"We waited, and at last our
expectations were fulfilled",
wrote Bishop Nicholas of South
Canaan, 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 Nicholas, forms the
foundation of all 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 rejoicing, each of us needs to pass through
a time of preparation. "We waited, " says Bishop Nicholas, "and at
last our expectations were fulfilled." Without the waiting, without the
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 comes twenty-two days (four Sundays) of preliminary
observance; then the six weeks or forty days of the Great Fast of Lent;
and finally Holy Week, there follows after Easter a corresponding season
of fifty days of thanksgiving, concluding with Pentecost.
This time can most
briefly be described as the time of the fast. Just as the children
of Israel ate the "bread of affliction" (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 inward. On the outward level fasting involves physical
abstinence from food and drink, and without such exterior abstinence a
full and true fast cannot be kept; yet rules about eating and drinking
must never be treated as an end in themselves, for ascetic fasting has
always an inward and unseen purpose. And a proper balance must always be
maintained.
The True Nature
of Fasting (Part II)
Man is a unity of body
and soul, "a living creature fashioned from natures visible and
invisible", in the words of the Triodion; 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 a
proper balance between the outward and the inward has been impaired.
One reason for the
decline in fasting is surely the 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 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" (1 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 also needs to be said that fasting, as traditionally practiced 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".
by Bishop
Kallistos Ware
