On the second Sunday of Lent in Orthodoxy we commemorate the life and teachings of Saint Gregory Palamas. The Gospel lesson comes to us from Mark 2:1-12. Today Fr. Dcn. Tikhon shares an important message from the Church, which both instructs and inspires. Saint Gregory Palamas taught that through prayer, ascetic struggle and the Church, one can directly and intimately experience and know God. He taught that God in His Essence is unknowable and unchangeable, but through His uncreated Energies He interacts with us and all of creation much like the sun and its rays. In the Gospel lesson four friends not only express their faith intellectually, but through action by opening the roof of an overcrowded home and lowering a paralytic at Jesus' feet to be healed. The Gospel lesson and the teachings of Saint Gregory Palamas can help us to understand the activities of prayer and fasting which together create a virtuous cycle of faith and experience that help us grow closer to God.