fasting

Why meat, wine, and oil?

This weekend I was asked why we fast from meat, fish, eggs, dairy, alcohol, and oil. The person wanted a neat explanation. There isn’t one.

My own understanding will differ from some and we Orthodox are OK with that. We’re not OK with not keeping the rule, but we’re OK with different understandings of why the rule might be in place, especially since there is more than one reason we fast [I already talked about that in another post].

As I see it, we fast from those things which are traditionally or ceremonially regarded as feast foods. By definition and practice, a fast is not a feast, and vice versa. After all, we don’t only fast from foods, but from parties, from spectacles and shows, etc. Whatever event it may be, the death of Our Lord, the darkness of the world and preparation for His Incarnation, his temptation in the wilderness, and ours, the answer can be simple: Our Lord is in such a condition; shall we be celebrating, or covering our heads with sackcloth and ashes, and keeping vigil? For us, there is no union with God, apart from sorrow, grief, dryness. The notion of only happy times, of continual gratification, is foreign to Orthodoxy. We don’t consider it Christian at all, but fundamentally pagan and anti-Christian. God is a burning fire. We have always known it, and said it, and meant it, and we have always fasted, since the first man in the Garden.

Fasting and feasting alternate along a timeline – they are inherently time based, historical activities. And we are a people of holy history, and that is another key point. In becoming Orthodox, one steps into the line of that history, with continuity, not with opposition or resistance. We are always either fasting or feasting, because we are the people of God, created by Him and redeemed by Him, and always following His life, and our calendar, through the Incarnation. We are a people of the calendar, a people of time, a people of history, because we are people of the Incarnation, of the Timeless entering Time, of God becoming man, and living a historical life among us, eating with us, fasting with us, and teaching us to live accordingly.

First, meat. Meat is traditionally a feast food. You’ve heard the phrase “to kill the fatted calf”. Meat, milk, cheese, eggs, among the Orthodox are a way of celebration.  Keep in mind that we are always feasting and fasting, have always been, since time immemorial – since the beginning. People forget, when they ask these questions, that we are not a Protestant religion, that began at a certain time among men, which is based on some particular philosophical stance. We are the religion of the first man, since God made him according to that religion, and we are in accord with our history. Ours is not a belief system, but an asceticism. Ours is not a religious philosophy, but an orthopraxis. The supremacy of doctrine over activity is a late, Western mediaeval, heterodox notion that has nothing to do with us. We reject it – it is heresy. In fact, we have always feasted and fasted since before there were any written doctrines, before there were any scriptures, before there were books, before anyone tried to explain anything. If anything, our way, our tradition, our history is the important thing, and any discussion afterward must be in accordance with it, since it came after. History dictates that, as an inviolable law – that there is a before and an after – an order built into our very condition and context and Orthodox people, as indeed all people are rightly designed to be Orthodox, and were from the beginning, from Adam.

So meat… – we did not try to transform that into a philosophical explanation. When it was necessary to clarify, we clarified, but we are not religionists constructing a positive religious philosophy. As Vladimir Lossky points out, we make statements when they are necessary to protect the faithful, to preserve for them the possibility of salvation. The statements are not “here is how we have built this philosophical construct” but “this is what we say, and this is what we do” – “this is our orthopraxy”. We have always treated meat as something especially regarded for feasting. So when we fast, it is quite normal for us to regard it as inappropriate. As evidence that we were not building a philosophy of meat, we did not regard shellfish the same way. Crabs and mussels and clams were ubiquitous – you picked them up off the ground like leaves. You don’t see this today, because of overfishing, ecological alteration, and climate change. But shellfish was never regarded as a special food, a feast food, because it was as common as grass, and so inappropriate to a feast. It would be a Protestant in the US having ramen noodles at Thanksgiving. The Orthodox always knew how to use food to celebrate. And because we always did, we always knew, almost automatically, what was inappropriate for a feast. Remember, we are either fasting or feasting at all times.

