Resources

Many informative articles were published in our parish newsletters in the years prior to Covid. Email to the friends and faithful of Holy Cross has replaced our newsletters, but many of the articles are collected here. Use the indexes below to find the topic or author you’re interested in. (Once you click on a topic or author, scroll to the bottom of the page to see the search results.)

Also, have a look at the Recommended Readings on the OCA (Orthodox Church in America) website for a list of books covering a wide range of topics. Essential Orthodox Christian Beliefs: A Manual for Adult Instruction is also available for free download on the OCA’s website.

(Speaking of our parent jurisdiction, the OCA traces its origins to the arrival in Kodiak, Alaska in 1794 of eight Orthodox missionaries from the Valaamo Monastery in the northern Karelia region of Russia. Today, the OCA includes some 700 parishes, missions, communities, monasteries, and institutions throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.)

We hope you’ll find these suggested readings to be both edifying and encouraging!

Anonymous 10/24/25 Anonymous 10/24/25

On the Nativity Fast

It all begins with an idea.

December 2011

Make ready, O Bethlehem: let the manger be prepared, let the cave show its welcome. The truth has come, the shadow has passed away...1

The herald of the pending miracle begins. It is the Eve of the Nativity as these words are sung. The transformation of the world, the birth of God, is but hours away, and it is through such words that the faithful are called into attentiveness and anticipation. ‘Make ready, O Bethlehem!’ We can see the radiant lights of of the feast just beyond the horizon, we can taste the sweetness of the miracle that took place beneath a star; and through the words sung around and within us in the Church, the great eve of the birth of God is made a reality in our present experience. We make ready, and we wait.

But this is not the first moment of preparation for the Feast. For ‘forty days’, with the usual adjustments to that length for Sabbaths and Sundays causing it to begin on 15 November 2, the Church has been setting herself in readiness, drawing her attention to the mystery to come, waiting in expectation. She has made use of the great joy that will arrive on Christmas day as occasion to take up the task considered by so many as opposite to joy: fasting, with all its rigour, its harshness, its discomfort. These are the steps which, for Orthodox Christians throughout the world, lead to the radiant wonder of the Nativity of Christ.

Whence the spirit of this fast, which each year ‘stands in the way’ of our arrival at Christmas rejoicing? The question itself helps guide the way to an answer: the fast seems awkward because so often we see Christmas as joy alone and do not appreciate fully the deep and profound mystery that is at the heart of our rejoicing. ‘Hark, the herald angels sing!’ we are eager to recall, but quietly we forget the universal significance of the event that is the cause of their singing. It is not just that a babe is born: He who is without birth is born. He who created all is made a created child. He who holds the universe in the palm of His hand, is held in the hands of a tender mother.

Before Thy birth, O Lord, the angelic hosts looked with trembling on this mystery and were struck with wonder: for Thou who hast adorned the vault of heaven with stars hast been well pleased to be born as a babe; and Thou who holdest all the ends of the earth in the hollow of Thy hand art laid in a manger of dumb beasts. For by such a dispensation has Thy compassion been made known, O Christ, and Thy great mercy: glory to Thee. (Sticheron of the Third Hour, Eve of the Nativity)

We do not tremble when we think of Christmas, we are not always struck with the wonder of the Nativity. Instead, we buy gifts and plan parties, catching a glimpse of the joy of the Feast, but without a heart immersed in its wonder. Thus the fast becomes that which we must ‘get through’ in order to reach that joyful day. When we arrive there, however, if this has been our attitude, we are caught askance by the hymns the Church feeds into our hearts. We find ourselves joined to a celebration of triumphal release from bondage, but we little understand what that bondage means. We sing songs of joy for deliverance, but we do not truly comprehend how we are enslaved. We find ourselves suddenly transported to the mountaintop, but without having climbed there from the valley far below, the scene we see is only another beautiful picture casually set before our eyes, and not the vision for which we have worked and struggled and longed with all our being. We may feel joy, perhaps even Christmas joy; but we will know, deep inside, that our joy is not like that which is exalted in the hymn:

