Tuesday, February 20, 2007
...BUT BY PRAYER AND FASTING
Since moving to Beirut 8 months ago I have gotten much more in touch with my eastern Christian roots. Spending most of my time among them, I have become influenced in some ways that I am grateful for, and some that I will perhaps drop if I ever return to the west. One of the things that I have loved is access to the Orthodox tradition (especially through the family of one of the Orthodox brothers in our house) and to the writings and wisdom of one of the riches Christian traditions in the world.
During Lent we are reading excerpts from a book by Fr. Alexander Shmemann called Great Lent. In a chapter on Lent in Our Life I have found a beautiful view of fasting, as I have never seen before, rooted in Scripture and church teaching, and springing from the deep experience of the author. I will post it in three segments. I pray that it will spur you on to love of the Lord this Lent through prayer and fasting.
There is no Lent without fasting. It seems, however, that many people today either do not take fasting seriously or, if they do, misunderstand its real spiritual goals. For some people, fasting consists in a symbolic “giving up” of something; for…others, it is a scrupulous observance of dietary regulations. But in Both cases, seldom is fasting referred to the total Lenten effort. Here as elsewhere, therefore, we must first try to understand the Church’s teaching about fasting and then ask ourselves: how can we apply this teaching to our life?
Fasting or abstinence from food is not exclusively a Christian practice. It existed and still exists in other religions and even outside religion, as for example in some specific therapies…. It is important, therefore, to discern the uniquely Christian content of fasting. It is first of all revealed to us in the interdependence between two events which we find in the Bible: one at the beginning of the Old Testament and the other as the beginning of the New Testament.
The event is the “breaking of the fast” by Adam in Paradise. He ate of the forbidden fruit. This is how man’s original sin is revealed to us: Christ, the new Adam –and this is the second event- begins by fasting. Adam was tempted and he succumbed to temptation; Christ was tempted and Ha overcame that temptation. The results of Adam’s failure are expulsion from Paradise and death. The fruits of Christ’s victory are the destruction of death and our return to Paradise. The lack of space prevents us from giving a detailed explanation of the meaning of this parallelism. It is clear, however, that in this perspective fasting is revealed to us as something decisive and ultimate in its importance. It is not a mere “obligation,” a custom; it is connected with the very mystery of life and death, of salvation and damnation.
In the Orthodox teaching, sin is not only the transgression of a rule leading to punishment; it is always a mutilation of life given to us by God. It is for this reason that the story of the original sin is presented to us as an act of eating. For food is means of life; it is that which keeps us alive. But here lies the whole question: what does it mean to be alive and what does “life” mean? For us today this term has a primarily biological meaning: life is precisely that which entirely depends on food, and more generally, on the physical world. But for the Holy Scripture and Christian Tradition, this life “by bread alone” is identified with death because it is mortal life, because death is a principle always at work in it. God, we are told, “created no death.” He is the giver of Life.
How then did life become mortal? … tomorrow’s reading
# posted by Brian @ 10:23 PM 
