An Instruction for the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent: The Meaning of Fasting in Relation to the Fallen Spirits

“This kind”, the Lord said to His apostles about the spirits of wickedness, “cannot be driven out” from those possessed by them, “except by prayer and fasting” (Mk 9:29). Here is a new characteristic of fasting! Fasting is accepted by God when preceded by the great virtue – mercy; reward is prepared in heaven for fasting when it is free from hypocrisy and vainglory; fasting acts when joined to it is another great virtue – prayer. And how does it act? Not only does it restrain the passions in the human body, but it enters into battle with the spirits of wickedness and overcomes them.

Why can fasting, which in itself is a bodily labor, act or contribute to prayer in warfare against spirits? And why, conversely, can bodiless spirits be subject to the influence of fasting upon them?

The cause of fasting’s action on the spirits of wickedness lies in its powerful action on our own spirit. A body tamed by fasting furnishes the human spirit with freedom, strength, watchfulness, purity, subtlety. Only in such a state can our spirit stand against its invisible enemies. “When they,” the demons, “were troubled with me,” says the God-inspired David, “I clothed myself with sackcloth, and humbled my soul with fasting, and my prayer returned into my own bosom.” (Ps 34:13) Fasting provides the mind with watchfulness, and prayer is the weapon of the mind by which it drives off invisible enemies. Fasting humbles the soul, freeing it from hardness and arrogance, which arise from satiation, and the prayer of the fasting man becomes especially powerful, is pronounced not superficially, is pronounced from the very soul, from the depth of the heart, lifts and raises it to God.

The dark spirits of wickedness committed two grave crimes: the first was the cause of their expulsion from the host of holy angels; the second crime was the cause of their irrevocable rejection. In heaven they rose up in rebellion against God; their leader, blinded by self-conceit, desired to make himself equal to God. For this criminal attempt, they were cast down from heaven to the realm below and became envious of the bliss of the newly created man, and committed a new crime: seducing man they drew him into their fall. The last evil deed of the fallen angels completely decided their fate: by it they sealed themselves in evil; because of it divine grace completely withdrew from them; they are abandoned to themselves, to their wickedness, to their sin, which they conceived and brought forth in themselves, which they allowed to permeate their nature. Now no good thought ever comes to the rejected angel; no good feeling ever comes to him. He is wholly, entirely, plunged in evil, desires evil, invents evil. Burned by an insatiable thirst for evil, he seeks to satiate himself with evil, and cannot. All the evil accomplished and being accomplished by him appears to him insufficient before the evil which he imagines, which his unbearable thirst for evil seeks. Though created as a luminous angel, he is cast down for his crimes lower than all the beasts of the earth. “Because you have done this” – the enraged God said to Satan, finding him at the place of the crime in paradise, near the men whom Satan had just cast into fall – “you are cursed among all cattle, and among all the beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life” (Gen 3:14). A bodiless spirit is condemned to thoughts and feelings solely earthly, passionate; in them his life, in them his treasure. The spirit is deprived of the capacity for spiritual occupation; carnal occupations completely possess him. A spirit is brought down from the rank of spirits to a carnal state for its intellectual habitation, and in this rank stands lower than all the beasts and wild animals of the earth. Beasts and animals act according to the laws of their nature, but the fallen spirit, moving in the nature of beasts and animals, moves in a nature alien and humiliating to him. He does not wish and cannot act rightly in this nature: he continuously abuses this nature. Such sinful materiality of the fallen angel subjects him to the influence of fasting, which frees our spirit from the dominion of the flesh. The fallen angel, approaching the fasting man, no longer sees that material predominance which he desires and needs; already he cannot disturb the blood, beneficially cooled by fasting; already he cannot arouse the flesh, which is disinclined to agitation and restrained by fasting; already the mind and heart do not obey him, which have felt on account of fasting a special spiritual alertness. Seeing resistance, the proud fallen spirit withdraws, because he does not tolerate resistance and contradiction. He loves immediate agreement, immediate obedience. Despite the fact that “he goes on his belly”, despite the fact that he is nourished solely by earth, the thought of being like God has not left him: he seeks worship and worshippers. He dared show the Son of God “all the kingdoms of the world in a moment” and promised to give Him all the “authority” over them and their “glory”, demanding worship of himself in return (Lk 4:5–8); and now he does not cease to present to the followers of the Son of God the charms of the world, depicting them in imagination with the most seductive traits and colors, in order to extort by any deception worship of himself. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you”, said the holy Apostle James (Jas 4:7); and another apostle said: “take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the fiery arrows of the evil one” (Eph 6:16). Let us lift the eye of the mind by the power of faith to eternity, to the ineffable blessedness awaiting the righteous in eternity, and to the equally ineffable torments awaiting there the unrepentant and stubborn followers of the serpent. Such contemplation is possible for us only when the body is brought into order and is maintained in order by fasting, when by pure prayer, possible only during fasting, we cling to the Lord and become “one spirit with the Lord” (1Cor 6:17). “The serpent crawls constantly on the earth in accordance with the judgment pronounced against it from on high, – said holy John Chrysostom – if you wish to be safe from its poisonous bite, let your mind and heart constantly be above the earth”. Then you will be able to resist him, and he, proud, not tolerating resistance, will flee from you.

