Theodore the Studite: Fasting Renews the Soul and Makes Us Habitations of God Sunday, Feb 17 2013

The present days of the holy fast are, among the other periods of the year, a calm haven to which all gather and find spiritual serenity –

not only monastics, but laymen as well…., for this period is beneficial and salvific for every country and age of mankind.

At this time every disruption and disorder comes to a halt, and doxology and hymnody are multiplied, charities and prayer by means of which our good God is moved to compassion and is pleased to grant peace to our souls and forgiveness of sins –

if only we shall sincerely turn to Him with all our heart, falling down before Him with fear and trembling, and promising to cease from every bad habit which we might have.

[...] Brethren, fasting is the renewal of the soul, for the Apostle says insofar as the body weakens and withers from the ascetic labor of fasting, then so much is the soul renewed day by day and is made beauteous and shines in the beauty which God originally bestowed upon it.

And when it is purified and adorned with fasting and repentance, then God loves it and will live in it as the Lord has said: “I and the Father will come and make Our abode with him” (John 14.23).

Thus if there is such value and grace in fasting that it makes us into habitations of God, then ought we to greet it with great rejoicing and gladness.

[...] If we desire that the fast be for us a true one and acceptable unto God, then together with abstaining from food, let us restrain ourselves from every sin of soul and body, as the sticheron instructs us in which it is said,

“Let us keep the Fast not only by refraining from food, but by becoming strangers to all sinful passions”.

[...] Let us guard against ill temper and self-assertion, that is, let us not appropriate things for ourselves and indulge our self-will.

For nothing is so loved of the devil as to find a person who has not forgiven another and has not taken advice from those able to instruct him in virtue; then the enemy easily deludes the self-assertive and traps him in all that he does and reckons as good.

Let us vigilantly attend to ourselves, especially in regard to the desires of the flesh; for it is just now, when we fast, that the chameleon serpent-devil fights us with bad thoughts.

Theodore the Studite: (759-826): Catechetical Homilies, 47 @ Orthodox Christian Information Center.

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Leo the Great: Love of God and Neighbour Saturday, Nov 10 2012

There are two loves from which proceed all wishes, as different in quality as they are different in their sources.

For the reasonable soul, which cannot exist without love, is the lover either of God or the world.

In the love of God there is no excess, but in the love of the world all is hurtful.

Therefore we must cling inseparably to eternal treasures, but things temporal we must use like passers-by.

Accordingly, as we are sojourners hastening to return to our own land, all the good things of this world which meet us may be as aids on the way, not snares to detain us.

[...] But as the world attracts us with its appearance, and abundance and variety, it is not easy to turn away from it unless in the beauty of things visible the Creator rather than the creature is loved.

When He says, “thou shalt love the Lord thy God from all thy heart, and from all thy mind, and from all thy strength” He wishes us in nothing to loosen ourselves from the bonds of His love.

And when He links the love of our neighbour also to this command, He enjoins on us the imitation of His own goodness, that we should love what He loves and do what He does.

For … in all things He requires our ministry and service, and wishes us to be the stewards of His gifts, that he who bears God’s image may do God’s will.

For this reason, in the Lord’s prayer we say most devoutly, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done as in heaven, so also on earth.”

What else do we ask for in these words but that God may subdue those whom He has not yet subdued, and as in heaven He makes the angels ministers of His will, so also on earth He may make men?

And in seeking this we love God, we love also our neighbour. And the love within us has but one Object, since we desire the bond-servant to serve and the Lord to have rule.

This state of mind, therefore, beloved, from which earthly love is excluded, is strengthened by the habit of well-doing, because the conscience must needs be delighted at good deeds, and do willingly what it rejoices to have done.

Thus it is that fasts are kept, alms freely given, justice maintained, frequent prayer resorted to, and the desires of individuals become the common wish of all.

Labour fosters patience, gentleness extinguishes anger, loving-kindness treads down hatred, unclean desires are slain by holy aspirations, avarice is cast out by liberality, and burdensome wealth becomes the means of virtuous acts.

Leo the Great (c.400-461): Sermon 90, 3-4.

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G.K. Chesterton: The Joyful Asceticism of St Francis Thursday, Oct 4 2012

If ever that rarer sort of romantic love, which was the truth that sustained the Troubadours, falls out of fashion and is treated as fiction, we may see some such misunderstanding as that of the modern world about asceticism.

[...] Men will ask what selfish sort of woman it must have been who ruthlessly exacted tribute in the form of flowers, or what an avaricious creature she can have been to demand solid gold in the form of a ring; just as they ask what cruel kind of God can have demanded sacrifice and self-denial.

