The Concept of Fasting for Non-Monastics
INTRODUCTION
A curious
phenomenon can be observed in the interactions between pastors and their
parishioners at the beginning of each major fast of the Church. Pastors attempt
to call their parishioners’ pious attention to the spiritual heights of
fasting: the fighting against sin, the conquering of passions, the taming of
the tongue, the cultivation of virtues. In turn, parishioners pester their
pastors with purely dietary questions: when fish is allowed, whether soy milk
or soy hotdogs are fasting, whether adding milk to coffee is breaking the fast,
or whether there is some dispensation that can be given to the young, the
elderly, those who study, those who work, women, men, travelers, the sick, or
those who simply do not feel well. In response to the overwhelming preoccupation
with dietary rules to the detriment of the spiritual significance of fasting,
some pastors, seemingly out of frustration, began to propose in sermons and
internet articles that dietary rules are not important at all: if you want
yogurt during Lent, just have some as long as you do not gossip; if you want a
hamburger, then eat one, as long as you do not devour a fellow human being by
judging and backstabbing. Unfortunately, such advice rarely helps eradicate
gossip, judging or backstabbing. Rather, it seems to confuse people into
thinking that since they have not yet conquered these and many other vices in
their hearts, they do not have to fast from hamburger either. Thus, I would
like us to discuss the very topic which fascinates so many lay people: what the
fasting rules are and how they are to be followed by those of you who have not
taken the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.
The Rules, the Rules, Let Us Attend
So, what
are the fasting rules? Most of us refer to a calendar we buy at a church kiosk
to tell us what to eat and what not to eat on any given day. But where do the
people who print the calendar get their information? Where does it really say
how to fast? Well, you may have heard the Russian saying about not going to
someone else’s monastery with your own rules. The fact is that fasting as we
have come to know it nowadays is a monastic discipline, and fasting rules come
from monasteries. The rules we use in the Russian Orthodox Church today, for
example, largely come from the Monastery of Saint Sabbas near Jerusalem. There
are several paragraphs in chapters 32 and 33 of the Typicon which outline the
rules of fasting. There are also some local variations—usually relaxing the
fast—that have to do with either memories of saints or life in northern
climates. The Solovki Monastery, for example, is quite a bit north of the
Monastery of Saint Sabbas; not too many vegetables grow there year round, but
fish is plentiful. But most of us do not live in Solovki or Alaska.
There are
several fasting periods in the Church, and we will not discuss all of them in
detail, but let us look at the rules for Great Lent, for example, as the fast
of all fasts. According to the Typicon, on Monday and Tuesday of the first
week, no food is allowed at all. On Wednesday of the first week, warm bread and
warm (or cooked) vegetable dishes are served once—and that is the only meal on
that day. And those who cannot keep such a strict fast, such as the elderly,
may eat some bread after vespers on Tuesday. The rest of Great Lent is less
strict: some bread and vegetables are allowed once a day every day after
vespers. And “if any monk destroys the holy Lent through his gluttony by eating
fish on days other than the Feast of the Annunciation and Palm Sunday, may he
not partake of Communion on Pascha.” That is the rule.
Does
anyone actually follow these rules? I presume some do—probably some monastics
and a small number of lay people. But if you see a monk having lunch on any
weekday during Great Lent, you may assume that the said monk is modifying the
rules somewhat to suit his particular needs or wants. In fact, most lay people
and many monastics follow some modified version of the rule which is almost
never a stricter version of the fast, but rather a relaxation of it—whether
increasing the number of meals, or the amount of food, of the type of food, or
all of the above. For example, at the Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary,
located on the premises of the Holy-Trinity Sergius Lavra near Moscow, students
and staff eat fish throughout Great Lent—not only on the two feast days
mentioned in the Typicon. In recent years, fish is served twice a week on most
weeks, but in the not-so-distant past, it was served as many as four times per
week. Likewise, those who read the diary of Tsar-martyr Nicholas II will note
that fish was served to the Royal Family throughout Great Lent. And this is not
something that somehow started in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Patriarchal
“Feeding Chronicle” of the 17th century, for example, recorded an abundance of
fish dishes served to the Patriarch and his guests on every Saturday and Sunday
during Great Lent.
