Metropolitan Kallistos Ware on Fasting
Many years ago, Archimandrite Kallistos Ware
penned an article on Fasting. The whole article can be found at the beginning
of the Lenten Triodion that he helped translate. I
was hoping that the whole article would have been published on the internet, but
have only found excerpts. So here is a taste:
"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.
If I find the whole piece somewhere, I'll post
a link. It is well worth reading.
Posted: Tuesday - February 19, 2008 at 01:06 PM