They will have lost the clue to all that lovers have meant by love; and will not understand that it was because the thing was not demanded that it was done.

But whether or no any such lesser things will throw a light on the greater, it is utterly useless to study a great thing like the Franciscan movement while remaining in the modern mood that murmurs against gloomy asceticism.

The whole point about St. Francis of Assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he certainly was not gloomy.

As soon as ever he had been unhorsed by the glorious humiliation of his vision of dependence on the divine love, he flung himself into fasting and vigil exactly as he had flung himself furiously into battle.

He had wheeled his charger clean round, but there was no halt or check in the thundering impetuosity of his charge. There was nothing negative about it; it was not a regimen or a stoical simplicity of life.

It was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. He devoured fasting as a man devours food. He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold.

And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure.

[...] It is certain that he held on this heroic or unnatural course from the moment when he went forth in his hair-shirt into the winter woods to the moment when he desired even in his death agony to lie bare upon the bare ground, to prove that he had and that he was nothing.

And we can say, with almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity, looked down upon a happy man.

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936): St Francis, ch. 5.

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Augustine of Hippo: Lent is the Epitome of Our Whole Life Sunday, Feb 26 2012

As we begin our annual Lenten observance with its solemn call to conversion…it is more than ever my pastoral duty to nourish your minds with the word of God when you are about to mortify your bodies by fasting.

We are soon to celebrate the Passion of our crucified Lord. It is therefore in keeping with our commitment to him that we should crucify ourselves by restraining the desires of the flesh.

As St Paul says: You cannot belong to Christ Jesus unless you crucify all your self-indulgent passions and desires.

Such is the Cross upon which we Christians must continually hang, since our whole lives are beset by trials and temptations.

Not for us, as long as we live, to be rid of those nails we read of in the psalm: Pierce my flesh with the nails of your fear.

Flesh means the desires of our lower nature; nails, the demands of God’s justice and holiness.

With these the fear of the Lord pierces our flesh and fastens us to the Cross as an acceptable sacrifice to him.

In a similar passage the apostle Paul appeals to us by the mercy of God to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

To hang on such a Cross brings no shame to the servants of God; it is something in which they glory, as Saint Paul does when he says:

Far be it from me to glory in anything except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

This crucifixion, I repeat, is something that must continue throughout our life, not for forty days only.

It is true that Moses, Elijah, and our Lord himself fasted for forty days; but in Moses, Elijah, and Christ we are meant to see the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel, and to learn from them not to cling to this present world or imitate its ways, but to nail our unregenerate selves to the Cross.

Christians must always live in this way, without any wish to come down from their Cross, otherwise they will sink beneath the world’s mire.

But if we have to do so all our lives, we must make an even greater effort during these days of Lent. It is not a simple matter of living through forty days;

Lent is the epitome of our whole life.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430): Sermon 205.1 (PL 38:1039-1040); from the Monastic Office of Vigils, First Sunday in Lent, Year 2.

 

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John Chrysostom: Why Do We Fast? Saturday, Feb 25 2012

During this Lenten season each of the faithful would undergo a thorough purification by means of prayer, almsgiving, fasting, watching, repentant tears, confession, and every other remedial measure.

Then when they had done all in their power to cleanse their consciences, they could approach the sacraments.

It is certain that the fathers did well to use such lenience in their desire to establish us in the habit of fasting.

As we know, we could proclaim a fast throughout the whole year, and no one would pay any attention.

But now, with a set time for fasting of only forty days, even the most sluggish need no exhortation to rouse themselves to undergo it; they accept it as a regular observance and recurring encouragement.

So, when someone asks you why you fast, you should not answer: because of the Passover, or because of the Cross. Neither of these is the reason for our fasting.

We fast because of our sins, since we are preparing to approach the sacred mysteries.

Moreover, the Christian Passover is a time for neither fasting nor mourning, but for great joy, since the Cross destroyed sin and made expiation for the whole world.

It reconciled ancient enmities and opened the gates of heaven.

It made friends of those who had been filled with hatred, restoring them to the citizenship of heaven.

Through the Cross our human nature has been set at the right hand of the throne of God, and we have been granted countless good things besides.

Therefore we must not give way to mourning or sadness; we must rejoice greatly instead over all these blessings.

Listen to the exultant words of Saint Paul: God forbid that I should boast of anything but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And elsewhere he writes: God shows his own love for us because when we were still sinners Christ died for our sake.

Saint John’s message is the same. God loved the world so much, he declares, and then, passing over every other manifestation of God’s love, he comes at once to the crucifixion.

God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, that is, he gave him up to be crucified, so that those who believed in him might not perish but might have eternal life.