Is It a Sin to Break the Fast?
So, is it
a sin to break the fast? The answer to this question depends on what is meant
by breaking the fast. As we have discussed, it turns out that most
people—monastic and lay alike—deviate from the rule in some way. If this
deviation is meaningful and its purpose is to accommodate a real physiological
need, then, it seems to me it is well within the spirit of fasting, even if it
is not exactly according to monastic rules. If, however, the deviation is due
to our gluttony, laziness, lack of discipline, or some other weakness, then we
have something that should be corrected. Perhaps, the best way to think about
sin in relation to fasting is not in legal terms—law, crime, and punishment,
but in terms of preparation or exercise. Fasting is an ascetic discipline. The
word “ascetic” comes from the Greek ἄσκησις
which means “exercise” or “training.” In other words, imagine that you are a
soldier preparing for a difficult and dangerous mission. It is not so much a
crime to be lazy in your training or to cut corners as much as it means that
you may not be well-prepared for your task and thus will not be able to
complete it or even perish in the process. So, if you choose not to exercise
the discipline of fasting, you are cheating yourself out of the training
necessary to fight against the enemy—sins and passions—and will be unprepared
to face the snares of the devil.
THE CONCEPT OF FASTING
The Discipline of the Body
There are
two aspects to the exercise of fasting that I would like to discuss. The first
one is the discipline of the body. Any time something is limited in its
freedoms, it becomes subject to whatever force is limiting it. So, when I make
my body do what I need instead of what it wants, I become its master. In other
words, if I tell my feet to walk and where to go, or if I tell my hands to work
and what to do, or if I tell my brain to solve a problem and which one—I gain
control over this incredible gift of God called my body. On the other hand, if
my body forces me to do what it wants, then it becomes my master. And it would
not, perhaps, be so bad if the body wanted what is best for me. Unfortunately,
that is not always the case. Each one of us has his or her own vices yielding
to our fallen nature, but in general, we know that given a choice, our body
does not always choose wisely: it wants to be lazy rather than productive; it
wants to eat junk food rather than healthy food; and our brain just wants to
party or get into mischief—often to the detriment of the body.
All of
this may sound simple enough, but what are we talking about? What is the body,
and who is it that is supposed to be in charge? The dichotomy of body and soul
is not within the scope of our talk, but for simplicity’s sake, let us agree
that when we say “body,” we mean the whole of our nature: flesh, including
brain, emotions, desires, will, intellect, etc. And the “you” is the hypostatic
you, that which tells your brain to solve a math problem and the brain
obediently solves it, it is the “I” in “I love you,” and it is the “my” in “my
name is…” But it so happens that in English, when we say “body” we often refer
to the physical body. This is not, however, the biblical use of this word.
Thus, the
discipline of the body is exercised for the purpose of keeping you in charge of
your body. In our fallen state, the natural order of our being has been
perverted: the flesh with its passions and desires is the ruler of our being;
our mind is a slave of the flesh and is preoccupied with figuring out how to
fulfill the desires of the flesh; the soul feeds on the passions of the flesh,
looking for pleasure and never finding satisfaction; and the spirit—the
direction in which our entire being moves—is not that of God, but rather of
corruption, waste, and destruction. In other words, the human spirit, the
vector, is missing its true mark, which is God. In Christianity, this is known
as “sin,” or ἁμαρτία in Greek, which translates as “missing
the mark” or “mistake.”
