Half way through the first week of lent the first stichera of Vespers points to Isa 58 and, reminds us of the purpose of the great fast. “While fasting with the body, brethren, let us also fast in spirit.” Sack cloth and ashes, surrendering chocolate and beer – too often the discipline of lent is seen as our annual demonstration of personal holiness, an attempt to attract the benevolent attention of God, if only for a short time. God likes our suffering – because it shows our solidarity with him. This brutal perspective is both warped and joyless. It focuses on the “rules” of fasting and attention to religious rites rather than the conscious integration of important ideas of our faith into the life of the community.

“This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. . . . If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday . . .” (Isa. 58. 6-10)

Fasting in Spirit then is an expression of solidarity with humanity (itself a living ikon of Christ); and an expression of how we are Christ in the world, and to the world by embodying the teachings of the Master – transforming the world around us one encounter at a time.