Make glad, O ye righteous! Greatly rejoice, O ye heavens! Ye mountains, dance for joy! Christ is born; and like the cherubim the Virgin makes a throne, carrying at her bosom God the Word made flesh. Shepherds, glorify the newborn Child! Magi, offer the Master gifts! Angels, sing praises, saying: ‘O Lord past understanding, glory to Thee!’ (First sticheron of the Praises, Nativity Matins)

A Time of Preparation

The Fast of the Nativity is the Church’s wise solace and aid to human infirmity. We are a forgetful people, but our forgetfulness is not unknown to God; and our hearts with all their misconceptions and weakened understandings are not unfamiliar to the Holy Spirit who guides and sustains this Church. We who fall far from God through the magnitude of our sin, are called nonetheless to be close to Him. We who run afar off are called to return. Through the fast that precedes the great Feast of the Incarnation -- which itself is the the heart and substance of our calling -- the Church helps draw us into the full mystery of what that call entails.

Like Great Lent, the fast of the Nativity is a journey. ‘Come, O ye faithful, and let us behold where Christ is born. Let us join the Magi, kings from the east, and follow the guiding star’ 3. Let us ‘join the Magi’, let us ‘follow’ and ‘behold’. On the fifteenth of November, the Church joins together in a journey toward that salvation first promised to Adam in God’s curse laid upon the serpent (Gen 3.14-15). The One who will crush the head of the serpent, of sin and the devil and all that is counter to the life God offers, is Him to whom the star leads us. The fast of the Nativity is our journey into the new and marvellous life of the Holy Trinity, which is offered by God but which we must approach of our own volition. In this act, we are joined to the story of our fathers. The gift of a new land and great blessings was freely given by God to Abraham, but in order to obtain it, ‘Abram went, as the Lord had told him’ (Gen 12.4).

A journey is, by its nature, naturally ascetic. Unless my life is already very humble, I cannot take the whole of my possessions on a journey. I cannot transport social and political ties along a journey’s path. I can never be too reliant on the plans I have made for my journey: a control lying beyond the self must be admitted and accepted. This is the spirit to which the fast calls us.

A journey is, by its nature, an act of movement, of transportation, of growth. What is old is left behind, newness is perceived and embraced, growth of understanding takes place. And even if the journey comes to a close in the same physical location from which it began, that place is transformed for us by the journey through which we have re-approached it. The aid shelter on a street corner in London is no different after a journey to the Middle East; but after witnessing there first-hand the struggles and torments of poverty, of suffering, of sorrow, the meaning and importance of that small shelter is indeed different for me.

Here the importance of the fast. As the Nativity approaches, that great feast of cosmic significance and eternal, abounding joy for which heaven and earth together rejoice, the fast calls me to consider: do I rejoice? Why do I rejoice? The hymnography of the Church makes it clear that this is a feast for all the world, for all creation; and the fast calls me to take my place in that creation, to realise that, despite all my infinite unworthiness, Christmas is a miracle for my soul too.

Make ready, O Bethlehem: let the manger be prepared, let the cave show its welcome. The truth has come, the shadow has passed away; born of a Virgin, God has appeared to men, formed as we are and making godlike the garment He has put on. Therefore Adam is renewed with Eve, and they call out: ‘Thy good pleasure has appeared on earth to save our kind’.

Adam and Eve, all of humankind, are renewed and made alive in the Incarnation of God in Christ, who ‘appeared on earth to save our kind’. Fallen flesh, so long bound to death, so long yearning in for growth and maturation into the fullness of life, is sewn into the garment of Christ and at last made fully alive. There is a pleasing old saying, with perhaps more than a touch of truth to it, that humankind drew its first full breath at the infant Christ’s first cry.

We are called, then, to approach this great mystery as God’s condescension into our own lives, personally and collectively. The Canon of Matins for the Nativity lays it out clearly: ‘He establishes a path for us, whereby we may mount up to heaven’ 4. The Nativity is not only about God’s coming down to us, but about our rising up to Him, just as sinful humanity was lifted up into the person of Christ in the Incarnation itself.