Fasting,
then, helps us restore divinely ordained order to our being: the spirit or
vector must always point to God, the soul must find its fulfillment in
communion with God, and the body, in all of its complexity, must serve the soul
in its service to God. We may, and will, talk about meat, fish, shrimp and the
like, but the main point is: if you cannot be in control of your stomach, if
this simple sack of flesh is the ruler your life, how can you hope to be in
control of more complex physiology, or your mind, or your soul?! This is not
even a purely religious matter but a matter of being a human being. I have
heard some teenagers bragging about breaking a fast as if it is some
accomplishment to eat a hotdog or bacon on a fasting day. In reality, it is
simply the mark of an individual who lacks self-control and is ruled by his
gut—nothing at all to brag about. If I were that person, I would not advertise
this embarrassing infantile quality and try to work on developing more
self-discipline.
Unity with the Church
The
second aspect of fasting that I would like to mention is the unity of the
Church which is the Body of Christ. Fasts and feasts of the Church create a
certain kind of unity among its members. Think of your family: relatives have
meals together, celebrate important events together, and stick together during
sad times. This helps maintain cohesion and unity within the family, and if
anyone decides to abstain from family life, then he or she is essentially
cutting themselves off from the family. It is the same in the Church: we keep
fasts together and we celebrate feasts together as a family of God. And if
anyone decides not to fast together with the Church or not to join the Church
family in festal celebrations, then they are separating themselves from our
family, cutting themselves off from the Body. And if you do not want to join
your brothers and sisters in this short temporal life, how do you plan to spend
eternity with them? Our faith is not individualistic; it is not about one single
person being saved in some solitary way. Salvation is possible only in the Body
of Christ, and only as a member of that Body. A branch which is cut off from
the vine no longer inherits life but is thrown into a burn pile.
FASTING AND PHYSIOLOGY
But enough
theory and theology! This conference is supposed to be about practical things.
Let us assume that everyone here believes in and tries to follow the spiritual
path which is offered to us by Orthodox Christianity, and that we all know that
this path necessarily includes the discipline of the body, a small part of
which is the discipline of that sack of flesh called the stomach. So, what do
we know about this organ? All too often people come to me and say that they
cannot fast because they need protein. When I ask them questions and try to
figure out why they think that they need more protein that most other Orthodox
Christians who observe the fast, it turns out that these people rarely have a
good idea of how much protein their body really needs, or which foods contain
protein and how much, or what else they may need besides protein. In most
cases, these people simply want that hotdog, they want that hamburger, and they
want that cheese sandwich, and that is the only reason they say that they need
protein. So let us take a closer look at our bodies’ real needs.
This is
not a college course on human physiology, so we will keep things very simple.
When it comes to food, your body basically needs three things: carbohydrates,
proteins, and fats. Also vitamins and minerals, of course, but people usually
do not complain that they do not get enough vitamins during a fast—even if they
really do not get enough—but that is for a different reason, which has nothing
to do with fasting. The amount of carbohydrates, protein, and fat that a person
needs depends on the person’s age, gender and lifestyle. But before we get into
the exact amounts, let us first discuss what these nutrients do for us.
Carbohydrates
Our body
is a marvelous and complex organism created by God. It is usually a mistake to
think of our body as a mechanism or a machine, but to simplify our discussion,
let us use some mechanical language when talking about nutrition. In the
simplest terms, in order to operate, our body needs fuel. If we do not have enough
fuel in our body, then the body slows its metabolism—the rate at which it burns
fuel—and begins to shut down non-essential work, making one feel tired and
sluggish. Carbohydrates or carbs, such as oatmeal, buckwheat, or rice, serve as
a good source of this fuel. But people who are following a fast do not
typically have a problem with getting enough oatmeal or buckwheat. Some people,
of course, do have a problem with eating too much highly processed and refined
starch, such as white bread, white pasta, etc., and not enough of the good
complex carbs like oatmeal or buckwheat; but, just as with vitamins, this is
not related to the fasting rules, as such people may have a poor diet whether
or not they are fasting. In fact, some people have complained to me that they
gain weight during Lent. And by looking at their diet, which contains huge
amounts of pasta, white bread with slabs of margarine, and salads drowning in
fatty dressing—it is easy to see why they do. Add to this a regular helping of
“fasting” desserts overloaded with sugar, and your Lent becomes a dangerous
experiment in trying to see how much junk your body can endure before it breaks
down.
