The Catalog of Good Deeds: Lent and Fasting

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The didactic imitation of the fast of Christ during the time preceding the days in which the sufferings, the death and the glorious resurrection of Christ are remembered, gives to the Holy Forty Day Fast a special meaning and value for us. The suffering of the Savior and His Resurrection grant to all of us hope even for our resurrection to eternal life. But to realize this hope of receiving an eternal blessed life, we need to imitate Christ in purity and holiness of life. We need to go through the same path of life, as also did the Savior: the way of self-renunciation and self-denial and besides this, the way of struggle against the sensuality and sinfulness of our nature.

The Holy Forty Day Fast serves as the most convenient way to follow this way. "If we shall carefully observe them", teaches the Blessed Augustine, "the Forty Days signify the life of the present age, as the days of Pascha also signify the life of eternal blessedness". In the Forty Day Fast we have contrition, and in Pascha we have joy. And in the present life we should be repentant so that in the future life we could reach eternal blessings. So, everyone, during his terrestrial life, should sigh about his sins, pour out his tears, and do works of mercy. But if the obstacles of the world often confuse us in this, then in a larger measure we shall fulfill in our heart the sweetness of the law of God during the Holy Forty Days.

During the harvest season food for the body is gathered, so that during the season of the spiritual harvest we should gather food for the soul, which could be eaten for eternal life. If we are negligent and have not prepared anything during its season, the whole year endures famine. So the one who neglects fasting, reading the Sacred Scriptures, and prayers during this period fails to gather spiritual wheat and heavenly food for the soul, and will reap eternal thirst and heavy distress. Even the Holy Church expresses a similar idea when she prays to God for us that He guide us "in these most honorable days" of the Holy Forty Days, "for the cleansing of souls and bodies, for the abstention from passions, for the hope of resurrection", and gave to us the power "through ascetical effort to strive for the good, to complete the course of the fast, to observe the undivided faith, to destroy the heads of the invisible serpents, and to be revealed the conqueror of sin". In such a way the Holy Forty Days, according to the sense and meaning for us, is a paradigm of our life as it should be, i.e. life not for the flesh and this world, but for heaven and eternity.

By Sergei V. Bulgakov

Source: www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2013/03/great-lent-imitates-fast-of-christ.html

Monday marks the beginning of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church (which liturgically begins at Forgiveness Vespers on Sunday). Though Great Lent is kept with rigor in Orthodox Tradition, there is nothing unusual asked of believers – nothing that we do not do on many days throughout the rest of the year. We fast; we pray; we give alms; we attend services, etc. But we do these with greater intensity and frequency during the Great Fast (the more universal name of the season). As preparation for the feast of Pascha, the “feast of feasts,” all of these disciplines drive the point of the Christian faith further and deeper.

Much of modern Christianity lives as a stranger to ascetical discipline. Few Christians fast, and the fasting of many others has forgotten the traditions of earlier generations. Various historical factors have turned the Christian life into a set of beliefs rather than a way of life. Monasticism seems exotic to many.

There is nothing exotic about asceticism. The New Testament assumes fasting and similar activities as normative for the Christian life. The Pharisees observed that the disciples of Jesus did not fast. When Christ was asked about this omission (something that seemed entirely unusual in the Judaism of the time), He responded:

Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast (Matt. 9:15).

The days in which “the bridegroom is taken away” are the days in which we live. Fasting is normative. Fasting is part of the practice of continual repentance – the proper attitude of the Christian heart. Repentance is not a single action taken in response to having done something wrong – repentance is a state of the heart – the state of brokenness and contrition:

A broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise (Psalm 51).

To a large extent – this is the goal of the Christian way of life – to cultivate a heart of repentance. King David is called “a man after God’s own heart,” not because he was without sin (he was an adulterer and a murderer). He was a man after God’s own heart because when confronted with his sin – his heart is broken. He makes no defense and offers no excuse.

St. Paul offers this admonition:

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him (Romans 12:1-3).

No other single passage, it seems to me, manages to gather as many aspects of the Lenten life (and thus daily life at all times). Our bodies become “a living sacrifice.” I can only wonder which sacrifice St. Paul had in mind (there were many different ones in the Old Testament). Or it may be that the sacrifice of Christ is now the dominant image for him. But our bodies, now “crucified” with Christ are offered up in what St. Paul calls our “spiritual worship” logike latrein.

To offer our bodies as a sacrifice, through fasting and prayer, is itself lifted up to the level of worship, and interestingly our logike worship (“spiritual” is perhaps a more accurate translation than “reasonable” as some render it – though it would also be quite accurate to translate it as “natural” or “the worship that is proper to us as human beings”). It is a struggle to fast, to present our bodies as a “living” sacrifice. This is so much more than a “one time” offering: it stretches through the days and nights of this great season.

