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At our last
meeting two weeks ago I mentioned that the Church had entered into the
period of the Triodion, the service book that will accompany us through
Great Lent until the last service on Holy and Great Saturday night just
before the Resurrection service. The Triodion begins four Sundays before
the onset of Lent with themes that will help us to prepare for that
spiritual journey that will lead us to that great feast of Pascha. These
four Sundays are a pre-Lenten preparation with teachings that will help
us enter Great Lent in the right frame of mind so that we may reap the
rewards of our struggles in the spiritual arena. The teachings for the
first two Sundays were repentance and humility, which we saw at our last
meeting with the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican and the
Parable of the Prodigal Son.
The third
Sunday, the Sunday that just passed, teaches us the importance of love
with the Gospel reading of the Last Judgement. In the reading, Christ
tells us what to expect at the Last Judgment. At that time he will
separate the people as a shepherd separates the goats from the sheep,
and some he will put to his right and others to his left. But the
criterion with which he will judge us will not be whether we fasted,
neither our prayers or how good a Christian we might appear to be, but
our attitude towards our fellow men. Christ said that whatever help we
offer even to the lowest man it is as though we offered that help to
him, and whatever help we didn’t offer to someone who was in need it is
as though we didn’t help him. In other words love is the criterion by
which we shall be judged. If we cannot love our fellow men then in truth
we don’t love Christ, because he has created each man in his own image
and likeness. Christian love transcends above someone’s physical
appearance, social standing, ethnic origin, intellectual capacity and
reaches the soul, the unique personal root of a human being where the
image of God is.
This is just
a very quick summery of the reading, because to analyze it in full we
would need all the time of the talk and we would not have time to cover
this Sunday's reading. We would have had the time if we had a talk last
Thursday, but as it was “Scorching Thursday”, most of us had family
duties with the “Scorching Thursday” celebrations. In Greek “Scorching
Thursday”, is known as “Τσικνοπέμπτη” and literally means the Thursday
with the aroma of roasting or sizzling meat. According to the Church’s
calendar it is the last weekday in which we eat meat and, whether or not
people keep to the Church’s rules for fasting, in popular tradition, it
is another excuse for a celebration. It is also the day for introducing
the king of the carnival which of course doesn’t concern us. The whole
week is known as “Meatfare Week” because it is the last week of eating
meat and takes it name from the Sunday that just passed which is known
as “Meatfare Sunday.” In fact Meatfare is not a correct translation of
the Greek “Κυριακή της Αποκρεώ.” The verb “Αποκρεώ” means to stop eating
meat so in English we should really call it “Meatstopping Sunday.”
Now as with all
things in the Greek world this is another occasion for a family get
together and celebration with the barbeques burning away and other meat
dishes washed down with gallons of beer and wine. In popular language
the day is also known as “η Πρώτη Σήκωσης” in other words “the First
Lifting” which refers to the lifting of certain foods from the household
larder. In this case it is the lifting of all meat products which have
to be lifted from the larder and consumed before the start of
“Cheesefare week” which began this Monday. As the name implies we don’t
eat meat but cheese and dairy products, eggs and fish every day with the
purpose of using up the surplus stored up in the fridge. In practice
most people don’t observe Cheesefare Week and still eat meat until just
before the fast begins.
The week
comes to a climax with “Cheesefare Sunday” and another excuse for a
family celebration. It is also known as “η Δεύτερη Σήκωσης” or the
Second Lifting and again refers to lifting and consuming from the home
all the non meat products that are not allowed to be eaten during the
Lenten Fast. The main treat of the day which has come to be identified
with Cheesefare Sunday are the “Bourekia”. These are pastries filled
with the Cypriot soft cheese “Anari”, sugar and cinnamon. Similarly in
the West there is Shrove Tuesday which in times when the West actually
fasted they made pancakes and had the same purpose of using up the dairy
products before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday.
Cheesefare
Sunday is this coming Sunday and is the last of the Pre-Lenten Sundays.
