Orthodox fasting keeps set seasons and weekdays free of meat, dairy, and often oil and wine, joined to prayer and almsgiving.
Tagged: Fasting Prayer Sacred time
How It Is Practiced
The calendar holds four great fasts — Great Lent, the Nativity Fast, the Apostles' Fast, and the Dormition Fast — plus most Wednesdays and Fridays of the year. The faithful abstain in stages from meat, then dairy and eggs, and on strict days from oil and wine, eating simply and less. The fast is kept with increased services, the Jesus Prayer, confession, and deliberate almsgiving; children, the ill, travelers, and pregnant women are eased or exempt by their priest's blessing.
Purpose and Meaning
Fasting is the Church's training of desire: by refusing lawful pleasures in season, the appetite is schooled so that prayer and charity have room. The tradition is explicit that fasting without prayer and mercy is a diet, not a fast — its measure is the softened heart, and its aim at Pascha is hunger for God made physical.
References
- Fasting — Orthodox Church in America Free / open access
Related Practices
- The Prayer Rule — A prayer rule is a fixed daily pattern of prayers, readings, and prostrations kept under a spiritual father's guidance.
- Prostrations and Bows — Orthodox prayer is prayed with the body: bows from the waist and full prostrations punctuate the daily rule and the services.
- Vrata — Votive Fasts and Vows — A vrata is a vow undertaken for a set term — a fast day kept, a food renounced, a rite performed — for the good of oneself or of those one loves.
Related Across the Site
- Eucharistic Adoration Devotion — In Eucharistic adoration the consecrated host is displayed and the faithful pray in its presence in silence.
- First Fridays Devotion Devotion — The First Fridays devotion joins Mass and Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays to the promises of the Sacred Heart.
- The Angelus Devotion — The Angelus is a short prayer on the Incarnation, prayed at morning, noon, and evening at the sound of a bell.
- The Bahá'í Fast Devotion — For the nineteen days of the month of ʿAlāʾ, the last month before the spring New Year, Bahá'ís fast from sunrise to sunset.
- The Three Daily Prayers Devotion — Jewish devotion is structured by three daily services — morning, afternoon, and evening — built around the Shema and the Amidah.
- Veneration of Icons Devotion — Before the icons at home and in church, the faithful light lamps and candles, bow, and kiss the images of Christ and the saints.
- Vrata — Votive Fasts and Vows Devotion — A vrata is a vow undertaken for a set term — a fast day kept, a food renounced, a rite performed — for the good of oneself or of those one loves.
- Ṣalāh — The Five Daily Prayers Devotion — Five times a day, at hours set by the sun, Muslims stop and pray: the standing, bowing, and prostration that structure the Islamic day.