What about oil and wine? (by which we mean alcohol, though in some places, where beer is a ubiquitous part of daily life, served at ever meal, that has been accepted, within normal moderation – though going out drinking is still ridiculously inappropriate as the activity of a fast, just as a party is). Oil has always been a special food. We have always spoken of it among ourselves (listen to the Scriptures being read in our Churches) as special, as significant, as rich, as reserved, as often holy. We annoint with it, ceremonially was our faces with it or cover our heads in it. It is understood, like meat, to be the fat of the land, a richness, a feast food. The same is true of wine. The examples are everywhere, and the reasons obvious. Christ, after all, fasted from wine. If being Christian means anything at all, according to the minimum definition thrown about in the wide open culture, it at least contains the idea of imitating Christ. Again, as an illustration that we did not make a philosophy of wine or of oil: some Orthodox fast from all oil, because they piously see it as the same thing, and some fast only from olive oil (that at least is forbidden during fasts), but find corn oil acceptable, because corn oil where they live is as common as dung, and included in every meal, since they can remember. In South Korea, where Orthodoxy has existed for 100 years, the Metropolitan has given a general economia for sesame oil (it is to Koreans what corn oil is to people in the US). Again, in some Germanic Orthodox churches, beer (as a daily dinner food) is acceptable.

Neither those who would point fingers and say, “you’re in violation – you’re using canola oil!” nor those who would say, “ah, who cares about oil anymore when chocolate and coffee are the happy foods of our time – we should ban those!” are allowed to rule us in this. The Church has been gentle, though in gluttony it is easy to see the fast as extreme. But that is to have already stepped outside the Faith to occupy some presumably automonous plateau of evaluation, and is heretical in principle. We have always fasted with gravity, with somberness, with seriousness, with sorrow, with work, with effort – there is absolutely nothing there that was decided by philosophical principle and simply ‘implemented’. This is how Orthodox people behave.

We have not become like the heterodox, who make personal inclination or attitude the beginning place – and choose what to “give up” for a fast – that is to miss the point – the fast changes your personal inclinations and attitudes, not the other way around. One might as well decide to drape oneself with robes, if one is so inclined, and proclaim onself a bishop. Indeed, some heterodox do. This is all of one piece.

Certainly, if pious people wish to fast from chocolate and coffee, along with what the Church requires, there is nothing wrong with that. There is something deeply heterodox about substituting that decision for what the Church requires. And even the decision to add to it may only be made, in Orthodox praxis, with the Church, in consultation with one’s father confessor. The moment it becomes disconnected from the life and mysteries of the Church, the good thing is now a heterodox thing, and becomes bad. It was not for Adam to decide, on his own, from which fruit to abstain in the Garden. As it was with our father, so it is with us, his children.

Certainly, if pious people understand the prohibition on oil to mean all oil, a dry fast (there is great tradition behind that), let them keep it, if that is how their bishop and their father confessor roll. If they eat corn oil, and that does not conflict in their understanding, with the prohibition on oil, or with the advice of their father confessor and bishop, then who can judge otherwise for them? To do so, is to oppose the Church. God forbid.

As [looking up priest’s name] has said, I feel it’s all right to have non-dairy creamer in my coffee, and to have coffee, but I’m not comfortable with vegan bacon. Still, personally, I’ll eat a Boca Burger during the fast. It’s basically our falafel. There are areas here where one cannot make absolute statements on an item by item basis, and one cannot create a general philosophy that explains external reasons for what we fast from – reasons external to our history and tradition.

We have fixed the basic requirement, when clarification became necessary, at meat, fish, dairy, eggs, oil, and wine – just as the Apostle St. Peter had fixed the minimum for avoiding “pagan food” at rejecting at least the drinking of blood and eating strangled things. Our way in this is not a philosophy, nor because it is tradition is it optional in the way the heterodox speak of tradition (“well, it’s tradition, but we don’t keep it”). Phooey on that; it’s just a lie. An Orthodox person who says this has told you a lie, whether he realizes it, or has simply believed the lie himself and is repeating it like a monkey repeats an action it sees. We are not monkeys. In essence, I can just as easily say that there is no “why” for this food vs. that food. We fast – this is what fasting is and has always been – we kept the tradition w/o words until the words were needed, and then we kept the tradition with words, and because the words changed little, the tradition changed less after the words. When you ask for “why”,  you are hypothesizing a different kind of “religion” than that. You are asking that we give it a Western mediaeval philosophical pedigree. This we cannot, need not, should not do.

