An Instruction for the Second Sunday of Great Lent: The Meaning of Fasting for Man

“Take heed to yourselves, that your hearts be not weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness” (Lk 21:34).

Beloved brethren! It is beneficial for us in the days of holy Lent not only to afflict our bodies with fasting, but also to speak of fasting; it is beneficial for us in the days of holy Lent to give full attention to the admonition given us by the Lord Himself against excess and satiation: “take heed to yourselves,” He said, “that your hearts be not weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness.”

The institution of fasting is God’s institution. The first commandment given by God to mankind was the commandment concerning fasting. It was necessary for us in paradise before our fall; how much more necessary it is after the fall. The commandment concerning fasting was given in paradise and repeated in the Gospel. Let us lift our thoughts to the divine institution of fasting and by contemplating this institution, as it were enliven the very work of fasting with our soul.

The work of fasting does not belong exclusively to the body; the work of fasting is not useful and necessary solely for the body; it is useful and necessary chiefly for the mind and heart. “Take heed to yourselves, that your hearts be not weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness.” The Saviour of the world revealed to us in these words a consequence of excessive consumption of food and drink worthy of special attention, a terrible consequence, a consequence destructive to the soul. From indulgence to the belly the heart grows heavy, becomes coarse, hardens; the mind loses its lightness and spirituality; man becomes carnal. What does a carnal man mean? By the name of carnal, Holy Scripture marks that wretched man who is nailed to the earth, who is incapable of spiritual thoughts and feelings. “My Spirit shall not abide in these men forever, for they are flesh” (Gen 6:3), God testified. The carnal man is incapable of worship of God. Even a spiritual man, succumbing to satiation, loses his spirituality, loses as it were the very capacity to know God and serve Him. “When Jeshurun ate”, says Holy Scripture, calling Jeshurun a true servant of God, “and was filled, then he became fat and kicked; he abandoned God his maker and rejected the Rock of his salvation.” (Deut 32:15) Into such a state comes the ascetic when he excludes from his works the work of fasting. The heaviness and darkness communicated to the body by abundance and indiscriminate eating gradually spread from the body to the heart and from the heart to the mind. Then these eyes of the soul, the heart and mind, grow dull; eternity hides itself from them; earthly life appears to the diseased vision as endless. According to these concepts and feelings the earthly pilgrimage is directed, and the wretched blind wanderer, together with the rejected serpent, creeps on his belly and eats earth all the days of his earthly life (Gen 3:14). Violation of fasting threatens the disciple of Christ with falling away from Christ.

Such influence of immoderate or even thoughtless and careless consumption of food on man explains the reason why man, in his very state of innocence, amid the delights of paradise, needed the commandment of fasting. It was entrusted to preserve the newly created creature, made up of two natures, bodily and spiritual, in a spiritual state; it was entrusted to keep the two natures in balance and to maintain the preponderance of the spiritual nature. With its help man could continually stand in thought and heart before God, could be impervious to vain thoughts and fantasies.

How much more necessary is the commandment of fasting for fallen man. Attachment to the earth, to brief earthly life, to its sweetness, to its glory and honor, the very inclination toward sin have become inherent properties of fallen nature, as inherent to sickness are the disordered impulses and sensations it produces. We are nailed to the earth, clung to it with our whole soul – not only with the body; we have become entirely carnal, deprived of spiritual feeling, incapable of heavenly thoughts. The commandment of fasting appears again as the first, necessary commandment for us. Only through the help of fasting can we tear ourselves from the earth; only through the help of fasting can we resist the seductive power of earthly delights; only through the help of fasting can we break the bond with sin; only through the help of fasting can our spirit be freed from the heavy chains of the flesh; only through the help of fasting can our thought arise from the earth and look toward God! As we take upon ourselves the good yoke of fasting, our spirit acquires greater freedom: it rushes into the realm of spirits kindred to it, begins often to turn toward the contemplation of God, to immerse itself in this immeasurable and wondrous contemplation, to dwell in it. If the objects of the material world, illumined by the rays of the material sun, necessarily borrow from it and emit radiance, how can our spirit not be illumined when, having cast off through fasting the crude and dense veil of carnality, it stands immediately before the Sun of Righteousness – God? It is illumined; it is illumined and transformed! New, divine thoughts arise in it; mysteries hitherto unknown to it are revealed before it. “The heavens” tell it “the glory of God: the sky proclaims” the almightiness of the hand that created it (Ps 18:2); all creatures, visible and invisible, loudly proclaim the ineffable mercy of the Creator; it tastes spiritually and sees spiritually, “how good the Lord is” (Ps 33:9). The gracious lightness and subtlety of the spirit are communicated to the body; the body, following the spirit, is drawn toward spiritual feelings and prefers incorruptible food, for which it was created, to corruptible food, to which it has fallen. At first it submits with difficulty to the healing and compulsion of fasting; at first it rises up against the institution of fasting, stirs up our spirit against it, arms itself against it with various arguments drawn from false wisdom; but, being tamed and healed by fasting, it now feels and understands differently. Its relation to satiation is such as the feelings of a recovered man to the harmful foods which he desperately craved during his illness; its relation to satiation is like the relation to revealed and now evident poison, which takes away the spirit’s dominion over the flesh, by which man from likeness and kinship to the angel is brought down to likeness and kinship to the brute beasts. Spiritual warriors, who have won victory over the flesh through fasting, standing before the face of the Lord to be taught the greatest mysteries and the most exalted virtues, hear from His lips the teaching about the high virtue of fasting and the revelation of the mystery – that state which gradually forms from satiation and excess: “take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness.” The victors are reminded to guard carefully the weapon by which victory was won! And victory is obtained, and the spoil acquired by victory is preserved by one and the same weapon – fasting.

The disciple of Christ, illumined from above and taught by his own pious experience, turning to examine the work of fasting itself, finds it entirely necessary not only to abstain from excess and constant satiation, but also to exercise strict discernment in food. This discernment appears superfluous only to a superficial, hasty glance at oneself; but in truth the quality of food is especially important. In paradise only quality was forbidden. In our valley of tears, on earth, we find that indiscriminate choice in quality produces far greater spiritual evils than excess in quantity. One must not think that grapes alone have the capacity to act upon our mind and soul; every kind of food has its own action on the blood, on the brain, on the whole body, and through the body on the spirit. Whoever carefully observes himself while practicing the work of fasting will find it absolutely necessary to purify body and soul from the prolonged consumption of meat and even fish; such a one will lovingly embrace the fasting rules of the holy Church and subject himself to them. The holy Fathers called fasting the foundation of all virtues, because through fasting our mind is preserved in proper purity and watchfulness, our heart in proper subtlety and spirituality. He who shakes the foundation of virtues shakes the whole edifice of virtues.

Brethren! Let us run the course of holy fasting with zeal and diligence. The privations to which our body is subjected at first glance by the rules of fasting are as nothing before the spiritual benefit which fasting is able to bring. Let us separate through fasting our bodies from luxurious and rich food, and our hearts from the earth and corruption, from that deep and destructive forgetfulness by which we cut ourselves off from the coming and ready eternity that awaits us. Let us strive toward God both in spirit and in body! Let us fear the carnal state produced by violation of fasting; let us fear the complete incapacity for worship and knowledge of God produced by contempt for fasting. This destructive incapacity is the beginning of eternal death. This destructive incapacity appears in us when, from negligence toward God’s divine commandment concerning fasting, we allow “our hearts to be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness.” Amen.