Forgiveness Sunday is the last Sunday before Great Lent in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches, also called Cheesefare Sunday because it is the last day on which dairy is eaten before the fast; the preceding Sunday, Meatfare, was the last for meat, so the diet is tapered over the final week rather than stopped at once. Its Gospel is Christ's teaching on forgiveness and on fasting in secret, and it recalls the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, framing Lent as a return.
The day is defined by the rite of forgiveness held at its close: the members of the community, often the whole congregation one by one, ask one another's forgiveness, each bowing and saying "Forgive me, a sinner", and answering "God forgives, and I forgive". The practice enacts the conviction that one cannot rightly enter the fast, or approach God, while at odds with a neighbour. Beginning the most demanding season of the year with mutual pardon rather than with resolutions gives Orthodox Lent a strongly relational opening, and the vespers that follow already sing in the plaintive Lenten tone.