What is behind the word “fasting”, which is so familiar to us? We often perceive it only as a time of food restrictions, as a “difficult season” in the church calendar. But the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers teach us to look more deeply. Fasting is not just a disciplinary church prescription—it is a special way of life that runs through the history of mankind and leads us to eternity.
Let us reflect on it together and answer the question: what is fasting?
1. The Natural State of Primordial Man
The first thing we must understand is that fasting is not a medieval invention or a punishment. It is the natural state of humanity before the fall. All food in Paradise was fasting, and it had to be eaten with abstinence in order to keep in mind: Man doth not live by bread only (Deut. 8:3). Paradisal bliss already included fasting, for there was no place for satiety, which dulls the soul.
In Paradise man was given the commandment to fast. Even before the fall, when Adam’s body was incorruptible and his mind was pure, the Lord prescribed fasting as a means of fostering freedom. The prohibition to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil was, in essence, the first commandment of abstinence given to man. It is important to understand that fasting has never been perceived by Christianity as something complete in and of itself. It has always been just a preparation, a path leading to an goal.
For primordial man this abstinence became a special educational tool—a test through which free will could be revealed and strengthened. We can say that fasting was introduced as a law that exercised freedom. If virtue were just an innate quality, an automatic property of Paradisal existence, it would not be a fully personal property of man. The Lord wanted righteousness to be the result of a conscious, sovereign choice—a fruit that grows from free obedience of a loving heart.
2. The Foundation of Righteousness and Prophetic Ministry
In the Holy Scriptures, fasting often appears to us not as a mere custom or rite, but as a visible sign of special closeness to God. It became synonymous with righteousness and holiness. Let us recall the Old Testament prophets: St. Elias, the great zealot of faith; St. Moses, who spent forty days on Mt. Sinai without bread and water—all of them show us an image of those for whom abstinence was a natural companion of communion with God. But this image is especially vividly manifested in the person of St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner of the Lord. His life, spent from the youth in the wilderness, became a living sermon telling us that we can live not so much by bread as by the Word of God.
The Gospel has preserved for us sparse yet expressive details of the life of the greatest among those born of women: And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey (Matt. 3:4). His austere life was not self-torture or contempt for the gifts of God. It was a natural expression of the inner state of a man who was directed towards the coming Messiah with his whole being. St. John’s fasting was not a diet for the sake of good health or a feat for the sake of self–affirmation, but perfect freedom from the power of earthly things. His heart was so full of God and the thirst for His coming that all human attachments—to comfort, dietary diversity, and peace—simply lost their power.
And here we are coming to a very essential thing: A righteous man is not holy because he does not eat meat or wears coarse clothes. External abstinence only reflects the inner state of a soul that has come to love God above all created things. When the heart truly meets the Living God, it naturally grows cold to the world—not in the sense of hostility to creation, but in the sense of losing its painful dependence on it. Fasting becomes not a heavy duty, but the joyful path of liberation. Just as a bird taking to the skies does not regret leaving its shell on the ground, so a soul that loves Christ easily leaves what seemed important before. And the more perfect this liberation is, the more fully you can receive the grace of God.
3. The Key to Understanding History
Fasting is also a key to understanding human history. History began with fasting (the commandment in Paradise) and continued with its violation. The fall is breaking the fast, lack of abstinence. Adam broke the fast, tasted the forbidden fruit, and the world fell into the abyss of corruption.
Life in Paradise was a time of unprecedented closeness of man to the Creator, when all creation was in harmony and obedience to its human king. Adam was made lord of the world by God: the elements had no power over him, animals did not threaten him, diseases did not affect his body, and death itself did not dare approach the one who was created for eternity because it did not yet exist. For God made not death (Wis. 1: 13). It was a state of genuine royal dignity, when man enjoyed the fullness of God’s gifts, but was called to grow in love and freedom.
And in the midst of this untold abundance the Lord gave man a single commandment of abstinence—not to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This commandment was not a painful prohibition, but rather a small obedience through which man could show his gratitude to the Creator for all His countless blessings. It was the little that Adam could freely have offered to God as a sign of his love and faithfulness. Just as a child who has received everything from his father can fulfill his small request out of filial love, so man was called to a small feat of abstinence for the sake of a great purpose—to keep and strengthen his unity with God.
Unfortunately, the history of mankind, which began with fasting in Paradise, continued with the tragic violation of it. The fall took place precisely through intemperance—through disregard for the only “don’t” that God had given to man as a test of his freedom. Adam broke the fast, tasted the forbidden fruit, and in an instant the world fell into the abyss of suffering, disease, and death. The gift of immortality was lost, harmony with nature was destroyed, and dominion was replaced by a struggle for survival. Thus, having been trampled upon, fasting, given as a means of union with God, became the cause of separation.
And now each one of us is called to understand that fasting is not just a tradition, not an accidental institution, but a powerful, practical way to return to Divine plan from which we fell away at the beginning of history. Returning to fasting, we begin the path opposite to the fall, and this is the key to the entire sacred history of salvation.
