HOW TO FAST versus HOW NOT TO FAST. The Desert Fathers on fasting, obedience and humility.
Summary
TLDRThe video script discusses the spiritual and religious significance of fasting, emphasizing its connection to obedience and humility rather than a mere diet. It warns against creating personal fasting rules, as this can lead to pride and displease God. The speaker cites the Desert Fathers, highlighting the importance of adhering to the Church's fasting rules to avoid spiritual pitfalls and maintain a humble and obedient heart.
Takeaways
- 🍃 Fasting in a spiritual and religious context is not about dieting or physical health but is a form of obedience and humility.
- 🚫 Fasting should not be an individual's personal choice but must be based on the rules and traditions of the Church to avoid serving pride rather than God.
- 📜 The script emphasizes the importance of adhering to the guidance of the Desert Fathers and the Church for proper fasting practices.
- 👵 Amma Syncletica warns of a type of fasting that is pleasing to demons due to pride and advises living according to the rules of fasting to discern the right path.
- 🙏 Obedience to the Church's fasting rules is a safeguard against pride and aligns one with the spiritual struggles of the Fathers and Mothers over 2000 years.
- 👹 Pride is identified as a dangerous poison in spiritual life, which can corrupt even the most extreme fasting practices if they are self-imposed.
- 🙇♂️ Humility is key in fasting; even if one must eat meat due to humility, it is preferable to fasting with pride, as per Abba Isidore the Priest.
- 🛑 If fasting begins to feed one's pride or sense of self-importance, it is advised to stop and confess this to a spiritual father to combat it.
- 🎭 The Orthodox tradition includes the role of 'Fools-for-Christ' who would publicly break fasts to fight against the sin of pride.
- 🌳 The script uses the story of Adam and Eve to illustrate the importance of obedience in fasting, as they were commanded by God, not choosing their own path.
- 🙌 The ultimate goal of fasting is to strengthen one's obedience to God and nurture humility, not to achieve personal satisfaction or recognition.
Q & A
What is the main message of the video about fasting?
-The main message is that fasting should be an act of obedience and humility, not a personal choice or a means to achieve physical health or self-satisfaction.
Why does the speaker compare self-decided fasting to Adam and Eve's disobedience in the garden?
-The comparison is made to illustrate that just as Adam and Eve's disobedience was a form of pride, self-decided fasting is also a form of pride and disobedience to God's commandments.
What does the speaker mean by 'fasting in its proper meaning'?
-The speaker means that fasting should be understood in its spiritual and religious context, not as a diet for physical health or personal choice.
What is the role of obedience in fasting according to the video?
-Obedience is crucial in fasting because it aligns the individual with the rules and traditions of the Church, ensuring humility and preventing pride.
What does the speaker warn against in the context of fasting?
-The speaker warns against fasting that is done for self-gratification, pride, or without adherence to the Church's rules and traditions.
What is the significance of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers in the video?
-The Sayings of the Desert Fathers are used to provide wisdom and guidance on the proper approach to fasting, emphasizing obedience and humility.
What does Amma Syncletica advise regarding fasting?
-Amma Syncletica advises to live according to the rules of fasting and warns against fasting that is planned by demons and serves pride rather than God.
What is the danger of fasting that is pleasing to demons according to the video?
-The danger is that such fasting, driven by pride, can lead to spiritual harm and destruction, as it is not in line with God's will and the teachings of the Church.
Why does the speaker mention the story of the man called the Faster?
-The story illustrates the potential for pride and self-deception in fasting, showing that even those who are admired for their fasting can fall into the trap of self-satisfaction.
What advice does Abba Xenon give to the Faster in the story?
-Abba Xenon advises the Faster to eat once a day like everyone else and to do any additional fasting in secret, to avoid the sin of pride and self-admiration.
What does Abba Isidore the Priest say about the relationship between fasting and pride?
-Abba Isidore warns that even those who fast according to the Church's rules can fall into pride, and in such cases, it is better to eat meat than to fast and be spiritually harmed by pride.
What is the ultimate purpose of fasting as discussed in the video?
