Vol: 9 Issue: 2
Amshir 1731 / Feb 2015
Fasting - A Period Of Love By: H.H. Pope Tawadrous II We consider fasting a period of love. It is a period to test our love for God, and the love of God for us. We fast plenty in our church. Our church is an ascetic church and that’s how we have come to know Christianity. Fasting in actual fact is a very old commandment. When God created Adam and Eve in paradise, God gave them a period of fasting. God wanted to teach man various lessons at the beginning. Thus man was experiencing the first test (fasting, selfcontrol, obedience, keeping the commandments, proving his love to God). Unfortunately man failed this simple test; he broke the commandment and broke the heart of God. There is a verse in the Bible we come across twice, once in the Old and once in the New Testament. Our Lord Christ recalled it once again in the temptation on the mountain: He answered saying: “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God� (Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:4). This commandment has become the bases for fasting and this period of fasting is where our love to God increases. Fasting is not a prohibition of the body from food, or a physical workout rather it is an expression of love to the creator not an expression of strength. Our Lord Christ at the beginning of the sermon on the mountain talked about the Christian life (Matthew 6). He spoke about the two things prior to fasting: the first is helping the poor and the second being prayer. After these then comes the period and life of fasting which is the third step. Assisting the poor which is the first step resembles our relationships with one another. Our feeling towards each other increases at the time of need and we do not distinguish the needy person according to their religion or race but as a human being. Therefore we feel the pain of others wherever they may be in the world and we pray for every
needy soul, even if they were across the world from us, even if we do not know them or their name. Then comes prayer which resembles our relationship with God. Christian fasting is dependant on a period of abstaining, then eating vegetarian food. The period of abstinence can extend to long hours and can even exceed 3pm (depending on the guidance of the Confession Father). The rest of the day we’re allowed to have vegetarian food. The abstinence period is a period of training where the will of the person is to abstain themselves from food at that specific time. Of course fasting isn’t only about food, but it is the first component in fasting, it is a training period for saying “no”, which is practicing our self-control. The period of having vegetarian food reminds us of Adam and Eve when they were still in paradise before they committed sin, they used to eat from the food of the soil. Vegetarian food usually gives power to man, not power to increase his lusts. Also, during our fasts, we submit our bodies to the work of our spirit. We want the spirit to guide the body not the other way around. For this to happen we need to give the spirit a chance and this chance is during the periods of fasting such that we don’t live just according to the body but to the spirit. Thus our spiritual lives can be closer to heaven than earth. In fasting we are freed from our egos, we begin to feel our weakness. This freedom is required in our life, we are battled by ourselves a great deal and we may fall at any time or at any age. It is true that the devil can battle us humans and we can be battled by the world’s lustful desires, but when the person battles themselves it remains with them forever. Fasting is the companion of prayer. It is also the companion of charity and service and the Christian life in general. The love of God motivates us to fast, our request for the strength from the Holy Spirit motivates us to fast, and our request of being set free from our ego motivates us to fast. Even our love for one another motivates us to fast. In addition to this, fasting itself is a practice for repentance and humility. This is evident from the story of the people of Nineveh. It is a practice of repentance and at the same time it gives peace to the person so that he feels he is closer to. As fasting makes us feel for one another it also makes a person feel his weakness as well. This feeling of one’s weakness is used to overcome anger and selfishness. When we fast we gain a virtue of loving everyone unconditionally. By fasting we gain many more virtues. Those who truly benefit from fasting find that they can control their anger and whatever they utter. They somewhat attain to the virtue of silence and the virtue of having pity towards others. People gain all these virtues through fasting. St Athanasius the apostolic has a wonderful saying: “When fasting is kept holy, it not only leads to repentance, but it prepares saints. It leads them to the heavenlies not just the earthlies.”
