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Beloved in Christ:
Sometimes
when we enter the period of the Fast, we miss the big picture. We
are concerned with keeping the fast, with eating the right foods and
making sure that we do it right! We have to be perfect! It
is truly a good and pious practice to adhere rigorously to the fast,
and this is what we are asked to do during the period of Great
Lent. The issue is not one of simply abstaining from foods, but
rather of looking more deeply to understand as to what ends we are
fasting.
If we look to the Gospels, we remember the
parable of Christ and the Disciples walking through the fields on the
Sabbath day picking the heads of grain and eating them. Remember
a time in America when everything was closed on Sunday? Sunday
was a strict Christian Sabbath. There was no working on
Sunday. The Jewish Sabbath was even stricter. No work
was to be done whatsoever. The Pharisees were very critical of
Christ and the Disciples because they were working on the
Sabbath. But, they failed to see what was really happening.
The Disciples were doing this out of necessity because they were
hungry. Christ rebuked the Pharisees and reminded them “The
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Not working
on the Sabbath, while having its pious purposes, did not make a person
righteous or justified in the eyes of God. It was God’s gift to
humankind, giving him a day when he was required to do absolutely
nothing and to rest. He was forbidden from working on the Sabbath
so that he did not have the temptation to work. In our
hectic lives that we are living, I’m sure many of us would appreciate
being told, “Don’t work today!”
If we take Christ’s words
and apply them to the fast, we understand the Great Fast in a different
light. “The fast was made for man, not man for the fast.”
The intensity of our fasting does not make us righteous or justified in
the eyes of God; in fact, we need to be careful that in the intensity
of our fasting that we do not become proud and start to believe we are
justified simply because we fasted properly. When we fast,
it is important for us to remember that the fast was made for us!
It is our opportunity to cleanse our bodies from the impurities that
have been building. Through the cleansing of our bodies, we are
reminded of the cleansing that needs to take place in our souls as
well.
When we fast, the rich foods are not constantly at
our fingertips and we remind ourselves, once again, that our reliance
is on God as The Giver of life. When we hunger for food and
food is not available, we turn our hearts to God to provide. We
recall the children of Israel praying to be delivered from their hunger
and how the manna from heaven was provided for them. Perhaps, we
are not physically in danger of going hungry today or tomorrow; but
each of us has areas in which we are starving, in which we are blind or
choose not to see. When we experience hunger in our stomachs, we
begin to recognize the hunger that exists elsewhere. We forget
about feeding the hole in our stomachs and start feeding the hole in
our souls. The fast exists to open us up to prayer and to see God
more clearly. The fast does not exist on its own or to justify
us. It exists for us to cling to God in prayer.
God bless you!
With love in Christ,
+Father Felix
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©2004
Holy Cross-Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church &
Elias Katsaros |
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