What the Saints Sought in Fasting

Most Christians know why the Church fasts: fasting restrains the body and strengthens the spirit. Yet when we read in the lives of the saints that some ate only a piece of bread a day, and that others went whole days without eating or drinking anything at all, a simple and honest question rises within us: what were these people seeking? They were not seeking suffering for its own sake, for the Church has never praised pain without purpose. They were seeking something that cannot be seen from the outside, something that took place within them while the body went hungry.

Many sermons and many books have been written about fasting, and on this site we have already spoken about the forty-day fast in Scripture and in the lives of the saints¹ and about fasting as one of the two pillars of the Christian life². These pages follow the inner path of the one who fasts: what changes in a person when the stomach is left empty, why the saints went so far, why the Fathers did not give the same measure to everyone, and why fasting remains fruitless when it is not joined to prayer.

Where the Fall Began

Saint Isaac the Syrian observes that fasting was the first commandment given to human nature, to guard it precisely in the matter of tasting food, and that it was through this commandment that the first man fell. That is why, he says, those who struggle begin their battle at the very place where the first defeat was suffered³. Man lost Paradise through disobedience, and this disobedience was committed through food. For this reason the Fathers saw in abstinence from food one of the first works by which fallen man learns obedience anew.

The Fathers of the desert saw in this a law of the spiritual life. Saint John Cassian, who lived among the monks of Egypt and wrote down their teaching for the West, says that the first battle we must fight is the one against gluttony, and that the man who cannot check the desire for food will not be able to master bodily lust either⁴. The passions do not each keep to their own corner. They hold on to one another like the links of a chain, and the chain is most easily grasped by its first link. It is no accident that Saint John Climacus places the step on gluttony in his Ladder immediately before the step on chastity: the first opens the way to the second.

The body is God's creation and will rise again, so fasting is not born of contempt for it. It is born of the understanding that the appetite for food is the lowest and deepest door through which the passions enter a person, and that whoever cannot say "no" to a piece of bread will not be able to say "no" to a thought of anger, of vainglory or of lust.

What Happens Within the One Who Fasts

Fasting does not work upon a person all at once, nor in a mechanical way. Hunger alone gives birth neither to repentance nor to tears. But when fasting is joined to prayer, to vigil and to prostrations, the grace of God works through it a number of inner changes, which the Fathers described with great clarity because they had lived them themselves.

Hunger Brings Hidden Things to Light

A person who has eaten his fill often believes himself calm, patient and gentle. When he fasts for a few days, he discovers that he flares up quickly, that his thoughts run to food, that he grows angry with the person beside him over some small thing. Hunger did not put these passions in him. It only brought them into view. Saint John Climacus urges us to laugh at the demon who, once we have eaten our fill, whispers that from now on we will eat later⁵, for the man who is full easily makes promises that tomorrow's hunger will overturn. These small inner dialogues are the beginning of self-knowledge. The one who fasts begins to see his heart as it is, and without this sight there is no true repentance.

The Heart Is Humbled

Fasting then helps to humble the heart. Saint John Climacus says it very briefly: "When the stomach is constrained, the heart is humbled"⁶. The one who feels hunger feels at the same time that he is dependent, that he is not sufficient unto himself, that his life hangs on a piece of bread he did not give himself. This bodily feeling slowly becomes a spiritual one. Man understands that he depends on God as his body depends on food.

The Mind Awakens

Fasting also helps to clear the mind. "The mind of one who fasts prays with watchfulness," writes the same Saint John⁷. By watchfulness the Fathers mean the state of a mind that keeps vigil, that does not let itself be carried away by thoughts and that stands attentive before God. Saint Gregory of Sinai, one of the great teachers of the Jesus Prayer, says of the one who weighs himself down with food that he "can no longer say the prayer with strength and purity"⁸. A full stomach drags the mind down and makes it heavy and drowsy. A light stomach leaves it free to rise.

Saint Isaac the Syrian goes further. He shows that a body which fasts can no longer sleep through the whole night without waking, and that the person, even when his senses are weakened, keeps his mind awake towards God in prayer. For him fasting is the mother of prayer, and the desire for prayer accompanies fasting kept with discernment, just as the sight of light accompanies healthy eyes⁹.