Personally, I think that there are more than one reason for the same thing. It’s not the Orthodox way to say that one word has only one meaning, nor that there is one law to all truths, one premise to all realities. Reality is not based on premises – reality is reality – reality yields premises, and many of them. The West has it backwards. They try to divide 2 by 6 to get 3.

Among the effects then, if not reasons, I think it’s a true statement, as the monks have discussed, that the rich foods tend to inspire the passions, most especially blood-filled meats do. This isn’t hard to fathom on a practical level when you consider that the US consumes the bulk of the world’s meat, and is also the most violent and warlike civilization in history. Sorry if you don’t like that, but it is the only people to have utilized a nuclear weapon on another civilization. On civilians populations. Intentionally. Twice. The cultural obsession with meat in the United States, in my view, is no coincidence.

I also think that fasting from meat is an abstinence from death, a sign of paradise that was and paradise that is to come. The lion will lie down with the lamb and a little boy will lead them. There will be no more suffering, no more tears, no more death. Yes, you’ll all be non-meat-eaters in Heaven. Even Protestants would have to cook up some new ad campaign to keep their books from adding up to that truth. In fact, the monks, who eat only fish on special feasts, and no meat the rest of the time, are themselves as sign of the coming world, of paradise, and I think that’s one reason. But again, this cannot be, is not, and never has been a philosophical principle, with any absolute weight, or any precise 1:1 correlation with our practice. After all, we fast from milk, which does not require the death of the animal. Though, we fast from eggs also, and I think it’s telling that we fast from reproductive products. This has significance as well, in my view, for paradise and for our history. I simply refuse to make a philosophy of food out of it, nor does the Church teach it as a doctrine. I think it’s true, but I would only comment on the significance I see, and not offer it as an absolute rule, or the “why” of it all. Again, remember, we are not forbidden, most of us, mussels and crabs during the fast, though most of us would understand it to miss the point entirely if we went out for Alaskan King Crab and Maine Lobster during Lent. It’s not really appropriate, and we know better. Some Orthodox, quite piously see all fish, including shellfish, as included in the prohibition on fish, and that’s pious – nothing wrong with that at all.

The Church is gentle. The Church does not pronounce absolutes – cannot do so – because we are not a religious philosophy. Philosophers are the ones who make categorical statements, inviolable ones. We are alive in time and history, the Spirit with and in us, and always have been, since our first breath, and will be always now and ever unto Ages of Ages. Amen.

Knights of the Desert

Increasingly, I find dissidence and social resistance are considered, among the religious, to be either un-Christian, or somehow an unpleasant aspect of Christianity that is best swept under the rug along with keeping the fasts. Actually, fasting and resistance to the world, in fact open warfare with the world, are related. The very purpose of asceticism is to save us – from the world and unto God. So often, you’ll find those who don’t do one (e.g. fasting or resisting the world) don’t appreciate the other. I’ll be called judgmental for that, but I really don’t care – I only care, at this point, if it’s true. But what is true religion? To relieve the poor and keep oneself unstained by the world. Increasingly, I’m thinking that all of orthopraxy (or orthopraxis for you misguided sticklers) is summed up in that statement.

The other day someone asked a personal question at coffee hour – namely, why I tendered my resignation at a particular company. I explained that I’m not a big fan of corporations and what they’ve done to the culture, the world of work, and people. I find they tend to create a climate of fear and compliance that’s antithetical to what I value. My boss tried to make me afraid and, when faced with an invitation to fear, I tend to break it. So I broke it; I handed in my resignation. You should have seen how people stiffened. You’d have thought I smacked the Bishop. Literally.

So what’s so radical about this? Before you go nitpicking it, I’m not an idiot – this is just one of many examples I could cite, across the interactions of many different kinds of people in many different religious environments. I’m not taking it personally, nor is it about anything personal. Not really. What I’m talking about is the perception that true religion is Mitt Romney, or at least religion should allow for it.

