The Holy Week has started and this is the culmination of the Great Lent when Christians recall of the Savior's suffering. It is a week of reflection on life and death as each believer focuses on his inner values and tries to be closer to  God.

This year, the Holy Week is marked by one of the most difficult challenges that humanity has faced after the Second World War. During these days when churches are usually full of Christians, people are now called on to stay in their homes in order to prevent spread of coronavirus infection.

"I think that each of us obeys this call because it is a type of sacrifice," says one of the most popular contemporary Bulgarian writers Theodora Dimova in an interview with Radio Bulgaria.

"This is good because we are saving someone's life this way. We are protecting the lives of priests and our loved ones, as we do not become carriers of the infection." And for Orthodox Christians, who are expecting the Resurrection of Christ and the Holy Eucharist, their absence in the church is the greatest challenge:

"We are now in a period when we need to be highly responsible and the fact that we would have to pray at home does not mean that our prayers would be less sincere," the writer, who is also a believer, told us. "My personal thoughts are that this forced lent carries some spiritual fascination because we have rethought many things; we have become accustomed to a new type of daily life and we have learned how little we actually need. We have learned that we used to be living in a predatory, consumer society with so many unnecessary things burdening us. We have turned towards more ordinary but truly valuable things and started paying more attention to each other. We now appreciate the extreme joy of communicating with our children, of inviting friends over, having social contacts. It seems we were somehow neglecting all this.”

According to Theodora Dimova, in these days of crisis we see more clearly what we truly need. It has turned out that we can do a lot of things from home and that more ordinary dishes can also be tasty. For people used to fasting and leading a more ascetic way of life this challenge is much easier to live with.

"We live with the image of the cross, a symbol of both death and of Resurrection. Days of fasting allow one to focus and hear the inner self, to become able to live with deprivation. Therefore, this test of our strength is somehow easier to pass for people who believe.All this anxiety and fears for the loved ones, the economic woes and questions whether we would survive and what would happen next. It is clear that there will be economic turmoil, but it is always less painful than spiritual turmoil."

The spiritual turmoil for a writer is the natural environment in which they create their works, the writer says. At first glance writers may seem like they have no connection to reality because some of them live in isolation, but actually they are the ones relied on for articulating people's reality, thoughts and feelings. Often writers predict the future correctly. Are we going to learn a lesson from the current crisis?

"Worries will go away, as well as the fear; the virus will be overcome, sooner or later. This is not the first time it has happened. Life goes on, but if we stayed the same, this valuable lesson now would be a waste. I hope and pray to overcome this challenge, but also not to forget what we have been learning these days. Let us use every occasion, every gesture, and every word to strengthen our faith and prayers, so we feel this Easter joy on the day of the Resurrection. Let’s carry it in our hearts and share it with others in order to make their lives a little more cheerful and easier; to bring them the comfort we would receive. This is my message!”

English: Alexander Markov