Why Orthodox Christians Fast

Christ assumed His disciples would fast — "when you fast," not "if" (Matthew 6:16) — and He fasted forty days in the wilderness before beginning His ministry. The Church fasts for the same reasons He named: not to be seen, and not because food is evil, but because the stomach is the most honest place to practice saying no to yourself. A person who cannot decline a cheese sandwich will find it harder to decline anger, lust, or despair. The Fathers call fasting the training ground of freedom.

Fasting is also confession in action: it says with the body that man does not live by bread alone. And it is inseparable from mercy — the money and time not spent on rich food are meant to go to the poor. Isaiah is read daily through Great Lent, and the fast's opening hymns take up his words precisely to make the point: the fast God chooses is "to loose the bands of wickedness... to deal thy bread to the hungry" (Isaiah 58:6-7). A fast without prayer and almsgiving, the saying goes, is merely a diet — or worse: "you will be likened to the evil demons, who never eat," the Church's own Lenten hymns warn.

The traditional rule abstains from meat, eggs, dairy, fish, wine, and oil, with the strictness varying by day and season; the detailed rules have their own entry. The rhythm is weekly (most Wednesdays, for the betrayal, and Fridays, for the Cross) and seasonal: Great Lent before Pascha, the Nativity Fast before Christmas, and the shorter Apostles' and Dormition fasts in summer. There are also entirely fast-free weeks after the great feasts — the Church feasts as seriously as it fasts.

Two rules govern everything. First, the fast is a means, never the goal — broken cheerfully for hospitality, illness, pregnancy, travel, or a brother's need, under the Church's principle of economia. Beginners are meant to grow into it gradually with their priest's guidance, not to attempt the full monastic rule in their first year. Second, the fast is private and without judgment: Christ's instruction to wash your face and tell no one, and the tradition's blunt warning that pride over fasting is worse than any food (more here).

The test of a fast is what comes out of the mouth, not what goes in. St. John Chrysostom's rule of thumb has never been improved on: fast from foods if you can, but above all fast with the eyes, the tongue, the ears, and the temper — let the hands fast from grasping and the feet from running to evil. Kept that way, the fasting seasons become what they were designed to be: the Church's regular springtime, in which appetite loosens, prayer sharpens, and Pascha arrives to people who are actually hungry for it.