As with the previous Sundays the Gospel reading wants to prepare us and
put us in the right frame of mind to enter Great Lent. The reading warns
us of three main things we should do if we want our fast to be of
spiritual benefit otherwise our fasting will just be in vain and
possibly even harmful for our spiritual wellbeing.
Let's then hear the reading:
“The Lord said: if ye forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye
forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses. Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad
countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto
men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou,
when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou
appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and
thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. Lay not up
for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt,
and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6: 14-21)
Based on
this Gospel reading, this Sunday is also known as “Forgiveness Sunday”.
And it also lends its name to the special Vespers service held in the
evening called the Vespers of Forgiveness. This is in fact the very
first service of Great Lent and at the end of the Service, the faithful
come one by one to the Priest, kiss the Cross and his hand and exchange
a mutual forgiveness. Having done this the faithful also asks
forgiveness of one another. Thus we begin Lent by asking forgiveness
from everyone and not only from those who we know have wronged us,
because many times we upset our fellow men without realizing.
But coming
back to the Gospel reading, the first of the three warnings is for us to
have the humility to forgive others for the wrongs they have done
against us whether big and serious or small and trivial. Christ says
that forgiveness for our own sins is achieved through our brother. He
reveals to us the shortest route by which we can receive forgiveness
from God. If we show charity and love for the wrongs of our brother we
receive an audience before God when we pray and ask him to forgive our
own sins. We could even tell him that as we have forgiven the wrongs of
our brethren then forgive ours also. In fact this is what we pray every
time we say the Lord’s Prayer: “And forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive them that trespass against us”. The fathers of the Church say
that when our heart is bright with the light of reconciliation with our
brethren, it receives the grace of the good things we pray for. This
rule to forgive to be forgiven is probably one of the most difficult to
put into practice because it is opposed by our fallen human nature which
is governed by egocentricity, a self pride, a hardness of heart, the
remembrance of evils and resentfulness, and a feeling of wanting justice
and revenge, that is why forgiving is not an easy thing to do.
But these
passions can be put to death with love, charity, compassion and the
Cross of humility and then forgiveness will follow. Thus, by the Cross
we pass over from the death of the passions to life and to the
resurrection of love and partake of the Cross of the Lord. There where
once ruled enmity, resentfulness and hatred now reigns love and
brotherhood. The forgiveness of our brother also helps us in the work of
prayer and especially the prayer of the heart which is intensified
during this period as are also the increased services of the Church. A
clear mind imitates the holy angels in the work of glorifying God; it
sees the hidden mysteries in Holy Scripture. When we think on the evil
that our brother has done us, our mind cannot rise to God, but
continually remains fixed on those thoughts. That is why Christ advises
us that before we bring our offering to the temple to be first
reconciled with our brother.
The second
warning in Sunday’s Gospel reading has to do with how we fast. Christ
warns us that when we fast to not be “as the
hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that
they may appear unto men to fast.” Now because the man of sin,
that is, fallen man, failed in that which he was called by God to be, in
other words, because he failed to be the image and glory of God, he
pursues glory from men as did the vainglorious Pharisees who fasted in
front of the people so that they could receive praise and glory. This is
vainglory, an empty glory, because it doesn’t join us with God: it is
not a result of our relationship with him. Fasting with the intent of
showing others how good a Christian we are is actually a diabolical
trap, because it increases our pride, it seeks for human praises and
becomes unprofitable and even harmful. Fasting is not an act of
religiousness because we want to appear to others as religious. If our
fast has the element of pride with the feeling that we want to be
rewarded for our effort with praises from others, then we shouldn’t
expect any reward from God: it is a false fast and we might just as well
not fast at all. To avoid this diabolical trap it is essential to bear
the Cross of humility, to observe an unseen fast, a fast that is kept in
secret that only God can see. Only then is fasting pleasing to God.
The third
warning is against our attachment to earthly and corruptible treasures.
