Forgiveness Vespers, Lent Begins

The weather was finally in our favor this weekend! We went to liturgy in the morning at St, James and we went back for Forgiveness Vespers in the evening. It was very good to be there. After the Divine Liturgy we stayed for a long time at coffee hour and talked with Khouria and the people in the parish. It was nice to get to know them better and to begin to feel like we have a place to belong to again.

Forgiveness Vespers is always such a wonderful and humbling experience. The altar paraments are changed from gold to the purple of Lent. We kneel down and pray the prayer of St. Ephraim. At the end of the service we bow down before our brothers and sister in Christ and ask that they would forgive our sins. When I read about this service before becoming Orthodox it seemed so extraordinary and I romanticized how it would be in my mind. But then there's Forgiveness Vespers, the rubber meets the road and you find out what it's really about. And it's so much better than one could imagine, in a funny sort of way. It's awkward, bowing in front of people and bumbling around embracing with our heads going in all the wrong directions, where do you put your hands, you're taller, and oh, your beard brushed my cheek... and amid all that bumbling comes a humbling of the heart. I always feel like I'm the one that needs the most forgiving, the one who has offended others and God, and yet the priest, the deacons, the monk, the people I hardly know yet, and most of all my husband and children ask forgiveness of me and in turn forgive me, and I forgive them. We start off fresh and new, together.