4. The Way Back to Paradise
If we look more closely at what happens to us during holy fasting, we will discover an amazing truth: Fasting for us becomes not just a time of limitations, but a true journey—a return home to the lost Paradise. Of course, we cannot mechanically, by sheer effort of will, return to the blissful state primordial Adam was in. Our fall is too profound, and our nature is too corrupted by sin. But we have been given a path, which is opposite to the fall. Just as our ancestors Adam and Eve once fell away from God through intemperate eating and distrust of the only commandment, so now we are called to ascend to God through voluntary abstinence and obedience to the Church Typicon. Every “no” said to our stomach, every “I won’t” in response to a sinful habit becomes a small step on this journey home—from exile to return, from slavery to sonship.
And here the Church gives us an amazing prototype from the sacred history of the Old Testament. With every Lent we, like the new Israel, come out of the Egypt of passions. Egypt is an image of carnal slavery, the land where, like the Hebrews, we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full (Exod. 16:3), but paid bitter price for this satiety—the loss of freedom, forgetfulness of God, and the hard labor of sin. Let us recall the murmurings of the Israelites in the desert—they pined for the fleshpots of Egypt, even though those were fleshpots of slavery. Likewise, our fallen nature is sometimes nostalgic for the old life without fasting, without prayer, and without restrictions—for the life where we were full, but not free. Fasting calls on us to abandon these memories and trust in our Shepherd and Head, Christ, Who leads us through the wilderness of Lent.
The desert is not a place of death, although at first it frightens with its scarcity. The desert is a place of meeting with God, a place of purification and the gaining of true freedom. Israel wandered for forty years before entering the Promised Land; the Church fasts for forty days before meeting the Radiant Resurrection of Christ. And just as the ancient Jordan parted before the people of God, so the tomb of Christ opens to us on Paschal night. The path of fasting is that of escape from all bondage—from the Egypt of sin, from the captivity of passions, and from years of captivity by vanity. We walk, limiting ourselves in “Egyptian fleshpots” in order to taste of another food—the one about which the Lord said: My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work (Jn. 4:34). And the more zealously we walk this path, the less we look back at the abandoned Egypt, and the more clearly the light of the Promised Land glimmers ahead—the joy of Pascha—where there is no longer fasting, but eternal rejoicing; where there is no longer abstinence, but fullness of unity with the Risen Christ.
5. Becoming Like Christ and Participating in His Passion
But where does this long desert path, this exodus from the passions of Egypt, lead us? If we look closely at the direction of our Lenten journey, we will discover an amazing truth: the path of Lent leads us not just to self-improvement, not to pride in our feats, but to Christ. For us fasting is becoming like the One Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn. 14:6). Let us take a closer look at the Gospel: before the most important task of His earthly ministry—going out to preach, before meeting the tempter and beginning the salvific journey to Golgotha—the Lord retreats to the wilderness and spends forty days there in fasting and prayer. This is not a mere coincidence or just an example to follow. With His forty-day fasting, Christ sanctified our prayer, made the wilderness a place of meeting with God, and abstinence—a weapon against the enemy. He walked this path first, so that we could follow Him—not wandering in the dark, but seeing His light ahead.
The Gospel of Matthew has preserved for us these precious lines about this event:
And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to Him, he said, If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Mt. 4:2-4).
Here a very deep mystery is revealed to us: Christ comes as the New Adam to rectify what the old Adam did. The first man was in Paradise, living in perfect abundance, where there was no hunger, thirst, or need—and yet he succumbed to the temptation of the evil one, was seduced by the fruit, broke the fast given to him by God, and fell through it. The Second Adam, the Lord Himself, comes to a world lying in wickedness, to the wilderness where there is nothing, where He is exhausted by hunger after forty days of fasting, where satan tempts Him with exactly what the first Adam fell into—the stomach, the desire to be satiated, and distrust of the Father. And Christ triumphs where Adam fell. He does not respond to the tempter with His Divine power (although He could have turned stones into bread with a single word), but with a word of the Holy Scriptures, humility, and obedience to the will of the Father. He shows us the way: it is not by magic or miracle that evil is vanquished, but by faithfulness to God, even in the most acute need.
And here we are coming to the deepest meaning of fasting. Fasting is not just remembrance of an event that took place 2,000 years ago. It is a virtue that truly, mysteriously makes us participants in the Passion of Christ. When we voluntarily deny ourselves comfort, when our bodies feel hungry and tired, when we say “no” to ourselves in the most natural, biological urge—at this moment we are not just imitating Christ outwardly, but actually being crucified with Him. The Apostle Paul boldly utters these remarkable words: I am crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20). These words can become reality for us too.
Fasting is our small cross, which we voluntarily take on our shoulders in order to follow Him. Of course, our hunger and our fatigue are just a faint shadow of what He endured. But the Lord accepts even this small thing as a sacrifice of love. He suffered thirst and hunger on the Cross for us—and now, when we are suffering thirst and hunger for His sake, a mysterious connection arises between us and Christ, a living communion of love. We become able to touch, if only a little, the mystery of His sacrifice, and if only partially understand what our salvation cost Him. And the more deeply we enter into this experience, the more sincerely we bear our small cross, and the more clearly we feel that we are not walking alone—that He is near, the One Who has walked this path to the end and is calling us to His Pascha, to the joy that is not of this world and that no one can take away from us.
To be continued…