But I see genuine religion quite differently. I see it as much more similar to the placing of a Crusade on laymen-knights who have before them both an ascetic quest in the desert and a moral and ethical battle in the cities of the world. [Just to be clear, ethics is a science, based on those principles necessary to the survival first of the individual and, second, of the species. Morality is a revelation, something that requires a personal source and standard, a person or persons that are of the same image as the species or, more to the point, vice versa.]

Placed on us is not a commission to go forth and blend in, or go forth and adopt the world’s way of life, or go forth and invest your primary energies and essence into the world. Ours is a commission to go forth and do battle, call people out of the world while remaining within it (live in the desert in your own backyard), and defend the downtrodden, the exploited, the weak, and the oppressed. Religion (the kind I would criticize) is simply the translation of the world’s principles into liturgical language. True religion, the kind that is focused on relieving the poor and keeping oneself unstained by the world, is an ascetic warfare on the world and an ascetic conquest of the self, by which in both cases, we overcome the Evil One. True religion is not a sigh of frustration and defeat but a horn of challenge. As C.S. Lewis has said, Christianity is not defense but attack. We defend the weak, but we attack the dragon.

One of the most basic forms of attack, that helps us solidify our sense of resistance and rejection of the world (imo), is boycotting. You can boycott fear in a workplace (like I did), or you can do it in defense of others.

Recently, I was at a restaurant and the manager was yelling furiously at an employee, taunting and threatening him. I walked to the cashier, canceled our order, and explained that I won’t do business with someone who abuses workers, tries to make them afraid, and attacks their dignity. The manager came up and apologized for doing it in public, and I explained that it’s even worse to do it in private, where he’s free from accountability. I cut them off for six months, because it is the duty of Christians to defend the weak, the poor, and the dignity of work and of mankind, and to resist evil and work toward its downfall.

Some months later, I was in a supermarket, and the manager was pacing the front of the store, screaming over a cell phone at an employee who wasn’t coming to work, telling her she was fired. I stepped to the counter and informed the clerk, in the full hearing of all, that the behavior was illegal and immoral. The manager had not only violated the rights of this worker, but had tried to use shame and fear as weapons, and to exude toughness and volatility in the midst of a culture that is already overflowing with it and awash in the resultant blood and violence.

A while back, Yahoo was handed a request by the Chinese government for information that would identify dissidents contributing to internet discussion that was critical of China’s government or form of government (i.e. corruption, abuse of power, exploitation, and a history of genocide, torture, and untold agony). Without the slightest fuss, Yahoo offered up these people, who were then taken from their families (where they were breadwinners) and imprisoned for the best years of their lives. Google, so you know, was given the same request and not only completely refused, but moved their data servers offshore, where they could not even be seized by force. Google’s stated attitude (on this and other repeated occasions), is that there are some things you just don’t do. A common slogan at Google, posted around facilities, used in boardrooms, and guiding the decisions of decision-makers is “Don’t be evil.” That’s not the kind of organization Google wishes to be.

Frankly, I sent a gmail invite to every yahoo user in my contact list, suggesting they upgrade to a provider with better features and superior intangible benefits. I realize it’s a greed-based grabbing culture, and people flock to Walmart (one could write books on the evil giant) for a few dollars and change, helping sentence its workers, and all employees of companies who follow their model, to low wages, laughable insurance and benefits and, essentially, a shorter lifespan and poorer health, inadequate medical prevention and care, and all the attendant ills of chronic poverty. For a few dollars, we don’t care if we deal with the Devil himself. But we should.

You start talking boycotts, and the apostles of the dominant culture in our midst will pull out every “bible” verse about compliance and meekness they can lay hands on, not caring if it really adds up to the Christian worldview or just a bundle of proof texts that help prop up the world with religious stakes and servants. Expedience rules, just as it does at the checkout counter. Why would we expect any other kind of behavior from those in the line? It’s quite predictable. They’ll conjure up shibboleths of evangelical radio or left-wing newsletters, but in fact they’ll never talk of St. John Chrysostom and scores of other Saints who publicly denounced illicit behavior and worked diligently and openly to have it stopped. This will either have escaped their notice or be dismissed as the very proof-text piffle they’re offering at the outset.

