- When fast is accompanied with God-pleasing deeds, man is transformed into a light among people and a chosen vessel of God’s glory.
- We fast because we love Christ the Lord and we wish to nurture ourselves with the words of the Gospel, the words of the Scriptures, the words that we listen to during the divine services and to strengthen our prayer to grow spiritually.
- The most significant nourishment during the fasting season is Christ’s merciful love that we seek through prayer.
- Fast is also the sign of a faithful man who wishes to free himself from greed of material, limited and passing things in order to unite through intense prayer with the unlimited, eternal God, the Source of life and of eternal joy.
- By forgiving others, a man who desires to live in God’s merciful love cultivates humility and interior freedom.
- Genuine fast aims at raising man above the material, earthly goods, in order to receive spiritual, heavenly goods, to unite through prayer and through more often partaking of the Holy Eucharist with the heavenly God, the source of life and of eternal joy in the Kingdom of Heaven.
- Forgiveness is the good beginning of the fasting season.
- Fast is not only material, but also spiritual, which is fasting with our eyes, mouth, and heart.
- Without forgiveness, no one can enter the fasting season, which is a spiritual struggle for the purification of sins and the illumination of the soul.
- Fasting maintains the state of prayer of the faithful man who considers his relationship with God to be the centre, light, and nourishment of his soul.
- He who fasts, but does not pray, does not gather spiritual light in his soul.
- Genuine fast produces a change of man’s way of being, a shift from greed or passionate love of material things to the love of spiritual things, in order to cultivate more intense prayer or the loving communion with the immaterial, unlimited and eternal God.
- The heart or the soul of a fasting man acquires the freedom to enrich himself permanently with God’s infinite, eternal love.
- Fast maintains prayer, and fasting without praying is no spiritual work.
- The spiritual, prayerful, fasting man, who is illumined by Christ’s grace, acquires spiritual thinking and observance; he utilizes spiritual words and performs spiritual deeds, through which he resembles God’s Saints.
- Fast is a spiritual state of self-sacrifice, a state cultivated freely and in accordance with the strength of each.
- No one can fight evil spirits and dark, selfish passions unless he has first acquired the light of divine grace through fasting and prayer.
- Fast is a God-pleasing spiritual work when it is performed from the love of God. Therefore, we should not fast in order to be praised or admired by people for the strictness or the length of the fasting we keep.
- We want to feed on His love rather than on His material, limited and passing gifts. Therefore, during the fasting season, the amount of material food decreases and the spiritual nourishment increases. We read the Holy Scripture more often, we pray more, we confess more often, freeing ourselves from a pressing past, and we receive Communion more often.
Photo by Robert Nicolae/ Basilica.ro