To be satisfied with what we have and to avoid trusting in material
things that from one day to the next might be lost. The warning is for
us to show that we are not only flesh, but also spiritual and to avoid a
love for money and other material treasures that have nothing to do with
eternal life. We should seek for the “Bread of Life” not only to live,
but to live in God. Man departed from God and rejected the true treasure
which is God and his Grace, and turned his attention to worldly
treasures to take the place of the void he felt inside. But these
worldly treasures don’t last forever and neither can we take them with
us when we die. Thus the Lord tells us not only to not collect such
treasures but also not to love them, because they take over our heart
and enslave us. “For where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also.” If we become slaves to such treasures
we become alienated and strangers to the Cross of our Lord. For this
reason, the Fathers advise us not to have such possessions, but to
divide them among the poor and to achieve as much as possible a lack of
possessions. In this way we will become servants of Christ and not
slaves to gold. By giving to those in need it is like depositing our
wealth in the heavenly bank where it will be kept in safety and be given
back to us with interest. Thus, we will have treasure in heaven.
Our
salvation is a case of changing our life from a life of passions to a
new way of life and existence of the Church. This change or
transformation is accompanied with internal suffering, a cross, which is
a Passover from death to life and resurrection.
So from
Monday we enter into the period of Great Lent. It is the most beautiful,
the most touching and contrite period in the ecclesiastical year and we
can say that it is the heart of the liturgical and devotional life of
our Church. It comprises of a spiritual arena, an arena of virtues, as
it is called in many hymns, where the faithful “fight the good fight of
faith.” (1 Tim. 6:12) It is a time that we welcome, a time for
repentance: where we cast off the works of darkness and put on the
armour of light.
The purpose
of this holy period is our preparation to celebrate Pascha. What we
seek, what we request, is to be found worthy to venerate the Holy
Passions and Resurrection of our Lord. And this we achieve with the
spiritual battle we undertake to fight. At all times the Christian is
obliged to "fight the good fight of faith"
(1 Tim. 6:12) and follow faithfully the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But
Great Lent presupposes a greater struggle and a more organized attempt
in this spiritual warfare.
One of the
weapons with which we arm ourselves to do battle successfully in this
battle is fasting. St. Basil calls fasting the “weapon against the army
of demons” and the “medicine that takes away sin”. But it is not enough
just to abstain from certain foods for our fasting to be worthy of
praise. We need to keep a fast that is pleasing to God. True fasting is
the departure from everything evil and inappropriate: In the words of
St. John Chrysostom, fasting implies not only abstinence from food, but
from sins also. “The fast,” he insists, “should be kept not by the mouth
alone, but also by the eye, the ear, the feet, the hands and all the
members of the body: the eye must abstain from impure sights, the ear
from malicious gossip, the hands from acts of injustice.” It is useless
to fast from food, protests St. Basil, and yet to indulge in cruel
criticism and slander: “You do not eat meat, but you devour your
brother.”
To fast
properly, we need to understand what fasting is; where did it originate
from, why do we fast, what benefits are there from fasting, is it a
commandment and are we obliged to fast?
Fasting is
as old as the human race. Fasting was practiced by pagan religions,
Judaism and Christianity, and it was generally considered an important
element of religious life. In the ancient religions of the East fasting
meant a complete abstention from food for a certain period of time –
usually one or two days. In fact the Greek word for fasting = Νηστεία
means a total fast where nothing passes the mouth. I said it is as old
as the human race because the very first commandment God gave to Adam
was a type of Fast. God told Adam that he could eat freely of every tree
of the garden, but not of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In
other words, God instituted fasting in Paradise and from what we read in
Genesis, it is clear that fasting existed even before the “original sin”
of Adam and Eve, and that it was not ordered as a cure for their sin.
The fasting in Paradise consisted of abstaining of a certain food —
namely of “the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which
was created by God as well as all the other trees in Paradise. God’s
commandment to Adam and Eve not to eat of the particular fruit was
issued as a means for them to advance in the discipline of self-control
and for spiritual growth. This then is the main purpose of fasting; to
help us learn discipline, to help us gain control over those things that
we often allow to control us. In our culture, food dominates the lives
of most people. In the west especially there are entire TV networks
devoted to food. We have eating disorders, diets galore, weight loss
pills, liposuction treatments, stomach stapling; all sorts of things
that proceed out of the fact that we often allow food to control us. We
fast to discipline ourselves, to reverse this process and to gain
control of those things that we have allowed to get out of control.
