My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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NOT BY BREAD ALONE: FASTING TODAY IN THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WAY (PART V)
By Reverend Father Peter A. Chamberas
At one point, the disciples of Saint John the Baptist posed a question to Jesus about fasting: "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?" (St. Matthew 9:14-15; St. Mark 2: 18-20; St. Luke 5:33-35). Jesus answered like this: "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast" (St. Matthew 9:15). Here again, Jesus not only accepts fasting as a proper religious discipline, but He also proclaims its future necessity for His own Disciples. The presence of the Messiah with His Disciples is a time of joy and gladness, not a time of mourning and fasting. A time will come, however, when the Bridegroom of the Church will be taken away, and then the people of the Church will mourn and fast. Clearly the question is not if the disciples are to fast, but rather when and why they are to fast.
A new reality has indeed come into the world with the teaching, life, death, resurrection and Ascension of Christ, as well as with the coming of the Holy Spirit and the creation of the Church. This new reality in the Church of Jesus Christ cannot be simply assimilated to an old and unredeemed way of life, much like "a new patch" cannot be superficially attached on "an old garment." It is also unwise and impracticable for "new wine" to be placed into "old wineskins" (cf. St. Matthew 9:14-17; St. Luke 5:33-38; St. Mark 2:18-22). Christ is the New Man, Who now demands a new way of life with new requirements and a new righteousness. The new Christian fasting, like the new teaching of Christ, will need to belong rather organically and properly to the new man in Christ and to the new Christian way of life. The Christian gospel is not a mere external corrective to some of the elements of Judaism, but rather something strikingly new. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away: behold all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). This expression of Saint Paul the Apostle is an excellent commentary on this new Christian way of life. Christianity is the "new wine" and "the good wine" (St. John 2:6-10) that requires "new wineskins," new men and women of faith in Christ, not only to accept it and contain it, but also to live by it properly and successfully with Christian humility and obedience to God.
Moreover, Jesus Christ did not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them (St. Matthew 5:17-18), and He did this both in His teaching and in His Person as the Savior of the world, Who inaugurated the Kingdom of God and initiated the Christian way of life in His Church. As the Christian Church grew and expanded into the pagan world, the Holy Apostles, Martyrs and Fathers included in their teaching, among other important matters, the Biblical Tradition of fasting as noted above. The focus, however, was clearly on the ascetical spirit that characterizes the Christian way of life from the very beginning and particularly after the 4th century, when the persecutions had ended and large numbers of people were coming into the Church and needed to be instructed and guided into the new Christian faith and way of life.
During those early centuries of Church history, the ascetic ideal of Christian living was especially taken up and developed by the new Christian institution of Monasticism, which introduced even more rigorous disciplines into its own way of life. With this in mind, we must be careful not to make a common mistake and assume that the strict discipline of Orthodox fasting, indicative of Great Lent and the other Lenten seasons in the life of the whole Church, is a monastic invention and appropriate only to its own rather strict ascetical way of life. This wrong notion is often repeated by skeptics today, and it must be dispelled again by the historical truth and the proper understanding of the tradition of fasting in the Orthodox Church. Fasting is not a monastic innovation; it is a biblical tradition adopted and practiced by the early Church and the Orthodox Church to the present time. Fasting is in fact a basic Christian virtue, a tried and true and invincible weapon against the wiles of Satan in a fallen and sinful world. And as such, fasting has the seal of approval of Christ Himself, Who practiced it and Who thus set the supreme example for all of His followers to emulate, as they seek to live their new life in Christ and for Christ.
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" -- Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George