THE TRUE
NATURE OF FASTING
By Bishop Kallistos Ware
'We waited,
and at last our expectations were fulfilled', writes the Serbian
Bishop Nikolai of Ochrid, describing the Easter service at
Jerusalem. 'When the Patriarch sang "Christ is risen", a heavy
burden fell from our souls. We felt as if we also had been
raised from the dead. All at once, from all around, the same cry
resounded like the noise of many waters. "Christ is risen" sang
the Greeks, the Russians, the Arabs, the Serbs, the Copts, the
Armenians, the Ethiopians -one after another, each in his own
tongue, in his own melody. ...Coming out from the service at
dawn, we began to regard everything in the light of the glory of
Christ's Resurrection, and all appeared different from what it
had yesterday; everything seemed better, more expressive, more
glorious. Only in the light of the Resurrection does life
receive meaning.'
This sense of
resurrection joy, so vividly described by Bishop Nikolai, forms
the foundation of all the worship of the Orthodox Church; it is
the one and only basis for our Christian life and hope. Yet, in
order for us to experience the full power of this Paschal re-
joicing, each of us needs to pass through a time of preparation.
' We waited,' says Bishop Nikolai, 'and at last our expectations
were ful- filled. ' Without this waiting, without this expectant
preparation, the deeper meaning of the Easter celebration will
be lost.
So it is that
before the festival of Easter there has developed a long
preparatory season of repentance and fasting, extending in
present Orthodox usage over ten weeks. First come twenty-two
days (four successive Sundays) of preliminary observance; then
the six weeks or forty days of the Great Fast of Lent; and
finally Holy Week. Balancing the seven weeks of Lent and Holy
Week, there follows after Easter a corresponding season of fifty
days of thanksgiving, concluding with Pentecost.
Each of these
seasons has its own liturgical book. For the time of preparation
there is the Lenten Triodion or 'Book of Three Odes', the most
important parts of which are here presented in English
translation. For the time of thanksgiving there is the
Pentekostarion, also known in Slav usage as the Festal Triodion.
The point of division between the two books is midnight on the
evening of Holy Saturday, with Mattins for Easter Sunday as the
first service in the Pentekostarion. This division into two
distinct volumes, made for reasons of practical convenience,
should not cause us to overlook the essential unity between the
Lord's Crucifixion and His Resur- rection, which together forln
a single, indivisible action. And just as the Crucifixion and
the Resurrection are one action, so also the 'three holy days'
(triduum sanctum) -Great Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday
-constitute a single liturgical observance. Indeed, the division
of the Lenten Triodion and the Pentekostarion into two books did
not become standard until after the eleventh century ; in early
manuscripts they are both contained in the same codex.
What do we
find, then, in this book of preparation that we term the Lenten
Triodion ? It can most briefly be described as the book of the
fast. Just as the children of Israel ate the 'bread of
affiiction' (Deut. 16: 3) in preparation for the Passover, so
Christians prepare themselves for the celebration of the New
Passover by observing a fast. But what is meant by this word
'fast' (nisteia) ? Here the utmost care is needed, so as to
preserve a proper balance between the outward and the inward. On
the outward level fasting involves physical abstinence from food
and drink, and without such exterior absti- nence a full and
true fast cannot be kept; yet the rules about eating and
drinking must never be treated as an end in themselves, for
ascetic fasting has always an inward and unseen purpose. Man is
a unity of body and soul, 'a living creature fashioned from
natures visible and invisible', in the words of the Triodion ;1
and our ascetic fasting should therefore involve both these
natures at once. The tendency to over-emphasize external rules
about food in a legalistic way, and the opposite tendency to
scorn these rules as outdated and unnecessary , are both alike
to be deplored as a betrayal of true Orthodoxy. In both cases
the proper balance between the outward and the inward has been
impaired .
