"ABOUNA" says:
Today is the beginning of the Lenten Season in the Orthodox Catholic Church:
"Let us fast an acceptable and very pleasing fast to the Lord. True fast is the estrangement from evil, temperance of tongue, abstinence from anger, separation from desires, slander, and falsehood perjury. Privation of these is true fasting." A Hymn of First Monday of Lent By St. Basil the Great
The Church teaches that man needs guidance for his spirit as well as instruction for a virtuous and healthy body.
Because fallen man feels guilt within himself, Almighty God provides man with the means of healing - a healing of the body and of the spirit by the wondrous correlation between the two. Helping to heal the afflictions of the body and spirit is the practice of fasting, not only from foods, which affects the body, but, more important, fasting from sins and iniquities, because "the wages of sin is death" (Romans
One of the longest established discipline of the human body is that of fasting. Among pagan religions, Judaism and Christianity fasting is considered an important element in religious practices. Fasting (equivalent to the Greek word nesteia and Latin words jejunium,abstinentia) literally means a total abstention from food for a certain period of time. The origin of fasting as a moral discipline is obscured.
Fasting, in our days, has become one of the most neglected spiritual values. Because of misunderstandings regarding the nature of fasting, because of confused and reversed priorities in its use, many of today's Orthodox Christians fast very little, or disregard fasting altogether.
Fasting is abstinence from food. By detaching us from earthly goods and realities, fasting has a liberating effect on us and makes us worthy of the life of the spirit, a life similar to that of angels. Fasting is also abstinence from bad habits and sin, it is the mother of Christian virtues, the mother of sound and wholesome thinking; it allows us to establish the proper priority between the material and spiritual, giving priority to the spiritual.
The challenge of the Great Lent: to use fasting to obtain the resurrected life, to unite with the Risen Lord. Who could refuse to accept this challenge? Are you prepared to take up the challenge?
|