Fasting is the Natural Order
When other animals get sick, the first thing they do is stop eating – they fast, in other words. Fasting is an acknowledgement that, as all the Fathers have taught us, we are fundamentally sick with the disease of Death. Not to fast is to deny the most basic truth of our Faith, that we have become separated from God, and is to deny the example of God himself, who became man to unite us to himself, and who likewise fasted and still does fast. As St. Seraphim says, he who does not fast does not really believe in God. Certainly, he does not believe in the “god” we mean when we say that word.