Comments on: Feasts

By: Bože! » Blog Archive » Fasting - Solidarity With Others

Bože! » Blog Archive » Fasting - Solidarity With Others — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:55:27 +0000

[...] to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxEarlier this week I posted on Feasts – and the converstaion took an interesting and unexpected direction to discuss fasting and the [...]

By: Huw Raphael

Huw Raphael — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:55:57 +0000

I always assumed the Wed/Fri thing was more “training”. Those two are among the earliest fasts in the church, of course (attested to by the Didache), but as we picked up the “fullness” of the calendar it makes more sense: you have to stay in practice, yes? I think that’s one reason some of the Eastern folks now keep the Wed/Fri fast even during the Pascha season: we’re so bloated with a super-abundance of food, that a 50-day party might as well be “in the world”.

I’ve read in Talley’s “Origins of the Liturgical Year” about all these mini-fast periods. It makes much better sense than the extended 40 (or more) fasting period, but I think some part of the 40-day lent makes sense given my first hypothesis: in a time when food storage meant “burying it under the snow”, by the time Lent rolls around, it is the wealthy who have food left to share…

Today we may *need* a bunch of fasts just to keep us honest…

By: admin

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:45:30 +0000

oo oo Huw, how curious that you put it in the context of fasting – and then as well with social justice.

For about three years now we’ve been contemplating re-setting the context of feasts by introducing a bit of “retro-praxis”. Back in the late antique period (before the late fourth century, possibly in some areas, into the first half of the fifth) the custom of fasting a week before the feast coalesed into the Great Fast or Lent. Some feasts still have the fast before – but think about it for a moment – if one had to observe the fast customs for one week out of every month (for the major feast of each month) the consciousness, of which you speak could really take root, and develop. Wednesdays & Fridays come and go – there is not enough time, not enough continuity, and space for reflection in that short period of time to really give it an impact. Not to mention those days have dubious histories – they were, I believe, instituted because they were days on which Jews did not fast. Your thoughts give new impetus to this idea.

hmmm . . . .

By: Huw Raphael

Huw Raphael — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:52:43 +0000

It’s important to remember the old saying (or is it an American convert saying??) “No feast without a fast” and my own parallel, “No fast without a feast”. Essentially the traditional fasting calendar, as my first Orthodox priest pointed out, puts poverty on the wealthy. If a Byzantine Prince is forced by his piety to eat (at least on Wed and Fri and for Lent) what the poor eat all the time, a sense of equality and justice is inculcated. Then, when a feast rolls around – where the poor can’t often afford to do anything special, but do strain to buy something “upscale” and the rich suddenly host a public table… then something Messianic has happened, something Christ-like.

Sadly some have taken the fasts and become rather legalistic about them. Likewise the feasts have become restricted to sort of a legalistic “church box” where we keep them out of sight. We know that “fasting” in our world, adhering to what would now be called veganism, can be *terribly* pricey! It’s possible to require a huge income to eat that way. Yet most of the world do it all the time. And when the feasting rolls around most of us rush out to buy ready-made fancy stuff…

You know where I’m going here, you weave your own material…