Fats
While we
are on this topic, how much fat do people need? Depending on the total number
of calories you need per day (this number is calculated based on your age,
gender, and level of physical activity), you may be able to safely consume up
to 100 grams of high-quality fats (although, for many of us, half of that
amount should be more than sufficient). High-quality fats are, for example,
good (non-refined and not heated) olive oil, coconut oil, nuts, or fish, but
not lard, butter, or margarine. Good fats serve many functions in the body—from
protecting your cardio-vascular system, to helping your brain, to making sure
that your joints work well.
Protein
Finally,
we get to the main concern of many people who are looking for an excuse not to
fast—protein. According to the National Academy of Sciences, adult females need
an average of 46 grams of protein per day, and adult males –52. These numbers
may vary depending on your size, but not necessarily your current weight. For
example, if you weigh 200 pounds, but you really should weigh only 150, then
your protein intake is calculated based on your ideal weight and not the extra
weight you carry. The amount of protein intake also depends on your level of
activity: if you exercise every day, you probably need a little more; if you
spend your days playing computer games or texting, then you probably need a
little less. We will discuss some of these situations in due course, but for
now, let us just average the number to 50 grams per day and see how we can get
that much protein on a fasting diet.
On days
when fish is allowed, you can actually get good animal protein without too much
trouble. 2 oz of cold-smoked salmon (lox) has approximately 13 grams of
protein. A serving of canned fish—salmon or tuna—has the same. And for those
who choose to follow the Greek custom of eating shrimp, it also contains
approximately the same amount of protein—12 grams of protein per 50 grams of
shrimp. Remember that a serving—2 oz. or approximately 60 grams—is a pretty
small amount. In America, we are used to eating a lot more than one serving of
anything. Two small servings of fish or shrimp contain half the daily amount of
protein for an adult male.
Among
other common fasting foods, peanut butter has 7 grams of protein per 2
tablespoons, rice, buckwheat, and oatmeal—approximately 6 grams per one cup of
cooked product, good bread (not the white fluffy chemical kind)—6 grams per
slice, a cup of cooked beans or lentils—15 grams (that’s more protein than a
serving of fish), 20 almonds (a handful)—5 grams. In other words, if you have a
cup of oatmeal and a peanut-butter sandwich for breakfast, a cup of buckwheat
and 100 grams of fish for lunch, and a cup of rice and bean mix for supper, you
get 62 grams of protein—a bit more that an average adult male needs. I
understand that many people do not like math and find these calculations
confusing and incredibly boring, but just think about it: this is simple addition
of small numbers—the stuff you should have learned in grade school.
What
about complete and incomplete protein? In order to understand this difference,
we must understand how our body processes protein. When we eat a piece of meat,
for example, our body does not take that meat and strap it directly to the
biceps (even though that would be nice). Instead, it disassembles the protein
contained in meat into small building blocks called amino acids and then
reassembles those amino acids into protein for the human body. In addition, our
body can create many of the amino acids from all sorts of building blocks found
in many foods, but there are eight amino acids that our body is not able to
create. Foods that contain these eight essential amino acids are said to have
complete protein; foods that do not contain all eight are said to have
incomplete protein. Meat, to be sure, does contain all eight, but so does fish,
a mixture of beans and grains (such as rice), or quinoa. Quinoa is a grain that
contains all eight essential amino acids—and that is 6 grams of complete
protein per cup of cooked product.
As you
can see, it is very much possible to get more than enough protein on a simple
fasting diet. Nutritionally, there is absolutely no reason why you cannot abstain
from meat, or eggs, or milk for a period of time. People have practiced fasting
for thousands of years—since well-before the incarnation of Christ.
