Orthodox Day of Forgiveness
(Sunday of Forgiveness)
This is a Day when younger ask the elderly for forgiveness.
But it also goes among friends.
On the plea:
Forgive me...
the custom respond is:
You are forgiven....
This feast preceding the Honourable Fast Season (Great Lent) is established to remind of the spiritual character of fasting. It is dedicated to forgiveness or more essentially to repentance, which in the Church represents the only true content of personal relationships. Bodily abstinence practiced during the fast is inseparable from the God-yearning love of the Christians. Itself it implies aspiration to live in the virtues of mercy, meekness, long-suffering, humility, and all kinds of philanthropy. The faithful, through fervour in these virtues and particularly through the practice of the Jesus prayer tend to prepare within them abode to the Holy Spirit.