The Springs of Tears Are Opened

Fasting also prepares the piercing of the heart. Saint Isaac says that when fasting sets its seal upon a person's lips, his thought moves towards compunction, that is, towards the piercing of the heart that makes it weep for sin, and his heart pours forth prayer¹⁰. Saint John Climacus says the same thing from the other side: "Satiety of the stomach has dried up the springs [of tears]"¹¹. The tears the Fathers speak of are not a passing emotion. They are the sign that the hardened heart has begun to soften, and that the person feels his sin and, at the same time, the mercy of God.

Desire Changes Its Aim

Finally, fasting turns a person's desire. Man cannot live without desiring something, because God created him with longing. When desire is no longer fed day after day with the pleasures of the throat, it does not disappear. It remains hungry and looks for other food. If during this time the person prays, his desire slowly turns towards the One for whom it was made. The hunger of the body then becomes the image of another hunger, that of the soul seeking God.

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov uses for all this the image of a field. Our heart, he says, "needs to be worked by fasting, by vigil, by kneeling and other bodily labours, so that the bodily and passionate feelings that rule it may give way to spiritual feelings"¹². Fasting is the plough that turns the soil, but ploughed ground remains bare until someone casts the seed into it.

Why the Saints Fasted So Strictly

If fasting works in this way, it becomes clear why some saints went much further than the ordinary order of the Church. Their reasons were not the same for all, but they can be known from what they left in writing.

Some were driven by repentance. Saint John Climacus describes a monastery near Alexandria called "the prison", where monks who had fallen into grave sins did penance. Some of them, he says, tasted a little water only so as not to die of thirst and then stopped, while others, having bitten off a little bread, threw the rest away, saying that they were not worthy of the food of men¹³. In them this was no technique, but the pain of a soul that felt its distance from God and found no taste in anything else.

Others were driven by the desire for purity. Saint John Cassian shows that not only the kind of food but also its quantity inflames the passions of the body, and he adds something few people know: "not only the fumes of wine make the mind drunk, but also being filled with water, just as an excess of any kind of food makes it sluggish and drowsy"¹⁴. For the Fathers, even water drunk beyond need weighed a person down.

For many of them, fasting was closely bound up with prayer. The saints who fasted strictly were usually also people of night prayer. A light body kept vigil more easily, and a mind emptied of concern for food gathered more easily into the heart. Their fasting was not an end. It was the preparation of the place where they might meet God.

The Total Fast, Without Food or Water

When we speak of fasting without water, we mean the total fast: days on which a person eats nothing and drinks nothing. It deserves to be looked at separately, because it is the strictest and most dangerous form of fasting. Scripture speaks of Moses, who stood before God without bread and without water¹⁵, and the lives of the saints also know such struggles. Saint John Climacus notes that "thirst often puts an end to thirst"¹⁶, speaking of the craving for drink that the ascetic learns to restrain. His words concern the struggle with craving, not the body's need for water, which remains the same even when thirst is no longer felt. Lack of water weakens the body quickly and can endanger life, which is why the saints never made it a rule for just anyone to follow.

It must also be said clearly here that the Church knows no "water-only fast" in which a person eats nothing for days on end and drinks as much water as he likes. The strictest degree of the Church's fast is total abstinence, eating and drinking nothing until the appointed hour, and the black fast means without food and without water, so a "black fast with water" contradicts itself. The many-day hunger with unlimited water that is spreading among Christians today comes from the world of detox treatments, not from the Tradition of the Church. We have shown this at length in an earlier article¹⁷.

Outside these days of total fasting, the Fathers did not separate food from water: bread, however little, was eaten together with water. Saint Gregory of Sinai, writing for hesychasts who lived in complete stillness, reckons that "a litra of bread is enough for them, and of water and wine, three or four cups a day"¹⁸. A Byzantine litra was about 320 grams, so for a whole day this meant a small loaf. By hesychast is meant the monk who lives in stillness, devoted to unceasing prayer. Thus the ordinary rule, even for the most ascetic monks, was a little bread and a little water. The total fast was a rare struggle, of short duration, tied to a particular repentance or a great day, and it was kept with a blessing. Whoever is ill or taking medical treatment should not begin it without also asking a doctor's advice.

