Fasting - entering the fasting of the Savior Christ
- The person of the Son of God the source of the sanctification of time -
“And the Lord fasted forty days,
He honored and sanctified these days now, brethren, reaching them, we cry out:
Bless and exalt Christ forever.”
(hymn Matins)
The fasting is a time of blessing. The fasting is the time to encounter God. The fasting is the time divinely sanctified by the desertic askesis of Christ.
The Church has ordained the forty days of Lent and the Week of Christ’s Passion as a blessed time of preparation for the encounter with God.
God puts fasting as an ordinance right from Heaven says St. Basil the Great:
“Fasting is as old as humanity: it was legislated in paradise. It was the first command that Adam received: You shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2, 17). You shall not eat legislate the fasting and self-control. If Eve had fasted from the tree, we would not need this fasting now. For those who are well have no need of physician, but those who are sick (Mt 9, 12). We have been injured by sin; let us be healed by repentance. But repentance is futile without fasting.”[1]
Fasting is a permanent state of man preparing for the encounter with God. True knowledge of man is a result of fasting. Not fasting results in sickness and sin. Healing from disease and sin says the text is done through repentance, through metanoia, that is, by changing the mind from its orientation to the immediate and material things to God and to the spiritual life. It was necessary for man to return to that order of spiritual foundation of self-restraining required by God. The ordinance of fasting was the first obedience God gave to man on which the good steadfastness of man's life as a whole depended. If the first man did not fast and the consequence was a progressive increase of sin in the world, then the One who would become the First in all things (Colossians 1:18), the new Adam, that is, the Son of God incarnate, through whom the world it will be restored, preceded the beginning of its public mission by fasting for 40 days.
“Fasting the Lord for forty days, He honored and sanctified these days now, brethren, reaching them, we cry out: Bless and exalt Christ forever” (hymn Matins). Christ precedes us and re-establishes the time of fasting. He restores the order of Heaven which man had disturbed by not fasting, that is, by disobedience to the Word of God. In fact, we understand in this short meditation of the Church on fasting that the Son of God enters the world and sanctifies time. It honors and sanctifies it through the incarnation, suffering, death and the resurrection on the third day.
Our fast is an imitation of the fast practiced by the Son of God. We enter into the work of fasting of the Savior Christ because we enter into the order of Heaven, that is, obedience to the Word of God. The readings of the Holy Scriptures during Lent multiply and it does nothing but remind us, make us present the Word of God among us and in us and thereby re-create us planting us on the Word of God, giving us the true knowledge resulting from the obedient tasting according to God from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that is done by sharing the Body and the Blood of Christ at the Divine Liturgy.
He, Christ, during Lent, becomes for us again the cornerstone, the beginning of all. His obedience to God the Father becomes our obedience to God.
Fasting in its fullness means – diminishing the food or abstaining totally from others but also fighting spiritually the inner passions.
“Let us begin the time of fasting enlightened, submitting to the spiritual fight. Let's clear our soul, let's clean our body. Let us fast as for food, as well as for all passion, rejoicing in the goodness of the Spirit in which, abiding with love, let us all deserve to see the passion of Christ God glorified, and the Holy Easter, spiritually rejoicing” (hymn Matins).
The true and full fast is the one practiced in the entirety of the person - body and soul. Through the two fasts aside, the body is relieved of the weight of the food and the soul from the darkening of the passions. These result in the enlightenment of the life of the person practicing the fast. This physical and spiritual struggle that eases or frees him from passions allows the light of God's grace to enter the person who practices fasting and makes him feel the active work of the Holy Spirit. These works of the Spirit lead us to the suffering of Christ the Savior for us and to our salvation and to His Resurrection which restores and renews our human nature by healing man from sin and death.
“Let us begin the most precious fast enlightened, shining with the rays of the holy commandments, of Christ, our God, which are: the radiance of love, the lightning of prayer, the sanctity of purity, the strength of steadfastness, Resurrection, which enlightens the world with incorruption” (hymn Matins).
Fasting means light because God is light. By fulfilling the commandments, which are the words of God - light, we enlighten ourselves with the light of divine grace. The virtues are the presence of the light of God's grace in our souls and bodies. Love, prayer, purity, steadfastness are just as many manifestations of God's grace in the person who fast. Through the love of God and of the neighbor one fast of his own selfishness; through prayer you fast from the worldly conversation and turn your attention and dialogue with the One who did everything and Who seeks man in the cool of the day (Genesis 3: 8); purity is keeping away from the abominations of the passionate world and evils; the steadfastness comes from the feeling of God's presence in us that gives man the strength of verticality similarly to a son who grows under the lee of his father, who protects him like the gardener who protects his garden plants when they are young, helping them to grow and reach maturity. The end of the ascetic path of fasting is the encounter with God in His Resurrection on the third day from the death through which sin and death are destroyed and man is granted incorruption.
“Adam ate food and the appetite drove him out from heaven, and you, Lord, by receiving our fast, will show us worthy of repentance, Lover of men” (hymn Matins).
Adam lost Heaven by falling away from the obedience to God's Word, that is, by not self-restraining and not fasting. Through our fasting we re-enter into the obedience of the Son of God which means our repentance, that is, the change of our mind in favor of God and the fulfillment of His word. We thus follow St. Paul's example of having the mind of Christ: “But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).
The Elder Teofil Părăian especially explains what this means:
“We can know Christ by His words, and insofar as we know Him, we must follow Him. Renewal means, first of all, having the mind of Christ. What does it mean to have the mind of Christ? It means thinking with the thoughts of Christ. But where do we find the thoughts of Christ? We find them in the Holy Gospel. We make up our minds according to the thoughts of Christ, we make up our minds minds of Christ, we come to think like Christ. We have, says the Holy Apostle Paul, the mind of Christ, or we have the thinking of Christ, because you cannot have the mind of Christ without the thinking of Christ. You find the thinking of Christ in the Gospel, you appropriate them, you carry them in your mind, and then your mind is given to Christ.”[2]
Fasting teaches us repentance, that is, the change of mind, and consequently of life because this new understanding springs from faith in God. We enter into the understanding and acting of Christ. We enter into the fasting of Christ, that is, we enter into the fasting from worldly thoughts and deeds through obedience to God. Obedience to God protects us from alienation from God, from our own nature and from our most intimate vocation.
+ Ioan Casian
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[1] First homily on fasting in St. Basil the Great. On Fasting and Feasts. Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Yonkers, NY 2013 (translated by Susan R. Holman and Mark DelCogliano) p 57
[2] Elder Teofil Părăian. The Resurrection of Christ, the renewal of our life, Doxologia Publishing House, 2013 (see https://www.urcusspreinviere.ro/2100/having-the-mind-of-Christ/)