We are called to arise, then, during the fast that is the journey into this Feast. ‘O blessed Lord who seest all, raise us up far above sin, and establish Thy singers firm and unshaken upon the foundation of the faith’ 5. The faithful take up this call through the abandonment of those things which bind, rather than free, in order that a focus on God as ‘all in all’ might become ever more real and central to daily life.

Meals are lessened and regimented, that a constant, lingering hunger may remind us of the great need we each have for spiritual food that goes beyond our daily bread. The number of Church services is gradually increased, that we might know whence comes that true food. Sweets and drink are set aside, that we might never feel content with the trivial and temporal joys of this world. Parties and social engagements are reduced, that we might realise that all is not so well with us as we often take it to be. Anything which holds the slightest power over us, whether cigarettes or television, travel or recreation, is minimized or -- better -- cast wholly aside, that we might bring ourselves to be possessed and governed only by God.

The fast is an ascetic time, designed by the Church to strip away common stumbling blocks into sin, to provide us with the means of self-perception that we lack in our typical indulgence, and to begin to grow the seeds of virtue. All these are necessary if we are ever to know even partially, or appreciate even menially, the ‘depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God’ 6. We must take up the task of our own purification, gifted by God and achieved only through His grace, that we might approach Him on Christmas Day as did the Magi and the shepherds in Bethlehem:

Come, O ye faithful, inspired by God let us arise and behold the divine condescension from on high that is made manifest to us in Bethlehem. Cleansing our minds, let us offer through our lives virtues instead of myrrh, preparing with faith our entry into the feast of the Nativity, storing up treasure in our souls and crying: Glory in the highest to God in Trinity, whose good pleasure is now revealed to men, that in His love for mankind He may set Adam free from the ancestral curse. (Sticheron of the Sixth Hour, Christmas Eve)

True Joy in the Mystery of the Nativity

The Church journeys toward the birth of Christ God, steered by the ship that is the Nativity fast. She does so with the knowledge that unless she struggles up the mountain that is desperately too steep for her to climb, she will never know the breadth of the gift that is the mountain’s levelling by the hand of God. Resurrection unto life is the ultimate gift of the Incarnation, but unless a man understands that he is dead, he will never know the meaning of resurrection.

The fast is a holy and blessed tool that brings us closer to such self awareness. It reveals to us who we are, perhaps more importantly who we are not, and makes us more consciously aware of that for which we stand in need. Then and only then, with eyes opened -- even only partially -- by the ascetic endeavour, we will truly know the life-giving light of the Nativity of Christ. We will hear with awe the proclamation of the hymn at vespers, taking the mystery presented therein as united directly to us:

Come, let us greatly rejoice in the Lord as we tell of this present mystery. The middle wall of partition has been destroyed; the flaming sword turns back, the cherubim withdraw from the tree of life, and I partake of the delight of Paradise from which I was cast out through disobedience. For the express Image of the Father, the Imprint of His eternity, takes the form of a servant, and without undergoing change He comes forth from a Mother who knew not wedlock. For what He was, He has remained, true God: and what He was not, He has taken upon himself, becoming man through love for mankind. Unto Him let us cry aloud: God born of a Virgin, have mercy upon us! (Sticheron of Vespers of the Nativity)

We will never fully comprehend this ineffable mystery; some knowledge is properly God’s alone. But by His grace through the ascetic effort, we will come to understand -- perhaps, most of us, only to the slightest degree -- how this mystery is our own mystery, how His life is our own life, and how the salvation of Christmas Day is, indeed, our own salvation. And with this realisation, joy: joy far greater than a mere entrance into the temple on Christmas Day could ever bring us. This is the joy of the age-old journey of man, our own journey, come to its fulfilment in the awe-inspiring mystery of God Himself become a man. With this joy in our hearts, we shall embrace the hymnographer’s words as our own:

Today the Virgin comes to the cave to give birth ineffably to the pre-eternal Word. Hearing this, be of good cheer, O inhabited earth, and with the angels and the shepherds glorify Him whose will it was to be made manifest a young Child, the pre-eternal God. (Kontakion of the Forefeast)

Article from Monachos.net with permission: http://www.monachos.net/content/liturgics/liturgical-reflections/97 (Link no longer works but left here for attribution.)