Amazingly, you’ll even hear that boycotts is ‘participation in the world’ instead of resistance to it! You’ll hear it in the car on the way to Walmart, ironically, but that’s what’ll be said. In the end, the lines are drawn not between those who attend our churches and those who don’t, but rather between those who worship at the altars of the world and those who smash them, because they’re altars of human sacrifice. You’ll hear all kinds of “but we should be tolerant” until you realize they’re chewing on human bones.

The question is the same question Google asked, to our shame: What kind of people do we choose to be? The Walmarts of the world would dress up expediency as virtue: “Do something for your family, save money at Walmart.” If you haven’t heard the ad their running, you should. They ask you to look only at the surface, think only of instant gratification, consider only the end and ignore the means. The very basis of the conversation is anti-Christian.

Pretty it up, dress it up in a cassock, and lay it on the altar, but it’s still excrement with the stench and stain of the world. And we’re still facing the question of whether, as more and more people are gobbled up, pressed down, turned into means to an end that all good men must reject, we will get up off our lard asses and fight back, for ourselves and for them. For the very dignity of being human beings, made in God’s image, and for the sanctity of even the basic quest for goodness. If we can’t save the world, and deliver it from The World – the dominant culture – the world system – the evil artifice and Babel of principalities and powers, can we at least get up the gumption to get off the sofa and chuck a spear at it? And refuse to eat its dead.

That’s what it is. Eating the dead. And when the apostle said to at least stay away from blood and from strangled things, I see in that exhortation a command to correct, admonish, and resist the world’s edifice that it builds on the backs of the poor, the minds of all men, and the souls of the weak. It is hard to be a knight in the desert. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Remember the 80/20 rule, and hold the line. And I for one will be made stronger and more likely to stand, because you’re standing.

The Eschatology of Food

We just finished the Dormition Fast. As one writer said in The Dawn, our Matriarch was on her bed of repose, and so the whole family ceased its celebration and stayed by her side. Theotokos, save, by thy prayers.

I’m interested in the eschatological aspects of fasting. I see fasting, and the life of the monks, who don’t touch meat, as a foretelling of the end of Death. What the quasi-Darwinists hold is what we Orthodox must reject (you don’t have to “believe in evolution” to accept the basic assumptions of the Darwinists) – namely, that Death is natural – that it’s a normal condition of the natural order. We repudiate this. There is no middle ground. Death is an attack on man and the created order. It has entered the natural order as an invader, and is therefore a negation of the normal (nor do we confuse, conflate, and substitute the concepts of “natural” with “normal” as do the Darwinists).

And so our eating of meat is made possible only through Death, a thing which is passing away, a thing over which we live to triumph and die to defeat. When we fast from flesh, just as the monks always do, those who go before us on the path, we recall that “every green thing” was given to us in Eden, but that we are no longer the veegans we were – because of Death, and we foretell the fulfillment of the Kingdom, in which the “lion will lie down with the lamb, and a little child will lead them” and neither will there be any more Death or sorrow. We look to a heaven in which the enmity between creatures is replaced with the reign of peace. The alienation, the fragmentation, that is Death itself, is replaced with life that destroys Death.

So often, the cultural religious response is suspicious of Veeganism and Vegetarianism, and reaches quickly for heterodox hermeutics and the first council in the New Testament, in which nothing is forbidden to eat except strangled things and blood and (elsewhere), in the advice of the Apostle, things sacrificed to idols. But this is to miss the point, and indeed to Protestantize our thinking, using one point over against another, as though ours is a religion of proof texts and a debate over contradictions – a faith in this not that – either/or rather than both/and.

It’s like talking about fasting at all: “Are you judging your brother? Are you prideful about your fasting? Love is more important than fasting.” One cannot answer these attitudes, because they’re formulated on a Protestant mentality in the first place. A religious psychology predicated on hashing out dialectical conflicts. When one even begins to question our consumption of meat, the immense suffering – both human and animal – brought about my the meat processing industry, etc. – it’s immediately treated as suspect. So be it. But the Orthodox response is ultimately a destruction of death and, yes, a taking away of that hamburger and that pepperoni pizza. What is permitted during the feasts is with equal truth and fervor forbidden during the fasts, and moreso will be extinguished and nonexistent in the fulness of the Kingdom. If we cannot take full stock of that truth, the problem is in our own prejudices, and not in the Faith or in those who articulate it. The Incarnation itself is null without the end of Death, so it is the very Faith itself that is vain if this is not true.

