Metropolitan Anthony of Chkondidi (†1815)

The Lord says by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah: “Sanctify a fast, proclaim a solemn service.” It is plain to see that the fast is given by the Lord; if the fast had not been given, He would not say, “Sanctify a fast”; but the fast is given by the Lord. As food is given for the body, so the fast is given to the soul as food. The four elements — fire, water, earth and air — strengthen the body, and God gave food to help them. The four virtues strengthen the soul, that is, wisdom, courage, chastity and justice. To help them, God gave the fast. As the body will die without food, so without fasting the soul will die, that is, perish, as Esau died and perished through gluttony. So God has given both: food for the body and fasting for the soul; the image of both is seen in the commandment to Adam. God commanded Adam: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.” Here is the image of bodily food. And again He commanded: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat.” Here is the image of spiritual food, which is fasting. So it turns out that together with food for the body, fasting too is given by God; and it is given as so necessary that without fasting there is no salvation of the soul. Let us show how there is no salvation of the soul without fasting. He from whom the devil and his temptation do not depart will undoubtedly not be saved. And the devil and his temptation do not depart from a man without fasting, as the Lord Jesus says of those possessed: “This kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer.” That is why fasting was given us with great firmness; how, let us show further. First, through His great Forerunner John He commanded fasting, for John took nothing, as the Lord affirms, saying: “John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking.” Second, Christ Himself commanded fasting to us by His own example, as Matthew teaches us: “The Saviour fasted forty days and forty nights” — He did it for our instruction, for He Himself had no need of fasting. The apostle Peter declares to us plainly: “He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.” Why should the Sinless One need fasting? But He fasted for our instruction. At the beginning of the sermon it was said: “Sanctify a fast”; let us now say how a fast becomes defiled. The fast of one who touches forbidden food is defiled, as Adam touched the forbidden food and brought the Lord's wrath upon himself. So too whoever breaks the fast laid down by the fathers and touches what is forbidden will bring the Lord's wrath upon himself. As He was angered with Adam for his unseemly eating, the same Lord tells us by the mouth of the prophet: “I am the Lord, I change not.” The fast is defiled again in this way: as the Hebrews sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play and were defiled, and the Lord was angry with them, so that the tablet of the Law was then broken by Moses — so today too, for those who live in gluttony the Law is loosed; by the Law they are not counted; if in the time of Israel the tablet of the Law was broken because of gluttony, know, glutton, that because of your gluttony the Law has been taken from you. The fast is defiled again if the one who fasts judges the one who eats, as the Pharisee fasted. He says himself: “I fast twice in the week”; but because he reproached the publican and said, “I am not as extortioners and adulterers, or even as this publican,” his fast was defiled and he perished. Let no one become like the Pharisee; you who fast, do not judge the one who eats, or you will be punished like the Pharisee. Listen to the great teacher Paul: “Let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth.” The fast is defiled again by pride, as the Pharisee's fast was defiled by his pride — when he exalted himself over the publican and reproached him — and he was punished, while the publican was justified, as the Lord Jesus says: “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified.” You who fast, do not take on the Pharisee's haughtiness and destroy your blessed labour. Christ commands you: “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted; and he that exalteth himself shall be abased.” You have images of pride and humility visible to the eye — learn from them: the proud Pharisee was punished, while the humble publican was saved; and the apostle teaches you: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” So prove, and hold fast what is better — the publican's humility; if you do not, your fast is not pleasing to God; He tells you plainly by the mouth of the prophet: “Your fasts and your idleness and your feasts my soul hateth.” And if anyone asks why God established fasting, we must give an example here: physicians examine a sick man and learn that the illness has entered him through food, and so they prescribe him a fast from some food. So too God saw the nature of men: through the unseemly eating of our first father Adam, the sickness of sin is in man. For this reason He gave us fasting as a medicine. Eating made our nature sick; it is just that fasting should make it well. Let us take an example from the Old Scripture of how fasting heals one sick with sin: the city of Nineveh became so sick with sin that it was to be overthrown; but fasting so healed it that nothing harmed it at all. If spiritual overthrow threatens anyone through sin, as it did Nineveh, fasting will keep him unharmed. Had Nineveh not fasted, it would have been overthrown. Without doubt, if you do not fast either, you will be overthrown spiritually. That is why God established fasting. Let us give another reason