Fasting

“And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Matthew 6: 15-18

With Great Lent beginning in just three days, it is a good time to consider our plan for how we will spend the next 7 weeks growing in our faith. We’ve discussed almsgiving (charity) and prayer and today we will discuss fasting. Fasting is the first thought people often have when it comes to Great Lent, and it is usually followed by a thought of how it stinks to not eat meat and go without dessert. Fasting, for many people, is about deprivation and punishment. Fasting also becomes the centerpiece of Lent, as if fasting absolves us of all other Lenten spiritual practices. Here are some thoughts on fasting for this year.

First of all, fasting is not about deprivation but it is about discipline. We all have passions for different things. Some healthy passions include cooking, writing, yard work (well, that’s me, maybe not you), and exercising. These are good things. There are some unhealthy passions that we all must confront—ego, pride, greed, lust, power, anger, etc. The greatest passion is hunger, because while we can go some time without our healthy or unhealthy passions, we can never go more than a few hours without thinking of food. If we can tame our passion for food by controlling what goes into our bodies, the hope is that we can control the other passions we have, what comes out of our bodies. Fasting is designed to help us have heightened spiritual focus, not to punish or deprive us.

Here are two contemporary thoughts about fasting. First, we’ve completely lost the time element that is part of fasting. In previous centuries, people did not have refrigeration as we do today. Their daily lives were centered around getting food in order to survive. They would spend time hunting, killing food, dragging it back home and cooking it. During fast periods, when people didn’t eat meat, they gathered fruits and vegetables which were near home and didn’t have to spend the time getting their food. And the time they saved was spent in additional prayer, worship and charity. In the modern world, we can order shrimp instead of steak at a restaurant and say that we are fasting. And that’s true. Except that there is a time element that is lost with this. We can fast without prayer (that is dieting). We can fast without worship, even though this makes fasting almost pointless. Fasting needs to be done in conjunction to prayer and worship, otherwise it is just altering our diet. With so many foods like “fake chicken patties” and “meatless burgers”, we can feel like we are eating meat even when we aren’t.

Traditional fasting is from all blood products. We don’t co-mingle our blood with the blood of any animal, in remembrance of the blood Jesus shed for us. I would argue in today’s world, it is not what we eat that is keeping us away from Christ. It is how we are spending our time. I would encourage people, in addition to some semblance of a fast from food, to do a fast which involves time. In speaking with a group of teenagers recently, we were discussing how much time each spends on screen. The amount of time is astronomical. Between texting and aimless scrolling, people are wasting hours a day, and that is true not only for teens but for many adults as well. What if we cut screen time by 10-20 percent during Great Lent. That means for every hour we are on screen, we reduce that to 45-50 minutes on screen instead of 60. That extra 10-15 minutes times however many hours of screen time we have would add up to quite a bit. For those who say they don’t have enough time to pray, or worship, or do charitable things, there’s the time right there, the time we are actually wasting on screens. Cutting down screen time can be a great way to fast, in the sense of being more disciplined and thus more focused on Christ which is what fasting is about at its core.

Great Lent should not just be a period of time  where we give up something, only to get it back when Lent is over. Rather, it should be a period where we add something to our lives and then maintain what we’ve added after Great Lent is over. If we spent each Lent adding something that will keep us more focused and joyful in our Christian walk, and were able to then maintain that for the rest of the year, over a period of years, we’d be much more focused on Christ and hopefully have much more joy. If we spend Lent giving up something, only to get it back when Lent is over, over a period of years, we might find ourselves in the same place, and not growing much over time. If there is a habit that is successfully changed during Great Lent, such as cutting down screen time and replacing it with prayer and Scripture reading, why not maintain that once Lent is over? They say it takes doing something for thirty days for it to become a habit. Great Lent, plus Holy Week, ends up being 48 days, which is a great amount of time in which to establish some new spiritual habits that can be maintained after Pascha has come and gone. In these last few days before the beginning of Great Lent, please consider how you can fast, not only from food, but from things that take you away from God, with the idea of creating some new habit that you can carry through after Lent is over.

We were expelled of old, O Lord, from the Garden of Eden, for wrongly eating from the tree. But, O my God and Savior, You once again have restored us through Your Cross and Your Passion. Thereby, O Master, fortify and enable us purely to finish Lent and to worship Your divine Resurrection, Pascha our saving Passover, by the prayer of Your mother. (Praises, from the Orthros of Forgiveness Sunday, Trans. by Fr. Seraphim Dedes)

Here are some questions to ponder:

1.     What one food can I fast from? How often can I commit to fasting from it?

2.     What one non-food thing can I fast from?

3.     What habit can I add/replace during Great Lent?