Thus it is
important to have a correct understanding of what fasting is. It is not
what most people consider to be the purpose of fasting. It is not an act
of religiousness because we want to appear to others as religious. It is
not a “little suffering” which is somehow pleasing to God. It is not a
punishment, which is to be sorrowfully endured in payment for sins
because as already said God instituted fasting in Paradise before the
original sin. And because God instituted fasting, it is a commandment
that we are obliged to keep, but we must be careful not to understand
this as keeping to the letter of the law. St Paul tells us that
“we are not under the law, but under grace”
(Rom. 6: 14), and that “the letter killeth, but
the spirit giveth life” (2 Cor. 3: 6). “For
the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace,
and joy in the Holy Ghost.” (Rom. 14: 17)
In other
words we do not keep the fast like the Pharisees who obeyed the law out
of a religious duty. We keep it by free choice because we want to be
closer to God and the only way to do this is to discipline and cleanse
ourselves of the passions that form a barrier cutting us off from God.
If we keep the fast like the Pharisees, as an act of religiousness or
out of fear because it is the law of the Church, then this will do us
more harm than good. Fasting is a commandment, but it will not benefit
us if we feel it is a burden imposed upon us. God created us with free
will. Adam made bad use of his free will and through disobedience to
this simple commandment broke the living union of love with God and lost
paradise. Adam’s fall was his free will; that is, he held in scorn the
heavenly obligations of prayer and fasting by eating of the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil. Through our free will we voluntarily impose
upon ourselves a discipline of fasting by being obedient to the rules of
the Church regarding the use of spiritual and material goods in the hope
that we may return to the life in Paradise, a life of communion with
God. Fasting therefore, is a means of salvation, this salvation being a
life we live in accordance with the Divine will, in communion with God.
For
Christians to grow spiritually we must deny our own will and live in
accordance with God's will. Our Lord Jesus Christ calls all of us to
salvation through self-denial, he said: "If any
man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and
follow Me." (Matt. 16:24) Christ calls us to follow and imitate
his life which was a life of self denial even unto death. What does
Christ mean when he says "If any man will come
after me"? He means if we want to partake of his Resurrection and
be with him in Paradise we must do want he did. Christ began his mission
on earth by fasting for forty days. By this he showed us that discipline
in self denial is the first step we must take if we wish to follow him.
Through his action he showed us that fasting is important for spiritual
growth and if he fasted then it is also our Christian duty to also fast.
In fact Christ takes it for granted that we fast. In the Gospel reading
that we heard for this coming Sunday Christ said:
"Moreover when you “fast”, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad
countenance". He said "when you fast" and not "If you fast" thus
indicating that Christ assumes that we fast.
But in an
indirect way he also commanded us to fast. When the Pharisees asked
Jesus why his disciples didn’t fast. Jesus replied:
“Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as
long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the
bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.”
(Matt. 9:15)
Here Christ
is saying that he has come on earth as a bridegroom and his bride is the
Church and just like any wedding there is joy and celebration and the
mourning character of fasting is not appropriate during these
celebrations, but when the wedding feast is over, when he will leave the
earth, then the Church his bride will grief and mourn and then she will
fast. The Acts of the Apostles tells us of many occasions when the
apostles fasted and Paul tells us that at certain times we must give
ourselves to fasting and prayer. (1 Cor. 7:5)
Today, the
practice and idea of fasting is largely ignored. Some people say that
God’s people need not fast since we are saved by grace and not by works,
and that fasting can easily become hypocritical, done merely for show
and for the condemnation of others. Many others generally dismiss
fasting as something old-fashioned, simple and naïve. “This is the
twenty-first century; those rules were made for the past and simpler
days.” Nonetheless, in spite of the present practice of most people, we
must take the practice of fasting seriously. We all need to develop the
habit of saying no to our carnal passions and desires. What we need is
self-discipline and self-control. These are acquired only through
regular spiritual exercise — namely through fasting.