-The ultimate purpose of fasting is to strengthen obedience to God and to nurture humility, serving as a spiritual tool rather than an end in itself.
Outlines
🙏 The Essence of Fasting and Obedience
This paragraph delves into the spiritual and religious significance of fasting, emphasizing its distinction from dieting and the necessity of obedience in its practice. The speaker warns against creating personal fasting rules, likening it to Adam and Eve's disobedience in the Garden of Eden. The importance of humility and obedience in fasting is highlighted, with the Desert Fathers' teachings used to stress that fasting should be an act of submission to the Church's guidance rather than a self-imposed regimen. The potential for pride in self-devised fasting is critiqued, suggesting it serves demons rather than God.
📜 Discerning Demonic from Divine Fasting
The speaker continues the discussion on fasting by referencing Amma Syncletica, one of the Holy Mothers of the desert, to illustrate the discernment between fasting that pleases God and that which serves demons. Syncletica's advice is to live by the 'good measure' or discernment, following the Church's fasting rules to maintain obedience and humility. The paragraph warns against the pride that can arise from self-imposed fasting and the dangers of serving the demon of pride instead of God, as exemplified by the story of the Faster who sought admiration for his fasting.
🚫 The Dangers of Pride in Fasting
This paragraph further explores the perils of fasting when it is not grounded in obedience and humility. The speaker recounts a story from Saint Xenon about a man known as the 'Faster,' who, despite his rigorous fasting, was reprimanded for seeking admiration and thus feeding his pride. The story serves as a caution against the self-satisfaction that can accompany fasting when it is not an act of obedience to the Church's guidance. The importance of fasting as a means to strengthen humility and obedience, rather than a display of personal piety, is underscored.
⛪️ Fasting and the Preservation of Humility
The speaker discusses the potential for pride even among those who follow the Church's fasting rules, citing the words of Abba Isidore the Priest. The paragraph emphasizes that fasting should not lead to a sense of superiority or self-righteousness but should instead be a tool for nurturing obedience and humility. It suggests that breaking the fast might be more beneficial for one's spiritual life if it prevents pride, as the ultimate goal of fasting is to strengthen the believer's submission to God and humility, not to earn recognition or self-aggrandizement.
🙌 Embracing the Wisdom of the Church's Fasting Rules
In the concluding paragraph, the speaker calls for humility in adhering to the fasting rules established by the Church and the wisdom of the Fathers and Mothers of the faith. The paragraph reinforces the idea that fasting is not about personal choice but about obedience to God's commandments as interpreted by the Church. It encourages believers to follow the guidance of the Church in fasting to avoid the pitfalls of pride and to ensure that their fasting is a practice that pleases God and supports their spiritual growth.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Fasting
💡Obedience
💡Humility
💡Pride
💡Desert Fathers
💡Asceticism
💡Demons
💡Adam and Eve
💡Fools-for-Christ
💡Abba
💡Self-admiration
Highlights
The concept of fasting is distinct from dieting and is not about maintaining physical health.
Fasting must be based on obedience and not on personal choice to be truly meaningful in a spiritual context.
Fasting outside the Church's rules is likened to Adam and Eve's disobedience in the garden.
Fasting is an act of obedience to God's commandments, as illustrated by the story of Adam and Eve.
The importance of discernment in fasting to avoid serving demons instead of God, as taught by the Desert Fathers.
Amma Syncletica warns of a type of fasting that is pleasing to demons due to pride and lack of discernment.
The necessity of following the Church's fasting rules to maintain humility and avoid the sin of pride.
The spiritual danger of self-imposed fasting rules that can lead to pride and away from God's grace.
The story of the Faster who, despite his frequent fasting, fell into despondency due to the lack of external admiration.
Abba Xenon's advice to the Faster to eat like everyone else and avoid pride that comes from fasting for recognition.
Abba Isidore's warning that even when following the Church's fasting rules, one must be vigilant against falling into pride.
The paradoxical advice that it is more useful for a monk to eat meat than to fast and fall into pride.
The purpose of fasting is to strengthen obedience to God and humility, not to serve personal satisfaction.
