Remembering Sunday: Nativity Fast (Orthodox)
What I Remember
There are Sundays when it feels like the pastor is speaking directly to you. When every word echoes through your being like the very word of God. When everything you are is focused on the message. This was not one of those weekends. The church was packed and I was working as a doorman of sorts. But I still got something from it!
Matthew is called, and Jesus eats with him and his tax collector friends. The pharisees criticize him, to which he replies, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." In the epistle, we hear “the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him.” Thank God for that!
reflection
It’s interesting to note that the orthodox religion still treats Advent as a fasting season, which begins on the 15th of November. I actually enjoy fasting, but this is one of the areas where I wonder about discerning the higher purpose of tradition and not relying so much on the letter of the rule. But the rule is a good guide for learners. I completely forgot and ate lots of meat at lunch today! Comparing my behavior to that which the rule requires helps me to understand how to better cultivate virtue, gives me some kind of yard stick. I can’t compare to others, it is my walk, but this orients me in it. Like Christ does in the Sermon on the Mount, I will try to extract the virtues implied by the rule of fasting.
First off, awareness and continual connection to our Lord. When we allow ourselves to become reactive and swayed by the passions or trends of the moment, it can lead to a lower form of living. So love of Christ, as of all love, requires forethought and creativity… though this more so in a pluralistic society such as ours. I imagine in countries which are Eastern Orthodox, this individual practice of remembrance, planning ahead to make sure you can find appropriate foods, and so on, is not important. Instead, the fasting would have more to do about preparing together with your community, and bonding with them through shared experience.
There’s a question of the physiological goal of fasting. My understanding of the sports performance literature is that there are distinct zones to metabolism depending on the depth of caloric deficit. For example, there’s a “weight loss zone” of mild deprivation and a “starvation zone” where the body is very stressed and holds on to fat due to the large caloric defecit and adaptations made in response, such as lower energy and movement. It would be interesting to understand the physiological ranges that fasting is intended to promote — or maybe that is besides the point.
I am also remembering what I learned from my over-fasting sickness last Lent: These seasons are just as much about prayer and charity as they are about fasting. So this Advent I really ought to focus on prayer and charity. I think I will keep a bunch of $20 bills in my wallet as part of a “caught being good” fund, as giving to beggars is not as straightforward as it was in first-century israel. I want to be proactive, not reactive, and promote this virtue in others.
I love the richness of practices that religion offers us. To me, the specific rule is not so important, but trying to follow some kind of rule is. Certain people, and certain parts of myself, cannot stand temperance as a concept [1]. But for me, saying no to the slavery of the passions, to the rule of the most base instincts, was the beginning of the path to truly live well and know my God. Avoiding the negative can be the beginning, but it is nothing to brag of or rest on. I am reminded of Maximus the Confessor’s expansive definition of chastity, not the one-dimensional avoidance of certain forms of sexual sin, but total well-ordering of all the passions. So this Nativity Fast, I do say no to all lower instincts that seek to distract the mind, occlude the heart, scatter the eyes. But, more importantly, I seek a well-ordered Eros, an Eros made whole through Agape. No grasping, no consuming obsession, no distraction, but grateful acceptance, honoring of the good in others, and focus.
footnotes
“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.” ~ C.S. Lewis