Notes:

1. Sticheron at the Royal Hours, by St Sophronius of Jerusalem.

2. According to the Church Calendar; 28th November on the civil calendar.

3. Sessional Hymn of the Nativity Matins.

4. Irmos of Canticle Two, from the Iambic (second) Canon of the Nativity Matins.

5. Irmos of Canticle Three, Iambic Canon of Nativity Matins.

6. Cf. Romans 11.33; found in the sticheron in tone four from the Sixth Hour of Christmas Eve.

John Boojamra 10/24/25 John Boojamra 10/24/25

Some Reflections on Fasting

It all begins with an idea.

by John Boojamra

March 2011

Fasting, or more correctly, the practice of abstinence for certain days and certain periods of the year, has long caused difficulty in the minds of many Orthodox in North America. Every year, as the Easter lent approaches, Orthodox begin to wonder what, if anything, to do in preparation for the feast. (Very little direction has come from the hierarchs of the Church by way of guidelines or explanations and each parish priest, if he does more than simply announce that the fast is beginning, will say something different.) In general, I think it is safe to say that the practice and idea of fasting is largely ignored. Many people generally dismiss fasting with the rather simple and naive “This is the twentieth century; those rules were made for the past and simpler days.”

Nonetheless, in spite of practice of most people, we must take the practice of fasting seriously, if for no other reason than other people, throughout Christian history, have taken it seriously. It is valuable here to consider not so much “how” to fast, as “why” fast. This deeper understanding of the reason for this practice in Christianity will help us in determining our own fasting practices.

We must first admit that fasting has a firm foundation in the Scripture and Tradition of the Church, as well as the practice of the Jewish community which gave birth to the Church. We know for instance that Jesus fasted, that the disciples of John the Baptist fasted, and that Jesus said that prayer and fasting were necessary for casting out certain evils.

Fasting And This World

To this emphasis we must add a certain otherworldly emphasis in Jesus’ teaching. Perhaps the most realistic treatment of this is in Matthew (6:19-21).

Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be.

In spite of the great love which Jesus and His Church have demonstrated for the world and life in the world, there is in Christianity a reservation about the world and human life as it is now. The Church calls it “fallen world,” a world in all its aspects in some way separated voluntarily from the love, and life of God, its Creator. Fasting must be seen in this light —”Seek first the kingdom of God and all else will be added.” It is a matter of priority. Fasting cannot be separated from a struggle for the Kingdom of God and from a realistic appraisal of what the world is. There is something about fasting, something about refusing, as it were, to make a total investment in the world as it is, that is associated with the struggle to build the Kingdom of God.

Before discussing what fasting is, perhaps it would be beneficial to say a few words about what it is not. This is a valuable approach since there is a great deal of misunderstanding regarding the nature and function of fasting, both as an idea and as a practice.

God, we must admit first, is not simple-minded: He has no need of our fasting. Our efforts do not affect Him in any way. We cannot buy His love or His grace. This immediately takes fasting out of any legalistic framework and puts it on the level of personal spiritual growth and struggle. For instance, because one person fasts more strictly than another does not mean that God loves the first more or gives him more grace. It is as unimaginable that you could get more grace from a greater effort as getting more grace from a larger portion of the Eucharist.

Yet many people think of it in strictly legalistic terms. God’s love is always given freely and the degree of participation in that love is conditioned by our ability to receive it and be changed by it. This is the brilliant Orthodox idea of cooperation or synergy — we must open ourselves to the love and strength that God offers freely. Fasting is a way of achieving this openness.

Another view of fasting, which, like the previous one contains an element of distortion, is that which sees it as a means of voluntary suffering, a way of atoning for sins. Indeed, there may very well be an element of this in fasting, but this cannot be a predominant one. This would bring the practice to the level of individual pathology. Again, we cannot pay God back for our sins and fasting as a means of atoning for sins must be seen in the light of trying to reshape our spiritual lives in a more positive direction.

