The Holy Apostle Onesimus.
Great Fast Day 4. Abstention from meat and foods that contain meat. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Sixth Hour – Isaiah 2:11-21. Vespers – Genesis 2:4-19. Proverbs 3:1-19.
Read Isaiah 2:11-21
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
During this first week of Great Lent, “The arena of the virtues has been opened” as we chanted at Matins last Sunday. “Let all who wish to struggle now enter therein, girding themselves for the noble struggles of the Fast.” (Stichera at the Praises).
The primary goal of this struggle is to make us conscious of our dependence upon God. If practised seriously, the Lenten abstinence from food—particularly in the opening days—involves a considerable measure of real hunger, and also a feeling of tiredness and physical exhaustion. The purpose of this is to lead us in turn to a sense of inward brokenness and contrition; to bring us, that is, to the point where we appreciate the full force of Christ’s statement, ‘Without Me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5). If we always take our fill of food and drink, we easily grow over-confident in our own abilities, acquiring a false sense of autonomy and self-sufficiency.
In today’s reading from the Prophet Isaiah, the Lord declares that, “the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the pride of men shall be brought low; and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.” The observance of the fast undermines this sinful complacency.
Yet, fasting from food and drink is not an end in itself. Even in our ascetic observance, we can fall into the trap of pride and self-satisfaction, believing, like the Pharisee that we are saved by our own efforts. In this case we end up, not bringing ourselves low, but rather “worshiping the works of our own hands”.
True fasting is to be converted in heart and will; it is to return to God, to come home like the Prodigal Son to our Father’s house. In the words of St. John Chrysostom, it means ‘abstinence not only from food but from sins’. ‘The fast’, he insists, ‘should be kept not by the mouth alone but also by the eye, the ear, the feet, the hands and all the members of the body’: the eye must abstain from impure sights, the ear from malicious gossip, the hands from acts of injustice. It is useless to fast from food, protests St. Basil, and yet to indulge in cruel criticism and slander: ‘You do not eat meat, but you devour your brother’. The same point is made in the Triodion, especially during the first week of Lent:
As we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion.…let us observe a fast acceptable and pleasing to the Lord. True fasting is to put away all evil, to control the tongue, to forbear from anger, to abstain from lust, slander, falsehood and perjury. If we renounce these things, then is our fasting true and acceptable to God. Let us keep the Fast not only by refraining from food, but by becoming strangers to all the bodily passions. (Vespers of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday).
As we proceed through the Great Fast, let us embrace our ascetic practices with a spirit of humility, always mindful that it is only by God’s grace that our souls find true liberation from the caves of our self-centredness. In doing so, we prepare ourselves to truly encounter the Risen Christ, whose ultimate act of humility and dependence on the Father’s will brings salvation to the world.