Among the eminent good works, the Church prescribes fasting in the second place after prayer. Unlike prayer, fasting, and the third good work, almsgiving, cannot stand alone, but fasting and almsgiving must be accompanied by prayer. Fasting, when connected and ennobled with prayer, has a number of indispensable purposes in the life of the Church as well as in the life of the individual Christian.
The first purpose and advantage of fasting is to reawaken our desire for God through the mortification of our fleshly passions. First and foremost among the disordered natural energies, which we find within us is our hunger, our desire for food. By mortifying our hunger, we learn that "man does not live by bread alone," and that our true hunger is for something greater than the material food, which fills our bellies. The human being was made for God, and there is restlessness in the human spirit until that spirit rests in God, as Saint Augustine and many other of the Fathers of the Church pointed out.
At the same time, fasting is an expiation for our sins. We offer the voluntary suffering of fasting as a penance, a participation in the remission of sins, which is wrought in Christ's suffering and death. In some measure, through the suffering of hunger, we willingly enter into "death" with Christ in preparation for a corresponding share in the Resurrection. As many are willing to testify, fasting intensifies our sorrow for sin. It makes us feel our true poverty, apart from God, away from the Father's house.
Furthermore, fasting is also seen in Christian Tradition as a means to greater spiritual and mental acuity. By mortifying the body through hunger, the mind is able to rise above the body and more clearly perceive spiritual and eternal things. Whereas, slavery to hunger keeps the mind mired in the things of the world, mortification of the body through hunger allows the mind to rise aloft and consider the greater things to which human life must ultimately be aimed. Thus, the reality of the maxim of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky becomes especially real for us: "You are only loaned to this world."
According to the physical laws discovered by Isaac Newton, "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." We can see something akin to this as well in the spiritual life, since, when we mortify what is base in us, we end up improving and ennobling what is higher. The hymns of the Church do not tire of pointing this out to us. Adam, our ancestor, was condemned to return to the earth from which he had been taken, because he did not restrain his appetite. In contrast, by restraining our appetites, we rise from that same condemnation and, with the eyes of faith, begin to perceive the destiny that lies for us in the Kingdom of Heaven.
For all of these reasons, fasting is a tool for us, helping us to grow in the knowledge of God. It is available to us at all times, whenever we may perceive a need. It may be said with some certainty that we do not culturally perceive the need of fasting often enough, for the poor condition of our bodies clearly demonstrate that. After all, we should not hesitate to admit the physical advantages of fasting too, when it is tempered by prudence and ennobled by faith. We are composite beings, body and soul. Thus, it is perfectly legitimate to fast to benefit the body, just not the body only. Fasting can be expected to benefit the whole of our being, body and soul.
Fasting is a tool that is available to us always, just as prayer and almsgiving are as well. Nevertheless, during certain periods of the year the Church instructs us to fast corporately. The primary example of this corporate fasting is the period that we begin tomorrow, namely Great Lent, the forty day fast, which prepares us for the celebration of the Lord's Passover from death to life in the Resurrection. It is this period of fasting, which we begin tomorrow.
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