Fasting and Great Lent
My Brothers and sisters in
Christ,
We have now begun our Lenten
journey. The purpose of Lent is to prepare our souls for the Resurrection of
Christ… not just the Resurrection which we celebrate each year, but even more
importantly, the final Resurrection which will take place for all of us at the
Great Judgment seat of our Lord. There, we will either enter into the
Resurrection of Life or the Resurrection of Death. Obviously, on that day, we
all want to enter the Resurrection of Life.
Lent is also known as the
Great and Holy Fast. What then is the purpose of fasting? The
establishment of fasting was set forth by God from the very beginning of
human history: Adam and Eve were told to fast while they were still in
Paradise. This fast was not merely a physical fast, but also a spiritual one as
the fruit which they were forbidden to eat was both
spiritual and material. The reason for their fast was to strengthen their will
and desire to follow God through obedience and love and have communion with
Him. Unfortunately, Adam and Eve disobeyed the commandment of God, and through
their disobedience, they became separated from Him and the result of that
separation was spiritual death. Because of the fall, mankind became subject,
among many things, to disease, despair, anxiety, hate and depression. Prior to
their fall, Adam and Eve’s souls were filled with divine grace beholding God
face to face. Their bodies, as a result, benefitted and were in-turn fed by
their souls filled with grace. After the fall, their souls no longer were
filled with divine grace, and instead of turning to God for pleasure and joy,
their souls turned to their bodies. Their bodies, likewise, no longer being
nourished by their souls filled with grace, turned instead to the fallen world
for their fulfillment. This then is where the passions began to develop (which
we need to be purified from in order to return to God). The passions are all
the natural movements of the soul which have become
corrupted over time due to habitual sin. For example, God has given everyone a
natural desire to eat food, as eating food is pleasurable and we need to
survive. However, many of us misuse this desire and do not eat many times for
nourishment, but eat only for the sake of pleasure. Anger, for example is a
natural movement of the soul that God has given us in order to hate sin and the
devil. However, we misuse anger by becoming angry with others and thereby
taking our aggression out on them and inanimate objects. Because of our fallen
nature and brokenness, we define our lives by seeking pleasure, instead of
seeking God who really is our only pleasure. Adam and Eve traded paradise for a
momentary taste of a piece of fruit. It was that overriding desire for a
temporary pleasure that somehow displaced the pleasure that nothing can compare
to. As Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “Every one who drinks of this water
will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the
water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him
will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John
4:13-14). Lent is therefore the time when we make a great effort in choosing
God, over the temporary and false pleasures of our world.
It is of great importance for
us to remember that Adam and Eve could not have remained in Paradise except
through fasting, and so too, we cannot expect to return to Paradise without
fasting. After Moses led the Hebrews out of their slavery to Pharoah and the
Egyptians, the Israelites yearned to return to their former bondage because
they were hungry in the wilderness. Because of their hunger, they grumbled
against God and desired to return to the Egypt for the sake of the ‘stew pots’ which they received as their daily ration of food.
Their desire to return to Egypt was not just a matter of a willingness to
become slaves again for the sake of having food to eat, but it was even more so
a rejection of faith, God, and the promise of salvation. God led them
through the Red Sea as a baptism of new life, and they were willing to reject
this for food. The story of the Jews and their captivity in Egypt and their
subsequent freedom is a great example of our fallen humanity. For, we too were
led from the slavery of sin through the waters of Baptism, into the “wilderness
and isolation of this world.” We continue onward, struggling and suffering
because we have a sure hope in the Salvation of Christ and the promise of the
Kingdom of Heaven. Yet, we too are called by our stomachs
into our former slavery of the passions. Many of us, like Esau (Genesis
25:29-34), are willing to sell our birthright, our inheritance into God’s
eternal Kingdom, for the sake of our belly, and our fallen desires.
We can therefore note two
important aspects of fasting:
1)
The necessity
of obedience to God — for if Adam and Eve had continued to fast
from the tree, they would have remained in paradise, and …
2)
Freedom from the
slavery of the evil one — for through fasting, we free ourselves from the
slavery to the passions, allowing our ascent back into paradise.
A third important aspect of
fasting is the spiritual ascent itself. When Moses was in the presence of the
Lord, he fasted for forty days. For more than a month, his food was communion
with the Creator and his drink was the words of God (Exodus 34:18, 34:28;
Deuteronomy 9:9 and Deuteronomy 10:10). Christ fasted in the Jericho wilderness
for forty days in order to defeat the temptations of the evil one, but Moses
fasted on Mt. Sinai in order to be in the presence of God! We therefore fast
for forty days before Holy Pascha so that we too might overcome the temptations
of the evil one and stand in the presence of God. This is the third aspect of
the fast: that we put aside all earthly cares, all concern of the flesh, to the
best of our ability, so that we take no thought of what we shall eat (Luke
12:22, 29) but instead, seek first the Kingdom of God (Luke 12:31).
Let's think about this for a
moment. The church instructs us to fast before every Divine Liturgy, because,
at that very moment, we stand before the Lord. However, at Pascha, we stand
before Him in a greater way, because we are then like Moses, having beheld the
Passover, we stand on the summit of a spiritual Sinai and receive the promise
of God.
The great prophet Elijah,
when the angel called him to go to the mount of God, he fasted for forty
days–not only to purify his soul, but also
because he was caught up in the awe and wonder of God, having no thought for
the flesh, but having all his hope in the Lord (3Kings 19:8) So too, we also
prepare ourselves for the peak of the liturgical year with a forty day fast to
purify our souls and because of our total reliance on God that He is the one
who nourishes and sustains us.
May God grant us a good
beginning in the fast so that we may have a good and successful completion of
our Lenten Journey!
+Fr Photios
