By joining our minds and hearts to these words as they are chanted, we may, with the help of the Holy Spirit, gradually come to see hidden failings in our life, and so more clearly recognize our need for forgiveness and purification. Because the Great Canon has the possibility of taking on real importance in our spiritual life, we should make an attempt to say exactly what kind of poem it is. A well-known theologian, Olivier Clement, calls it "A Song of Repentance."

This poem, beloved by the Eastern Orthodox Church, lets us overhear a conversation between Christ and an old man, who knows he will soon die and then face judgment on all the deeds of his life.

The experience of Lent is a spiritual journey whose purpose is to transfer us from one spiritual state to another, a dynamic passage. For this reason the Church commences Lent with the great penitential Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete. This penitential lamentation conveys to us the scope and depth of sin, shaking the soul with despair, repentance, and hope.

Why are you sorrowful and glum while walking along the way of God? Those who have forgotten God, who have no hope in the living and eternal fountain of God, should grieve. But we, who believe in the Living God and whose hopes depend upon Him, ought to rejoice that we have such a Father in the heavens, Who loves us more than all fathers and mothers and Who takes infinite care to render us worthy to Him.

Our will is what urges our footsteps to follow the Savior, this is what strengthens our hearts to show self-denial, this is what bears the cross on the shoulder. Because although grace invites us, dispels the gloom and illumines the dark places, it is possible nevertheless, due to the carelessness and slothfulness, the contamination and spiritual idleness of the carnal view of life, for our free will to feign deafness, to close its eyes, to remain in darkness and to proceed in exactly the opposite direction: the direction towards perdition. In other words, our free will can act in total contradiction to what it actually wants. Therefore, it is necessary for us truly to want our salvation, to seek it.

Human free will is sacred. This saying demonstrates the profundity of our moral freedom. The Savior invites people to follow Him and then leaves us free to decide this most important question for ourselves: to follow Him or turn against the way of God. He came for our salvation but does not encroach on our free will. He invites us to take an active part in our salvation, but does not violate our free will in the slightest.