The second
tendency is doubtless the more prevalent in our own day,
especially in the West. Until the fourteenth century, most
Western Christians, in common with their brethren in the ortho-
dox East, abstained during Lent not only from meat but from
animal products, such as eggs, milk, butter and cheese. In East
and West alike, the Lenten fast involved a severe physical
effort. But in Westem Christendom over the past five hundred
years, the physical requirements of fasting have been steadily
reduced, until by now they are little more than symbolic. How
many, one wonders, of those who eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday
are aware of the original reason for this custom -to use up any
remaining eggs and butter before the Lenten fast begins? Exposed
as it is to Western secularism, the Orthodox world in our own
time is also beginning to follow the same path of laxity .
One reason
for this decline in fasting is surely a heretical attitude
towards human nature, a false 'spiritualism' which rejects or
ignores the body, viewing man solely in terms of his reasoning
brain. As a result, many contemporary Christians have lost a
true vision of man as an integral unity of the visible and the
invisible; they neglect the positive role played by the body in
the spiritual life, forgetting St. Paul's affirmation: 'Your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. ... glorify God with your
body' (I Cor. 6: 19-20). Another reason for the decline in
fasting among orthodox is the argument, commonly advanced in our
times, that the traditional rules are no longer possible today.
These rules presuppose, so it is urged, a closely organized,
non-pluralistic Christian society , following an agricultural
way of life that is now increasingly a thing of the past. There
is a measure of truth in this. But it needs also to be said that
fasting, as traditionally practised in the Church, has always
been difficult and has always involved hardship. Many of our
contemporaries are willing to fast for reasons of health or
beauty , in order to lose weight; cannot we Christians do as
much for the sake of the heavenly Kingdom ? Why should the
self-denial gladly accepted by previous generations of Orthodox
prove such an intolerable burden to their successors today? Once
St. Seraphim of Sarov was asked why the miracles of grace, so
abundantly manifest in the past, were no longer apparent in his
own day, and to this he replied: ' Only one thing is lacking -a
firm resolve'.
The primary
aim of fasting is to make us conscious of our depen- dence upon
God. If practised seriously, the Lenten abstinence from food
-particularly in the opening days -involves a considerable
measure of real hunger, and also a feeling of tiredness and
physical exhaustion. The purpose of this is to lead us in turn
to a sense of inward brokenness and contrition; to bring us,
that is, to the point where we appreciate the full force of
Christ's statement, 'Without Me you can do nothing' (John 15:
5). If we always take our fill of food and drink, we easily grow
over-confident in our own abilities, acquiring a false sense of
autonomy and self-sufficiency. The observance of a physical fast
undermines this sinful complacency. Stripping from us the
specious assurance of the Pharisee who fasted, it is true, but
not in the right spirit -Lenten abstinence gives us the saving
self-dissatisfaction of the Publican (Luke 18: 10-13). Such is
the function of the hunger and the tiredness: to make us 'poor
in spirit', aware of our helplessness and of our dependence on
God's aid.
Yet it would
be misleading to speak only of this element of weariness and
hunger. Abstinence leads, not merely to this, but also to a
sense of lightness, wakefulness, freedom and joy. Even if the
fast proves debilitating at first, afterwards we find that it
enables us to sleep less, to think more clearly, and to work
more decisively. As many doctors acknowledge, periodical fasts
contribute to bodily hygiene. While involving genuine
self-denial, fasting does not seek to do violence to our body
but rather to restore it to health and equilibrium. Most of us
in the Western world habitually eat more than we need. Fasting
liberates our body from the burden of exces- sive weight and
makes it a willing partner in the task of prayer, alert and
responsive to the voice of the Spirit.
It will be
noted that in common Orthodox usage the words 'fasting' and
'abstinence' are employed interchangeably. Prior to the Second
Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church made a clear
distinction between the two terms: abstinence concerned the
types of food eaten, irrespective of quantity, whereas fasting
signified a limitation on the number of meals or on the amount
of food that could be taken. Thus on certain days both
abstinence and fasting were required; alternatively, the one
might be prescribed but not the other. In the Orthodox Church a
clear-cut distinction is not made between the two words. During
Lent there is frequently a limitation on the number of meals
eaten each day,& but when a meal is permitted there is no
restriction on the amount of food allowed. The Fathers simply
state, as a guiding principle, that we should never eat to
satiety but always rise from the table feeling that we could
have taken more and that we are now ready for prayer .
