Toward the Endless Day:
The Life of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel

Author: Olga Lossly
Translator: Jerry Ryan
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Release date: 2010
“Vers le jour sans déclin”
was first released in French in 2007
Pages: 344
ISBN: 978–0-268-03385-9
Genre: Nonfiction/Biography/Autobiography/Memoir
History – Byzantine & Orthodox
Religion & Theology – Christianity

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     MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

Until 1582, all Christians used to celebrate Easter  on the same date. That year, a new calendar was adopted in Western countries, leading then Catholics and others to calculate the date of Easter in a different way from the Orthodox, who kept to the original calculation.
Henceforth, some years, in 2017 for instance, Easter is celebrated by all on the same date.
This year 2016, the Orthodox Pascha will be celebrated on May 1st! Therefore, as our Catholic brothers and sisters are almost done with Lent, today is actually the very first day of Lent for Eastern Orthodox Christians.
I’d like then to wish a Blessed Great Lent to all Eastern Orthodox Christians, on this “Clean Monday“.
This is another interesting difference: whereas the beginning of Lent is on Ash Wednesday for Catholics, when they receive on the forehead a dark mark made of ashes to remind them of death, the Great Orthodox Lent starts with Clean Monday (Καθαρά Δευτέρα): along with a service of mutual forgiveness the day before in Church (Forgiveness Sunday), they are invited today, through a strict fast, to start this blessed liturgical time with a “katharsis”, a cleansing of their conscience and renewed love.

I chose this day to present to you a unique person, in fact the most important woman Orthodox theologian of the 20th century. She happens to have lived most of her life in France. Unfortunately, she is not too well known in the United States, not even among Orthodox Christians, even though Towards The Endless Day, her biography, was already translated and published in English six years ago!
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