No, we don’t go around pointing fingers, but neither is it necessarily an expression of pride, arrogance, or judgment to be veegan – and to be veegan precisely as a piety – as a devotion – as an expression of Faith. “Keep quiet about it, then,” we are told. No. The same people who say this are busy writing articles on all kinds of topics – how can they say this one is forbidden, and on what basis? On the contrary, if we can’t have a free and open discussion on it, then perhaps that very religious psychology – the very “piety” being suggested – is itself an even more important topic for conversation, and this issue is just a catalyst, a useful example, for bringing it to light.

Anthony Campolo once said, “My theology is best expressed in elevators.” By which he meant that, contrary to the demands and assumptions of the dominant social order, he wouldn’t turn, and he would also sing on elevators, which you’re not supposed to do (people don’t get on, when the doors open). This kind of mundane warfare with the world is simply the every day expression of our all out campaign against the world system – the ascendant societal framework. It’s the Ghandi-esque expression of small, continual acts of repudiation, rejection, and rebellion in the face of an all-consuming overriding social system. It is the brief ignition of joy in the darkness of the way things supposedly are.

In the same way, I like to challenge the social order’s assumptions about meat, in small continual doses. I live in a part of the country in which it’s just not considered a meal w/o copious portions of carcass. Vegetables are, at best, a garnish. Animal products constitute the primary fare, and ridicule of vegetarians and religious vehemence about “liberty in Christ” and privacy in fasting (which means, typically, not fasting at all), is generally a cover for decadent gluttony – the kind of gluttony that causes immense health problems, not to mention pain and discomfort waddling away from the table (irrational, almost insane gluttony). I’m a flexitarian – which means sometimes I’m veegan, sometimes vegetarian, and sometimes I eat hamburgers – it’s a long story, but it’s part of an ongoing process. Often, I’ll order toast and eggs at local diners. I almost always get a bewildered query from the waitress, “No meat?!?” And I always have the same response: “Eggs *are* meat.” Usually I get a moment of hesitation and thought and a “Hmm. Guess so.”, but it can range anywhere from a hrrmph to laughter. The point is that we need to question the assumptions we’ve absorbed with our mother’s milk and taken from the very air of the world into which we were born. And one of those key assumptions is that Death is a given – it’s a normal, natural, native part of the created order – and our lives aren’t complete without depending on the death of others. There are implications for attitudes about war, capital punishment, abortion, and what have you. Food is just an entry point.

The thing is, being afraid to talk about it, or ask these questions, or keep the topic open, or think about it – think through the implications of our doctrines, and our relation to the assumptions embedded in the culture’s behavior, attitudes, and ideas, is itself a non-Christian attitude. An anti-Christian one, in fact. And if we can’t do it about food, we can’t effectively do it about money, about human relationships, about work, or about any other significant area of human endeavour. Food is a crucible issue for us, which is one of the reasons we fast. It’s that important, it’s a capsulized representation of our religious attitudes about creation, the world, the Incarnation, and all else that we consider a matter of Orthodox interest.

So frankly, here’s talking about it.

Fasting & Sickness

“Do not abandon a fast in time of sickness, for lo, those who do not fast fall into the same sicknesses.” – St Syncletica

The Rule of Fasting and Eating are the same Rule

“It is not suited to everyone to follow a severe rule of abstinence from everything, or to deprive himself of everything which can serve for the easing of weakness.

One should make use of food daily to the extent that the body, fortified, may be the friend and assistant of the soul in the practice of virtue. Otherwise, the soul may weaken because it is exhausted.

On Wednesdays and Fridays, especially during the four fasts, eat once a day, and the angel of the Lord will remain with you.”

– St. Seraphim

Fasting and Alms

A brother said to an old man: “There are two brothers. One of them stays in his cell quietly, fasting for six days at a time, and imposing on himself a good deal of discipline, and the other serves the sick. Which one of them is more acceptable to God?” The old man replied: “Even if the brother who fasts six days were to hang himself up by the nose, he could not equal the one who serves the sick.”

