Fasting & Feasting in Lent
The penitential and preparatory season of Lent includes 40 days of fasting. However, if you look at the calendar closely enough and do the math, you’ll see that the actual season is a bit longer. Why?
Within those 40 days, we exclude those Sundays. Sundays are feast days and cannot be fast days. These Lord’s Days earn the title, “Sundays in Lent” rather than “Sundays of Lent.”
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Fasting vs Feasting: What’s the Difference?
The Church calendar comprises an ongoing series of feasts and fasts. The Church assigns feast days, which are significant biblical events (such as the Transfiguration and Annunciation). In contrast, other days and seasons are reserved for fasting (Fridays, Advent, and Lent, among others). Easter is the supreme “Feast of Feasts.” Furthermore, every Sunday throughout the year is a celebration and commemoration of the Paschal feast.
How can the [wedding] guests fast when celebrating with the Groom?
Mark 2:19
The point being that weddings are times of celebration and joy, not reserved for fasting or penitence. If Christ is the groom and the Church His bride, and if Sunday is the Lord’s Day, then how could we possibly do anything but feast? Within the early church, and still maintained throughout modern Christian theology, was the concept that Sunday was the first day, the third day, and the eighth day. I have written about this unique thought elsewhere.
Sunday is the first day of the week and the first day of creation. It is the day of the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2), given that Saturday is the Sabbath, the day of rest. It is the third day, because it was on Sunday that our Lord arose from the grave. He conquered sin, death, and the devil, having “trampled down death by death,” and he was raised to new life. This echoes his bold claim from earlier in John’s gospel,
I am the resurrection and the life…
John 11:25
Finally, Sunday is the eighth day because the resurrection changes everything. It is the first day of the new week, the first day of the new creation. It is the breaking in of God’s Kingdom in the here and now. John marks his Gospel according to days, and the Sunday of the Resurrection is both a continuation of the first day and its fulfillment.
Pointing to Easter
It is this very combination of metaphors, meaning, and symbolism that creates our annual celebration of Easter and our 51 mini-celebrations every other Sunday. Easter is always on Sunday. Fasting cannot occur on the Feast of Feasts.
The Orthodox celebrate the Eucharist during the weekdays of Lent using “pre-sanctified gifts.” Such an action demonstrates the maintenance of balance between feasting and fasting. Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote:
“As the sacrament and the celebration of the Kingdom, as the feast of the Church, it is incompatible with fast and is not celebrated during Lent; as the grace and the power of the Kingdom which are at work in the world, as our supplier of the ‘essential food’ and the weapon of our spiritual fight, it is at the very center of the fast, it is indeed the heavenly manna that keeps us alive on our journey through the desert of Lent.”
Schmemann, Great Lent, pp. 48-49
Explaining the Lenten Fast
Fr. Schmemann highlights two distinct types of fasts: an ascetical fast and a complete or total fast. I’d like to briefly unpack both of these fasts in the hope that they will aid in your observance of Lent.
There are indeed two ways or modes of fasting. They are rooted in both Scripture and Tradition, and they correspond to two distinct needs or states of humanity. The first one can be termed total fast, for it consists of total abstinence from food and drink. One can define the second one as an ascetical fast. It consists mainly in abstinence from certain foods and in substantial reduction of the dietary regimen…
Schmemann, Great Lent, p. 49.
Exploring Tensions
Regarding tension, I am firmly convinced that the entirety of our Christian life is an ongoing ebb and flow of fasting and feasting. We fast in penitence, preparation, joy, and anticipation. The Christian year gives us the two seasons of Advent and Lent as prime times for intentional fasting. It is also common to fast on Fridays—in honor of our Lord’s sacrifice on Good Friday—as well.
Lent: A Renewal
Lent is about self-denial, repentance, and seeking the Lord. The Lenten fasting days are days for self-denial, concentration on God’s gifts, and focusing more fully on God. This could include meat, dairy, and alcohol. Fasting always accompanies the Feast of Feasts in view, and never to earn or merit our participation at the Altar. Fasting is about preparing for feasting. As we prepare to celebrate Christ’s resurrection and his second Advent, may we deny ourselves daily and fast to find him.
Christian Feasting vs. Cultural Feasting: What’s the Difference?
Fasting is intuitively a bodily and a liturgical act. The Liturgical Year invites us to “days of discipline, denial, and special prayers” in Lent, Fridays outside of Christmastide and Eastertide, Rogation Days, and Ember Days (BCP, pg. 689). While intermittent fasting has recently been a diet fad, ordinarily fasting in our North American context is…
Lent at Antioch: The Spiritual Disciplines of the First Christians
The first Christians did not have the noun “Lent” nor a forty-day season before Easter. However, they did practice the spiritual disciplines of Lent: almsgiving, fasting, and prayer. In the New Testament, we see all three practices together at the church at Antioch, where believers were first called Christians. Acts 11 and Acts 13 describe how these…