One Meal, Late in the Day

The Fathers thought not only about how much a person eats, but also about when he eats. The ancient rule of monks was one meal a day, and it was not taken in the morning. The day began with prayer and work, and the meal came later, usually after the ninth hour. In the ancient reckoning the hours of the day were counted from sunrise, so the ninth hour falls at about three in the afternoon. Some ascetics put off the meal until after sunset.

Saint John Cassian preserves the rule that the Fathers of the desert had given their disciples. The measure for a whole day was two small loaves of dry bread. The monk ate one at the ninth hour and kept the other for the evening, so as to have something to set on the table if a brother came to visit. If no one came, he ate it in the evening. Abba Moses also explains why the meal was taken at just that time: food taken at the ninth hour has time to be digested before the evening and night prayers, so that it does not weigh down the mind when the time of prayer comes¹⁹. The hour of the meal was arranged according to the hour of prayer.

The morning thus remained God's. The mind is then at its clearest, and an empty stomach leaves it free. The Church preserves this to this day in an order every believer knows: the Divine Liturgy is celebrated in the morning, and the one who communes receives the Body and Blood of the Lord before any other food. The Christian's day begins with Christ, not with the table.

The ninth hour carries a particular weight for Christians. The Gospel says that from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour, and that then Jesus cried out from the Cross with a loud voice²⁰. The one who fasts until this hour spends his day close to the Lord's Passion, especially on Wednesday and Friday, the days of the betrayal and the crucifixion. Scripture preserves another witness: the centurion Cornelius, the devout man of Caesarea to whom God sent the Apostle Peter, relates that he was fasting until that hour and praying in his house at the ninth hour when the angel appeared to him²¹.

The Church's order has kept the same measure of the day. During the Nativity Fast, the typikon prescribes that in monasteries total abstinence be kept on Monday, Wednesday and Friday until the ninth hour, and only then dry food or boiled vegetables without oil be eaten²². Total abstinence here means eating and drinking nothing until the appointed hour. On Nativity Eve this abstinence is kept until the ninth hour, and on the weekdays of Great Lent the rule is a single meal of dry food in the evening²³. For lay people, the Church does not make this abstinence a commandment for all. A fast day remains a fast day from morning to evening, and putting off the meal is a struggle each person takes up according to his strength and with the counsel of his spiritual father²⁴.

A single meal taken later works on a person differently from several small meals scattered through the day. When a person eats often, his thought circles around food all day long. When he knows he will eat once, his thought grows quiet, and the little hunger that stays awake reminds him constantly why he is fasting. Abba Moses puts it very simply: daily hunger must go hand in hand with the daily meal²⁵.

Why the Measure Was Not the Same for All

The Fathers wrote much about fasting: why we fast, what fasting works in a person, what dangers it carries. They also left concrete measures in writing, such as Saint Gregory of Sinai's litra of bread or the two loaves of the monks of Egypt. These measures, however, were given to particular people in a particular way of life. What the Fathers never wrote down is a measure valid for everyone, and this silence does not hide some unutterable secret, but springs from a deliberate decision.

Saint John Cassian explains it plainly: "The Fathers also found by experience that a diet of greens or vegetables does not suit everyone, nor can everyone take dry bread as food. And the Fathers said that one man, eating two litras of bread, is still hungry, while another, eating one litra, or six ounces, is satisfied"²⁶. In today's measures, two litras come to almost 650 grams of bread, one litra to about 320 grams, and six ounces to only some 160 grams, that is, two or three slices. From this difference between people the Fathers drew a conclusion: they gave everyone "a single rule of abstinence: that no one should deceive himself by filling his stomach, nor let himself be carried off by the pleasure of the throat"²⁷. The rule remained the same for all, while the measure was left to each.

Saint Gregory of Sinai says the same in his own words: each is satisfied "according to his strength and habit"²⁸. And Saint Cleopa of Sihăstria, who carried this teaching into our own days, told the faithful that the same measure of abstinence cannot be demanded of everyone, because not everyone has the same bodily constitution. He also reminded them of the saying of Saint Isaac the Syrian: "Measure adorns every thing"²⁹.