St. Paul then admonishes us not to be conformed to the world but to be transformed by the renewal of our mind (nous) which could easily be rendered “heart.” Fr. John Behr describes the passions, in his The Mystery of Christ, as “false perceptions,” our own misunderstanding of the body and its natural desires. Thus renewing our minds is an inner change in the perception of our selves and our desires, or in the words of St. Irenaeus (quoted frequently by Behr) “the true understanding of things as they are, that is, of God and of human beings.”

I find it of great importance, that St. Paul concludes this small admonition by pointing us towards humility (as he does as well in Philippians 2). It is in embracing the cross of Christ, in emptying ourselves towards God and towards others that our true self is to be found and that our minds are renewed. We cannot look within ourselves to find our true selves. “For he who seeks to save his life will lose it.” Rather the true self is found when we turn to the other and pour ourselves out towards them. We find ourselves by losing ourselves in the beloved. This is the love that makes all things possible for us.

The Fast, like all things in the gospel, is ultimately an act of love. It is an act of love for it is a training in the sacrifice of self. Having denied ourselves in such small things (such as abstaining from various foods and drink), we learn to deny ourselves in much larger things – such as pride and anger, self-love and envy. By God’s grace such efforts are molded into the image of Christ – who Himself began His ministry with a fast of 40 days – and this for love.

By Fr. Stephen Freeman

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2010/02/15/the-great-fast/

I miss Ash Wednesday, the Western liturgical churches’ entry into Lent. The ashes on the forehead in the shape of the Cross, the important reminder that we are mortal: “Dust you were and dust you shall be.”

We don’t have that wonderful tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy, to which I converted in 2007. And I miss it. But I so appreciate our own opening stanza of the long, slow spiritual symphony of Great Lent, known as “Forgiveness Sunday,” just passed.

Orthodox Christians enter Lent with a special post-Liturgy or evening vespers service that launches us into “Clean Monday,” the first day of the rigorous Lenten fast (about which more below).

The forgiveness service begins as any other vespers, but it soon changes with different hymns and more mournful prayers. In the midst of the service, Lent begins as the choir cries out in earnest supplication:

Turn not away thy face from thy servant; for I am in trouble:

hear me speedily. Attend to my soul, and deliver it.

From the ends of the earth I cried unto thee.

I shall be protected under the cover of thy wings.

I will praise thy name forever.

As they mournfully sing, the altar cloth is changed to Lenten purple and the priest changes into dark vestments to symbolize mourning.

At the service’s end, our first Lenten act is to ask from and offer forgiveness to everyone present—not collectively, but individually from person, to person, to person. This is one of the most powerful moments of the Church year. One by one, each parishioner bows or prostrates, first before the priest, and then each other, asking, “Forgive me, a sinner.”

Each responds with a bow or prostration, asking also for forgiveness and assuring, “God forgives.” Each then exchanges the kiss of peace.

The service is a healing balm. It is hard to bear grudges when all have shared such an intimate mutual humbling. Indeed, Forgiveness Vespers is emotionally intense, tears often flow and hugs of true reconciliation are common.

Why start Lent with a service that almost forces us to forgive? “Lent calls us to spiritual perfection,” explains Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou in Meditations for Great Lent , “which is impossible without love and forgiveness. Thus before Lent begins, we are called to forgive all who have wronged us. Only then can we hope to attain perfection, which is the likeness of God.”

Having given and received forgiveness, we enter the desert journey of the Great Fast. Unlike many Western traditions, we Orthodox don’t choose what to “give up” for Lent (although we often do that as well—for example, a friend in my parish is foregoing all social media). Rather, during the forty days of Lent (and Holy Week thereafter), we are asked by the Church to become essentially vegan: No meat. No dairy. No fish (other than shellfish). Not only that, other than on weekends, we also abstain from wine and olive oil.

Why such a rigorous course? Papavassiliou again elucidates (my emphasis):

The purpose of our fasting is spiritual. Spirituality must not be viewed as something that does not concern the body, but as something that is made possible through and within the body. . . . The desires and needs of the flesh can all too often overpower the spirit. Fasting is a means of restoring balance between soul and body, a means of bringing the flesh under the control and will of the mind and spirit.

The Great Fast is one of those times when we must journey alone. Yes, it helps to know in times of weakness that we are simultaneously sharing the same struggle with three hundred million others. But Lenten ascesis is a matter of solitary steps through the desert.

This discipline is not intended to draw us away from others. Moreover, the Church is very clear that fasting per se is not virtue, nor is failing to fast sin. Indeed, we are strictly instructed not to judge in this regard. If we see someone we know to be Orthodox eating a hamburger, it is none of our business. We have our own vegetables to fry. The arduous Lenten disciplines of the Great Fast help us, again in the words of Papavassiliou, “turn back to Paradise to the Life of Eden” so that “like Moses, we too may see God.”

By Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow

at the Discovery Institute’s Center

on Human Exceptionalism.

Source: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/03/forgiveness-sunday-opens-the-door-to-orthodox-lent

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