The Orthodox tradition of Fools-for-Christ who would publicly break fast to combat the sin of pride.
The importance of confessing and fighting against pride when it arises during fasting.
The collective wisdom of the Church's fasting rules, gathered over 2000 years, as a guide for believers.
The call to humility in fasting by bowing to the wisdom of the Fathers and Mothers of the Church.
The closing message of hope for a better, healthier, and more pleasing-to-God world after enduring the current difficulties.
Transcripts
To decide yourself what are the rules of your fasting is like
Adam and Eve in the garden telling God, after God has told them do not touch that particular fruit,
and they show up and they say Well in fact I don't quite crave for that fruit,
I crave more for the food next to it, so instead of doing what you told me to do,
I am going to eat that fruit that you've forbidden me to eat, but I am going to be a very good faster
and I'm going to abstain from eating three other fruits that I have chosen for myself.
Now I don't think that this scenario would end up with a very positive result for Adam, Eve
and ourselves as their children, spiritual children. Hello, my dear ones, I pray you are all
safe and healthy wherever you are. We are recording in the chapel today because it's getting
very windy outside and it's quite dark as well but in the chapel is all right.
Um... everyone is all right at the monastery by the grace of God and through your prayers,
thank you so much for your prayers and thank you also for your support, your continuous
support that makes it possible for us to be here and to keep on praying and to keep on working.
Today I want to talk to you, but very briefly, about fasting. This will only be an introductory
video about fasting: why do we fast, how do we fast, what is the meaning of fasting, and so
on---and then based on the comments you will leave to this video we shall continue with a few other
brief videos in the future over the weeks to come; Christmas is coming so we have to
start preparing for the Great Feast and before the very Feast, we have 40 days of fasting.
Fasting in its proper meaning, in the spiritual, religious meaning of the word has nothing to do
with a diet: I think that's something very important that needs to be clarified---this
is not about keeping your body healthy. In some ways, it's quite the opposite, so
the fast, fasting of someone who keeps a diet in order to look better or in order to be healthier
is not the fasting that we are talking about and it's not the fasting that the Saints or the Church
has been talking about for 2000 years, that's one thing that needs to be absolutely clear
from the very beginning; the other thing which is equally important is that fasting can only be
based on obedience, fasting is not something that we, we willingly give up in order to sacrifice
something for the Lord, fasting has to do with obeying someone else's rules;
if fasting is not based on obedience then again it is not the sort of fasting that
God requires or expects of us. To fast outside the rules of the Church, to fast outside the tradition
of the Church to pretty-much come up with your own rules is in some ways just the opposite
of what fasting is all about and the Fathers have advised against that for centuries now.
Let's try to talk for about a minute about what do I mean by that, what do I mean when I say that
fasting has to be essentially an act of obedience and that it has to be founded
on humility. Be warned that today I've brought the Sayings of the Desert Fathers
with me because my memory is just so bad I remember their teachings I remember their words
but I definitely do not remember who said what, so today I've brought the book with me, one of the,
I think, six or seven versions that we have, and I will try to quote from them.
Look for instance at what Amma Syncletica---I don't know how to pronounce it in English,
that's the way you would pronounce the name in English [Romanian, he meant]---Amma
Syncletica is one of the Holy Mothers of the desert and look what she's saying: she says
there is an ascetical struggle, there is a type of fasting which is planned by the demons
and the disciples of this practice do not know that they are serving the demons rather than God
by doing it, therefore how can we discern between ascetical struggles that are pleasing to God,
fasting that is pleasing to God and ascetical struggles that are pleasing to the demons
and she says obviously the answer is the good measure ---when she says, when the Fathers
and the Mothers talk about a good measure they actually imply discernment---'live all your life
according to the rules of fasting', and then she goes on to say do not fast for four days and then
try to eat a lot, do not fast for a week or a month and then try to---she's just giving all
sorts of bad examples of how not to fast, but the rule for her is live your entire life according
to the rules of fasting. Now of course unless you are Orthodox you are going to say 'Well, whose rules?'
And the only answer is the rules of the Fathers the rules of the Church the rules of tradition.