The Danger of Fasting by One's Own Will

The measure was not given to all alike for a second and graver reason as well. The Fathers saw with their own eyes what happens to the person who fasts strictly according to his own opinion. Saint John Cassian preserves the word of Abba Moses on discernment. Abba means "father" and was the name given to the tried elders of the desert. Abba Moses tells his disciples that the Fathers considered "both the stretching of fasting beyond measure and the filling of the stomach" equally harmful, and excessive vigil as harmful as sleep without measure³⁰.

As an example, Abba Moses brings forward the fall of an elder named Heron, who had lived fifty years in the desert in very strict asceticism. Because he followed his own opinion, he says, he "pursued fasting and separation from men to such a degree" that he came to receive an angel of Satan as an angel of light and perished miserably³¹. His fall did not come from a lack of ascetic effort, but from the fact that he never submitted his fasting to anyone else's judgement.

Saint Gregory of Sinai sums up the danger in a single sentence: "going beyond measure, in all things, is easily followed by self-esteem"³². That is why he asks the one who lives in stillness to keep "always the royal way", that is, the middle path, which turns aside neither towards satiety nor towards a harshness without discernment. Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov sees the same thing in the image of his field: carefully ploughed ground in which the commandments of Christ have not been sown yields weeds thicker than unploughed ground. Fasting without humility feeds pride.

From Abba to Disciple

Abba Moses says that "true discernment is acquired only through true humility"³³, and this humility shows itself in the disciple revealing his thoughts before the tried Fathers and not trusting in his own judgement. That is why the measure passed from abba to disciple, by word of mouth. It was not a hidden teaching, but a measure cut to fit a particular person: his body, his passions, his strength in that year of his life. Such a measure could not be put into a book, because a book speaks to everyone, while the measure concerns one person alone.

For the Christian of today, the measure of fasting is found together with one's spiritual father. The books of the Fathers give us the principles, and the spiritual father helps us to set them upon our own life.

How to Find Your Measure

If a measure for everyone cannot be written down, the path to each person's measure can still be described. The Fathers left a few sure signs, which any Christian can follow together with his spiritual father.

Begin with the Church's fast. The first step is not a struggle of our own choosing, but the fast the Church asks of everyone: Wednesday and Friday and the four fasts of the year. Whoever does not yet keep this fast has no reason to seek stricter ones.

Climb gradually. Saint John Climacus relates that a certain Father advised that when the soul craves various foods, it should be constrained with bread and water. Saint John does not accept this counsel for beginners and likens it to telling a child to climb the whole ladder in a single step. He proposes another path: "we cut off first the foods that fatten, then those that inflame us, then those that give us pleasure"³⁴. He also shows that as a person struggles with the stomach, it contracts, and after a while the person needs less food and becomes a faster almost of himself³⁵.

Stop before satiety. This is the rule the Fathers gave to everyone. Saint Gregory of Sinai distinguishes three limits of eating: "abstinence, sufficiency and satiety". Abstinence "consists in rising from the table hungry". Sufficiency means "eating so much that one is not left hungry, but is not weighed down either". Satiety "consists in being somewhat weighed down"³⁶. Whoever can bear more rises from the table a little hungry. The sick, the elderly or those who do heavy work may stop at sufficiency, without weighing themselves down. For all, fasting begins where a person stops before he is full.

Value the daily fast more than great feats. Saint John Cassian teaches that food taken daily with measure is more profitable than a strict and long fast followed by satiety, and shows that fasting without measure can weaken the power of prayer through weariness of the body³⁷. Whoever fasts completely for three days and then feasts has gained no more than the one who, day after day, rises from the table a little hungry.

Examine the fruits. A good measure is known by its fruits. When the fast is fitting, the mind grows clearer, prayer easier, words fewer, and the person gentler with others. When the fast goes beyond measure, irritation appears, judging of those who fast less, a hidden self-satisfaction, or a weakness that hinders prayer instead of helping it. These signs should be told to one's spiritual father.

