Gesimatide and the Long Approach to Repentance: Preparing for Great Lent in the Western Orthodox Tradition
By Bishop Stephen In an age that prizes immediacy and resists restraint, the Church’s ancient instinct to prepare slowly, deliberately, and penitentially stands as a quiet rebuke. The Western Orthodox observance of Gesimatide, Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, embodies that instinct with remarkable wisdom. Far from being a quaint archaism or an optional prelude, Gesimatide forms a spiritual vestibule to Great Lent, teaching the faithful how to enter the fast rightly, soberly, and with humility of heart. Gesimatide is not Lent. That distinction is essential. The Church, like a wise physician, does not demand sudden exertion from weakened limbs. Instead, she stretches the soul before the long race. These three Sundays before Ash Wednesday (or Clean Monday in the East) function as a gradual withdrawal from festivity and a reorientation of the Christian imagination toward repentance, mortality, and hope in God’s mercy. They prepare the ground so that when the hard soil of t...