A third view of fasting is common among both Christians and non-Christians. This view mistakenly sees fasting in the history of the Church as an expression of a pathological morbidity with regard to the world, which is based on a dualistic view — the world, the body, sex, all created and material things are essentially evil; all spiritual things are good. Hence, fasting is an effort to disconnect the self from the use of matter — food, sex, etc. There has indeed been a tendency towards this in the Christian history, but it has been consistently condemned by the Church when it expressed itself. The Church has always affirmed that the created world is essentially good, though suffering from a profound distortion and misdirection.

Fasting As Preparation

What fasting is will necessarily involve us in a discussion of the nature of man and the nature of the world. Fasting is, as the Church uses it, a preparation. Every time we encounter a fast it is prior to a feast. We all know the fast before the Eucharist as preparation for the Eucharist and the fast before Easter as preparation for the great feast. Nothing in life just happens; that is obvious; all sorts of things require a variety of preparations. The Church recognizes the fact that part of getting somewhere is the trip and more than the trip, the anticipation. This is a basic human psychological quality. Perhaps children understand this expectation and anticipation best of all. Full participation demands this kind of expectation and preparation. Now, the nature of Orthodox preparation is no mystery. The Church has taught that man is a unity, he is not a being which has a body and which has a soul; rather, he is a body and he is a soul. The Christian vision is that of a total and unified personality — body and soul. Hence, the Church calls on the entire being to share in the fast and the feast. A season changes in Church — the colors change, the music changes, the services get longer, the icon changes. How does our body share in this except through fasting, except through initiating a change in its normal procedure. Now this description keeps the nature and degree of fasting open. It can involve food, entertainment, sex, in fact, any aspect of our daily and routine lives. It is clear that we Orthodox are not spiritualists or intellectualists, we are Christian “materialists.” The Church’s emphasis on fasting is precisely a reflection of this materialism.

Our Lord says, “lay not up treasures on earth” and fasting is in effect the reminder that our heart cannot be invested like our money in the world. We all know the feeling we have for something when we have an investment in it. People always try to protect their investment. This is natural. That is what our Lord meant. Here we find a rejection of the world, not in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense. The world in itself is valuable only when it is seen in its relationship to God. Since the world is in effect separated from God, freely, then it cannot be fully normal and the Church says limit your participation in the life of the world, not because it is evil, but because it in itself is limited.

Food is the most obvious example. Everyone agrees that eating, after the process of breathing, is the most necessary and normal activity of our life. It is in this area which is regarded in a worldly sense as normal that the Church says stop! think! question everything which the world calls normal and necessary, because the world itself is “abnormal.”. That is, it is abnormal as it now exists apart from God’s love. But fasting is only a beginning and this questioning must be our approach to all the values that the world regards as necessary and even virtuous — victory, self defense, getting ahead, accumulating wealth and property, competition, popularity, self-aggrandizement. All of these are then signed with a question mark.

Fasting And A Clear Image Of The World

Mind you, this is not a rejection of the world, it is a questioning of the values which the world as it now exists, and human societies which characterize it, hold as valuable. Inasmuch as the world is treated as normal, because this is in fact all we know, and inasmuch as it is not normal or truly worldly in the Christian sense, then it is a deception and a lie and we must tell it as it is. In a real sense the Church in asking her people to fast is declaring a moratorium on the world. Remember the various moratoria against the Vietnam war? The same idea is implied. The war had been going on for almost ten years on an incredibly brutal level characterized by My Lai, yet everyone went about his business, apart from inflation which was blamed on pay raises, no one’s life was really affected. We bought our food, celebrated all those little occasions, there was no shortage of butter or meat or autos. The very normalcy of life here at home, at the same time that wholesale death swept Southeast Asia, was a deception. On a cosmic level, the fast is this effort to put the world and life in the world in its proper perspective. To accept the present patterns of the world as normal is a deception! There is no hate for the world in this and it recognizes that something has happened to the worldliness which God created.