Do not begin the day with food. Whoever can, let him give the morning first to God and leave the meal for later. For some, the first step is to eat nothing until midday. Others, in time and with a blessing, come to eat only once a day, after the ninth hour. Whoever works hard or has a bodily weakness arranges this rule together with his spiritual father.

Fast in secret. The Lord said: "But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret"³⁸. The danger lies not in others learning that we fast, but in the desire to be seen, which turns fasting into food for vainglory.

Do not begin a strict fast without a blessing. A prolonged fast, and above all the total fast without food or water, is not begun without one's spiritual father, and to those who are ill, who are taking treatment or who have a bodily weakness, the spiritual father gives another measure. Saint John Cassian reassures them: "Weakness of the body does not harm purity of heart, when we give the body not what pleasure wants, but what weakness requires"³⁹.

Fasting Without Prayer

All this would remain without purpose if we forgot why we fast. When the disciples asked the Lord why they had not been able to cast the unclean spirit out of the boy brought to them, Christ first answered that it was because of their little faith, and then added: "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting"⁴⁰. The Lord did not speak of fasting alone. He set it beside prayer, and prayer is named first.

Saint Cleopa said the same in simple words that anyone could understand: "Bodily fasting is of no help at all without spiritual fasting. The demons too fast, and never eat or drink, but they remain demons all the same"⁴¹. When he explained what bodily fasting is, he called it abstinence from food for a time, "with the aim of praying more purely to God and mastering our nature". And of the bond between them he said: "Almsgiving and fasting are the wings of prayer. Our prayer never flies faster to God than when it is helped by fasting and almsgiving"⁴².

Saint Seraphim of Sarov left the best-known explanation of this in his conversation with Nicholas Motovilov in the winter of 1831. He told him there that prayer, fasting, vigil and the other Christian works, however good they may be, are not the aim of the Christian life but the means by which a person reaches the aim, and that the aim is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God⁴³. Saint John Cassian calls purity of heart the immediate goal of ascetic struggle, through which a person advances towards the Kingdom of God. The two teachings shed light on each other: a person is not purified in order to remain within himself, but in order to live in communion with God, and the purified heart becomes a dwelling of the Spirit.

Fasting empties a person, and prayer comes to fill that emptiness. An empty stomach and an empty heart are like a room swept and made ready for a guest. If the guest is not called, the room stays empty, and fasting turns into mere abstinence, which can make of a person a self-satisfied ascetic, but not a disciple of Christ.

The Three Companions of Fasting

The Fathers did not leave fasting alone. Beside it they set vigil, prostrations and the Jesus Prayer. All four work upon the same person from different sides and support one another.

Vigil

To keep vigil means to take from the time of sleep for prayer. Saint John Climacus writes: "A watchful eye purifies the mind, while much sleep hardens the soul", and calls vigil "the quenching of (bodily) burning, deliverance from (unclean) dreams, a moistened eye, a softened heart"⁴⁴. He also says that the monk who keeps vigil is a "fisher of thoughts", because in the stillness of the night he can see them and catch them with ease⁴⁵.

The bond between fasting and vigil is easy to see. At night the world falls silent, the cares of the day settle, and the mind, which during the day was pulled in every direction by outward things, can gather itself. The body that has fasted does not sink into heavy sleep, because it is not weighed down by food. Saint Isaac the Syrian wrote whole pages on the work of night vigil and on its fruits⁴⁶.

Yet here too the Fathers ask for measure. The same Saint John Climacus observes that sleep "is a crafty friend; after we have eaten our fill it often leaves us, but when we are hungry and thirsty it wars against us mightily"⁴⁷. Whoever adds strict vigil to a strict fast without counsel will be overcome by sleep or by weakness. For a lay person who works, vigil can be very simple: a quarter of an hour of prayer at night, before going to sleep, or early in the morning, before the noise of the day begins.

Prostrations

A prostration is a bow down to the ground, made with prayer. Through it the body takes part in prayer: it bows down to the earth, and the soul bows down with it. Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov links it directly to the Jesus Prayer. He counsels the beginner to make himself a daily rule of prostrations, according to his strength, each one made without haste, with a feeling of repentance and with the Jesus Prayer on his lips. At the beginning, he says, twelve prostrations are enough, and the number may grow slowly, according to strength and circumstances. The most fitting time is the evening, before sleep, when the cares of the day have passed. Prostrations warm the body and tire it a little, and this state makes attention and compunction in prayer easier⁴⁸.