Psychologically, you may be craving a hotdog or ice-cream, but this craving has
nothing to do with your body’s nutritional needs.
Let us
now take a look at some special circumstances in our lives, and how we can
observe the fasts of the Church while studying, working, exercising,
travelling, etc.
FASTING FOR NON-MONASTICS
Fasting and Life’s Seasons
Our life
is not one uniform and monotonous continuum. Rather, it is a variety of
seasons. Some easily come to mind—childhood, adulthood, old age—but there are
others: pregnancy, for example, or preparing for an exam, or training for a
competition, or travelling. We will touch on all of these, but let us begin
with the natural seasons of our life: childhood, adulthood, and old age.
Most of
you probably know that infants, with the exception of Saint Serguis of
Radonezh, do not fast. It is said that the baby Serguis (whose name was
Bartholomew before he became a monk) refused his mother’s milk on Wednesdays
and Fridays, but even in this miraculous account we do not read that he
abstained from milk during longer fasts, of which there would have been four in
his first year of life. There is a limit to how long a baby can go without
milk.
At about
the age of three, it is customary to begin teaching a young child the basics of
self-control. At that age, there is still no need for a child to follow a
monastic fasting rule, but even a three-year-old can be taught to give up a
cookie on Friday.
From
approximately seven years of age, children should be mostly eating what the
parents eat, with perhaps some adjustments.
And, of course, it is assumed that the family follows the fasts of the
Church. A parent, for example, may experiment with eating only once a day after
vespers, but a child probably should not—at least, not for forty-nine days
straight. Even if a child wishes to try some stricter asceticism, a parent will
naturally want to guide the child in ways that are age-appropriate.
Many of
you are teenagers or young adults. This is a season of many stresses in your
life: school, sports, romantic relationships for which you stay up half the
night and then feel lousy for most of the next day. All of this makes it very
difficult to add yet one more stressor. Fasting is a stressor. When you fast,
you have to exercise will power; you have to control yourself, limit your
appetite, and think ahead. But this season in life is also when you really need
to practice the skill of self-control and self-discipline. You are no longer a
child, and your parents are not always there to be your backbone. By now, you
had better have your own backbone. This is why it is so important to begin
fasting in some way and learning self-discipline when you are still a young
child.
Following
the turmoil of your young adult years, roughly half of you will get pregnant.
The guys may think that this does not apply to them, but the new Affordable
Care Act does cover pregnancy benefits for young men. So, fear not! Jokes
aside, however, pregnancy had better not be a young woman’s experience, but
that of the couple. Care, love, support, understanding, and—yes!—cooking is
what guys get out of this experience. There is absolutely no good reason for a
pregnant woman to follow the monastic diet, and I am certainly not aware of any
Church rules that say otherwise. One thing that I always say to pregnant women
is that they still have to fast. We all do! But their fast is eating as
healthily as they can, which is a discipline in and of itself. If it is
healthy—eat it; if it is not—do not eat it, even if it does not contain meat or
dairy. This does not mean that a pregnant woman should stuff herself on meat at
every meal. This would not be healthy, especially if we are talking about
processed meats full of sodium and nitrates. But the season of pregnancy is not
the time for only bread and water after vespers. To be sure, there are plenty
of vegetarians who never eat meat—not even during pregnancy—and deliver healthy
babies who also grow up not eating meat. You do not have to eat meat just
because you are pregnant. But neither do you have to follow a monastic fast.