I think we must then see fasting, never as a rejection of food or the world, but as a search for true worldliness; a search which must necessarily pass through the stage of preferring something else to the world. “Seek first the kingdom of God and all else will be given to you.” In the same way we fast from all food before liturgy so that we might receive the one true food in the Eucharist. It is in the Eucharist that we can get a glimpse of the true nature of food. There is no judgment on food as such. The same is true of the world. As food completes itself in the Eucharist, so the entire created world completes itself in the Kingdom of God.

The world is ours, it belongs to us and needless to say we were not meant to be slaves to its pleasures, its categories, and its values. Fasting is then a declaration of independence from the world and a proclamation of victory over its limitations and evil. “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

It is a recognition that the values of the world are limited and often perverted. Here we are freed, liberated in a real sense, not only from sin but from the fears that characterize life, free to act without fear of criticism as God wants us to act in our everyday life, in politics, in business, in social affairs.

Nothing in human society, the fast declares, is sacred in itself and can demand our loyalty, no form of government, no regime. We are freed to conform to the patterns of the Kingdom of God here and now —love, charity, justice, faith. To those for whom the world is the ultimate reality and the ultimate value it is essential to buy the love of the world and the world will only love those who accept its values. Our Lord assures us that the world will hate us; it has to, because the Christian is the on-going judgment on an on-going corruption that infects human relations and human societies.

For us Christians who live in the world, we are offered a choice: we can consume the world or allow the world to consume us. The first is the only creative approach. The second is psychological and personal disintegration. The fast is what gives us this opportunity.

God, we must admit first, is not simple-minded: He has no need of our fasting - Our efforts do not affect Him in any way. We cannot buy His love or His grace. This immediately takes fasting out of any legalistic framework and puts it on the level of personal spiritual growth and struggle.

Article reprinted from: http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/liturgics/boojamra_fasting.htm

Fr Stephen Freeman 9/1/25 Fr Stephen Freeman 9/1/25

The Nativity Fast - Why We Fast

It all begins with an idea.

Fr. Stephen Freeman

November 2011

[November 15th marks the beginning of the Nativity Fast (40 days before Christmas). The following article offers some thoughts on the purpose of fasting. - Fr. Christopher]

Fasting is not very alive or well in the Christian world. Much of that world has long lost any living connection with the historical memory of Christian fasting. Without the guidance of Tradition, many modern Christians either do not fast, or constantly seek to re-invent the practice, sometimes with unintended consequences.

There are other segments of Christendom who have tiny remnants of the traditional Christian fast, but in the face of a modern world have reduced the tradition to relatively trivial acts of self-denial.

I read recently (though I cannot remember where) that the rejection of Hesychasm was the source of all heresy. In less technical terms we can say that knowing God in truth, participating in His life, union with Him through humility, prayer, love of enemy and repentance before all and for everything, is the purpose of the Christian life. Hesychasm (Greek hesychia = silence) is the name applied to the Orthodox tradition of ceaseless prayer and inner stillness. But ceaseless prayer and inner stillness are incorrectly understood if they are separated from knowledge of God and participation in His life, union with Him through humility, prayer, love of enemy and repentance before all and for everything.

And it is this same path of inner knowledge of God (with all its components) that is the proper context of fasting. If we fast but do not forgive our enemies – our fasting is of no use. If we fast and do not find it drawing us into humility – our fasting is of no use. If our fasting does not make us yet more keenly aware of the fact that we are sinful before all and responsible to all, then it is of no benefit. If our fasting does not unite us with the life of God – which is meek and lowly – then it is again of no benefit.

Fasting is not dieting. Fasting is not about keeping a Christian version of kosher. Fasting is about hunger and humility (which is increased as we allow ourselves to become weak). Fasting is about allowing our heart to break.

I have seen greater good accomplished in souls through their failure in the fasting season than in the souls of those who “fasted well.” Publicans enter the kingdom of God before Pharisees pretty much every time.

Why do we fast? Perhaps the more germane question is “why do we eat?” Christ quoted Scripture to the evil one and said, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” We eat as though our life depended on it, and it does not. We fast because our life depends on the word of God.