If, then, the Cross has its foundation in love and is our glory, we must not say we mourn because of the Cross.

Far from it. What we have to mourn over is our own sinfulness, and that is why we fast.

John Chrysostom (c.347-407): Oratio 3 Adversus Iudaeos (PG 48, 867-868);  from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Ash Wednesday, Year 2.

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Aelred of Rievaulx: “They shall Beat their Swords into Ploughshares and their Spears into Sickles” Friday, Dec 2 2011

Rievaulx Abbey

Our way of life is a strongly fortified city surrounded on all sides by sound observances which, like walls and towers, rise up to prevent our enemy from deceiving us and enticing us away from our Emperor’s army.

What a wall poverty is! How well it defends us against the pride of the world, against harmful and ruinous vanities and superfluities.

What a tower silence is! It repels the assaults of contention, quarrelling, dissension, and detraction.

What about obedience, humility, cheap clothing? What about a restricted diet? They are walls, they are towers against vices, against the attacks of our enemies.

In this city we declare ourselves, not Romans, but angelic beings. For these observances demonstrate that we belong to the fellowship of the angels and are not among the slaves of the Romans.

When we make profession of this way of life the words of Isaiah are fulfilled: They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles.

Then he goes on: Nation shall not lift sword against nation nor ever again be trained for war.

[...] Let us think about the sword of which the Lord said: Everyone who takes up the sword will perish by the sword, and the ploughshares by which the earth of our heart is broken, in accordance with the text: Rend your hearts and not your garments.

And we shall see at the present time countless persons changing their swords into ploughshares.

The sword is wrongdoing. With this sword a person wounds himself before he does anyone else; as Saint Augustine says:

‘Every person who is a wrongdoer harms himself before he harms anyone else because, even before he injures the other person, by making up his mind to injure someone else he injures himself, slaying himself with the sword of wrongdoing.

This is the sword of which the Lord says to Peter: Everyone who takes up the sword will perish by the sword.

How many there are, brothers, who at the present time are beating this sword of wrongdoing into the ploughshare of compunction!

Many who have previously killed their soul with the sword of sin now rend their heart by the compunction of penance.

Many today are also changing their spears – that is, the subtlety of their wits by which they used to drag many others down into sin with them – into sickles with which they are reaping a spiritual harvest so that they may come to meet the Lord bearing in their hands the sheaves of justice and salvation.

Aelred of Rievaulx (1110 – 1167): The Liturgical Sermons 3.7-13, tr. Berkeley & Pennington (2001), from Cistercian Fathers 58, from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Monday in 1st Week of Advent, Year 2.

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John Chrysostom: Christ is Risen, and the Demons are Fallen! Christ is Risen, and the Angels Rejoice! Christ is Risen, and Life Reigns! Sunday, Apr 24 2011

If any man be devout and loveth God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast!

[...] If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward.

If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast.

If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings.

Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.

If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing.

And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour, will accept the last even as the first.

He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.

[...] Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord.

Receive your reward, both the first, and likewise the second.

You rich and poor together, hold high festival!

You sober and you heedless, honour the day!

Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast.

The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.

The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.

Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal Kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shown forth from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Saviour’s death has set us free.

He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.

He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.

And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered when it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.

It was embittered, for it was mocked.

It was embittered, for it was slain.

It was embittered, for it was overthrown.

It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.

It took a body, and met God face to face.

It took earth, and encountered Heaven.

It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen, and life reigns!

Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.

For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen.

John Chrysostom (c.347-407): Paschal Homily @ Pravoslavie.

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Francis de Sales: Perseverance Springs from God’s Mercy, His Most Precious Gift Saturday, Mar 26 2011

Perseverance is the most desirable gift we can hope for in this life, and the one which…we cannot have but from the hand of God, who alone can assure him that stands, and help him up that falls.

Therefore we must incessantly demand it, making use of the means which Our Saviour has taught us to the obtaining of it: prayer, fasting, alms-deeds, frequenting the sacraments, intercourse with the good, the hearing and reading of holy words.

Now since the gift of prayer and devotion is liberally granted to all those who sincerely will to consent to divine inspirations, it is consequently in our power to persevere.

Not of course that I mean to say that our perseverance has its origin from our power, for on the contrary I know it springs from God’s mercy, whose most precious gift it is.

I mean that though it does not come from our power, yet it comes within our power, by means of our will, which we cannot deny to be in our power.

For though God’s grace is necessary for us, to will to persevere, yet is this will in our power, because heavenly grace is never wanting to our will, and our will is not wanting to our power.

And indeed according to the great S. Bernard’s opinion, we may all truly say with the Apostle that:

Neither death, nor life, nor Angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus Our Lord (Rom. 8:38-39).