If it is
important not to overlook the physical requirements of fasting,
it is even more important not to overlook its inward signi-
ficance. Fasting is not a mere matter of diet. It is moral as
well as physical. True fasting is to be converted in heart and
will; it is to return to God, to come home like the Prodigal to
our Father's house. In the words of St. John Chrysostom, it
means 'abstinence not only from food but from sins'. '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' . The same point is made in the
Triodion, especially during the first week of Lent :
As we fast
from food, let us abstain also from every passion. ...
Let us observe a fast acceptable and pleasing to the Lord. True
fasting is to put away all evil, to control the tongue, to
forbear from anger, To abstain from lust, slander, falsehood and
perjury. If we renounce these things, then is our fasting true
and acceptable to God. Let us keep the Fast not only by
refraining from food, But by becoming strangers to all the
bodily passions.'
The inner
significance of fasting is best summed up in the triad : prayer,
fasting and almsgiving. Divorced from prayer and from the
reception of the holy sacraments, unaccompanied by acts of com-
passion, our fasting becomes pharisaical or even demonic. It
leads, not to contrition and joyfulness, but to pride, inward
tension and irritability .The link between prayer and fasting is
rightly indicated by Father Alexander Elchaninov. A critic of
fasting says to him : 'Our work suffers and we become irritable.
...I have never seen servants [in pre-revolutionary Russia] so
bad tempered as during the last days of Holy Week. Clearly,
fasting has a very bad effect on the nerves. ' To this Father
Alexander replies: 'you are quite right. ... If it is not
accompanied by prayer and an increased spiritual life, it merely
leads to a heightened state of irritability .It is natural that
servants who took their fasting seriously and who were forced to
work hard during Lent, while not being allowed to go to church,
were angry and irritable. 'Fasting, then, is valueless or even
harmful when not combined with prayer. In the Gospels the devil
is cast out, not by fasting alone, but by 'prayer and fasting'
(Matt. 17: 21; Mark 9: 29) ; and of the early Christians it is
said, not simply that they fasted, but that they 'fasted and
prayed' (Acts 13: 3; compare 14: 23). In both the Old and the
New Testament fasting is seen, not as an end in itself, but as
an aid to more intense and living prayer, as a preparation for
decisive action or for direct encounter with God. Thus our
Lord's forty-day fast in the wilderness was the immediate
preparation for His public ministry (Matt. 4: I-II). When Moses
fasted on Mount Sinai (Exod. 34: 28) and Elijah on Mount Horeb
(3 [1] Kgs. 19: 8- 12) , the fast was in both cases linked with
a theophany. The same connection between fasting and the vision
of God is evident in the case of St. Peter (Acts 10: 9-17). He
'went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour, and he
became very hungry and wanted to eat' ; and it was in this state
that he fell into a trance and heard the divine voice. Such is
always the purpose of ascetic fasting -to enable us, as the
Triodion puts it, to 'draw near to the mountain of prayer'.
Prayer and
fasting should in their turn be accompanied by alms- giving -by
love for others expressed in practical form, by works of
compassion and forgiveness. Eight days before the opening of the
Lenten fast, on the Sunday of the Last Judgement, the appointed
Gospel is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt. 25:
31-46), reminding us that the criterion in the coming judgement
will not be the strictness of our fasting but the amount of help
that we have given to those in need. In the words of the
Triodion :
Knowing the
commandments of the Lord, let this be our way of life :
Let us feed
the hungry , let us give the thirsty drink, Let us clothe the
naked, let us welcome strangers, Let us visit those in prison
and the sick. Then the Judge of all the earth will say even to
us : 'Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom
prepared for you.'
This stanza,
it may be noted in passing, is a typical instance of the
'evangelical' character of the Orthodox service-books. In commOn
with so many other texts in the Triodion, it is simply a
paraphrase of the words of Holy Scripture.
