lent

Christian Fasting Part 2

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There are different kinds of fasting, in the same way that there are different kinds of prayer or different forms of worshipping. All are offered to God as our holy sacrifice.

Firstly there is the complete fast. Usually this involves just giving up food for a specified period of time- perhaps a day, two days, a week. At the beginning of His ministry Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness. We are told that He was hungry, not that He was thirsty. Jesus would have drunk water during this time.

In a complete fast, people sometimes allow themselves fruit juice to maintain their sugar levels. I drink tea as normal, sometimes with milk but sometimes black. Even though fasting is a discipline, we have freedom within the discipline.

Secondly there is the absolute fast, which includes abstaining from water or any other fluid. This should be done very carefully as our bodies do need water, especially during hot weather or physical exertion. During the month of Ramadan, devout Muslims engage in this type of fast during the daylight hours only. So an absolute fast might just go for the day time, or 24 hours maximum.

Finally, there is the partial fast. People sometimes choose to go without things that they consider to be luxurious food items. The most widely known partial fast is the so-called Daniel Fast. There are actually two fasts mentioned in the book of Daniel.

In Daniel 1, Daniel asks for his friends and himself to be given just fruit and vegetables and spared from the richer foods of the King’s table. These would have been considered unclean in Israel’s dietary laws. This was initially given on a trial basis for ten days, but then they were allowed to continue.

Then in Daniel 10, Daniel enters a special time of “mourning” that involved abstaining from wine, meat and fine food for 21 days. During this time he undertook special prayers for his people. Often a Daniel fast is considered to allow fruit, vegetables and grains, but exclude things like cakes, fine pastries and sweet desserts.

It is important that we do not get hung up on rules about fasting. Decide in prayer what kind of fast you will undertake and for how long. Pick a particular prayer project that God is laying on your heart and make that the focus of your prayers in that time.

In the past I have only ever done a sunrise to sunset type fast, that is fasting until the evening meal. Recently the Lord led me in a whole day fast, that is eating nothing at all from when I got up in the morning until I went to bed at night. That was harder, but still doable. I believe that in the upcoming Lent season I may do a number of these fasts, and maybe even a two day fast.

Whatever kind of fast you do, just do it to the glory of God. If you fall down and fail to complete the fast, don’t get discouraged. Learn from your mistakes and try again later.

Fasting

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A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast, on my bike, about fasting for miracles. This particular speaker is a part of a church in the USA where members regularly fast for 21 days in January. As I was listening I was drawn to the idea of fasting as a congregation, not in January which doesn’t work at all in Australia, but through Lent.

I have spoken to a few people who think, as I do, that the Lord is calling the church to do this project together. It is interesting that at the time that the Holy Spirit was talking to me about it, He was also talking to other people.

Fasting is not a big part of the Western church in our times. The idea of voluntarily abstaining from food for even just 1 day fills many of us with anxiety. I think because we are so used to having food of almost any sort, whenever we feel like it, we can’t imagine not eating when we are hungry.

I confess that I have not been a big practitioner of fasting at any time in my life, except for brief times. Yet this was a big part of living for followers of the Lord in the Old Testament and for followers of Jesus. The early church, and right through to modern times, extolled the value of fasting as a spiritual discipline.

If you search for “Fasting” on Amazon, there are literally thousands of titles on fasting for health, intermittent fasting, and so on. The number of christian titles on fasting is much smaller.

There are two things, I want to emphasise in this short article.

Firstly, Christian fasting is linked to prayer. It is not about just doing without food, but setting apart a time period when we seek the Lord with such intensity and passion, that you are willing to do without food for a period of time. There are many testimonies of people being saved, healed, receiving miracles, breakthrough prayers being answered because people fasted and prayed. Fasting turbo charges your prayer life by reminding you that you are dedicating this period to the Lord. Every time your stomach growls is a call to prayer.

Secondly, Christian fasting is about your relationship with God. In the Old Testament, various people are described as humbling themselves before the Lord, and usually in connection with fasting. Fasting reminds us very powerfully that we are totally dependent on the Lord for everything we need for life.

We fast for spiritual reasons, but there are health benefits. I have a tendency to snack almost constantly. When I fast it resets the bad habit of picking up food and mindlessly eating. Often people experience a detox process as their bodies take the opportunity to process and eliminate the bad stuff in their bodies. It gives your digestive system a rest and renews its strength.

So what does a Lenten Fast look like? How long do you have to keep it up for? What can I expect?

We will explore these topics and much more as we get closer to Lent.

Ukraine’s Holy Week Like No Other

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APRIL 14, 2022BY ARCHBISHOP BORYS GUDZIAK

As Ukraine is being crucified by the enemy, millions of its people go through the same experience of darkness and a sense of the absence of God as Jesus did on the cross. Let us not doubt that God is with the suffering and that his truth, peace, and love will prevail.

Christians of different traditions begin Lent on different dates. For Ukrainians of all denominations, their spiritual pilgrimage this spring started on February 24 at 4 AM. War and Lent have been deeply intertwined this year.

Lent is a time to discern evil, especially in one’s own life. Understanding violent and destructive passions is difficult amid the modern world’s comfortable, soft circumstances. For centuries, the Church’s tradition has helped us detach from worldly comforts during the Lenten journey through fasting, prayer, and works of charity. The war in Ukraine has given Lent a deeper resonance. Violence and suffering, sin and evil, compassion and sacrifice, virtue and heroism reveal themselves. War was something known to the monks of Constantinople and Jerusalem who wrote the prayers and hymns for our Lenten journey. And it was known to generations of our ancestors. But now we experience war in Lent first-hand.

