Three days of absolute fasting – Metropolitan of Strumica Nahum
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We are entering the period of the Great Lent. We start with the three days of absolute fasting (absolute abstinence from food and drink). In the Church of God this is not just a period with a special order and rules, this is, above all, a period of special grace.
We know that this period of special joy is a gift of God in which we experience all our struggle (asceticism) more easily. It is easier to fast, it is easier to pray, it is easier to forgive, it is easier to live the mystery of the overall repentance. Do you see what kind of antinomy this is – hard, yet easy?
If someone asked me to describe this period in one word, and especially the first three days, I would use the word ‘freedom’ for that purpose. It is the feeling that overwhelms me and that I experience every time at the beginning of the Holy forty-day-period of fast. And without freedom there is no person or personal relationship. Without freedom there is no love.
However, we must first liberate ourselves from the bondage of our passions, that is, liberate ourselves of the bondage of sin, death and the devil. This we all know. But observe this foretaste of the freedom that God gives us in the first three days of the Great Lent. Observe this joy. Most of us have nothing to eat or drink. When the world hears about this, it simply does not believe that this is possible.
But is it all about not eating and not drinking? Certainly, it is not. Fasting is, above all, in humility – how to take our mind from being proud, scattered and darkened and to transformed into a humble, collected and enlightened mind.
All of us who have experienced the three days of absolute fasting know that the more time we spend in fulfilling the obedience given by our spiritual father and the more time we spend in prayer and reading the teachings of the Holy Fathers, the easier and happier we endure hunger and thirst. Conversely, the more unfocused and busy we are with the responsibilities of this world, the harder it is for us to fast physically.
On the other hand, those who have returned to the home of their Heavenly Father, that is, those who have entered prayerfully their hearts, can testify to you that they feel neither thirst nor hunger, and not only in those three days but for a longer time. The God-Man Christ says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4: 4). This means that the real life of man originates from the grace of God.
The grace of God was the main food and drink, and the clothing of the Desert Fathers, whose amazing deeds we admire. We have these examples in the lives of the Holy Fathers. In our days we have the example of the Venerable Father Gabriel, Bishop of Velika. But above all, we have the example of our Lord God-Man Jesus Christ, who for forty days ate nothing in the wilderness (see: Luke 4: 2; Matthew 4: 2).
Thus, children, obedience and prayer, especially for us monks, are the only basis on which our struggle for fasting is founded as a complete liberation from passions (from both vainglory and covetousness), and not only as a liberation from carnal passions (from love of pleasures). That is the quality of true fasting. Otherwise, everything else is the essence of vanity and demonic pride.
Therefore, when the disciples begged Him to eat, Christ answered, “I have food to eat that you do not know.” And when the disciples said among themselves, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”Jesus reveals the secret to them: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. (John 4: 32-34). That is both Christ’s and our true food.
And the act of God, i.e. Christ, is the salvation of man and the world, which He performs and has performed in and through His Body – the Church, through us, the Christians. Therefore, the greatest expression of synergy (interaction) with God as well as the creativity of every Christian consists in the more perfect fulfilment of God’s will and in the more perfect prayer for all people. This is the catholic dimension of the Christian life and, especially, of the struggle of fasting.
Do you see, from all of the aforementioned, how the struggle of the three days of absolute fasting resembles and corresponds to the moment when before Holy Baptism we renounce satan and all his thoughts, words and deeds, all his pride and all his auxiliary powers.
Do you see how the struggle of the three days of absolute fasting explains the monastic renunciation of the world as being death for this world, until receiving the gift of the prayer of the mind in the heart?
Do you see how the period of the three days of absolute fasting is also an icon of the Kingdom of Heaven, where the God-Man Christ is everything to everyone, even real food and drink?
Therefore, the struggle of the three days of absolute fasting means the renewal of the vows we made at Holy Baptism, it means also, the renewal of the monastic vows and struggle (asceticism), it means also the renewal of hope for the Kingdom of Heaven within us.
The same is relevant for the second time of three days of absolute fasting for the period from Holy Thursday to the end of Holy Saturday.
And let us not forget, we abstain for the reason of withholding from our mouths for those who do not have. Fasting without mercy is nothing; and it is possible to become a demonic thing. God seeks mercy, not sacrifice. More precisely, a sacrifice for the sake of doing mercy.
Christ is risen!
Metropolitan of Strumica Nahum
(06.03.2022 17:18)
