Pancake week, Forgiveness Sunday and the Great Lent

The last week was a week of Maslenitsa or Pancake week, you could learn about it in the post earlier. Each day of the week has its own name and traditions. Usually Russians visit each other during the whole week and cook and eat a lot of pancakes.
The pancake week's last day - Sunday - is so called Forgiveness Sunday. On this day there is a very kind tradition - we ask for pardon and forgive each other for all evil and wrong things we have done to each other. In such a way you 'become clean' from all your sins - when you receive an excuse and forgive those who did wrong to you.

In Russian we use to say the following
- Прости меня! - Forgive me 
- Бог простит, и я прощаю, и ты меня прости! - God forgives you and I will forgive, please forgive me too! 


Next day after the Forgiveness Sunday in Orthodoxy comes the Great Lent, the fasting time before the Easter which lasts 40 days and the Passion week.

Clean Week

The first week of Great Lent starting on Clean Monday, the first day of Great Lent. The name "Clean Week" refers to the spiritual cleansing each of the faithful is encouraged to undergo through fasting, prayer.

Throughout this week fasting is most strict. Those who have the strength are encouraged to fast completely, eating only on Wednesday and Friday evenings, after the Presanctified Liturgy. Those who are unable to keep such a strict fast are encouraged to eat only a little, and then onlyxerophagy (uncooked food) once a day. Meals are served on Saturday and Sunday, but these are fasting meals at which meat and dairy products are forbidden.

At Great Compline during the first four days of the Fast (Monday through Thursday) the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is divided into four parts and one part is chanted each night (for further information about the Great Canon, see Fifth Week, below).

The First Saturday is called "St. Theodore Saturday" in honor of St. Theodore the Recruit, a fourth century martyr. At the end of the Presanctified Liturgy on Friday (since, liturgically, the day begins at sunset) a special canon to St. Theodore, composed by St. John of Damascus, is chanted. 

The First Sunday of Great Lent is the Feast of Orthodoxy, which commemorates the restoration of the veneration of icons after the Iconoclastcontroversy, which is considered to be the triumph of the Church over the last of the great heresies which troubled her (all later heresies being simply a rehashing of earlier ones).

(c) wikipedia