Finally,
most of us will grow old—40-or-so, or even older. This is a good season for a
renewed focus on your spiritual life. An older person may have more time for
prayer, more opportunity for strict fasting. Certainly, the older people get,
the more ailments they may have. But they will have those ailments whether or
not they pray and fast. Watching television instead of praying, or eating
hotdogs instead of fasting will not cure those ailments. In fact, it may add to
them. Prayer and fasting, on the other hand, rejuvenate the soul and the body. In a recent study (2012), researchers at the
National Institute of Aging in Baltimore discovered that strict fasting twice a
week helps lower the risk of developing many brain diseases, such Alzheimer’s
or Parkinson’s, and delays aging in general. While this is not why we fast, it
is still nice to know that fasting is really good for our physical body. Lack
of self-control and self-discipline, on the other hand, is really bad at any
age.
All of
this, of course, is a long way away for most of you, or, at least, it may seem
like it is a long way away. There is beauty and a tremendous spiritual benefit
in living in the moment, in making today the day that counts, as if there were
no tomorrow. But it is also important to “keep an eye on the ball” of our life,
and to realize that what we sow today will have to be reaped tomorrow. But
today you are young, and so let us discuss some life circumstances in which
young people find themselves.
Fasting and Study
The most
common thing that young people do in Western societies is study. In America,
you may study for twelve, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, or even more years—at this
point, that is virtually all of your life. Is study compatible with fasting?
Absolutely! But some adjustments to the fasting rule may be made, both due to
age and also to the task of studying. It is well-researched and documented,[2]
for example, that breakfast is important for school performance. There is a
simple explanation: if you eat supper at seven or eight o’clock in the evening,
then by seven or eight in the morning you will have been fasting for twelve
hours. If you do not break fast, then by lunch time, you will have been fasting
for sixteen hours. When your body does not receive fuel in the form of good
complex carbs, it begins to slow its metabolism and shut down non-essential
functions—you feel tired, sleepy, sluggish, and cannot think well or fast,
because your brain actually consumes approximately 20% of your total calorie
intake. In other words, school children should not follow the monastic rule of
eating once a day after vespers—at least, not for any length of time.
Also, as
I mentioned before, some prominent seminaries and theological academies serve
fish during Great Lent. If future priests and their instructors, many of whom
are monastics, feel that they need fish because they study or teach, I believe
that other students may benefit from the same. It certainly does not have to be
a fancy lobster dinner, but if you or your parents feel that you may need a can
of tuna on a “non-fish” day, this may be an acceptable practice.
It may
also be the case that you are served lunch at school. It is difficult to
observe all of the fasting rules when you have no control over what goes into
your food. For example, you may be given a salad with some cheese or dressing
that has dairy. It is better to thank God and to eat this salad than to go
hungry or eat a bag of potato chips, which may be perfectly fasting from a
legalistic point of view, but are certainly not good for you if you always
choose chips over salad. You can still abstain from meat even in school, and
you can observe as strict a fast as you wish when you eat breakfast and supper
at home. But it is normal to make some allowances for school lunches and even
better to pack your own lunch.
Fasting and Work
Most of
you either have a job or will have a job soon. And yes, just like studying, all
jobs are perfectly compatible with fasting. If your job is not very physically
demanding, you can and should observe a stricter fast. If you lift a lot of
heavy things for your job, or work outside in cold weather, perform some other
physically demanding task, you should probably increase you calorie intake and
relax some of the “no-oil” days. There is no “one-size-fits-all” advice, and
you should push yourself to fast as strictly as you can. But if you see that
your job performance is suffering, then you should consider making some
allowances and relax your fasting rule just enough to do your job well. In any
case, I personally believe that everyone who has any important obligations in
the morning—students, parents, workers—should not skip breakfast. Priests, of
course, do not have breakfast before serving the Liturgy, and maybe that is why
some of our sermons are not as good as they could be. Lay people should also
observe the Liturgical fast whether they are preparing for Communion or not.
But this is a special case, and a special time. In most other cases, in my
opinion, a good, whole grain breakfast is the most important meal of the day
and can solve many problems with “not feeling well” while observing a fast.
