful life of the Great Fast (Lent) itself.

What the five weeks are

The five weeks before the Great Fast are usually counted by their Sunday names in the Byzantine tradition:

· Sunday of Zacchaeus (January 18) Not technically part of the formal Triodion: the movable liturgical time beginning on the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee (ten weeks before Pascha (Easter) and ending with the services of Holy Saturday. However, the Sunday of Zacchaeus is our initial call in our desire to meet Christ.

· Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee (January 25)

· Sunday of the Prodigal Son (February 1)

· Meat‑fare Sunday (Sunday of the Last Judgment) (February 8)

· Cheese‑fare Sunday (Sunday of Forgiveness, before “Clean Monday”) (February 15)

· First week of the Great Fast then begins with Clean Monday (February 23), so in practice the four pre‑Lenten Sundays plus the first strict Lenten week give a five‑week arc of preparation and early fasting.

Each of these Sundays highlights a particular virtue or attitude:

· Zacchaeus: longing to encounter Christ, willingness to change one’s life that expresses itself in concrete acts of making amends for a wrong or injury and mercy.

· Publican and Pharisee: humility and honest acknowledgement of sin, contrasted with proud self‑righteousness.

· Prodigal Son: repentance, return to the Father, and the Father’s merciful love.

· Meat‑fare (Last Judgment): responsibility for acts of charity and love, especially toward the poor and suffering.

· Cheese‑fare (Forgiveness): mutual forgiveness and reconciliation within family, friends, parish, and neighbor before beginning the Great Fast.

As we journey together towards Pascha, I will be sharing more reflections on these Sundays, so that step by step we can enter the Great Fast with renewed hearts, reconciled relationships, and a deeper love for Christ and our neighbor.

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Our next Divine Liturgy will be at 7:15 pm on Sunday, 25 January at St. Elizabeth’s!

Warm Aloha, Tim