His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, also reflected on Ukraine’s violence-hewn Lent in his address on April 5, 2022, the 41st day of the war.

The Christian faith teaches us not to turn our eyes away from God who became human, from God whom humans dishonored, crucified, and killed in the most shameful way. The Christian faith teaches us to honor the wounds of Christ, to kiss them, because we know that by His wounds we are healed [cf. Isaiah 53:5], as the Prophet Isaiah writes.

These days Ukraine is experiencing her Golgotha, her crucifixion. Today I ask all of us—all Christians of the whole world, all people of goodwill—not to turn your eyes away from the humiliation and suffering, the death and wounds of Ukraine. . . . Just a few tens of kilometers from the center of Kyiv we see today hundreds of dead who were shot in the back of the head. We see the wounds of the Ukrainian people.

This Lent has made reality clearer to me than ever. The work of evil, the wicked will of the Enemy of humankind, and the frailty of our human nature are on display. We witness Adam’s grab. Adam had all the trees and their fruit in the garden of Eden. God the Giver gave Adam everything he needed. And yet, he decided not to live with God and be like God the Giver. Despite being forewarned, he decided to grab that which would lead to his death.

Grace amid Horror

Today we witness the leader of a contemporary empire that extends across eleven time zones grab for more. Unprovoked, he decides to invade a sovereign, independent country. In the account of Christ’s Passion, we see that Judas, blinded by greed, stretches out his arm to snatch silver in exchange for the Savior. These are different episodes of the same story of human sin. All of them lead to death.

Yet Easter gives us hope for salvation and new life. God repeats and renews His gift. Amid the brutality and horrors, there are many signs of grace. In this world, which is characterized by compulsive self-reference and the dictatorship of relativism, we see people giving their lives for others and for the truths of dignity, freedom, and justice. Ukrainians are demonstrating that greatest love defined by our Lord in John 15:13: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” As we recall and celebrate the salvific sacrifice completed on the Cross, we see the sacrifice of our contemporaries—brothers and sisters in Ukraine, military and civilians—who are willing to give their lives to protect the innocent. Through their sacrifice, we get a glimpse into the sacrifice of the Son of God once more.

Holy Week’s rich liturgical traditions help us understand reality. As Father Alexander Schmemann noted, in our liturgical celebrations, we do not merely remember past events. The power of liturgy is that it “transforms remembrance into reality.” Lazarus Saturday, celebrated by Byzantine-rite Christians on the day before Palm Sunday, places before us the reality of death. “It stinketh,” Jesus is told as he approaches Lazarus in the tomb. Schmemann writes that at the grave of Lazarus, God encounters Death, “the reality of anti-life, of destruction and despair.” Jesus weeps “because He contemplates the triumph of death and destruction in the world created by God.”

At the beginning of April, the world was shocked by the dreadful images of bodies and violence discovered in Bucha, Borodianka, Irpin, and other towns near Kyiv; these were people Russian soldiers slaughtered during the weeks of occupation. We see death’s ugly face. And we weep as Jesus did. In the recent words of Bishop Erik Varden, “His tears show him aggrieved, indignant at the scandal of death’s reign in beings made for immortality, who long for paradise lost and lost friendship. Having wept, he goes up to Calvary to work our redemption.” The deaths Ukraine is experiencing bring the reality of Christian liturgy into full view.

After Jesus’s glorious entry into Jerusalem, we begin Holy Week by remembering the Lord’s last days on the earth before his salvific Passion and death. But the death on Great Friday will not be the closing of our week. Holy Week will be crowned by the feast of the Resurrection. The Resurrection provides all-important perspective on the suffering that Jesus, the Innocent One, endured.

Read the rest of the article here

Lent- A Season For Finding Ourselves Again

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Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the start of the season of Lent in the church year.

Lent is a time of preparation of our souls for the awesome events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It lasts 40 days, excluding Sundays, and has traditionally been marked by fasting or giving up of some luxury or other.

Lent is one of those ancient customs, going back to the early church period. In recent times it has been largely associated with the Catholic Church, which is a bit sad. Why should the Catholics have all the fun?

Lent is a great time to reorient our lives and our habits back towards God. Instead of seeing it as a time for “giving up” our little luxuries we should see it as a time of allowing God to bend us back to His direction.

Rather than “giving up” ice cream for Lent, it’s more helpful to ask ourselves, “What is it that keeps me distant from God?” Or perhaps, “What should I be doing that would draw me closer to God?”

The brilliance of Lent is that it goes for 40 days (plus Sundays). To establish a new habit generally takes up to 30 days. So setting up new life patterns that draw us closer to God during Lent reprograms our souls to keep the same pattern going all year.

Things you might “give up” during Lent: wasting time on the internet, including social media; road rage; obsessing about money, perhaps giving more to charity; crash diets; feeling bad about your performance as a christian.

Things you might “take up” in Lent to draw closer to God: help a neighbour with gardening; make a space in your routine for daily Bible reading; offer to lead your cell group; help a single mother with child minding; pray blessing for that annoying person.

If we do Lent right every year we can become super heroes of faith, bending our lifestyle away from the world and towards God.

Start today and let this next few weeks be a time of growing in Christ.