Fasting
Every person should keep faith in God and love for Him stored up in the heart; but faith and love become living when they are shown in deeds. One such deed is when, in answer to God's boundless love for us, we deny ourselves a little of the pleasures of this world — food, amusement, comfort — and are abstinent. This is called fasting. In this sense a reasonable person should always be fasting, as with prayer (and such were and are the holy fathers); but in general a person, because of his fallen and weak nature, cannot abstain continually. So the Church has laid down a definite time and form of abstinence, that is, of fasting, the keeping of which, even if at first only mechanical and under compulsion, is a pledge that some day we shall be able to fast truly and live an abstinent life. Multi-day fasts
Four long fasts are appointed in the year, which come before four great feasts.
a) the Great Holy Fast — before the radiant Resurrection of Christ; b) the Nativity Fast — before the Nativity of Christ; c) the Dormition Fast — before the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos; d) the Apostles' Fast — before the feast of the chief apostles, Sts Peter and Paul.
a) The Great Holy Fast is the longest and most serious of them. It begins 49 days before Pascha and lasts until the feast of Pascha; b) the Nativity Fast lasts from 28 November to 7 January, when the Church celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ in the flesh (7 January is in fact 25 December by the old and true calendar that our Church uses); c) the Dormition Fast lasts two weeks, from 14 August to 28 August, when the Church celebrates the end of the earthly life of the Most Holy Theotokos — her Dormition; d) the length of the Apostles' Fast varies from 9 days to a month and a half. This is because its end is fixed but its beginning is movable and is tied to the feast of Pentecost, which in turn depends on the feast of Pascha (it is kept on the 50th day after Pascha). The Apostles' Fast begins a week after Pentecost and ends on 12 July (new style), when the Church commemorates the chief apostles, Sts Peter and Paul. One-day fasts
On particular days the Church has appointed one-day fasts for us:
a) Wednesday and Friday of every week except fast-free weeks, because on Wednesday Judas betrayed Jesus Christ and on Friday Christ was crucified; b) the eve of Theophany — 18 January (new style); c) the Beheading of St John the Baptist — 11 September (new style); d) the Exaltation of the Cross — 27 September (new style). Fast-free weeks
During the year there are several special weeks when Wednesday and Friday are not fast days, that is, fasting is lifted. Such a week is called a fast-free week (in Georgian msgepsi; in Old Georgian this word was used for any week, whether or not Wednesday and Friday were fasted, but today it has acquired the meaning of a week in which every day is free of fasting). There are five such fast-free weeks in the year:
a) from the Nativity to Theophany — from 25 December (7 January) to 4 (17) January; b) the week of the Publican and the Pharisee — the third week before the beginning of Great Lent; c) Cheesefare Week — the last week before Great Lent, when cheese and eggs are allowed; c) Bright Week — the week after Pascha; d) the week of Pentecost — the week following the feast of Pentecost. How to fast in practice
The month and date of the last four fast-free weeks must be looked up each year in the church calendar.
During a fast a person should not eat certain kinds of food: meat (animals and birds), dairy products (milk, matsoni, curds, cheese, sour cream, butter) and eggs.
Allowed: bread, grains, fruit, vegetables, melons and gourds, and honey.
It should also be noted here that there are, by tradition, universal rules for keeping the fasts, common to all the autocephalous Churches in every age; but there are certain limits within which the strictness of the fast may vary according to geographical position or particular circumstances (this concerns chiefly eating fish during a fast and keeping the strict fast). There are also traditions of the local Church (for example, we abstain from grapes and certain other fruit until the Transfiguration, and so on).
As for fish, it is generally counted a fasting food, but whether or not it may be eaten depends on the strictness of the fast. The same goes for wine. Despite its plant origin it is counted a non-fasting product, and if drunkenness is not allowed even outside a fast, in a fast it may be taken only in small quantity, and then only on Saturday and Sunday.
In general, the strictness of the fast at each particular time and place is determined by the primate of the local Church. What a believer should do if for some reason he cannot keep the fast
Sometimes it happens that a person finds it hard to keep the fast: he is very weak, or elderly, or ill, and the doctor has prescribed a special diet. In such a case, eating non-fasting food will not be counted as breaking the fast if the believer takes a blessing, given either by a bishop or by a priest. By virtue of this blessing the believer may take dairy products, and even meat, if this is necessary.
Keeping the fast is also not obligatory for children under the age of 12. If parents nonetheless want to accustom a child to fasting from the start, we advise them to reason thus: for a child, eating meat every day is not only not necessary but even harmful. So his diet should be arranged so that Wednesday and Friday are his days free of meat.