It is no
coincidence that on the very threshold of the Great Fast, at
Vespers on the Sunday of Forgiveness, there is a special
ceremony of mutual reconciliation: for without love towards
others there can be no genuine fast. And this love for others
should not be limited to formal gestures or to sentimental
feelings, but should issue in specific acts of almsgiving. Such
was the firm conviction of the early Church. The second-century
Shepherd of Hermas insists that the money saved through fasting
is to be given to the widow, the orphan and the poor. But
almsgiving means more than this. It is to give not only our
money but our time, not only what we have but what we are; it is
to give a part of ourselves. When we hear the Triodion speak of
almsgiving, the word should almost always be taken in this
deeper sense. For the mere giving of money can ofter be a
substitute and an evasion, a way of protecting ourselves from
closer personal involvement with those in distress. On the other
hand, to do nothing more than offer reassuring words of advice
to someone crushed by urgent material anxieties is equally an
evasion of our responsibilities (see Jas. 2: 16). Bearing in
mind the unity already emphasized between man's body and his
soul, we seek to offer help on both the material and the
spiritual levels at once.
'When thou
seest the naked, cover him; and hide not thyself from thine own
flesh. ' The Eastern liturgical tradition, in common with that
of the West, treats Isaiah 58 : 3-8 as a basic Lenten text. : So
we read in the Triodion :
'While
fasting with the body, brethren, let us also fast in spirit! Let
us loose every bond of iniquity; Let us undo the knots of every
contract made by violence ; Let us tear up all unjust
agreements; Let us give bread to the hungry and welcome to our
house the poor who have no roof to cover , them, that we may
receive great mercy from Christ our God.
Always in our
acts of abstinence we should keep in mind St. Paul's admonition
not to condemn others who fast less strictly: 'Let not him who
abstains pass judgement on him who eats' (Rom. 14-: 3). Equally,
we remember Christ's condemnation of outward display in prayer,
fasting or almsgiving (Matt. 6: 1-18). Both these Scriptural
passages are often recalled in the Triodion :
Consider
well, my soul: dost thou fast? Then despise not thy neighbour.
Dost thou abstain from food ? Condemn not thy brother . Come,
let us cleanse ourselves by almsgiving and acts of mercy to the
poor, not sounding a trumpet or making a show of our charity.
Let not our left hand know what our right hand is doing ; Let
not vainglory scatter the fruit of our almsgiving ; but in
secret let us call on Him that knows all. secrets : Father,
forgive us our trespasses, for Thou lovest mankind.
If we are to
understand correctly the text of the Triodion and the
spirituality that underlies it, there are five misconceptions
about the Lenten fast against which we should guard. In the
first place, the Lenten fast is not intended only for monks and
nuns, but is enjoined on the whole Christian people. Nowhere do
the Canons of the Ecu- menical or Local Councils suggest that
fasting is only for monks and not for the laity .By virtue of
their Baptism, all Christians -whether married or under monastic
vows -are Cross-bearers, following the same spiritual path. The
exterior conditions in which they live out their Christianity
display a wide variety , but in its inward essence the life is
one. Just as the monk by his voluntary self-denial is seeking to
affirm the intrinsic goodness and beauty of God's creation, so
also is each married Christian required to be in some measure an
ascetic. The way of negation and the way of affirmation are
interdependent, and every Christian is called to follow both
ways at once.
In the second
place, the Triodion should not be misconstrued in a Pelagian
sense. If the Lenten texts are continually urging us to greater
personal efforts, this should not be taken as implying that our
pro- gress depends solely upon the exertion of our own will. On
the contrary , whatever we achieve in the Lenten fast is to be
regarded as a free gift of grace from God. The Great Canon of
St. Andrew of Crete leaves no doubt at all on this point :
I have no
tears, no repentance, no compunction ; But as God do Thou
Thyself, O Saviour, bestow them on me.
