My Beloved the benevolent                    February 2026

Grace and peace, wishing you every goodness and blessings

We begin the Fast of Jonah on Monday, February 2nd, for three days, then celebrate the Feast of Jonah on Thursday, February 5th. We begin the Great Lent on Monday, February 16th, and it continues until our celebration of the Glorious Feast of the Resurrection on Sunday, April 12th. I wish you all blessed fasting periods, accepted before God.

Fasting is a special spiritual period, a time for reflection and self-examination, a time for repentance, and also a time for spiritual growth.

Each fast is associated with beautiful spiritual meanings that help us grow in our spiritual life. I would like to contemplate with you on the greatness of God’s care for us, which we see through the Fast of Jonah and the Great Lent.

+ During the Fast of Jonah, we read the Book of Jonah at Matins prayer each day of the fast. The Book of Jonah is a small book consisting of only four chapters. At the conclusion of the book, we see Jonah’s sorrow when he saw the repentance of the people of Nineveh, and how the Lord treated this sorrow through the story of the plant. The lesson God wanted to teach Jonah is that God is a Father to all, even to those who do not believe, and to the sinners; and He cares for everyone to lead them to faith and to lead sinners to repentance.

God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” Jonah said, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death!” But the Lord said, “You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?” Jonah 4:9–11

Jonah forgot God’s care for him, even though Jonah disobeyed the Lord’s command to go to Nineveh and fled to Tarshish. God did not abandon him, but led him to repentance when he found himself in the belly of the fish, where he prayed a profound prayer mentioned in chapter two of the Book of Jonah.

God cared for the Gentile sailors and led them to faith, and they offered a sacrifice: “Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the LORD and took vows.” Jonah 1:16. God cared for the unbelieving and wicked people of Nineveh, and sent Jonah to warn them. When they feared and repented, from the least to the greatest, the Lord accepted them: “Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.” Jonah 3:10

+ During the Great Lent, the Church reveals to us through the readings of the Sundays of Lent, God’s extraordinary care for each and every one of us and for all our needs.

On the first Sunday, God cares for our needs and calls us not to worry, saying: “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Matthew 6:31-34

On the second Sunday, God cares for our spiritual life as we face the battles of Satan. Through His victory over the temptations of the devil, He showed us the way to overcome sin.

On the third Sunday, God cares for the sinner who left and went far away. Yet when he returned, He received him and restored him to his original status, as we learn from the parable of the Prodigal Son.

On the fourth Sunday, God cares for sinners who are rejected by society through His encounter with the Samaritan woman, transforming her life from a woman living with a man who was not her husband and who had five husbands, into a woman who became an evangelist.

On the fifth Sunday, God cares for those who have no one to remember them. He healed the paralytic man who had suffered from illness for thirty-eight years and said, “I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up.” John 5:7

On the sixth Sunday, God cares for the man born blind whom everyone abandoned, even his own parents. He granted him not only physical sight but also spiritual insight, and enlightenment.

God cares for us, so do we care for one another? Let us remember that the rich man’s sin was that he did not care for Lazarus, the sick man lying outside his palace. Let us remember the saying of king Solomon: “Whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be heard.” Proverbs 21:13

May the Lord bless your offerings in meeting the needs of the needy through the support of Santa Verena Charity programs.

Metropolitan Serapion