True Nature of Fasting

'We waited and at last our expectations were fulfilled'. The sense of
resurrection joy forms the foundation of all the worship of the
Orthodox Church; it is the one and only basis for our Christian life
and hope. Yet, in order for us to experience the full power of this
Paschal (Easter) rejoicing, each of us needs to pass through a time
of preparation. 'We waited' says Bishop Nikolai, 'and at last our
expectations were fulfilled'. Without this waiting, without this
expectant preparation, the deeper meaning of the Easter celebration
will be lost.

So it is that before the festival of Easter there has developed a
long preparatory season of repentance and fasting, extending in
present Orthodox usage over seven weeks. The six weeks or forty days
of the Great Fast of Lent (in between falls the 25th Day of Lent
called MID-LENT and also the last Friday before Passion called 40th
Friday); and finally Holy Week. Balancing the seven weeks of Lent and
Holy Week, there follows after Easter a corresponding season of fifty
days of thanksgiving, concluding with Pentecost.

What is the meaning of the word 'fast' (nisteia in Greek)? On the
outward level fasting involves physical abstinence from food and
drink, and without such exterior abstinence a full and true fast
cannot be kept; yet the rules about eating and drinking must never be
treated as an end in themselves, for ascetic fasting has an inward
and unseen purpose. The human person is a unity of body and soul, 'a
living creature fashioned from natures visible and invisible'; and
our ascetic fasting should therefore involve both these natures at
once. The tendency to over-emphasize external rules about food in a
legalistic way, and the opposite tendency to scorn these rules as
outdated and unnecessary, are both alike to be deplored as a betrayal
to true Orthodoxy. In both cases the proper balance between the
outward and inward has been impaired.

The tendency to scorn rules of fasting and Lent as old fashioned is
doubtless the more prevalent in our own day, especially in the West.
In East and West alike, the Lenten fast involved a severe physical
effort. But in Western Christendom over the past five hundred years,
the physical requirements of fasting have been steadily reduced,
until by now they are little more than symbolic. Exposed as it is to
Western secularism, the Orthodox world in our own time is also
beginning to follow the same path of laxity (however, there are
exceptions in this case).

The decline in fasting is due to a false `spiritualism', which
rejects or ignores the body, viewing the human being solely in terms
of the reasoning brain. As a result, many contemporary Christians
have lost a true vision of the human person as an integral unity of
the visible
and the invisible; they neglect the positive role played by the body
in the spiritual life, forgetting St Paul's affirmation: `Your body
is the temple of the Holy Spirit?. glorify God with your body' (1
Cor. 6:19-20). Another reason for the decline in fasting among the
Orthodox is the argument, commonly advanced in our times, that the
traditional rules are no longer possible today. There is a measure of
truth in this. But it needs also to be said that fasting, as
traditionally practiced in the Church, has always been difficult and
has always involved hardship. Many of our contemporaries are willing
to fast for reasons of health or beauty, in order to lose weight;
Cannot we Christians do as much for the sake of the heavenly Kingdom?
Why should the self-denial gladly accepted by previous generations of
Orthodox prove such an intolerable burden to their successors today?
Once so abundantly manifest in the past, but no longer apparent in
our own day, is `a firm resolve'.

The primary aim of fasting is to make us conscious of our dependence
upon God. It is to lead us to a sense of inward brokenness and
contrition; to bring to us, that is, to the point where we appreciate
the full force of Christ's statement, `Without Me you can do nothing'
(John 15:5). We have to strip ourselves from the specious assurance
of the Pharisee ? who fasted, it is true, but not in the right
spirit ? Lenten abstinence gives us the saving self- dissatisfaction
of the Publican (Luke 18:10-13). Such is the function of the hunger
and the tiredness: to make us `poor in spirit', aware of our
helplessness and of our dependence on God's aid.

Abstinence leads to a sense of lightness, wakefulness, freedom and
joy. Many doctors acknowledge, periodical fasts contribute to bodily
hygiene.
While involving genuine self-denial, fasting does not seek to do
violence to our body but rather to restore it to health and
equilibrium. Most of us in the Western world habitually eat more than
we need. Fasting liberates our body from the burden of excessive
weight and makes it a willing partner in the task of prayer, alert
and responsive to the voice of the Spirit.

Fasting is not a mere matter of diet. It is moral as well as
physical. True fasting is to be converted in heart and will; it is to
return to God, to come home like the Prodigal to our Father's house.
In the words of St John Chrysostom, it means `abstinence not only
from food but from sins'.
It is useless to fast from food, protests St Basil, and yet to
indulge in cruel criticism and slander: `You do not eat meat, but you
devour your brother'. The inner significance of fasting is prayer,
fasting, almsgiving.
Divorced from prayer and from the reception of the holy sacraments,
unaccompanied by acts of compassion, our fasting becomes pharisaical
or even demonic. Prayer has to be linked with fasting. Fasting is
seen, not an end in itself, but as an aid to more intense and living
prayer, as a preparation for decisive action or for direct encounter
with God.

Prayer and fasting should in their turn be accompanied by almsgiving ?
by love for others expressed in practical form, by works of
compassion and forgiveness.
Without love towards others there can be no genuine fast. And this
love for others should not be limited to formal gestures or to
sentimental feelings, but should issue in specific acts of
almsgiving. It is to give not only our money but also our time, not
only what we have but what we are; it is to give a part of ourselves.
We should be able to follow the words of the Lenten Triodion:
-While fasting with the body, brethren, let us also fast in spirit.
Let us loose every bond of iniquity; Let us undo the knots of every
contract made by violence;
Let us tear up all unjust agreements; Let us give bread to the hungry
And welcome to our house the poor, who have no roof to cover them,
That we may receive great mercy from Christ our God-

Always in our acts of abstinence we should keep in mind St Paul's
admonition not to condemn others who fast less strictly: ` Let not
him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats' (Rom. 14:3). Equally,
we remember Christ's condemnation of outward display in prayer,
fasting or almsgiving (Matt. 6:1-18).
We should not despise our neighbor when we fast nor condemn our
brother when we abstain from food. We cleanse ourselves by almsgiving
and acts of mercy to the poor, but never to make a trumpet or show of
our charity. Let not our left hand know what our right hand is doing
and let not vainglory scatter the fruit of our almsgiving. Our
fasting, prayer and almsgiving should be in secret. In secret let us
call on God who knows all secrets and pray, `Father, forgive
us our trespasses, for thou lovest mankind'.

-Tenny Thomas
----------------------------------------------------------
A repost from 2003 IOC Achieves