It is rather
amazing that most Protestant Churches who dismiss tradition and claim
they live only by the Bible, disobey the very teaching of Christ and the
Apostles concerning fasting. Where in the bible does it say that modern
Christians are exempt from this holy practice? If we believe in Christ
we are not free to choose what teachings we prefer and to reject the
teachings that place restrictions on our own free will? Either we are
Christians or we are not. One cannot reject a certain Apostolic
Tradition as the Protestants do, because as they claim it is not in the
Bible, but on the other hand to reject and blatantly disobey a teaching
given by Christ himself which is very clearly in the Bible.
In times
past, the Roman Catholic Church use to fast like the Orthodox Church,
but even they have rejected this commandment and have reduced it to
something nominal and symbolic by just giving up chocolate or something
similar for the period of Lent. They give Lent a sacrificial character
by giving up something they really love. But this only shows that they
have lost the meaning of fasting, because it is not to give up things or
to do something sacrificial.
Unless one
is controlled by chocolate, giving it up is not fasting; it is simply
just giving up chocolate or it is done with the idea that we fast in
order to suffer. But we do not fast in order to suffer. We fast in order
to get a grip on our lives and to regain control of those things that
have gotten out of control.
Fasting is
not just an exercise of giving up certain foods: if done properly it can
bring about a spiritual change in us and if at the end of the fast we
feel the same, then we can be sure that our fast was not conducted
correctly. There is a right and a wrong way of fasting and only if done
correctly can it bring forth the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
True fasting
can be our entrance and participation in that experience of Christ
Himself by which He liberates us from the total dependence on food,
matter, and the world. By no means is our liberation a full one. Living
still in the fallen world, we still depend on food. But just as our
death—through which we still must pass—has become by virtue of Christ’s
Death a passage into life, the food we eat and the life it sustains can
be life in God and for God. Part of our food has already become “food of
immortality’—the Body and Blood of Christ Himself. But even the daily
bread we receive from God can be in this life and in this world that
which strengthens our communion with God, rather than that, which
separates us from God. It is only fasting that can perform that
transformation, giving us the living proof that our dependence on food
and matter is not total, not absolute, but that united to prayer and
God's grace, it can itself be spiritual.
Fasting
helps us to place a boundary to our own egotistic desires, it is a
voluntary self denial with the intention of disciplining ourselves to
live according to what is truly necessary and not according to worldly
pleasures. In this sense it is a real fight because we are doing battle
not only with the devil, but with our passions which can be stronger
than any temptation he can hurl at us to bring us down.
The aim of
bodily fasting is the enslavement of the flesh; fasting bridles the lust
of the stomach and of that below the stomach, meaning the removal of the
passions. When we overcome the stomach then the healing process begins
to suppress and then remove the deadly passions.
In fasting
the flesh and the spirit struggle one against the other. True bodily
fasting leads to the triumph of the spirit over the body, and gives a
man power over the stomach, it subdues the flesh and permits it not to
commit fornication and uncleanness. The fathers say that abstinence is
the mother of cleanliness, the giver of health and is good for rich and
poor, sick and healthy, alike. It strengthens the seeker after godliness
in spiritual battles and proves to be a formidable weapon against evil
spirits. As the Lord Himself said, concerning the casting-out of certain
demons: "This kind never cometh out except by
prayer and fasting". (Matt. 17:21)
Fasting,
however, is not to be done out of pride or self-will; It must be
observed in the praise of God and must be in accordance with the canons
of the Church, since it consists in the complete renunciation of
self-will and of the desires. At the same time, we must realize that for
fallen man to attain perfection, even intensive fasting is insufficient,
if in his soul he does not abstain from those things, which further sin.
Fasting is not only the abstinence from food, but also from evil
thoughts and all passion, for, as the Saviour says:
"Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth
passes into the stomach, and so passes on? But what comes out of the
mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the
heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false
witness, slander. These are what defile a man..." (Matt.
15:17-20) Thus exterior fasting, without the corresponding interior
fasting is in vain.