A Fast for All Meals

“I shall speak first about control of the stomach, the opposite to gluttony, and about how to fast and what and how much to eat. I shall say nothing on my own account, but only what I have received from the Holy Fathers. They have not given us only a single rule for fasting or a single standard and measure for eating, because not everyone has the same strength; age, illness or delicacy of body create differences. But they have given us all a single goal: to avoid over-eating and the filling of our bellies… A clear rule for self-control handed down by the Fathers is this: stop eating while still hungry and do not continue until you are satisfied.” – St. John Cassian

Comment: It seems like we are always fasting when we feast, never letting the food become the point, and feasting on the Spirit when we fast.

Gearing up, for Battle

“Let us set out with joy upon the season of the Fast, and prepare ourselves for spiritual combat. Let us purify our souls and cleanse our flesh; As we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion. Rejoicing in the virtues of the Spirit, may we persevere with love, and so be counted worthy to see the solemn Passion of Christ our God, and with great spiritual gladness, to behold His holy Pascha.” – (Sticheron, First Monday of Great Lent, Tone 2)

Mysterium of Holy Matrimony

“Where the flesh is one, one is the spirit too. Together they pray, together prostrate themselves, together perform their fasts; mutually teaching, mutually exhorting, mutually sustaining. Equally are they both found in the Church of God; equally at the banquet of God; equally in straights; in persecutions, in refreshments. Neither hides from the other; neither shuns the other; neither is troublesome to the other; the sick is visited, the indigent relieved, with freedom. Alms are given without danger of torment; sacrifices without scruple; daily diligence without impediment; there is no stealthy singing, no trembling greeting, no mute benediction. Between the two echo psalms and hymns; and they mutually challenge each other which shall better chant to their Lord. Such things when Christ sees and hears, He joys. To these He sends His own peace. Where two are, there withal is He Himself. Where He is, there the evil one is not.” – the Christian Tertullian [cited here]

Runway Lights in the Desert

“Angels are the light of monks, and monks are the light of men.”

Comment: Orthodoxy is not actually a belief system; it’s more closely understood as an asceticism. The essence of the Faith, in every aspect, is ascetic. Even our theology is apophatic – or negative theology – a theology of prayerfully removing from our minds all false images. In fact, standing in prayer is our most basic ascetic activity and study of theology, and the Church’s prayers are monastic prayers. Our fasts, likewise, are the monastic fasts. So it is with the many pious labours of the faithful. Our Bishop, who stands with us as our champion, like David calmly facing the giant Goliath, is usually a monastic. Unlike him, we may be married, but even marriage, lived out in an Orthodox manner, is an ascetic feat. With the monks, we are all engaged in a continual war with the passions, remembering that, in a war, it is possible to be defeated. The Orthodox are at war with Death, the ultimate affliction, the Enemy, the ultimate foe of creation, and the World, the ultimate delusional system. The monks are the warrior caste among us, training us in the strategies and tactics of battle. The monks go before us in theosis, as runway lights in the desert for all we “lay-ascetics’. We refer to the monks as earthly angels, the earthly hosts, surrounding us at all times with prayers, amid more angels than stars. There are banners in the invisible world, trumpets in this seeming silence, incense thick in the air, and the din of heroes. – DD

Fierce Faith

“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” – The Holy Apostle Paul to the Church at Rome

Excess: Results for Body & Soul

“For in our bodies too all distempers arise from excess; and when the elements thereof leave their proper limits, and go on beyond moderation, then all these countless diseases are generated, and grievous kinds of death.” — St. John Chrysostom

Fasting

“He who does not fast, does not really believe in God.” – St. Seraphim

The Fasts

Holy TheophanyPerhaps the extremity of the Fasts are part of the point. I can’t imagine what a “casual” fast would be like, any more than I can imagine a casual feast.

It might as well be boring party, or mediocre supper, or unimaginative art, or half-hearted effort.

The Fast

Cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. . . .”Why have we fasted,” they say, “and Thou dost not see? Why have we afflicted our soul, and Thou does not take notice?” Behold, on the day of your fast you find pleasure, and exact (from others) all your labor. Behold, you fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: you shall not fast as you do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. …

Scroll to Top