Saint Ignatius also sees the danger: whoever cares only for the number of prostrations easily falls into self-esteem and delusion. The fruits of prostrations made rightly are repentance, humility and tears. Saint Theophan the Recluse gave similar counsel: before prayer, a few prostrations gather the mind, and between the prayers from the book a person may make prostrations or say the Jesus Prayer, so that prayer grows in strength⁴⁹.

The Church's order does not make full prostrations on Sundays or in the days between Pascha and Pentecost⁵⁰. How many prostrations each person makes, and when, is also decided with one's spiritual father.

The Jesus Prayer

All these lead to a single place. The Jesus Prayer is the short prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." It is not a formula meant to replace the prayers of the Church. Saint Gregory of Sinai, who taught it to many, also wrote for hesychasts about how to chant the psalms, and the Psalter and the Book of Hours have always remained the prayer of monks. The Jesus Prayer, being short, helps the mind to gather itself into a single Name and to remain there.

To pray means, in the end, to seek God, not merely to utter words about Him. When a person calls upon the name of Jesus, he is not speaking about Christ. He is crying out to Christ, as the blind and the lepers cried out in the Gospel. That is why fasting and the Jesus Prayer call for one another. Fasting lightens the mind, and the lightened mind can remain in the Name. Saint Gregory of Sinai placed, within the same teaching, the chapter on food beside the chapters on prayer, precisely because, as we have seen, the one weighed down with food "can no longer say the prayer with strength and purity"⁵¹.

For the lay person of today, everything can be gathered into a simple day. In the morning, a few minutes of the Jesus Prayer; during the day, a meal from which one rises a little hungry; in the evening, the prayers from the book, a few prostrations made slowly, and then again the Name of Christ, spoken without haste. The measure of each thing is set by the spiritual father. The bond between them is seen by anyone who begins to practise them together.

The Saints' Answer

The saints who fasted so strictly were seeking the One whom hunger taught them to desire. They lightened their bodies so that the mind could rise, they fasted in secret so that only the Father would see, and they submitted their measure to obedience so that their struggle would not turn into pride. Their fasting was a voluntary emptying, made so that God might find room in them.

This emptying did not stay shut up within them. Saint John Cassian shows that the gain from fasting cannot make up for the loss caused by anger, and that the pure heart is known by love⁵². Fasting is therefore measured not only by what a person has refused his body, but also by what he has begun to give his neighbour. If abstinence does not make him more merciful, more patient and slower to judge, it has not yet reached its purpose.

Saint John Climacus says that "fasting is a forcing of nature"⁵³. Yet this forcing has a purpose. Human nature, fallen through disobedience, is compelled to return to the One who gave it life. Every meal from which we rise a little hungry, every night in which we steal a quarter of an hour for prayer, every prostration made with the name of Jesus on our lips is a step on this road of return. The measure of the steps we receive from our spiritual father. The road is the same for all, and at its end Christ awaits us.

