Sometimes it seems that, like a fairy tale hero, you suddenly find yourself in a world of temptations. He glanced around the store, and then the forbidden boiled pig glows enticingly behind the glass of the screen, calling and beckoning: “Eat me!” And the social networks? Many believers leave them during the fast, and you left. But then, while chasing the news, he could not stand it, he appeared for a minute, and that’s it – he dragged on, did not have time to come to himself, while he found himself furiously beating an angry rebuke to an unknown opponent on the keyboard. We met with an old friend, started a conversation about health and did not notice how an hour passed in a discussion of a malicious neighbor.
Men have their own obstacles. In the diaries of a clergyman from the early 20th century, one had to read complaints about billboard artists who, during Lent, allow themselves to draw bare-shouldered women. “Well, how can you keep your eyes off temptation?” – lamented the one whom the Church would later classify as a saint. All these Great Lenten troubles in the Church are called by one capacious word – temptations, that is, tests, proposals to commit sin. And the main battle of a fasting person is to fight with them, they are the cause of our nervous breakdowns. But why so many temptations in the post?
With any bodily abstinence, our body – the “veil of our flesh” that separates us from the invisible world, thins out, we become more receptive to the spiritual world. Saints warn: such a heightened sensitivity towards the spiritual world can become harmful and even dangerous if it exists on its own. If the body loses weight by fasting, and the heart at the same time is not cleansed by confession, we do not turn to the Lord with constant prayer, if we do not participate in the Sacrament of Communion, if we are not immersed in the state of prayerful mood of church services, we are not ready to respond to good deeds, then, coming into contact with this invisible world, we are exposed to dark forces. That is, fasting is impossible without the effective help of the Grace of Christ. Keep track of what you eat, say, do, but at the same time skip the services – doom yourself to a breakdown.
The second mistake is turning email into an end in itself. Fasting is a powerful tool, and when one begins to keep it out of vanity, fasting becomes an instrument of suicide, warns Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov). A demotivating message circulates on the Web: “Christ did not suffer so that I would not eat sausages.”
Yes, not for this. Once upon a time, two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ, sinless and immortal by his divine nature, voluntarily and out of love for people opened the way to meet us. Passing the way to Golgotha, Cross Suffering, Crucifixion, Death. Today it is up to us to embark on the path to Christ. No one demands to sacrifice life and health. Give up the little things: some food, some entertainment.
It is necessary to eat fasting like this: without falling into voluptuousness, get enough strength from food for a lifetime.
Let’s be honest, even such sacrifices are difficult for us. Fasting, the voluntary abandonment of what is significant to us, is our sacrifice, a voluntary sacrifice to God. Furthermore, this sacrifice must be made out of love. And if the last sentence seems pathetic to someone, let’s remember how natural it is for a mother to give the last piece of bread to her son, an effective act of love. God does not need our piece of bread, let alone the sausage. But He needs our love. Blessed Augustine put in the Mouth of God this call of the Lord to man: “I, who created you without you, cannot save you without you”. That is, God loves man and desires his salvation, but man himself …
“A full belly is deaf to the Lord”, they repeated among the people. “… their god is the womb,” said the Apostle Paul, and each of us knows how worries about earthly and bodily things not only captivate us, distracting us from God, but often distort the true picture of the world. . It begins to seem to us that we ourselves are the creators of everything, the kings of nature.
Prayerless fasting and works of mercy: the usual diet
Fasting is the restoration of the true hierarchy of the universe, when we clearly realize our smallness and dependence on the Creator. Moreover, we realize this not in a situation of death, illness or any other catastrophe: here everyone instantly remembers Who really holds everything in his Hand. Fasting is a kind of microcatastrophe to which a person goes at his own expense, voluntarily, refusing what in most cases not only makes ordinary life happy, but also constitutes its essence, based on the needs of the body. As the seminarians joke, I would rather go to God myself than be led to Him by sorrows, illnesses, pain. And so, turning around our body, we return to God. The goal of fasting is not our ascetic works, but the rebirth of our relationship with God. And these relationships begin with repentance, which means, again, the rule of the temple and home prayer, which includes the penitential prayer of Ephraim the Syrian during Great Lent.
The third error of those who fast is the lack of understanding. The Monk Paisius Velichkovsky explained: “If the meat is inflamed due to youth, then a lot should be refrained from; if it is weak, then you need to eat enough to satiety, regardless of other ascetics: everyone has a measure and an internal teacher. : his own conscience.” It is necessary to give up food when “you still feel hungry” It is necessary to get used to fasting in food gradually.But in order to stop blasphemy in yourself, the condemnation of others, anger, on the contrary, must be sharp and uncompromising.
You should not despair if, during the long days of fasting, you could not stand it and broke down: you ate the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, thought the wrong thing – a person is weak, but our churches are always open. for repentance These days, not in vain do they remember the words of the holy King Solomon that the righteous will rise even if they fall seven times, and the wicked will perish. The principle is simple: break, fall, get up, repent, move on.
There is one, the main criteria for determining whether your post is successfully approved. Saints teach: when you fast, control yourself: does love for people live in you, are you capable of good?