for the establishing of the fast: gluttony gives birth to fornication, as fornication came upon Lot through gluttony. And John of Sinai says: “Gluttony is the mother of fornication.” Since gluttony is the mother of fornication, God wants us by fasting to put to death the mother of fornication, gluttony, so that the fornication born of her may not grow up in us. If the mother of fornication, gluttony, is with you, without doubt the fornication born of her will be with you too. Let us give yet another reason for the fast, for what it was given us. Eating came in after the fall; before the fall man was nourished, like an angel, by the vision of God, as the prophet David says: “Man did eat angels' food.” And eating, which came in after the fall, is a likeness to the beasts, as David cries: “He is compared to the senseless cattle, and is like them.” And God does not want our likeness to the beasts — He wants our likeness to the angels. See the power of fasting: while you remain in the fast you are like the angels: they take no food, and neither do you; they serve Christ, and so do you. Perhaps you will ask me: if I do not fast, shall I perish? Instead I ask you: if you take no food, will you die in the body or not? You will tell me: I shall die. So I tell you: the food of the soul is fasting; if you do not fast, you will perish in the soul. And if you tell me: I am sick and have no strength to fast — Paul tells the sick to take food. This is seen from what he writes to Timothy: “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.” But in its place the sick man must keep another fast; fasting is not only in food, there is another fast too, as Theodore the Studite says: “Fasting is not bounded by food alone.” So instead of abstaining from food the sick man must fast in another way. Let us show briefly what another fast is like. Beloved, fast with your tongue, as the prophet David bids us: “Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.” God counts this highly, as the apostle Paul assures you: “If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man.” But do not defile this fast either. From the beginning of the sermon you hear: “Sanctify a fast”; by what is it defiled? If you have guile in your heart, and speak what is good only outwardly with your lips, this is not pleasing to God; God does not want guile; He Himself tells us by the mouth of Isaiah: “Is it such a fast that I have chosen?” What fast, then, does He want? By the mouth of the same Isaiah He commands you: “Loose every bond of falsehood” — while you act with falsehood and guile; God does not want this, nor does He count it. In place of fasting keep virginity too, which is a likeness to the angels; but take care not to defile it. — How? As you keep yourself from fornication and adultery in deed, so you must keep your eyes too, or you will become guilty, as the Saviour and Lord assures you: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” If anyone supposes that, keeping neither the fast nor the virtue that takes its place, he will be saved without repentance, he has wholly lost his mind, and this is ignorance. Consider what ignorance this is: in vain did the Baptist lay the severity and hardship of repentance on men, if a man is saved without repentance; and Herod, his murderer, since he did not repent, should not, by your folly, be counted in the wrong. But Christ undoes your folly and tells you: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” And if anyone thinks he will be saved by wealth, look at this too, what ignorance it is: if wealth saves a man, then the rich man who made merry and fared sumptuously every day should, by your folly, be saved; and if he was saved by wealth, then Lazarus the beggar must perish.

Flee from such a misguided thought of the heart. Christ tells you and makes known the rich man's being in hell in these words: “He lift up his eyes, being in torments”; and of Lazarus the beggar He says: “And was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom.” And if anyone says, I am young, and puts off repentance, this too is folly, because in Nineveh there were many young people, but for their sin all, from the greatest to the least, took fasting to heart and by it were saved from overthrow; that city was not saved by youth. So your youth will not save you from the overthrow of sin either, unless you take up fasting and repentance; do not deceive yourself in vain. And if anyone supposes, I am a man of rank, and for that reason does not keep fasting and repentance, this too is folly: what king will there be better than David, or like him? God Himself bears witness of him thus: “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will.” Such a king he was, yet his kingship did not blot out his sin — repentance and fasting blotted it out. David himself tells what a fast he kept: “as the locust... my knees are weak through fasting.” If David was not delivered from sin without repentance, let no evil thought of the heart deceive you: without repentance you will not escape the punishment of sin either. And let this cause no one to stumble: I have confession, and confession washes; it will wash me — what other repentance do I need? Beloved! Confession alone is not enough for you. First I will show you by an example that confession alone is not enough for you: if you show a physician a wound but do not apply the medicine, it will not be healed; so too, if you show your spiritual father the wound of sin but do not apply the medicine of repentance, it will not be healed. The prophet David calls you both to confession and to repentance. He calls you to confession in these words: “Depart from evil”; he