Why We Fast

Orthodox fasting is easily misunderstood as “justification through works,” which is not what the Orthodox Church holds true as a prescription for salvation. Salvation is a gift from God, which we cannot ourselves do anything to make ourselves worthy of. What we can do, however, is attempt to remove all the obstacles that stand in our way, so that we can receive God’s grace of free will and a ready spirit.

Satan has many means at his disposal to keep us from moving closer in our relationship with God, and our passions for worldly things is one of them. Fasting is about controlling those passions: eating good food, and plenty of it, is generally one of the most pleasurable things that we do as human beings. Fasting is therefore merely a practical exercise in abstinence from something that we enjoy so much that it keeps us from the balanced spiritual life that God intended for us.

Oftentimes, it is not until fasting is attempted that one realizes just how strong a hold our worldly passions have over us. The Devil’s greatest victory in modern times is that people have stopped believing in his existence. With that, ignorance of what binds us to what is evil, or not godly, has increased, and the effort put into combating it decreased.

Furthermore, as fasting is really quite hard work, it focuses our attention on God instead of ourselves and allows us an opportunity to think about something else than our own desires, but it does not buy us a place in the Kingdom of God. It’s an opportunity to think very concretely about something but ourselves and thus a gift to be savored.

Thus, fasting is an outward sign of repentance.

Fasting is meant to aid us in our effort to overcome temptations and to discipline ourselves to replace our self-will and personal desires with doing things that are in harmony with God’s will. This exercise of control is to extend to our thoughts, our words, and actions. In our pursuit to return to that divine image that we were all created in, the Church asks us to focus on the person of our Savior and to embrace His words with like action. Of Christ’s many recorded directives, those which extol the necessity of prayer and fasting for the curing of bodily and spiritual infirmities cannot be ignored (see Matthew 17:21).

Reposted from Michelle