I worked for a couple of years as a hospice chaplain. During that time, daily sitting at the side of the beds of dying patients – I learned a little about how we die. It is a medical fact that many people become “anorexic” before death – that is – they cease to want food. Many times family and even doctors become concerned and force food on a patient who will not survive. Interestingly, it was found that patients who became anorexic had less pain than those who, having become anorexic, were forced to take food. (None of this is about the psychological anorexia that afflicts many of our youth. That is a tragedy)

It is as though at death our bodies have a wisdom we have lacked for most of our lives. It knows that what it needs is not food – but something deeper. The soul seeks and hungers for the living God. The body and its pain become a distraction. And thus in God’s mercy the distraction is reduced.

Christianity as a religion – as a theoretical system of explanations regarding heaven and hell, reward and punishment – is simply Christianity that has been distorted from its true form. Either we know the living God or we have nothing. Either we eat His flesh and drink His blood or we have no life in us. The rejection of Hesychasm is the source of all heresy.

Why do we fast? We fast so that we may live like a dying man – and that in dying we can be born to eternal life.

[From http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2011/11/12/the-nativity-fast-why-we-fast-2/]

Fr Christopher Foley 8/1/06 Fr Christopher Foley 8/1/06

On Fasting

It all begins with an idea.

Fr. Christopher Foley

August 2006

Since we are currently in one of the four fasting periods of the Church year questions always arise about what is the proper approach to fasting as well as what is the actual prescribed fast. According to the Holy Canons of the Church, the Dormition fast calls for an ascetic fast which means no meat or meat products, fish, dairy products, wine, oil, or oil products. Wine and oil are permitted on Saturday and Sunday and fish, wine, and oil are permitted on Transfiguration. While this is the strict definition of the fast each one must prayerfully take into consideration their health, family concerns and spiritual considerations when approaching any fast. One should ask his or her Father Confessor when undertaking any fast. The main point to remember is the fast is not an end in itself, but a means towards an end which is continual abiding in Christ.

We fast for a number of reasons, one of which is so we can learn to eat properly. This may sound strange, but we fast from food in order to learn how to feast properly. We learn to be thankful to God for every good thing including our food. It is through food that Adam fell, and we all continue in this sin of Adam by seeing food as an end in itself. The root of all sin lies primarily in our appetites. We spend most of our time living "by bread alone." Food, and all of creation was meant for a means of communion with God, but we mistakenly see it as an end in itself, thereby making it out to be a god. Christ was also tempted by food in the wilderness and he refused to believe the lie that man lives by bread alone. Fasting restores our spiritual nature that has been corrupted by sin. Sin has mutilated and disfigured the image and likeness of God in man so much that when we feed our appetites as ends in themselves we have the impression of being alive, when in fact we are dead in sin.

Fasting helps to restore that image and likeness. We begin to see life as it truly is - in Christ. There is a tendency to either explain away the fast and reduce it to "giving something up", or to reduce it to a set of dietary laws that we follow in order to earn God's favor. According to Fr. Alexander Schmemann:

Fasting is our entrance and participation in that experience of Christ Himself by which He liberates us from total dependence on food, matter, and the world. By no means is our liberation a full one. Living in the fallen world, in the world of the Old Adam, being part of it, 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 us, our communion with God, rather than which separates us from God. Yet it is only fasting that can perform that transformation, giving us the existential proof that our dependence on food and matter is not total, not absolute, that united to prayer, grace, and adoration, it can itself be spiritual.

God grant us the strength to fast and grant us the transfigured vision of life as communion with the one thing needful - which is Christ Himself.

St. John Chrysostom on Fasting:

Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works.
If you see a poor man, take pity on him.
If you see a friend being honored, do not envy him.
Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye and the ear and the feet and the hands and all members of our bodies.
Let the hands fast, by being free from avarice.
Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run after sin.
Let the eyes fast, by disciplining them not to glare at that which is sinful.
Let the ear fast, by not listening to evil and gossip.
Let the mouth fast from foul words and unjust criticism.
For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes, but bite and devour our brothers?
May He who came to the world to save sinners strengthen us to complete the fast with humility, have mercy on us and save us.