The Great Fast and the Eucharist
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The Great Fast and the Eucharist- by Fr. David Petras
Through the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, our sacrifice of praise in which bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, this mystery of the incarnation is constantly renewed and made a present reality. We do not celebrate some distant event of human history, but God present among his people here and now, joining us together in one community which is the body of Christ. Therefore, today we are united in the one Lord and are being transformed into children of God, like God in glory. It is truly a time for rejoicing and thanksgiving.
Joy in God is different from natural human joy. It brings us to a new level beyond the power of human understanding. The Lord told the prophet Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. (Isaiah 55:8)” Therefore, the Great Fast (Lent) is seen with human eyes as a time of penitence, emptiness, harshness toward human comfort, but with spiritual eyes as a time of humble, kenotic (from the Greek word for “emptying”), and compassionate joy, a time of “alleluia,” of divine praise and divine glory in which we overcome the dark powers of enslaving passion and the deceits of the devil. Especially for this reason, the year of rejoicing, of Jubilee and of godly joy must include a love of the Great Fast, which prepares us for the thanksgiving of the Divine Liturgy and for the renewal of the Mystical Supper and Resurrection of our Lord.
The Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Churches has pointed this out in a booklet on the celebration of the year 2000: “The Good News begins in the desert and is accompanied by a fast (the fast from the trees of the knowledge of good and evil and of life, Genesis 2:16-17 ): this is the paradoxical reality that the Great Fast proposes symbolically. Every believer is called to the desert, to retire from the superfluous things that distract it and to get ready internally to receive the gift of salvation. In this sense it is there that the fast prepares us to give up the forbidden fruit to receive the Bread of Life. (§ 20)” “The Eucharist is incompatible with the Lenten Fast. The Eucharist is the feast of the Church, the banquet of the presence of its Lord, while the Fast, even from the Eucharist, is the sign of waiting, the vigil that precedes the sacramental parousia (that is, the coming of the Lord in Communion). It is the invocation and preparation to the sacrament. One fasts not to abstain from the Eucharist, but to prepare for the Eucharist. (§ 22)”
The purpose of the Great Fast is not to separate us from Communion, but to deepen our spiritual understanding and readiness to receive our Lord. Cheesefare Sunday is the gate to the Fast, by its very name, though it may also be called the Sunday of Forgiveness, for any self-denial is worthless unless we are willing to forgive our brothers and sisters. On this day we are reminded of the sin of rebellion against the commandments of God committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise. God forbade them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and of the tree of life, not to deprive them of these blessings but to bestow them according to God’s good plan, his providence or economy. Adam and Eve, however, insisted on “doing it their way,” bringing death into the world. Therefore, food is often called “the cause of the Fall.” We fast during Lent, then, as a sign of our desire to regain the tree of life lost in paradise. The Third Sunday of the Great Fast, the Veneration of the Cross, then reveals to us that the Cross of Christ is the Tree of Life, and that his body, which we receive in Holy Communion is the fruit of this tree. When the Great Fast reaches it mid-point we are told that if we can imitate Jesus in his love, by taking up our Cross, that is, by a willingness to give up our lives for God, for his Gospel, and for our neighbors, then we too have access to the Tree of Life.
Fasting then becomes a sign of our fidelity to God. “Fasting doesn’t mean the negation of human values or the negation of the joys that God gives with endless generosity. But if life in Christ is a participation in the life of the Church, and the mystery of the Church is a nuptial mystery (see Ephesians 5:32), this implies the radical fidelity of the love, and this teaches us to be faithful by dying every day to the egoism that is in us by means of patience and interior asceticism (training) .... Martyrdom was a proof of holiness, not because it refused the value or the beauty of life, but because it was a sign of love lived to the limit .... If a bloody death for the Gospel is not given to all, all are asked for the testimony of a faithful love. (§§ 24-25)” Just as Jesus, after his baptism, went into the desert to fast for forty days, so also we baptized Christians must imitate him by our forty day Great Fast.
The Church asks us, as a minimum, to observe the Great Fast (Lent) by abstaining from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays. This does not mean that we cannot do more. The Church only imposes a minimum to indicate that we must practice self-denial, and to not make it too difficult for some people who may have stressful circumstances or particular dietary needs. In any case, true “fasting,” that is a total abstinence from all food, but only a partial abstinence, from meat and meat products on Wednesdays and Friday, and from meat, meat products and all dairy products on the first Monday of Lent and Good Friday, is required. All who are followers of Christ, however, are encouraged to do more, to fast from the quantity of food and from those foods that are rich, such as meat and dairy products, according to their ability and piety. To help us in this fast, it might be well to recall the ancient practice of giving the money we saved by eating less to the poor. The booklet on the Great Jubilee recommends this practice, “The Fathers of the Church have also underlined that the fast allows us to share our daily bread with needy humanity. This is an aspect of the fast to which we are fortunately more sensitive today. (§ 23)”