St George Church Sunday school with Fr Kyrillos Farag
St Abraam’s High School group
St Mark’s Yr 10 Class
Fr Mark Attalla and a group of youth from Melbourne visiting the monastery
Fasting and the Imitation of Christ By: Fr Matthew the Poor In His forty days’ experience of absolute fasting, Christ laid down for us the basis of our dealings with our enemy—along with all his allurements and vain illusions. “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting” (Mk. 9:29). For when a person enters into prayerful fasting, Satan departs from the flesh. As the Son of God, Christ did not need fasting, nor did He need an open confrontation with Satan or baptism or filling with the Holy Spirit. Yet He fulfilled everything for our sake so His life and deeds would become ours. If we know that Christ was baptized to “be revealed to Israel” (Jn. 1:31), it follows that being filled with the Holy Spirit meant “being tempted by the devil.” This was so He could be revealed before the spirits of darkness, and openly enter into combat with the devil on behalf of our race. Fasting was to elevate the flesh to the level of war with the spirits of evil, those powers that hold sway over our weaker part, the flesh. The reader may notice that baptism, being filled with the Holy Spirit and fasting form a fundamental and inseparable series of acts in Christ’s life that culminated in perfect victory over Satan in preparation for his total annihilation by the cross. It is then extremely important to accept and to feel the power of each of these three acts in our depths and draw from Christ their action in us as they worked in Him, so that His same life may identify with ours. The ultimate aim of baptism, of being filled with the Holy Spirit, and of fasting is that Christ Himself may dwell in us: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Ga. 2:20). In baptism the connection with our old Adam is cut off for us to receive our sonship to God in Christ. In being filled with the Holy Spirit, our connection with the devil and with the life of sin is cut off for us to receive the Spirit of life in Christ. And in fasting, the connection between instinct and Satan is cut off to give the flesh victory in its life according to the Spirit, in Christ. We can never sever these three acts from each other; baptism grants spiritual fullness, and spiritual fullness grants (by fasting) victory for the flesh to walk in the Spirit. By the three together we live in Christ, and Christ lives in us. The dimension of time in these three acts does not weaken their merging together, nor does it separate one from the other. Baptism in childhood, the spirit’s fullness in mental and psychic maturity, and fasting, which concludes these three acts, could not be seen separately in the spiritual vision. Although they occur separately in time, out of human necessity, they are one act spiritually. They spring forth to us from Christ who is “One Act,” “One Word.” In all three acts, Christ dwells in us personally to give us His fullness, image, and life, so that we might live Him as One Act and One Word, and no longer live our own selves in our torn and disrupted image. The point to understand is that fasting is a divine act of life, which we receive from Christ complementary to baptism and fullness. Since its beginning, the Church has been occupied with infusing into its own body the acts of Christ’s life so they would become life-giving acts to all its members. If the Church imitates Christ in its life discipline, it is because it has been given grace and authority by God to possess Christ
Himself as a life of its own. The Church, which is one with Christ, is a lively and efficacious image of the life of Christ. The Gospel describes it as the “bride of Christ” united with her Bridegroom. Though the Gospel declares that the Church has become one with Christ, it still reiterates that Christ will remain a Bridegroom on His own, no matter how much He offers Himself. Neither does Christ become a Church, nor the Church become a Christ. This confirms to us that we, as members of the body of Christ, always need to strive to acquire Christ to become more like Him and to be a bride “without spot,” a betrothed “pure bride” in a perpetual state of betrothal like the Virgin who conceived and bore the Logos. Virginity here is “to keep oneself unstained from the world” (Jm. 1:27). Being stained is the ungodly union between Satan and “the lust of the flesh,” “the lust of the eyes,” and the “pride of life” (1 Jn. 2:16). These three bonds were united and shattered by Christ during His fast on the Mount of Temptation. He gave us the shattered bonds as an inheritance to live out and carry into effect by fasting in the fullness of the Holy Spirit and in the sacrament of baptism. Fasting in this sense is one of the fundamental phases that Christ underwent. We have never been able to claim that we live in the full maturity of Christ, or that Christ abides in us in His full measure, particularly if we overlook fasting. If baptism is one phase and crucifixion another, fasting is an extremely important stage between baptism and crucifixion. Fullness with the Holy Spirit, which Christ consummated by baptism, elevated the flesh to the level of extraordinary fasting, i.e. total deprivation of food and drink, utter seclusion and prayer. He thus raised the flesh to the stage of the cross.
h a n Jo FOR s n e Te
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Right: Fr Kyrillos Farag with a group of youth from St George Church
Youth group from St Barbra Church
Fr Daniel Fanous’s First Liturgy
St Mark’s Youth with the two newly ordained priest
Fr Pachomious’s First Liturgy
I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held (Rev 6:9) Bishop Anba Daniel and the monks of the St Shenouda Monastery Sydney, Australia, would like to send our deepest condolences to the family of the martyrs who have been recently been Martyred in Libya.
The Fathers Praying their daily Sunset Prayers