Notes

1. The Forty-Day Fast in Scripture and in the Lives of the Saints (in Romanian). ↩︎
2. Why Should I Fast? The Two Pillars of the Christian Life (in Romanian). ↩︎
3. Saint Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies, the homily on fasting and vigil (Homily LXXXV in the Romanian Philokalia, vol. X, Bucharest, 1981, pp. 433–434). The patristic passages in this article are translated from the Romanian Philokalia (Filocalia); paragraph numbers follow that edition. ↩︎
4. Saint John Cassian, Institutes, Book V, on the spirit of gluttony, chs. 3 and 11. ↩︎
5. Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 14, on the belly (Romanian Philokalia, vol. IX). ↩︎
6. The Ladder, Step 14, 17. ↩︎
7. The Ladder, Step 14, 16. ↩︎
8. Saint Gregory of Sinai, the chapter "On Food" (Romanian Philokalia, vol. VII). ↩︎
9. Saint Isaac the Syrian, the homily on fasting and vigil (Homily LXXXV in the Romanian Philokalia, vol. X, Bucharest, 1981, p. 433). ↩︎
10. Ibid. ↩︎
11. The Ladder, Step 14, 16. ↩︎
12. Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, Crumbs from the Feast (Romanian edition, Editura Renașterea). ↩︎
13. The Ladder, Step 5, on repentance. ↩︎
14. Saint John Cassian, On the Eight Thoughts of Wickedness, on abstinence of the belly (Romanian Philokalia, vol. I). ↩︎
15. Deuteronomy 9:9, 18. ↩︎
16. The Ladder, Step 14, 21. ↩︎
17. Water Fasting in Orthodoxy: the Forgotten Total Abstinence of the Church (in Romanian). ↩︎
18. Saint Gregory of Sinai, "On Food". ↩︎
19. Saint John Cassian, Conferences, II, with Abba Moses, chs. 19, 23 and 26. ↩︎
20. Matthew 27:45–46. ↩︎
21. Acts 10:30. ↩︎
22. The typikon for the Nativity Fast, in monasteries. ↩︎
23. The order for Nativity Eve and for the weekdays of Great Lent. ↩︎
24. On Wednesday and Friday the whole day is a fast day; abstaining until the afternoon or evening is a matter of personal struggle, with the counsel of one's spiritual father. ↩︎
25. Saint John Cassian, Conferences, II, ch. 23. ↩︎
26. Saint John Cassian, On the Eight Thoughts of Wickedness (Romanian Philokalia, vol. I). The Roman ounce weighed about 27 grams, and the litra (the Roman pound) of 12 ounces about 320–330 grams. ↩︎
27. Ibid. ↩︎
28. Saint Gregory of Sinai, "On Food". ↩︎
29. Saint Cleopa of Sihăstria, words on fasting; the saying of Saint Isaac quoted in his homily at the beginning of Great Lent (1983). ↩︎
30. Saint John Cassian, Discourse on the Holy Fathers of Scetis and on Discernment (Romanian Philokalia, vol. I); in the complete text, Conferences, II, with Abba Moses, chs. 16–17. ↩︎
31. Ibid.; Conferences, II, ch. 5. ↩︎
32. Saint Gregory of Sinai, "On Food". ↩︎
33. Saint John Cassian, Discourse on Discernment (Romanian Philokalia, vol. I). ↩︎
34. The Ladder, Step 14, 8. ↩︎
35. The Ladder, Step 14, 20. ↩︎
36. Saint Gregory of Sinai, "On Food". ↩︎
37. Saint John Cassian, Institutes, Book V, ch. 9. ↩︎
38. Matthew 6:17–18. ↩︎
39. Saint John Cassian, On the Eight Thoughts of Wickedness (Romanian Philokalia, vol. I). ↩︎
40. Matthew 17:19–21. ↩︎
41. Saint Cleopa of Sihăstria, homily at the beginning of Great Lent (1984). ↩︎
42. Saint Cleopa of Sihăstria, words on fasting. ↩︎
43. Saint Seraphim of Sarov, Conversation with Nicholas Motovilov on the Aim of the Christian Life (November 1831). ↩︎
44. The Ladder, the step on bodily vigil, 2–3 (Romanian Philokalia, vol. IX, under Step XIX; Step 20 in the Greek numbering). ↩︎
45. Ibid., 4. ↩︎
46. Saint Isaac the Syrian, the homilies on night vigil (Homilies XXVIII–XXIX in the Romanian Philokalia, vol. X, Bucharest, 1981, pp. 154–160). ↩︎
47. The Ladder, the step on bodily vigil, 9. ↩︎
48. Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, counsels for those beginning the Jesus Prayer. See Ascetic Experiences, vol. I, “On the Jesus Prayer”, part III, on practising the Jesus Prayer. ↩︎
49. Saint Theophan the Recluse, counsels on prayer. ↩︎
50. Canon 20 of the First Ecumenical Council (Nicaea, 325). ↩︎
51. Saint Gregory of Sinai, "On Food". ↩︎
52. Saint John Cassian, Conferences, I, with Abba Moses, chs. 6–7. ↩︎
53. The Ladder, Step 14, 30. ↩︎