Clean Monday

Clean Monday stands at the head of Great Lent, the forty-day fast whose original purpose was the preparation of catechumens for baptism and entry into the Church at Pascha. What began as the catechumens' fast quickly became a season kept by all Christians in preparation for the feast of the Resurrection.

The forty-day pattern that Clean Monday opens rests on biblical precedent: Moses fasting forty days before receiving the Ten Commandments, Elijah's forty-day fast before encountering God at Mount Horeb, and Christ's forty days in the wilderness before his temptation. Early Christian sources record an austere pre-Pascha discipline: the Apostolic Constitutions permit 'bread, vegetables, salt and water' in Lent while forbidding flesh and wine, and the Canons of Hippolytus allow only bread and salt during Holy Week.

In the Eastern reckoning that Clean Monday begins, Great Lent runs from this day until the Friday of the Sixth Week, on the eve of Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday; unlike the Western observance, Sundays are counted within the forty days while Holy Week falls outside the count. All the divine services of the season are governed by the Lenten Triodion, which begins to be used gradually during the pre-Lenten weeks. On the weekdays of Great Lent the full Divine Liturgy is not celebrated, because the joy of the Eucharist is held to be contrary to the penitential character of these days.

From the first four evenings of Clean Week, the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, a seventh-century penitential work, is read in sections at Great Compline, so that the beginning of the fast is marked by an extended call to repentance.

The name 'Clean' expresses the day's whole purpose: the purification of body and soul as Great Lent begins. The appointed Old Testament reading for the Sixth Hour, Isaiah 1:1-20, sounds this theme directly, calling the faithful to wash themselves and be clean and to put away wicked ways. The observance is anticipated at Forgiveness Vespers the evening before, which culminates in the mutual asking of forgiveness, so that the fast is entered with a clean conscience, with forgiveness given and received, and with renewed Christian love. It is customary to make one's confession during Clean Week and, in a domestic echo of the same movement, to clean the house thoroughly.

Great Lent, which this day opens, is understood less as a season of dwelling on repentance for its own sake than as an attempt to recapture humanity's original state before God — a 'workshop' in which the character of the believer is strengthened and life is rededicated to the ideals of the Gospel. The fast is meant to serve that inward renewal rather than to be a public performance.

A notable paradox marks Clean Monday: its festive, springtime tone seems to sit oddly beside Lenten austerity. This reflects the Gospel teaching (Matthew 6:14-21) that the faithful are not to display their fasting ostentatiously but to keep it in secret. The day is traditionally linked to the arrival of spring, a note carried in the liturgical poetry that greets the season as a 'Lenten Spring.'

The season's services are ordered by the Lenten Triodion. The dominant hymnographic feature of Clean Week is the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, composed in the seventh century and among the longest and most penitential of all canons, containing some 250 troparia arranged in four parts, each divided into the traditional nine odes. During the first four nights of Clean Week the canon is read in sections at Great Compline; it is chanted in full during Orthros on the Thursday of the fifth week of Great Lent.

The canon takes the form of a dialogue between St Andrew and his own soul, urging spiritual transformation and setting the acknowledgment of personal sinfulness against divine mercy. It draws on hundreds of biblical figures — positive and negative examples alike — to summon the hearer to repentance, its opening ode reaching back to Genesis and the figures of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. After each troparion the refrain 'Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me' is chanted, during which worshippers make full prostrations, and each ode concludes with a katavasia. The full reading on the fifth Thursday is accompanied by the Life of St Mary of Egypt, held up as an example of repentance, and by the kontakion 'My soul, my soul, why sleepest thou...' of St Romanos the Melodist. The season's poetry also greets the fast as the coming of the 'Lenten Spring.'

Clean Monday opens the strictest stretch of Great Lent. Throughout Clean Week the fast is kept most rigorously: those with the strength are encouraged to fast completely, eating only on the Wednesday and Friday evenings after the Presanctified Liturgy, while those unable to keep so strict a fast are encouraged to take only xerophagy — 'dry eating' of uncooked foods such as fruit, nuts, halva, bread, and honey — once a day. On Clean Monday itself the practice is to take no food at all.

For the whole of Great Lent the Church's discipline sets aside meat, eggs, and dairy products; fish is taken only on major feast days, while shellfish is permitted. Wine and oil are generally set aside on weekdays but permitted on Saturdays and Sundays, in keeping with canons that restrict strict fasting on those days, though interpretations of which oils are meant vary. This is a summary of the season's discipline; particular practice is a matter to settle with one's own priest.

The observance is anticipated at Forgiveness Vespers the evening before, closing with the mutual asking of forgiveness, at which all present bow down before one another.

It is customary to make one's confession during Clean Week and to clean the house thoroughly.

In Greece and Cyprus, where Clean Monday is a public holiday, the day is marked by outdoor excursions and the flying of kites, the latter understood as a reaching toward the Divine.

Special foods for the day include shellfish, molluscs, and other seafood dishes, together with 'lagana,' an unleavened bread baked especially for this occasion.

• Isaiah 1:1-20 — Appointed reading for the Sixth Hour; its call to 'wash yourselves and be clean' underscores the day's theme of purification.
• Matthew 6:14-21 — Christ's teaching not to fast ostentatiously, which frames the day's outwardly festive yet inwardly penitential character.