What do we seek as we knock at the doors of Lent? We abstain from food so that the Lord would feed us His rich mercy; that is, we pray Him for mercy to nourish us. As we walk the course to Pascha, we struggle to believe that we are able to be nourished with the Heavenly Food and to believe that the Lord instills in us hunger for Him. We must desire the Heavenly Food so that God grants us to desire Him. We will not be satiated unless we yearn for the Lord as our nourishment. Is our voluntary abstinence from the food of this world a way to desire “the Bread that comes down from Heaven” which is the Divine food par excellence? The Lord nourishes us with every word that He utters; His word is Himself.
Other than that there is much food that we eat that does not give us salvation “because food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, and the Lord will destroy both”. I think that it is important to believe, as we fast, that all what enters the mouth will be destroyed with our flesh.
There is variety in the ways of fasting among the Christians. They have differences as to the quantity of food eaten and its knids but they all agree that it is essential for the human being that, in his life, he exercises control over his desires so he does not find his identity in them. Christianity, when you obey it, saves you from the harmful desire and puts you in the moderation that builds you up. Fasting in our Church is not a kind of “diet”, but it is the human being as master of the impulses of the flesh and as a journeyer to the Bread of Heaven, that is, to the Word of God from which he receives life and to the Lord in whom the good deeds he does are done.
What is important is that one learns from his fasting that food passes away as the body does. “The Kingdom of God is neither food nor drink”. The totality of our life is important for one to learn that “The Kingdom of God is righteousness and holiness”. What do we learn from abstaining from food? What is important during fasting is what you learn for your salvation. All things in Christianity are an upward progress to God; other than that there is nothing. We need to transcend the “diet mentality” to “dieting from sin” thus protecting ourselves from wrongdoing so we can see God’s face; and if we do not seek and get to that “face” we would have misled ourselves into unrighteousness.
I am surprised at those Christians who question the importance of fasting knowing that they have not experienced it or have been through it. They obey the medical practice when they are told by a doctor to abstain from eating much meat for the betterment of their health, but they do neglect the abstinence which is of benefit for them both health-wise and spirit-wise. And they make a distinction between Jesus’ clear call to fasting and the great order of fasting set by the Church.
To avoid fasting in the pretext that the Lord Jesus did not regulate Lent but only called for fasting as a principle, is a belittling of the existence of the Church which exists because of Christ in that it undertakes the matters of salvation on earth.
The claim that fasting is not binding because the Lord Jesus did not define a method or timing for it is not accepted because the Savior usually gives us the principle and so we build on it; He did not organize the Church with all Her administrative details but left that to the disciples and those who come after them. That is He left that to the period of time that follows His death, His resurrection, Pentecost and the establishment of the Church. The Church is alive and She manages the times with Her wisdom in what brings benefit to the believers; She is not a “law” that is strict and rigid. Jesus gave us His living word and He did not lay systems for us. And what is referred to as an ecclesiastical law is not like the conditional law which is liable to constant change; in the Church, there is that which undergoes change and that which does not. What in the Church is truly Divine is enduring. What is merely of a historical nature can be modified.
There is no life without a form. The question is how to change the form without losing the life contained in it. The intricacy in Ecclesiastical forms makes them have both, the Divine and the temporal, at the same time. And so, do not strike the Divinity of the institution when you bypass something of its temporal history. History and time also carry God in them. What is eternal is linked to what is temporal and so do not modify the temporal in such a way that what is eternal is subdued. From that scope, you cannot modify the ways of fasting in such a way that you temper with the eternal that they contain. That is the wisdom of the Church: that you can reconcile between what is steadfast and what is mutable without having one overcoming the other. So if the Church sees that fasting is one of those immutable elements which, if removed, would cause the passing away of the institution, then you cannot change it unendingly.
Making changes in institutions is a very sensitive matter. Orthodox scholars have studied the matter of change in the system of fasting and decided not to continue in that. In Geneva, I participated in the meetings for the preparation of the Synod which was commissioned to study the modification of some systems in the Orthodox Church. We refused, then, to modify anything in the procedures of fasting. The general sense that prevailed among the conferees, of Bishops and laypeople, was that fasting in its Orthodox form was something that all of them felt good about.
Nothing prevents the situation to change in the present time. And the Church has the right to modify its general systems. And we have done that during the civil war in Lebanon, but the believers kept the fasting procedures as they are in our Church.
Any approach to the matter of fasting and its procedures will not be “healthy” if not accompanied with a spiritual awakening or renewal based on the Divine Book or on Holy Tradition. Discussing the matter of modifying the fasting system should be based on a profound understanding of fasting; so it does not become a discussion of changing the current eating system with a new one, but the discussion and the change should be accompanied with a sweeping spiritual renewal.
Fasting Lent is a yearning for Pascha and for the Light that is profusely poured on us. Approaching that great Light requires abstinence from sin and an onrush to the Divine Brightness which when we put on, we would have overcome the world. Fasting is an endeavor that signifies for us our unconditional plunging in that Brightness which removes all darkness from the folds of the soul and calls it to become a vast enterprise of light.
Translated by Riad Moufarrij
Original Text: “أبواب الصوم” – An Nahar – 09.03.2013