Fasting in
the Orthodox Church has two aspects: physical and spiritual. The first
one implies abstinence from rich food, such as dairy products, eggs and
all kinds of meat. Spiritual fasting consists in abstinence from evil
thoughts, desires, and deeds. The main purpose of fasting is to gain
mastery over oneself and to conquer the passions of the flesh. It is to
liberate oneself from dependence on the things of this world in order to
concentrate on the things of the Kingdom of God.
True fasting
means to put away all evil, to control the tongue, to forbear from
anger, to abstain from lust, slander, falsehood and perjury. Only if we
renounce these things is our fasting true and acceptable to God.
Prayer and
fasting should in their turn be accompanied by almsgiving, by love for
others expressed in practical form, by works of compassion and
forgiveness. Fasting must be undertaken willingly and not by compulsion.
God doesn't need our fasting. We don't fast as a kind of personal
punishment for our sins. We cannot pay God back for sins but we can only
confess them to Him to receive forgiveness.
Fasting with
a willing spirit and not just with an attitude of fulfilling a religious
obligation means that we keep the purpose of fasting always before us,
which is to develop self control and to remember God and His Kingdom.
Fasting then is a powerful tool which can help us to rid ourselves of
the bad elements in us. It purifies not only the body but also the soul
and helps to lift the veil of darkness from our eyes to see the things
that are really important for our salvation. This is why it is used as a
preparation before Holy Communion, because when undertaken properly,
fasting fills our hearts and minds with the task before us. It
concentrates our spiritual energies and makes them more effective by
constantly reminding us that our life depends entirely with God. This is
why it is also used as a preparation before the Great Feasts such as the
oncoming Feast of Easter. In this case it is not to prepare us for Holy
Communion on Easter night because we can have Communion many times
during the Great fast. It is to prepare us to enter and experience the
Feast with spiritual eyes and to participate fully in the joy of the
Resurrection.
Before we
break up for Great Lent I want to say something about the way many
people fast. Many observe only the first week of the fast and Holy Week
leaving out the weeks in between. But as Christians we are obliged to do
our best to be obedient to the rules of the Church. The benefit of
fasting is not in the foods that we eat but in our self denial and
obedience to the will of God. Many people believe it is a sin to eat
meat and dairy products during the fast, but we must understand that
food in general is not a sin. Whatever God has created is good and if a
sin is involved in eating meat it is not because of the food itself, but
because of the disobedience to the Church’s rule for fasting. Another
misconception is that we can eat as much as we like of the fasting
foods. Proper fasting should involve a reduction in the food that we
take and less mealtimes. We should not leave the table with floated
stomachs. Being a little hungry during the day should constantly remind
us that we do not live by bread alone but that our life depends on God
and the fact that the Lord alone can give us “food
that lasts for eternal life”(John 6:27).
As already
said the purpose of fasting is to help us gain control over those things
that we often allow to control us, thus we must beware lest our fasting
does the opposite and begins to control us. If we spend countless hours
reading the ingredient label of every item that we buy to make sure no
egg or milk extracts were used, then we can become just as controlled by
our fasting and, in the process, miss the whole point of fasting in the
first place. Another danger is the "substitution syndrome" where people
try to substitute milk with non dairy milk, cheese with a rubbery look
alike which definitely doesn't taste like real cheese and meat with tofu
burgers and many other things it can be made into. I haven't seen it in
Cyprus but in health shops in America they sell tofu turkey which is
shaped to look like a real turkey and is even supposed to taste like the
real thing. While the “substitution syndrome” can make fasting a little
more exciting, we must be careful not to let it take control because
then our fasting simply focuses on following the “letter of the law”
while ignoring the “spirit on which the law is based. Lenten cookbooks
have thousands of delicious looking recipes to tempt our palette and
while a gourmet meal does no harm for a special occasion we must not
forget that the basic rule in fasting is simplicity of eating.
Of all the
fasts in the Church's calendar, Great Lent is the strictest with
restrictions not only in what we can eat but also on how many times we
can eat. The first week is very difficult and should only be attempted
by those who have the spiritual strength to observe it. It begins with a
total fast on the Monday and Tuesday which means that nothing may enter
the mouth for those first two days. The first meal is on Wednesday after
the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. The Thursday is again a total
fast day with the second meal of the week on Friday again after the
Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. In practice this rule is kept only
by monks, but many people keep a total fast on the first day. If one
hasn’t the strength to keep a total fast then in the evening they may
have some tea or fruit juice. A lay custom makes a mockery of this rule
which has everyone going out into the fields and having a party on
Clean/Green Monday.
