Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann

There is no Great Lent without fasting. But it seems that people today either do not take fasting seriously, or misunderstand its true spiritual meaning. For some, fasting consists in symbolically forbidding themselves something. For others it means conscientiously keeping the fasting rules, that is, eating Lenten food. In neither case is fasting often regarded as the ascetic effort of Great Lent. So here, as in other cases, we must first try to grasp the Church's teaching on fasting, and only then ask ourselves how we can apply this teaching in our lives.

Fasting, that is, abstaining from food, is not an exclusively Christian practice. It has existed and still exists in other religions, and outside religion too. We need to understand the specifically Christian meaning of fasting. This meaning is revealed to us first of all in the inner connection between two events of which the Bible tells: the first at the beginning of the Old Testament, the second at the beginning of the New. The first event: Adam “broke the fast” in paradise by tasting the forbidden fruit — this is how we learn of the first sin. Christ, the New Adam — this is the second event — begins His ministry with a fast. Adam was tempted and did not withstand the temptation. Christ was tempted and overcame the temptation. The result of Adam's fall was expulsion from paradise, and death. The fruit of Christ's victory is the trampling down of death and our return to paradise. Lack of space does not allow us to explain in detail the meaning of this parallel, but from what has been said it is clear that fasting is something decisive. It is not a mere obligation or custom; fasting is connected with the very mystery of life and death, of salvation and perdition. Sin is not only the breaking of some rule that calls for punishment; it is always a distortion of the life given by God. That is why the story of the first sin is told as an act connected with eating. Food is necessary to a living organism, for it keeps us alive. But here too the main question arises: what does it mean to be alive, what is “life” itself? Today the word is understood mainly in its biological sense: as though life were precisely that which depends wholly on food and, in general, on the physical side of all that lives. But in the light of Holy Scripture and Christian Tradition, a life that ends in death is identified with death, since the principle of death always exists and works within it. We know that God did not create death. He is the Giver of life. How then did life become mortal; why is death the absolute condition of everything that exists? The Church answers: because man rejected the life God gave him and preferred a life that depends not on God but on bread alone. He not only disobeyed God, for which he was punished, but changed the very relationship between himself and the world. Without doubt the world was given to man as “food,” as the means of life. But at the same time life was meant to be communion with God: “In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). The world and food were created so that through them man might have communion with God. Only food received for God's sake could be life-giving. Food in itself has no life in it and cannot reproduce life. God alone has life and is Himself Life. Even in food itself, the source of life is God, not calories. The boundless tragedy of Adam is that he took food as “life in itself.” More than that, he ate it secretly from God, apart from Him, and in order to be independent of Him. Adam did this because he believed that food has life in itself, and thought that by eating it he himself would become equal to God, that is, would have life in himself. To put it simply, he put his faith in food, when the one object of faith, trust and hope is God, and God alone. The earthly world, food, became Adam's gods, the source and origin of his life. He became their slave. Adam in Hebrew means “man,” and it is our common name. Man is still Adam, still the slave of “food.” He may assure us that he believes in God, but for him God is no longer life, food, the all-embracing substance of his existence. He may assure us that he receives life from God, but he does not live in God and for God. His knowledge, his experience, his self-confidence are built again and again on one and the same principle — “by bread alone.” We eat in order to live, but we do not live in God. Of all sins this is the greatest sin. And by this sin our life is condemned to death.

Christ is the New Adam. He came to destroy the sickness that Adam lodged in life, to restore man to true life; and so He too begins His earthly ministry with a fast. For forty days and forty nights He fasts. Hunger is the state in which we feel our dependence on something, when we need food in order to exist — and this proves that there is no self-sufficient life in us. It is the limit beyond which I either die of hunger or, having fed my body, feel once more that I am alive. In other words, it is the moment when a question confronts us that contains an ultimatum: on what does my life depend? And since this question is not abstract, since the very life of my body depends on how it is answered, this moment turns out to be a temptation as well. Satan came to Adam in paradise. He came to Christ in the desert. Two hungry men heard his words: eat, for your hunger shows that you depend wholly on food, that your life is in food. And Adam believed him and ate. Christ rejected this temptation and answered: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” He rejected this universal lie, the falsehood that Satan instilled into the whole world and made into an evident, unquestioned truth, the foundation of the whole human world-view, perhaps even of religion itself. By rejecting this lie Christ restored the right relationship between food, life and God — the relationship that Adam broke and that we still break every day.