Fasting and Sports
Perhaps,
the most difficult topic is fasting for serious athletes. It is important to
emphasize that we are talking about serious athletes. A walk in the park or
high-school P.E. do not constitute a serious athletic pursuit and do not
require any relaxation of fasting rules. Likewise, we will not discuss
Olympic-level athletes—their training is so strenuous that they often require a
special strict diet and are not likely to be able to follow a monastic fasting
rule. But what if you are seriously involved in high school or college
athletics?
People
who engage in physical exercise need two basic nutrients: carbs and proteins.
Carbs are what fuel your muscles. During any physical activity, your muscles
burn the carbs that are stored in them, and then during the period of recovery,
the carbs in the muscles are replaced. If exercise is hard enough—and that is
the only way to increase performance—your muscles actually get damaged (that is
why you feel sore) and it takes protein to repair them. As your damaged muscles
are repaired, they get a little stronger and bigger than they were before a
workout.
In other
words, it is nearly impossible to observe a monastic rule of bread and water
after vespers and have regular hard workouts. To be sure, you can do it for a
day or two, but not for forty or forty-nine days—your performance will suffer.
So, in order to maintain athletic performance, you probably need at least three
good meals a day with plenty of complex carbs and 30% more protein compared to
those people who lead a less active lifestyle. But you can still keep the fast.
For example, you do not have to eat meat. There are many successful athletes
who are vegans and vegetarians. If you think that you absolutely have to have
animal protein in your diet, fish is a much more Lenten choice than beef. You
can get a lot of protein from many plant sources—the most strong and muscular
animals on planet Earth are all herbivores. (Of course, the digestive system of
those animals is very different from the human digestive system, but the Church
is not calling us to only eat grass.)
Many
athletes also feel that they need to take various supplements. Here, we will
not discuss the wide variety of products that supplement companies are trying
to sell to anyone who will listen to their advertising pitch, but people often
ask about protein supplements, such as protein shakes or powders. In my opinion,
such things as supplements, herbs, vitamins, etc., are not food and there is no
good reason to worry too much about whether a capsule is made from gelatin or
whether protein isolate was derived from whey. If you absolutely have to take
protein powder, it may be healthier for your body to take whey protein than soy
protein. You can still be very strict with your food: no ice cream or hotdogs
(and if you are a serious athlete, you probably do not eat junk food anyway).
But if you think you must take extra protein (and this is a big “if”), choose
the healthiest option, which is probably not soy isolate.
However,
the very idea of drinking a whey protein shake during Lent may bother you, and
it probably should. There are plenty of people who live healthy, productive
lives on a purely vegan diet. There are also many successful vegan athletes,
including marathon runners, bodybuilders, Olympic sprinters, MMA fighters,
cyclists, boxers, basketball players, football players and many others who
never eat any animal protein. They win championships and tournaments on a
completely Lenten diet, and so can you. It will take some research and
forethought, but you can absolutely be an athlete and observe the fast. The
health benefits you get from exercise are very important, but only for a few
years or a few decades. The spiritual benefits you get from fasting last for
eternity. Everything should be put in its proper place: eternal things first,
temporal—second.
Fasting and Travel
It is a
common belief that people who travel are somehow exempt from fasting or that
their fasting rules are relaxed. So, let us explore this issue a little
further. In the past, people often travelled by foot, walking twenty or more
miles each day and carrying their bags. They sometimes had to endure rain,
sometimes snow, and sometimes heat. They even had to camp and sleep in the
field or in the forest. Finally, they were unable to cook for themselves during
their journey and had to be satisfied with whatever they could find along the
way. Because of these hardships, fasting rules for travelers were relaxed—they
needed more energy and could not be picky about their food.
Nowadays,
travel is quite a bit different. We no longer walk very much, but usually
travel in a comfortable, air-conditioned car, or in an airplane with reclining
seats, with an iPod, iPad, or some other device which keeps us entertained. We
do not walk for hours, we sit for hours, and we complain a lot. When it is time
to make a stop, we no longer camp under an open sky or sleep on the hard, cold
ground. Instead, we sleep in a hotel room with a comfortable bed, a shower, and
a television set. And then we complain some more. This is not to say that
travelling cannot be exhausting or uncomfortable. But it simply is not as exhausting
or uncomfortable as it used to be.