On other weekdays
we keep to a Strict fast which signifies that we may eat only boiled
vegetables and also such things as fruit, nuts, bread and honey. On
these days olive oil and wine are not permitted. When the rules for
fasting were established only olive oil was available for cooking. Many
people are baffled why olives may be eaten but not the oil pressed from
the olives. It is not an animal product like all the other foods
prohibited so why is it forbidden during the weekdays of Lent? The
answer is simply because fasting should consist of very basic and simple
meals with the aim of weakening the body which in turn will weaken the
passions that rule the body. Olive oil is rich in sustenance and
strengthens the body and at the same time can be used in cooking to make
better and tastier meals. Most people will prefer fried chips to a
boiled potato. The rule says olive oil but now we have a variety of
vegetable oils and margarines which some people insist should also not
be used on the strict days. Granted you can have fried chips with
vegetable oil but it is not as rich as olive oil and neither does it
have the same health qualities. Those against the use of vegetable oil
are usually monks or people influenced from the monastic way of life,
but in general, ordinary people in the world will consume vegetable oil
and margarine on the strict days. I class them as substitute foods
similar to the fake cheese and tofu turkey.
Wine is not
permitted because it is alcoholic and one needs a sober mind to fast and
pray. The rule doesn't mention beer or whisky, but it goes without
saying that all alcoholic drinks fall under the category of wine unless
or course we categorize beer as a substitute for wine.
Another rule
that baffles people is that the main rule for fasting is to not consume
any animal products yet on these strict days of fasting we may eat
products made from fish eggs e.g. caviar and taramosalada and also
snails. Why these are allowed I have not been able to find out but it
probably has to do with the absence of blood. This also would explain
why on Saturdays and Sunday which are not considered as true fasting
days, we are allowed Olive oil and wine, but also sea creatures that do
not have red blood like octopus, calamari, all shellfish and crab and
lobster if you can afford them.
I think most
of the confusion concerning fasting has resulted from the many
dispensations the church has made to fasting over the centuries and the
various types of fasting. The Church listed foods in various categories
according to how tasty and how difficult it was to be deprived of them,
but also to what degree they consisted as abstinence. Fasting in its
true sense is total fasting which as already mentioned is abstaining for
everything, even water. The next level was called dry-eating which meant
eating dry bread and water only. These forms of fasting were extremely
difficult for most people so the Church added a new category – what we
now call the strict fast or the no-oil fast. This fast allowed
vegetables, pulses, fruit and nuts but any cooking had to be done
without oil. On Saturdays and Sundays it was forbidden to fast because
one was the Sabbath and the other the celebration of the Resurrection so
a new category of oil and wine was added which with the added
dispensation of octopus, calamari and shellfish one could have a feast
without allowing blood animal meat which would have broken the chain of
fasting. This form of fasting was also allowed on certain saint's days
throughout the year when they fell on a Wednesday or Friday. But if this
form of fasting was allowed for certain saint days we could not have the
same for one of the Lord's or the Mother of God's feastdays so another
category was established which added fish to the oil and wine category.
Thus on the 25th March, the feast of the Annunciation, which falls
during Great Lent and on Palm Sunday we can celebrate the days with fish
dinners. The last category is the dairy category of Cheesefare Week, of
which we are in now, but it is not really a fast, but rather a
preparation for the fast and an ideal way of using up the surplus cheese
and eggs stored up in the fridge.
In
conclusion, the point of fasting is not only to avoid certain foods, but
also to avoid the control we allow food to have over us by being
obedient to the Church's rule for fasting. If we can’t discipline
ourselves in terms of what goes into our mouths, we will hardly be in a
position to discipline ourselves with regard to what comes out of our
mouths.
So with that
I wish you all good strength for Great Lent and as we say in Greek Kalo
Stadio, meaning have a good fight in the spiritual arena.
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