Consider well, my soul: do you fast? Do not despise your neighbor. Do you abstain from food? Do not condemn your brother. (Fourth Troparion of the Praises, Matins of Meatfare Sunday)
IT IS SIGNIFICANT THAT THE DAY before Lent begins (Cheesefare, or Forgiveness, Sunday) we hear this lesson from St. Paul’s Epistle:
Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand. (Rom. 14:3-4)
This reading was, selected for this day to remind Christians that while the Church offers a general rule of fasting to all (no meat, no dairy, and most of the time no fish, wine, or oil), it is not realistic to expect everyone to be able to fast with the same rigor. Different conditions of life and health play a part in one’s ascetic effort. What is important is not how rigorously we fast, but to what extent, if any, fasting improves our spiritual life, and whether we fast according to our own strength and ability.
An elderly woman with many health problems cannot fast as rigorously as a young man in the peak of his physical condition, but that does not make the former’s fasting less valuable than the latter’s. The old woman may fast only from meat, while the young man abstains from dairy and fish also. But the old woman eats frugally and simply, gives what little money she has to the poor, spends many hours praying, and does not criticize or judge others. The young man, on the other hand, while observing the dietary rules of the fast, gorges on soya cheese, crab, prawns, and the like,6 spends money on himself rather than giving to others, and yet criticizes others for not fasting. Such a “fast” serves no spiritual purpose at all.
Therefore, the Triodion again gives us a stern warning about passing judgment on those who do not fast or who fast less rigorously than we. If we find ourselves passing judgment as the Pharisee did on the tax collector, then we fast in vain. For we have not even begun to fast from the root of all sin, which is pride. Pride renders fasting useless. For there is no other way to know God than to humble oneself before Him. As C. S. Lewis astutely remarked, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people, and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” 7
Lent calls us to stop looking down on others and to start looking up to God. But the image of a humble man in most people’s minds is someone who is downtrodden. Indeed, this is the picture we are given of the tax collector, as we saw in chapter one. But spiritually and inwardly the humble man looks up to God because, despite his penitence and contrition, he has hope that God will forgive him and accept him.
Therein lies the true meaning of repentance. It looks forward and not back; it looks upward and not down. It is. Ultimately, something that leads us to joy and liberation. God calls us to true joy and true freedom, and we cannot attain that until we have rejected the false joy arid freedom of sin.
~Vassilios Papavassiliou, Meditations for Great Lent: Reflections on the Triodion
6 Shellfish is not prohibited by the fasts of the Orthodox Church.
7 Mere Christianity, Harper Collins (2002), p. 124.
