Fasting in the Orthodox Church

Fasting is among the oldest practices of the Church. It begins already in paradise: the first commandment given to man was a commandment not to eat something. Christ Himself fasted forty days in the wilderness before He began to preach, and when the disciples could not heal a possessed boy, He told them that this kind goes out only by prayer and fasting. The prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch fasted and prayed before they sent out Paul and Barnabas. The Church has never let go of this. Anyone who opens an Orthodox calendar sees that almost half the days of the year are fast days.

Why fast

Fasting is not a diet and not an achievement. Nor is it a payment: God has no need of our hunger. The Fathers call it an exercise, and the word they use, askesis, simply means training. Whoever fasts learns to bend his will in the smallest matter, at meals, three times a day. Whoever can do that can do more. Whoever cannot notices that too, and that discovery is already a gain: so weak is man, and so greatly does he need God’s help.

That is why fasting in the Church is never separate from prayer and from mercy. An old saying of the Fathers holds that a fast without almsgiving is a lamp without oil, and that what the belly spares is due to the poor. The body eats less so that the heart may have room: for prayer, for Scripture, for the neighbour who needs attention. Whoever fasts and meanwhile treats those of his household irritably has not fasted; he has only fed himself on his own bad temper.

What one abstains from

The rule of the Church is simple, though the exceptions are many. On a fast day one eats no meat, no dairy and no eggs. On stricter days no fish either, and in the monasteries no oil and no wine. On the Saturdays and Sundays of the fasting seasons the rule is relaxed: then wine and oil are permitted. On a few feasts within the fast, such as the Annunciation and Palm Sunday, fish is permitted. Anyone who wants to know exactly looks at the Church calendar; it gives the rule day by day.

In its strictest form the rule is a monastic rule. It was written down for monks who have nothing else to do but pray and work. Families, the sick, pregnant women, children, travellers and those who do heavy work keep the rule as far as they are able. That is no leniency of recent years; it is the practice of centuries, and the priest to whom a person confesses is the one who sets the measure of it. Better a small fast that is kept up than a great fast that is abandoned after ten days with a sense of failure.

The fasting seasons

The year has four fasting seasons. Great Lent, which precedes Pascha, lasts seven weeks: six weeks of fasting and Great and Holy Week. It begins on the Monday after Forgiveness Sunday and is the strictest and at the same time the richest time of the year, with the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on Wednesdays and Fridays, the prayer of St Ephrem the Syrian and the penitential Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete. The Apostles’ Fast begins a week after Pentecost and ends on 29 June, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul; it is therefore of a different length each year. The Dormition Fast, the Fast of the Mother of God, lasts from 1 to 14 August, preceding her Dormition. The Nativity Fast, also called St Philip’s Fast, begins on 15 November and lasts forty days until the Nativity of Christ.

In addition, Wednesday and Friday throughout the year are fast days: Wednesday in commemoration of the betrayal, Friday of the crucifixion. A few single days are added to these: the Beheading of John the Baptist on 29 August, the Exaltation of the Cross on 14 September and the eve of Theophany. Set against these are fast-free weeks, among others the week after Pascha and the week after Pentecost, in which the Church expressly does not want anyone to fast.

Whoever follows the Julian calendar, as most Russian and Serbian parishes do, counts the fixed dates thirteen days later; the Nativity Fast then begins on 28 November by the civil calendar. It is good to know which calendar one’s own parish uses.

How one fasts

With moderation, and without fuss. The Lord says it Himself: when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting. Fasting is a matter between a person and God. Whoever brings it up at work, or explains at a birthday why he leaves the cake alone, has rarely gained anything by it. Whoever is a guest of others and is served something that does not fit the rule eats what is set before him, without comment: the apostle writes that love is the fulfilment of the law, and the Fathers say that hospitality takes precedence over fasting. The next day one takes up again what one had set aside.

Whoever begins, begins small. First the Wednesday and the Friday, then one of the shorter fasting seasons, then Great Lent. Not everything at once, and not with a chart on the fridge as the only compass. It is not about what one does not eat, but about what one does with it: the prayer that takes its place, the time that is freed, the money that one saves and gives away. And if it fails, and it fails for everyone at times, there is no reason for despondency. One gets up and goes on; that is the whole art.

Whoever experiences Great Lent in an Orthodox parish discovers that it is not gloomy. The services are longer and quieter, the vestments are dark, but the tone is one of expectation. On the night of Pascha the fast is lifted with a single sentence: Christ is risen. Whoever has fasted for seven weeks only then truly knows what a feast is.

The article The Mystery of Repentance deals with confession, which goes together with fasting.