This is to encourage everyone at the Third Week of our Lenten Journey in our beautiful Orthodox Christian tradition. May we open our hearts more to Jesus Christ on the bright-sorrowful path of self-denial toward joyous Pascha, with God’s help. Protestants often talk about wanting Jesus in their hearts. But, more deeply, we as Orthodox Christians seek to have, not a kind of toy inner version of Jesus to play with according to individual whims (how blasphemous that would be, of course!), but to empty our heart in our Lord and God and Savior. In that way some prayers of the Church do suggest we seek to welcome Christ in our heart. But that’s not just in an abstract concept or private emotionalism. Orthodox seek self-emptying in Him both embodiedly and in a deeply spiritual way, following the living God-given traditions of His Body the Church from across millennia and around the globe. And Lenten fasting helps.
As hopefully a Third Week way-station of encouragement on our Lenten marathon, this short post includes (a) a relevant meme (above), (b) this link to a talk I gave yesterday morning at our Pre-Sanctified Liturgy at St. John’s that discusses fasting, (c) a link to this good article related to self-emptying in Christ, which is a focus of our Lenten journey, and also (d) this brief reflection below from St. John’s.
Self-denial is very hard for us to do as Americans. We are taught to assert ourselves. But Lent is designed to encourage us to do a “deep clean” of our heart, and instead of self-assertion to engage with self-emptying in Jesus Christ. One important way to ask God’s help is to attend Lenten services like the Pre-Sanctified and Vigils the night before Liturgy, and also to confess and be more diligent about confession during Lent. If we are not doing so, then it is good to consider cutting back on any unnecessary distractions (including screens) and make the sacrifice, if physically possible.
This all is a medicine for our souls. I have had two close friends as mentors growing up (at different times and places) who were Native American elders/chiefs, one Potawatomi and the other Haudenosaunee. They shared with me how they considered their spirituality to be a “medicine” given by tradition. Orthodox Christian elders such as Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos say the same of Orthodoxy and even more so of course. Orthodoxy is the fulfillment of other traditions of spiritual medicine, as we saw in the Sacred Alaska movie our parish showed this last fall, for healing the after-effects of the Fall–healing how we objectify ourselves, others, and the Earth, so that instead we can truly find ourselves “hid with Christ in God.”
The tradition of fasting is a help with the discipline of self-denial in our Orthodox Christian tradition of spiritual medicine. It is a rule of the Church from more than a millennium ago in canons inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is to train ourselves as one would submit to a discipline in physical health training, a martial art, a military skill, or another profession. Early canons prohibit eating that which has been killed and eggs and dairy, and the tradition across centuries extends to fasting from wine and olive oil. Essentially our fasting is vegan plus shellfish without wine and olive oil. This directs us to eat less sentient forms of life and fewer delectable foods, and to lighten our footprint on the Earth. In that way it is akin to the old Scouting standard of “leave no trace,” or reducing carbon footprint. But it also harkens back to when Adam and Eve lived in Paradise and the animals were our brothers and sisters and no one was carnivorous. More than this, it is designed bio-psychologically to lower our emotional passions, by reducing our worldly consumption of richer foods, which help stoke our passions. (Fasting does vary a bit during Lent, especially on weekends when often wine and oil are allowed, and you can find daily fasting information on our parish calendar and at stjonah.org.) All this also shows our spiritual commitment to our Lord and His Body the Church.
Truly, as our Savior said, what comes out of the mouth is the cause of sin. But alongside that, reducing the worldiness of our inflow in fasting is a way to help train us to reduce sinful outflow in how we react when challenges and anxiety arise, and to be stronger to help others with their struggles, because we as human beings are both body and soul together. That is in a way a typology of our Lord Jesus Christ, fully God and fully Man, according to Whose image we are made (Genesis 1:26). We should encourage others in following this training, not as a source of self-righteousness, but as a form of small self-denial that is good practice for us, like practicing the piano each day for a pianist. It is training for all of us, not just clergy and monastics, for we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. The parish priest is responsible for giving communion and held accountable by God for his sin of communing people who are not prepared or not taught. So please if you have questions or seek a blessing for not following the traditional Orthodox fast, talk with your parish priest. For those in my parish especially, I’m happy to talk with you and visit you, or to meet by phone or zoom if that’s best for you, and am happy to bless exceptions from the traditional fast for medical and special situations, as also allowed in our tradition. Correct preparation and fasting is also important for the spiritual health of those communing in our tradition.
Lord Jesus asks us in His New Commandment to love one another more than ourself. The training in self-denial we do in Lent is to help others. It is like putting on an oxygen mask first in an airplane emergency so that we can then help others. But alongside the spiritual struggle, Lent should also be a joyful springtime for our souls, a time for the blooming of our hearts in Him. Fasting from screens is good, too, as we try to live more of “real life” beyond the virtual, for our Lord Jesus Christ said He is the Life. Unworthily loving you to death in Christ, brothers and sisters, in this Third Week of Lent, I as your sinful Priest pray that our Lord may bless us abundantly this soulful spring, in our ongoing journey to Pascha. +++