In the third
place, our fasting should not be se!f-willed but obedient. When
we fast, we should not try to invent special rules for our-
selves, but we should follow as faithfully as possible the
accepted pattern set before us by Holy Tradition. This accepted
pattern, ex- pressing as it does the collective conscience of
the People of God, possesses a hidden wisdom and balance not to
be found in ingenious austerities devised by our own fantasy.
Where it seems that the tra- ditional regulations are not
applicable to our personal situation, we should seek the counsel
of our spiritual father -not in order legal- istically to secure
a 'dispensation' from him, but in order humbly with his help to
discover what is the will of God for us. Above all, if we desire
for ourselves not some relaxation but some piece of additional
strictness, we should not embark upon it without our spiritual
father's blessing. Such has been the practice since the ear
centuries of the Church's life :
Abba Antony
said: 'I know of monks who fell after much labour an lapsed into
madness, because they trusted in their own work an neglected
the. commandment that says: "Ask your father, and he will tell
you." (Deut. 32: 7)
Again he
said: .So far as possible, for every step that a monk takes for
every drop of water that he drinks in his cell, he should consul
the aerontes, in case he makes some mistake in this. '
These words
apply not only to monks but also to lay people living in the
'world', even though the latter may be bound by a less strict
obedience to their spiritual father. If proud and wilful, our
fasting assumes a diabolical character, bringing us closer not
to God but tc Satan. Because fasting renders us sensitive to the
realities of the spiritual world, it can be dangerously
ambivalent: for there are evil spirits as well as good.
In the fourth
place, paradoxical though it may seem, the period of Lent is a
time not of gloom but of joyfulness. It is true that fasting
brings us to repentance and to grief for sin, but this penitent
grief, in the vivid phrase of St. John Climacus, is a
'joy-creating sorrow'. The Triodion deliberately mentions both
tears and gladness in a single sentence:
Grant me
tears falling as the rain from heaven, O Christ, As I keep this
joyful day of the Fast.
It is
remarkable how frequently the themes of joy and light recur ~
the texts for the first day of Lent:
With joy let
us enter Upon the beginning of the Fast. Let us not be of sad
countenance. ... Let us joyfully begin the all-hallowed season
of abstinence; And let us shine with the bright radiance of the
holy commandments. ...all mortal life is but one day, so it is
said, To those who labour with love. There are forty days in the
Fast : Let us keep them all with joy.
The season of
Lent, it should be noted, falls not in midwinter when the
countryside is frozen and dead, but in spring when all things
are returning to life. The English word 'Lent' originally had
the meaning 'springtime' ; and in a text of fundamental
importance the Triodion likewise describes the Great Fast as
'springtime' : The springtime of the Fast has dawned,
The flower of
repentance has begun to open. O brethren, let us cleanse
ourselves from all impurity And sing to the Giver of Light :
Glory be to Thee, who alone lovest mankind.
Lent
signifies not winter but spring, not darkness but light, not
death but renewed vitality .Certainly it has its sombre aspect,
with the repeated prostrations at the weekday services, with the
dark vestments of the priest, with the hymns sung to a subdued
chant, full of compunction. In the Christian Empire of Byzantium
theatres were closed and public spectacles forbidden during
Lent; and even today weddings are forbidden in the seven weeks
of the fast. Yet these elements of austerity should not blind us
to the fact that the fast is not a burden, not a punishment, but
a gift of God's grace : 'Come, O ye people, and today let us
accept the grace of the Fast as a gift from God.'