Where are the people possessed by an unclean spirit? Where are those people whom the demon would torture and torment, as he tortured and tormented the youth mentioned now in the Gospel? It appears they do not exist or are very rare: thus reasons he who looks at everything superficially and offers his earthly life as a sacrifice to distraction and sinful pleasures. The holy Fathers reason differently. “The devil and demons,” they say, “found freedom from the time when by disobedience they made man an exile from paradise and separated from God, to shake the mind and in night and day disturb the speech of every person”. Like the torments and anguish to which, according to the Gospel account, the body of the youth was subjected by the malevolent spirit, the soul also suffers from him, especially when it has voluntarily submitted itself to his influence and has recognized as truth that deadly falsehood which he continuously presents to us for our destruction, cloaking it with the appearance of truth for easier deception and more successful evil. “Be vigilant, be watchful,” warns us the holy Apostle Peter, “for your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking someone to devour. Resist him steadfastly in faith” (1Pet 5:8–9). By what means does the fallen angel act upon us? Chiefly by sinful thoughts and sinful fantasy. From those who resist him he flees, and those who do not know him, who converse with him and entrust themselves to him, he shakes, torments and destroys. As he himself crawls on his belly and is incapable of spiritual thoughts, so before our imagination he vividly paints this passing world with its charms and delights and at the same time enters into conversation with the soul about the realization of impossible fantasies. He proposes to us earthly glory, he proposes to us wealth, he proposes to us satiation, he proposes to us pleasures of fleshly impurity, for which, according to the expression of holy Basil the Great, he not only gained sympathy but which he, being created as a bodiless spirit, became the father of. He proposes all this in imagination and at the same time indicates illegal means for the realization of illegal fantasies. He casts us into sadness, into despondency, into despair – in short, he tirelessly cares for our destruction by means both respectable and disreputable: by manifest sin and by sin concealed under the appearance of good, anointed with the bait of pleasure. “This is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith” (1Jn 5:4), says the holy John the Theologian. Faith – the instrument of victory over the world – is at the same time the instrument of victory over fallen angels. Who, seeing with the eye of faith into the eternity proclaimed by God’s word, will not become indifferent to the brief advantages of the world? Who, being a true disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ, will want to trample His most holy commandments for sinful pleasure, appearing attractive before tasting and appearing vile and destructive after tasting? What power can the enchanting picture of earthly advantages and pleasures have, even the terrible picture of earthly miseries painted by cunning spirits to bring the viewer into despondency and despair, over the disciple of Christ, when by the power of God’s Word the majestic picture of eternity has been impressed upon his soul, before which every earthly painting is pale and trivial? The holy John the Theologian, who proclaimed that “the victory that has overcome the world is our faith”, greets the true children of Christ, who have conquered the world, with victory over the fallen angel and the hosts of spirits subject to him: “I write to you, young men,” he says, “for you have overcome the evil one” (1Jn 2:13). By young men are meant here Christians renewed by divine grace. When the servant of Christ displays proper courage and steadfastness in struggle with the spirits of wickedness, then divine grace descends into his soul and grants victory, then “his youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Ps 102:5) – that eternally youthful state with which the Creator adorned him at creation, which he replaced with incurable old age through voluntary fall. “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away, and its lust: but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1Jn 2:15–17).

Beloved brethren! Why should we not also be conquerors of the world and the prince of this world? Those like us—clothed in flesh and bearing the weaknesses of humanity—conquered him. Not only valiant men conquered him, but also feeble old men and weak women and little children. They conquered and left us no excuse in failing to conquer, should we submit to him. Before them stood that same world with its seductions; around them crept the same invisible serpents, striving with all their might to drag down and cast their souls into the dust. The hearts and thoughts of the conquerors were raised on high! Guarding their bodies by fasting, they tamed and stilled the attraction to earthly pleasure! Through fasting they gave their spirit the capacity to remain in unceasing watchfulness and vigilance, to watch and observe without slumber the manifold snares of the devil! Having lightened their bodies through fasting, having lightened their spirit itself, they gave their spirit the ability to cleave to the Lord with pure and constant prayer (Ps 134:3), to receive divine aid, to revive their faith from hearing, to make faith from hearing become knowledge, and by spiritual power—by this power—to achieve perfect victory over the world and the spirits of wickedness. This faith, as the holy John the Theologian teaches us, calling it boldness toward God and drawing the teaching on it from his own holy experience, is acquired through answered prayer (1 Jn 5:14–15). By such faith the righteous behold the invisible God, as the holy Apostle Paul said (Heb 11:27). At the vision of God it is natural that the world vanishes from sight! The transient world becomes as if non-existent, and the prince of this world has nothing upon which to lean for his warfare. “Be sober, brethren, and watchful; for your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walks about, seeking whom he may devour; resist him, steadfast in faith, taking up the shield of faith”—faith that is active, faith that is living, faith that is full of grace, for which only that ascetic of Christ is capable who has prepared himself for warfare with the spirits of wickedness through forgiveness of the trespasses of his neighbor—that is, through mercy and humility—and has entered into this warfare, clothed in the arms of fasting and prayer. Amen.

The Venerable Cassian. Conferences 8, 9, and 10

Discourse 8 on the Epistle to the Romans

Symeon the New Theologian. Philokalia, pt. 2. See the Discourse of Nicephorus the Monk

The Canon, First Prayer Against Defilement