One
thing, however, remains pretty much the same—we cannot cook for ourselves very
well while we travel and must be satisfied with the food that we can find along
the way. In many cases, the solution is very simple: if you are taking a
two-hour-long flight, eat a good meal before you leave home in order to avoid
having to look for food at an airport. If you have a long flight or a long
drive, you should try to pack Lenten food for the trip. If you end up needing
to buy food, choose the healthiest, most Lenten option you can reasonably find.
French-fries, while Lenten, are not necessarily the healthiest option. Often,
you can find a salad, fruit, or a fish sandwich, or good bread with some
vegetables. Whatever you choose may have dairy in the salad dressing or
mayonnaise in the fish—and there is not much you can do about it, although,
particularly here on the west coast of America, most establishments offer vegan
options. Thank God, enjoy your food, and continue with a stricter fast when
your trip is over. But there is certainly no good reason to seek out
opportunities to break your fast just because you find yourself sitting at an
airport waiting for an airplane. A relaxed fasting rule during travel is not a
dispensation, it is an accommodation.
CONCLUSION
When you
are a young child, your parents tell you to do what is good for you. They give
you rules to follow, and you follow them, but not because you realize what is
good for you, but because those rules are imposed on you. When you grow older,
you begin to understand what is good for you, and follow in that way freely. It
is the same with the rules of the Church. When we are babies in the faith, we
follow rules and canons often without a good idea why. But when we advance in
spiritual age, we begin to understand that these are not some meaningless
arbitrary rules, but a path to spiritual health and communion with God. With
age come freedom and responsibility, and we find ourselves having to decide how
rules apply in our lives and whether we are able to break them. But just as it
is the mark of a child to obey rules without understanding what they do, it is
also childish and immature to want to break rules just because you can.
Imagine
that your parents tell you not to stick metal objects into an electric outlet;
they may even slap your hand if you try. At a certain age, you will find that
there is no one to stop you—you are old enough to do what you wish. And then
you will discover that it is still a good rule not to stick metal objects into
an electric outlet. Maybe your parents made you brush your teeth. When you are
in college, your parents are not there to tell you to brush your teeth, but if
you have any sense in you, you will do that on your own without being told to.
And if you choose not to brush your teeth, you will not only offend others by
the foul smell from your mouth, but will also allow your own teeth to rot.
Our
loving mother Church gives us rules to follow. If we do not follow these rules,
the result will be foul smell and decay in our soul. And thus, the task should
not be to find as many excuses for breaking the fast as possible. Whether you
are young or getting older, whether you work or study, whether you exercise or
travel—Christians at all times in the history of the Church were both young and
old, worked and studied, exercised and travelled, and kept the fast. The task
should be to keep your faith, to discipline your body, and to grow in the
Spirit in every situation and under all circumstances.
Fasting
is only one aspect of our spiritual practice, but it is an important one. It is
one of the two wings which help us rise to heaven. A bird with only one wing
cannot fly; and a Christian who cannot control his belly does not have
spiritual freedom.
Undoubtedly,
you have heard these theoretical musings before. But I hope to show you that as
a practical matter, fasting is very much possible in most, if not all
situations. Decide that you will stop looking for reasons to break the fast and
instead start looking for ways to keep it; learn a new recipe or two, and
resolve to exercise your will-power and self-discipline. You reap what you sow.
Sow the good seeds of asceticism in your life, and you will reap freedom from
slavery to your belly, freedom from the passions of the flesh, and a blessing of
following in the footsteps of the greatest saints and our Lord Himself.
By Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov
Source: http://www.pravmir.com/fasting-non-monastics/