Fifthly and
finally, our Lenten abstinence does not imp!r a rejection of
God's creation. As St. Paul insists, 'Nothing is unclean in
itself' (Rom. 14: 14). All that God has made is 'very good'
(Gen. I: 31): to fast is not to deny this intrinsic goodness but
to reaffirm it. 'To the pure all things are pure' (Titus I:
15"), and so at the Messianic banquet in the Kingdom of heaven
there will be no need for fasting and ascetic self-denial. But,
living as we do in a fallen world, and suffering as we do from
the consequences of sin, both original and personal, we are not
pure; and so we have need of fasting. Evil resides not in
created things as such but in our attitude towards them, that
is, in our will. The purpose of fasting, then, is not to re-
pudiate the divine creation but to cleanse our will. During the
fast we deny our bodily impulses -for example, our spontaneous
appe- tite for food and drink -not because these impulses are in
them- selves evil, but because they have been disordered by sin
and require to be purified through self-discipline. In this way,
asceticism is a fight not against but for the body; the aim of
fasting is to purge the body from alien defilement and to render
it spiritual. By rejecting what is sinful in our will, we do not
destroy the God-created body but restore it to its true balance
and freedom. In Father Sergei Bulgakov's phrase, we kill the
flesh in order to acquire a body.
But in
rendering the body spiritual, we do not thereby dematerialize
it, depriving it of its character as a physical entity. The
'spiritual' is not to be equated with the non-material, neither
is the 'fleshly' or carnal to be equated with the bodily. In St.
Paul's usage, 'flesh' denotes the totality of man, soul and body
together, in so far as he is fallen and separated from God; and
in the same way 'spirit' denotes the totality of man, soul and
body together, in so far as he is redeemed and divinized by
grace. 26 Thus the soul as well as the body can become carnal
and fleshly, and the body as well as the soul can become
spiritual. When St. Paul enumerates the 'works of the flesh'
(Gal. 5: 19-21), he includes such things as sedition, heresy and
envy , which involve the soul much more than the body. In making
our body spiritual, then, the Lenten fast does not suppress the
physical aspect of our human nature, but makes our materiality
once more as God intended it to be.
Such is the
way in which we interpret our abstinence from food. Bread and
wine and the other fruits of the earth are gifts from God, of
which we partake with reverence and thanksgiving. If Orthodox
Christians abstain from eating meat at certain times, or in some
cases continually, this does not mean that the Orthodox Church
is on principle vegetarian and considers meat-eating to be a sin
; and if we abstain sometimes from wine, this does not mean that
we uphold ! teetotalism. When we fast, this is not because we
regard the act of eating as shameful, but in order to make all
our eating spiritual, sacramental and eucharistic -no longer a
concession to greed but a means of communion with God the giver.
So far from making us look on food as a defilement, fasting has
exactly the opposite effect. Only those who have learnt to
control their appetites through abstinence can appreciate the
full glory and beauty of what God has given to us. To one who
has eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, an olive can seem full
of nourishment. A slice of plain cheese or a hard-boiled egg
never taste so good as on Easter morning, after seven weeks of
fasting.
We can apply
this approach also to the question of abstinence from sexual
relations. It has long been the Church's teaching that during
seasons of fasting married couples should try to live as brother
and sister, but this does not at all signify that sexual
relations within marriage are in themselves sinful. On the
contrary, the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete -in which, more
than anywhere else in the Triodion, we find summed up the
significance of Lent -states without the least ambiguity :
Marriage is
honourable, and the marriage-bed undefiled. For on both Christ
has given His blessing, Eating in the flesh at the wedding in
Cana, Turning water into wine and revealing His first miracle.
The
abstinence of married couples, then, has as its aim not the sup-
pression but the purification of sexuality .Such abstinence,
practised 'with mutual consent for a time', has always the
positive aim, 'that you may give yourselves to fasting and
prayer' (I Cor. 7: 5). Self- restraint, so far from indicating a
dualist depreciation of the body, serves on the contrary to
confer upon the sexual side of marriage a spiritual dimension
which might otherwise be absent.
To guard
against a dualist misinterpretation of the fast, the Triodion
speaks repeatedly about the inherent goodness of the material
creation. In the last of the services that it contains, Vespers
for Holy Saturday, the sequence of fifteen Old Testament lessons
opens with the first words of Genesis, 'In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth. ..' : all created things are
God's handiwork and as such are 'very good' .Every part of this
divine creation, so the Triodion insists, joins in giving praise
to the Maker :
The hosts of
heaven give Him glory ; Before Him tremble cherubim and seraphim
; Let everything that has breath and all creation Praise Him,
bless Him, and exalt Him above all for ever .
