On Fasting

Reflections on the first week of Lent

Photo Credit: Tony Talbert

For the last four years, the first week of Lent has been a shock to the system, no matter how prepared I thought I was. In our previous tradition, we observed Lent, but it was marked by a pancake dinner and then a candle that was lit each week in church until Easter. Some may have given up social media or alcohol or chocolate by their own choosing. Others may have had a better understanding of how to dig deeper into the Lenten season, but personally, it didn’t much interrupt regular life at all, and my feeling was that Easter was just another church service with more boisterous music, and a basic gospel sermon geared for all the C & E Christians who only showed up twice a year and talked through the whole service. However, something is better than nothing and even this skeletal practice of the liturgical calendar had me longing for more.

In Orthodoxy, there there are three weeks of preparation for Lent, with scripture readings and homilies intended to turn the focus of the faithful toward an attitude of repentance. Two weeks beforehand we have “meat fare” Sunday, which is the conclusion of the season in which meat is consumed. The following Sunday is “cheese fare,” the conclusion of the permitted dairy consumption. On Cheese Fare Sunday, we celebrate Forgiveness Vespers. Churches do this in various ways, but at our church, we go straight from Divine Liturgy into Forgiveness Vespers. The Vestments are changed to purple or black, and suddenly the music takes on a somber tone, and we find ourselves making prostrations for the first time of the Lenten season.

What follows is one of the most anticipated exercises of every year - the giving and receiving of forgiveness. Our beloved pastor stands before us and asks our forgiveness for any offense he may have caused, and then, as in a receiving line, every member of the church bows to one another, asks forgiveness, and offers forgiveness.

“Forgive me, a sinner.”
“As God forgives, I forgive, may God forgive us both. Forgive me, a sinner.”

The first time I witnessed this, I was so stunned by what was about to happen that tears sprang to my eyes, and I decided I was not emotionally prepared to participate. The following year, having been baptized and fully a member of the Church, I was obligated. It was wonderful—I was still in my honeymoon phase and had not been offended by anything or anyone, and so offering that forgiveness was easy. Still, I had the sense that a “spring cleaning” of my soul had just taken place.

The next year, however, there were…things. I was in need of forgiveness, and I had been offended. We had inhabited this wonderful community and made ourselves at home, and as with any home and family, “things” happen.

The fellowship meal following this exercise always has an air of lightness to it—everyone is happy, everyone is forgiven, everyone is eating cheese for the last time until Pascha, so there is usually a lot of it—and then it is Lent.

The first week of Lent is known as “Clean Week,” and we are encouraged to fast as much and as strictly as we are able. The fast can hit hard. Science has shown what the Church has known for years—that the hormones involved in hunger and satiety affect so much of our emotions and behaviors, and it can be a tremendous struggle to resist acting upon those urges, whether it be the urge to eat, the inclination to snap at a child or spouse, or the desire to weep for no apparent reason. What science calls hormones the Holy Fathers would call demons. It is probably a lot of both.

Urges, inclinations, and desires… Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! We’ve just been through three weeks of preparation for a season of repentance, and we’ve resolved in ourselves to make this Lent really matter for our spiritual lives, and snap! I’ve just blown it by yelling at someone in frustration, but really, I’m just super hungry and irrational.

We are such fragile creatures. We are so fragile that we do not even need to be dropped or acted upon in order to break—we are so very capable of breaking ourselves from within our own hearts and minds where the passions reside. All it takes is the removal of food for a day to expose this, despite knowing that starvation is far from imminent.

It is easy to skip fasting. It is easy to skip church. It is easy to tell ourselves that we’re not so bad, and definitely no worse than the next guy. What’s the big deal? But the fast reveals things that we don’t want to see in ourselves, and the only way to fix it is through repentance, which by necessity must be done daily.

Anyone who has practiced intermittent fasting or attempted to “eat clean” or undertake a ketogenic diet for a period of time can recall the way that the body feels at first during the dietary shift. The feeling is not unlike the flu. Headaches, body aches, extreme weariness, moodiness, and sometimes even gastric upset result. The body is not accustomed to behaving in a healthy way or surviving on healthy food only. Our food system is so corrupted that our bodies have come to believe that a constant state of of mild poisoning is normal, and goes into a state of revolt when the poison is taken away, while cancers and chronic diseases take root beneath our level of awareness. Strange as it is, in our world it is far harder to eat food that is simply food than it is to eat toxic, processed substances that don’t resemble the ingredients that made them into what they are, packaged in plastic on the shelf, never molding, never decaying. Eating real food is more expensive and more labor intensive. We don’t like either of those things, expense and labor. However, if one trains the body to be adapted to eating clean food, or to burning ketones instead of glucose for fuel, there is a payoff. The struggler is rewarded with better sleep, weight loss, mental clarity, and higher energy. It is easy however, to look over one’s shoulder at the sweets, treats and (in my case, wine) that were prior indulgences. Over time, one becomes more lax and starts to lower the guard, have just one cookie, just one more glass…and before long the pounds creep back and inflammation returns.

The more I reflect upon the depth of corruption our food supply has fallen into, I cannot help but see it as an objective correlative to the state of our souls, and this is not something that I could see as clearly before becoming Orthodox.

The strictest of Orthodox monastics are exemplary fasters. When reading about the fasting practices of some of the most famous ascetics and the small rations that they live on, one wonders how it is humanly possible. How do they stay healthy? How do they live such long lives? Whether it is an untapped human potential to live on very little food, or God himself sustains them, or some combination of the two, we cannot fully know, but it stands to reason that fasting does not harm. That these ascetics have renounced the world, including most food, and live entirely for God challenges us, who can’t live without curly fries cooked in toxic seed oils when we pass a Chick Fil-a. Ascetics such as these achieve heights of illumination that are unimaginable for the average person. Through their ascetic labors they have effectively learned to steel themselves and overcome their human fragility to become all but immune to the passions of the carnal nature. These become workers of great miracles, possessing great knowledge of the kind known only to the angels. This is the goal of the Christian life—this is theosis—oneness with Christ.

When examining the lives and outcomes of our fellow humans who have achieved great heights of spirituality while remaining at our current level of spirituality (which often feels like splashing in mud puddles compared to the soaring joy of cliff-diving into waterfalls), consider that they began not with great theological insights and inductive studies of the scriptures. They began their spiritual climb with simple prayer and the mortification of the flesh, which is quite simply the discipline of prayer and fasting. In this most basic practice we train the body and the mind to focus on Christ, and to patiently wait upon him, and in so doing he will call us higher and deeper into the knowledge of Himself.

We consider prayer the easy part, until asked to sit for five minutes with a quiet mind in a state of contemplation. Suddenly all the sounds inside our own heads start knocking and shrieking, and it can be most disconcerting. Then, adding fasting to our prayers, we hear the rumblings of our stomachs and feel the discomfort of going without food, and we are once again disconcerted. These are the expenses and labors of the spiritual life. If we can find it within ourselves to be patient, and to throw these cares upon Christ who cares for us, then we can muster the strength to press into the discomfort and wait until it passes, for on the other side of the noise and rumblings there is quiet, peace, and communion with our Lord.

The season of Lent is the season of renewal, of metaphorical (and literal) spring cleaning, of the reawakening of the spiritual life and disciplines. We who do not live the ascetic monastic life need to be reminded of how far we have drifted—how tight the proverbial belt has become. It is a blessed season, and is to be undertaken with our whole being, body, mind, and spirit.

These are my reflections as we enter this season, in anticipation of the Great and Holy Pascha!