What then does fasting mean for us Christians? It is participation in the fast that Christ Himself kept, and by which He freed us from total dependence on food, matter and the world. But our freedom can in no way be complete. We still live in a fallen world, the world of the old Adam, and since we are part of this world, we still depend on food. But since the death through which we must all pass has been trampled down by the death of Christ and has become a passage into life, the food we eat and the life this food sustains in us can become life in God and for God. Part of our food has already become “the food of immortality” — the very Body and Blood of Christ. But even our daily “bread,” which we receive from God, can become in this world something that furthers and strengthens our communion with God, and does not separate us from Him. Yet only fasting can accomplish this transformation, can give us substantial proof that our dependence on food and matter is not final, not absolute, and that together with prayer, grace and worship this dependence itself longs to become spiritual. And all this means that in its true meaning fasting is the only means of restoring in man his real nature. By it we expose Satan and his lie — that we depend on bread alone. Fasting unmasks this lie. It is deeply significant that Christ met Satan while He was fasting; significant too that He said later that Satan can be defeated only by prayer and fasting. Fasting is a real battle against the devil; it is a challenge to the all-embracing law that makes the devil “the prince of this world.” If a man is hungry, but understands that he really can be independent of this hunger, and understands that not only will he not perish from it, but on the contrary will be able to turn it into a source of spiritual strength and health, then nothing will remain of that great lie of Satan's in which we have lived since the time of Adam.

Fasting, as physical abstinence from food, is utterly useless without its second, spiritual side — prayer. This means that without a corresponding spiritual effort, without strengthening oneself with the divine reality, without recognizing one's complete dependence on God and on God alone, physical fasting really does become suicide. Physical fasting, for all its great importance, becomes not only meaningless but truly dangerous if it is not joined to spiritual effort, to prayer, to a mind gathered upon God. Fasting is an art that the saints mastered perfectly. It would be dangerous and presumptuous on our part to take up this art without spiritual understanding. The whole of the Lenten worship reminds us constantly of the difficulties, contradictions and temptations that rise up before one who relies on his own strength and not on God.

This is why spiritual preparation for fasting is needed. And this preparation consists, first, in asking for God's help, and second, in making all our effort dependent on God and directing it toward Him. We must keep the fast for God. We must sense God's presence in our body. All this must be achieved before the fast begins, so that by its very beginning we may be spiritually armed and prepared for spiritual combat and victory. And when the fast comes, in keeping with what has been said, it must be carried out on two levels: first, on the level of ascetic fasting, and second, of total fasting. Ascetic fasting consists in a sharp reduction of food; during it we should experience a constant state of hunger as remembrance of God. Everyone who has kept such a fast — even a little — knows that this ascetic fast, instead of weakening us, gives us a certain lightness, alertness, sobriety, joy and purity. We truly receive food as given by God. We are constantly turned toward that inner world which, inexplicably, itself nourishes us. We shall not go into the quantity and quality of food or its distribution through the day. All this depends on our individual capacities and the conditions of our life. But the principle is clear: it is a constant state of half-hunger whose “negative” side is transfigured by prayer, by the remembrance of God. The length of the total fast, which prepares us for Communion, should accordingly be limited to the time of Communion. This is above all the day before Holy Communion, before the Liturgy. Whether we fast from early morning or only from midday, the main purpose of this fast is to spend that day in expectation of being fed by God Himself, in hope in Him. Let us remember: however limited our fast may be, if it is a real fast it will lead us into temptations, weakness, doubts and irritability. In other words, it will be a struggle in which we shall probably be defeated more than once; but if our fast is genuine in essence, then our life in Christ will be revealed. A faith that has not overcome doubts and temptations is seldom real faith. Sadly, Christian growth is impossible without the bitter experience of mistakes and falls. How often it happens that people begin to fast with enthusiasm, but give up at the first failure. I would say that the real test of faith comes after the first fall. If after a failure we begin all over again, sooner or later our fast will bear spiritual fruit. Between holiness and the cynicism of disillusionment lies the great and divine virtue of patience — and first of all patience with oneself. There are no short cuts to holiness. For every step, every rung, we must pay the full price. So it is better and safer to begin with a minimum (a little beyond our natural capacities) and strengthen the fast little by little, than to climb too high all at once and then be shattered falling back to earth.

So from a symbolic, nominal fast we must return to real fasting. Let it be limited and modest, but consistent and serious. We must honestly assess our spiritual and physical abilities and possibilities, and act accordingly. Let us not forget that in fasting we need not fear our limited abilities, and that we should see in it divine confirmation that what is impossible with man is possible with God.

Translated (into Georgian) by Manana Gelashvili