The worst, the most negative detrimental rule for us to follow
when we fast or indeed when we do anything in our spiritual life is our own rule;
just think about it, it's not, it's not difficult to see it if you just allow
your eyes to see it and your ears to hear this: if you follow a rule of fasting which is imposed upon
you by someone else, by someone from the outside, in this case the Church which is non-personal
and which has 2,000 years of good experiences and bad experiences to draw upon if you follow
that rule of fasting then you are in obedience to the Church you are in obedience to those Fathers
and Mothers who've struggled in those 2000 years before you and that safeguards you against pride;
on the other hand if you follow your own rule, even if you starve yourself to death you are going to
do exactly what Mother Syncletica is saying you are serving the demon of pride because you have
selected the rule for yourself and it really doesn't matter what you sacrifice, it really
doesn't matter how extreme your fasting or your prayer or whatever it is, because underneath it all
is the poison of pride, you are building on poison you are building on sand which will be taken away
from underneath your foot, underneath your feet as soon, as soon as the demon has an opportunity; the
only safe way to do anything in the spiritual life and this applies particularly to fasting
is by obeying to the rules of the Church. That takes away all the pleasure in fasting, that
takes away all the self-satisfaction, that self-fulfilment of 'Oh I have decided that
I am going to sacrifice this because this is what I feel is the best thing to do'; that is
an ode to pride, a hymn to the demon of pride, to decide yourself what are the rules of your fasting
is like Adam and Eve in the garden telling God, after God has told them
do not touch that particular fruit, and they show up and they say 'well, in fact I don't quite crave
for that fruit, I crave more for the fruit next to it, so instead of doing what you told me to do, I
am going to eat that fruit that you've forbidden me to eat but I am going to be a very good faster
and I'm going to abstain from eating three other fruits that I have chosen for myself.'
Now I don't think that this scenario would end up with a very positive result for Adam, Eve
and ourselves as their children, spiritual children from the very beginning
fasting and obedience have gone hand in hand, Adam and Eve are not abstaining or
they are not supposed to abstain from that particular tree because they decided to do so,
God tells them to do so: it is an act of obedience on their side to God's commandment.
So fasting and obedience go again hand in hand from the very beginning.
Adam and Eve do not get to choose the tree that they are not supposed to eat from, they are being
told precisely which is that forbidden tree, and also from the very beginning, if you pay attention
how the snake, how the devil approaches them, you'll see pride immediately:
the devil doesn't tell them 'Oh unless you eat from that tree something absolutely horrible
will happen to you', he's not trying to frighten them, he's not trying to approach them in any other
way except by means of pride. 'God forbade you from eating from the tree because if you eat from that
tree you are going to be like God', in other words, translating it in the words that Adam heard and
that all of us hear, 'if you eat from that tree you will become like God', and there it is, the poison of
pride and we all know what happened when obedience to God was broken and Adam and Eve decided for
themselves how to approach fasting, this is why the Fathers and the Mothers of the desert speak about
a type of fasting which in fact is pleasing not to God but to the devils, in fact the danger of this
is so great that there are other stories as for instance Saint Xenon---I've marked the story here---
hear this: there is a story that in one of the villages around the desert there lived a man who
fasted very frequently and people appreciated and admired him so much that he was called the Faster.
Now when Abba Xenon heard of the Faster, he called him to come and visit; the Faster was very pleased
that the old man called him and he went into the desert; once they were alone in the Abbas cell,
the Abba just sat down and continued with his daily work and his daily prayer;
having no one around with whom to speak and having no one around to admire his ascetical struggle,
the Faster very soon fell into despondency and in a matter of [an] hour he pleaded with the old man:
Please pray for me, Holy Father, because I need to go home; to which Abba Xenon answered, Why?
And the Faster responded, I don't know what is happening, but since I entered your cell my heart
burns inside; in my village I could fast for a day or two or three and this never happened to me;
to which the old man, the Desert Father answered, This is because in the village
you were feeding yourself not through your mouth but through your ears, and by that he
means you are feeding yourself through that feeling of satisfaction and self-admiration
that one has when other people speak highly of ourselves. Go home, he advised the Faster,
eat once a day like everyone else and everything you do above that, do without [anyone] else knowing.