O Thou who
coverest Thy high places with the waters, Who settest the sand
as a bound to the sea and upholdest all things: The sun sings
Thy praises, the moon gives Thee glory , Every creature offers a
hymn to Thee, His Author and Creator, for ever.
Let all the
trees of the forest dance and sing. ... Let the mountains and
all the hills break forth into great rejoicing at the mercy of
God, And let the trees of the forest clap their hands.
This
affirmative attitude towards the material world is founded not
only on the doctrine of creation but also on the doctrine of
Christ. Again and again in the Triodion, the true physical
reality of Christ's human nature is underlined. How, then, can
the human body be evil, if God Himself has in His own person
assumed and divinized the body ? As we state at Mattins on the
first Sunday in Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy:
Thou hast not
appeared to us, O loving Lord, merely in outward semblance, As
say
the
followers of Mani, who are enemies of God, But in the full and
true reality of the flesh.
Because
Christ took a true material body, so the hymns for the Sunday of
Orthodoxy make clear, it is possible and, indeed, essential to
depict His person in the holy ikons, using material wood and
paint the uncircumscribed Word of the Father becanle
circumscribed, taking flesh from thee, O Theotokos, and He has
restored the sullied image to its ancient glory, filling it with
the divine beauty . This is our salvation we confess in deed and
word, and we depict it in the holy ikons' This assertion of the
spirit-bearing potentialities of the material creation is a
constant theme during the season of Lent. On the first Sunday of
the Great Fast, we are reminded of the physical nature of
Christ's Incarnation, of the material reality of the holy ikons,
and of the visible, aesthetic beauty of the Church. On the
second Sunday we keep the memory of St. Gregory Palamas
(1296-1359), who taught that all creation is permeated by the
energies of God, and that even in the present life this divine
glory can be perceived through man's physical eyes, provided
that his body has been rendered spiritual by God's grace. On the
third Sunday we venerate the material wood of the Cross; on the
sixth Sunday we bless material branches of palms; on Wednesday
in Holy Week we are signed with material oil in the sacrament of
Anointing ; on Holy Thursday we recall how at the Last Supper
Christ blessed material bread and wine, transforming them into
His Body and Blood.
Those who
fast, so far from repudiating material things, are on the
contrary assisting in their redemption. They are fulfilling the
vocation assigned to the 'sons of God' by St. Paul: 'The created
universe waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons
of God. ... The creation will be set free from its bondage to
decay and will obtain the glorious liberty of the children of
God, We know that the whole creation has been groaning in
travail until now' (Rom. 8 : 19-22), By means of our Lenten
abstinence, we seek with God's help to exercise this calling as
priests of the creation, restoring all things to their primal
splendour. Ascetic self-discipline, then, signifies a rejection
of the world, only in so far as it is corrupted by the fall; of
the body, only in so far as it is dominated by sinful passions.
Lust excludes love: so long as we lust after other persons or
other things, we cannot truly love them. By delivering us from
lust, the fast renders us capable of genuine love. No longer
ruled by the selfish desire to grasp and to exploit, we begin to
see the world with the eyes of Adam in Paradise. Our self-denial
is the path that leads to our self-affirmation; it is our means
of entry into the cosmic liturgy whereby all things visible and
invisible ascribe glory to their Creator.
An excerpt
taken from the introduction to The Lenten Triodion. Translated
from the original Greek by Mother Mary and Archimandrite
Kallistos Ware. (Pages 13-28 of "The Meaning of The Great Fast).
In preparation of the Memorial Service, it is
customary for the family of the deceased to
bring a dish of boiled wheat to the Church (Kollyva). The boiled wheat is
placed on a table in the center of the nave during the Service. Kollyva, is a
symbol of the Resurrection. When speaking of the Resurrection, our Lord said:
"Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but
if it dies it bears much fruit." (John 12:24).