calls you to repentance by adding the words: “and do good.” David himself, too, made an image of confession and added repentance to it: he made an image of confession in that he did not hide his sin before the prophet Nathan; he made repentance, as he says himself: “I water my couch with my tears.” I will offer you another example showing that you must make both confession and repentance: the apostle Peter made both an image of confession and one of repentance: he made an image of confession when, having denied the Lord, “he went out.” Here is the image of confession: confession is a going out from the place of sin, and Peter went out from the place of his transgression, “and wept bitterly.” Here is the image of repentance! Again, the prodigal son made an image of confession when he turned back to his father: confession is a turning back to God the Father, and the prodigal son turned back to his father; he said to his kind father: “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee.” Here is the image of repentance! Let true images convince you: if you do not have both wings, confession and repentance, you will not fly up into the Kingdom. If a dove does not have both its wings, it will not escape the fowler. So too, if you do not have both confession and repentance, you will not escape the fowler, the devil. That is why the prophet David asks with longing for both wings: “Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.” It was said above that if one who fasts reproaches one who eats, the faster defiles his own fast. May this spiritual sickness befall no one. So let us say a little about it: beloved, fasting is a likening, and if you fast in order to become like an angel, the angel does not reproach one who eats. Elijah ate both meat and bread, and the angel not only did not reproach him but brought him these things himself. The angel does not reproach, yet you reproach — such a fast is not a property of the angels. If you reproach because you want to teach fasting, teaching should not be by reproach; rather, teach with gentleness. Look at your Jesus, how He taught with gentleness: “Do as ye have seen”; and if even then you reproach, your fast is not pleasing to Christ; He commands you by the mouth of Paul: “Let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth”; and if your fast is not pleasing to Christ, you labour in vain. And if you say, I see in him a matter deserving reproach, and so I reproach him — here we must remember Christ's word: “Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” If you want to reproach, why do you not reproach yourself? If you think you have done nothing deserving reproach, you deceive yourself, as John the Theologian says: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Pride also defiles the fast, as it defiled the Pharisee's fast. So let us speak of this too: may no one's fast be defiled by pride! You who fast perhaps take pride in holding to a property of the angels — fasting; but you should not be proud of this. God made you so that you should always have been like an angel, and now for a little while you have the property of an angel because you are fasting; tomorrow you will return again to the eating of the beasts; for ever you have been cut off by sin from the property of the angels, and you take pride in a single day; this is not wisdom. The peacock is a beautiful bird, and its feet are not in keeping with its beauty; they say that when it looks down at its feet it is greatly grieved. Your fast too is beautiful above all, but here take on the property of the peacock: as it looks at its feet, unworthy of its beauty, and is grieved, so you too look at the sin, unworthy of your beautiful fast, for which you are fasting; at the sight of your sin take up sorrow, and by this get away from pride. If you are proud, know that you are in error; this is how you are in error: you think that by fasting you have been raised up to the mountain of virtue, when you have fallen right down from virtue, as Jesus the Saviour affirms, saying: “Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased.”

In what was said above it was said that gluttony defiles the fast one has kept. May this defilement touch no one; to guard against it, let us say briefly a little about gluttony. The desire for food accompanies a man of flesh, but since he is rational he must not, for the sake of the beasts' passing food, lose the birthright of the Kingdom; he must not become like Esau through gluttony, but must take to heart the deed of Jacob. Jacob too, as a man, had the desire for food; he even had boiled lentils and bread; but he understood that the blessing of the birthright from his father was better than passing food; he gave this food to the gluttonous Esau, and himself prepared a gift pleasing to his father, and by his father's blessing received the birthright. So you too, though as men you desire food, look with understanding and see that the birthright of the Kingdom is sweeter; so leave the food of gluttony, and offer such a fast as God the Father loves, that you may receive the birthright of the Kingdom. Had Jacob given himself to that food, he could not have prepared the gift his father loved, and would not have received the birthright. So you too, do not give yourselves to gluttony, or you will be unable to prepare what God loves as a gift — the fast — and you will fall from the birthright of the Kingdom. But let us utterly abhor gluttony and offer a spotless fast to God the Father, from Whom we shall receive that heavenly birthright; to Him be glory now and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Sermons of Anthony of Chkondidi, Kutaisi, 1898