If fasting is cut away from obedience, it no longer serves God it no longer
pleases, God it pleases the demons, to the point that the damage that this sort of
fasting can do to us is so great that the Fathers tell us to stop our fasting .
There is another striking story from Abba Isidore the Priest
that warns against this danger of fasting which feeds once pride rather than one's humility,
and this is particularly striking because it does not apply to people who choose their own ways of
fasting, this applies to people who do follow the rules but because they follow the rules, because of
their very obedience they fall into pride and so Abba Isidore the priest says 'If you fast according
to the rules of the Church, do not fall into pride because you will be losing more than your fasting
it is better to eat meat than to fall into pride because you are fasting according to the rules
it is more useful for a monk to eat meat than to fast according to the rules and to fall into
pride'; and mind you the idea of a monastic eating meat in the desert in the 300s-400s was something
absolutely unthinkable and yet he says not that it is safer but that it is more useful for a monastic
to eat meat than to fast according to the rules and fall into pride---what does he mean by
it is more useful? He means precisely what we've been trying to understand since we've started this
video: that fasting is just a tool and the purpose of fasting is to strengthen our obedience to God
while at the same time feeding, strengthening our humility.
A monastic that fasts according to the rules and then feels very pleased about himself
or then is spoken very highly of by people who see him following the rules
a monastic doing that is in danger of falling into pride and then his fasting instead of serving him
and being pleasing to God does him a great disservice and is pleasing to demons, not God
a monastic who on the other hand for whatever reason is forced to eat meat because he knows how
long, how difficult, how far he's fallen from what a monastic should do and what the behaviour of a
monastic should be, that monastic has a better chance of feeding his humility and therefore
non-fasting, breaking the fast serves him better than actually keeping the fast.
The point of fasting is that it strengthens our obedience to God and that it feeds our humility
if you notice or if your spiritual father notices that fasting does not do that, then it is
better for you to stop fasting and indeed it is better for you to publicly eat
non-fasting foods; sometimes if you fast and you feel very good about yourself, 'Oh I'm doing
everything I'm supposed to be doing I am now a saint any minute now I'm going to float on a cloud';
if that happens in the background, if you notice any sign of this demon, of this poison in yourself,
confess it immediately and fight it any way you can; this is why
in the Orthodox tradition we have the wonderful, wonderful traditions of the Fools-for-Christ,
people who in the middle of Lent or in the fasting period before Christmas on a Wednesday or a Friday
outside a major fasting period would go in the public markets eating a sausage,
the minute that they felt pride entering their conscience they fought it any possible way,
because they understood that fasting is merely a tool and through this tool you need to feed
your obedience and your humility, if you take away this foundation of obedience and humility,
if your fasting is not built on these two and does not feed these two, then your fasting
is not fasting according to the wisdom of the Church and it is not a fasting that is pleasing to
God and it most definitely is not a fasting that serves or benefits your spiritual life in any way.
This is why we do not choose our own rules when it comes to fasting, this is why we humbly bow down
to the wisdom of those Fathers and Mothers who have struggled before us for 2000 years
whose collective wisdom has been gathered, tried, selected and put before us in these collections of
pure wisdom by the Church, and in obeying to them we do what Adam and Eve should have done in Eden ,
we allow God through the voice of His Church to tell us how to fast, when to fast, for how long
to fast and so on, we do not get to pick the tree or the fruit that we are supposed to abstain from
just like Adam and Eve did not have a choice in Eden, they were told precisely
which tree is off limits. I wanted to tell you more today but I think we'll just
wait and see what your comments and reactions are and then we'll see what is more useful for you
I think that is a better more productive more useful way of recording these videos.
Be blessed, dear ones, and keep me and keep our monastery in your prayers.
Slowly, slowly, day after day we shall survive this difficult period, and at the end of it all,
may we get to see, not the world we saw before, but a much better, healthier, more pleasing-to-God
world. Be blessed, dear ones. Amen, amen, amen.
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