Yes, indeed, for no creature can take us away by force from this holy love; we only can forsake and abandon it by our own will, except for which there is nothing to be feared in this matter.

So…we ought to place our whole hope in God, who will perfect the work of our salvation which he has begun in us, if we be not wanting to his grace.

For we are not to think that he who said to the paralytic: Go, and do not will to sin again gave him not also power to avoid that willing which he forbade him.

And surely he would never exhort the faithful to persevere, if he were not ready to furnish them with the power.

[...] We must often then with the great King demand of God the heavenly gift of perseverance, and hope that he will grant it us:

Cast me not off in the time of old age; when my strength shall fail, do not thou forsake me (Ps. 70:9).

Francis de Sales (1567-1622): Treatise on the Love of God, 3,4.

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Leo the Great: We Aim to Keep the Super-Excellent Mystery of the Lord’s Passion with Bodies and Hearts Purified Friday, Mar 11 2011

There are no seasons which are not full of divine blessings, and access is ever open to us to God’s mercy through His grace.

Nevertheless, at this time – when the return of the day, on which we were redeemed, invites us to all the duties of godliness – the minds of all should be moved with greater zeal to spiritual progress, and animated by larger confidence.

Thus we may aim to keep the super-excellent mystery of the Lord’s Passion with bodies and hearts purified.

These great mysteries do indeed require from us such unflagging devotion and unwearied reverence that we should remain in God’s sight always the same, as we ought to be found on the Easter feast itself.

But few have this constancy, and, so long as the stricter observance is relaxed in consideration of the frailty of the flesh, and so long as one’s interests extend over all the various actions of this life, even pious hearts must get some soils from the dust of the world.

Therefore the Divine Providence has with great beneficence taken care that the discipline of the forty days should heal us and restore the purity of our minds, during which the faults of other times might be redeemed by pious acts and removed by chaste fasting.

[...] Let us take care to obey the Apostle’s precepts, cleansing “ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit” (2 Cor. 7:1).

Let us control the struggles that go on between our two natures, the spirit which, if it is under the guidance of God, should be the governor of the body, may uphold the dignity of its rule.

[...] Our fast does not consist chiefly of mere abstinence from food, nor are dainties withdrawn from our bodily appetites with profit, unless the mind is recalled from wrong-doing and the tongue restrained from slandering.

This is a time of gentleness and long-suffering, of peace and tranquillity: when all the pollutions of vice are to be eradicated and continuance of virtue is to be attained by us.

Now let godly minds boldly accustom themselves to forgive faults, to pass over insults, and to forget wrongs.

[...] The self-restraint of the religious should not be gloomy, but sincere; no murmurs of complaint should be heard from those who are never without the consolation of holy joys.

[...] Forego vengeance, forgive offences:  exchange severity for gentleness, indignation for meekness, discord for peace.

Let everyone find us self-restrained, peaceable, kind:  that our fastings may be acceptable to God.

For in a word to Him we offer the sacrifice of true abstinence and true godliness, when we keep ourselves from all evil.

Leo the Great (c.400-461): Sermon 42, 1,2,6.

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Leo the Great: When the Outer Man is Subdued, Let the Inner Man be Refreshed Saturday, Feb 20 2010

(Conclusion – continued from previous post…)

Relying, therefore, dearly-beloved, on these arms, let us enter actively and fearlessly on the contest set before us:  so that in this fasting struggle we may not rest satisfied with only this end, that we should think abstinence from food alone desirable.

For it is not enough that the substance of our flesh should be reduced, if the strength of the soul be not also developed.

When the outer man is somewhat subdued, let the inner man be somewhat refreshed; and when bodily excess is denied to our flesh, let our mind be invigorated by spiritual delights.

Let every Christian scrutinise himself, and search severely into his inmost heart:  let him see that no discord cling there, no wrong desire be harboured.

[...] Accordingly, dearly-beloved, being mindful of our weakness, because we easily fall into all kinds of faults, let us by no means neglect this special remedy and most effectual healing of our wounds.

Let us remit, that we may have remission:  let us grant the pardon which we crave:  let us not be eager to be revenged when we pray to be forgiven.

Let us not pass over the groans of the poor with deaf ear, but with prompt kindness bestow our mercy on the needy, that we may deserve to find mercy in the judgment.

And he that, aided by God’s grace, shall strain every nerve after this perfection, will keep this holy fast faithfully.

Free from the leaven of the old wickedness, in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. 5:8), he will reach the blessed Passover, and by newness of life will worthily rejoice in the mystery of man’s reformation through Christ our Lord Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Leo the Great (c.400-461): Sermon 39,5-6.

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