Monday, 23 February 2015, His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church celebrated the Canon of Saint Andrew the Cretan within the Great Compline service. The canon celebration began at 16.00 hours, in the presence of hundreds of faithful. Because we are during the Lent period, the Primate of our Church was wearing black cassock with white kamelaykion, the insignia of the patriarchal dignity.
To end with the Compline, when the Great Canon was read, the Patriarch of Romania delivered a sermon on fasting.
“Fasting is a total or partial free accepted refraining from food and drinking or from aliments of animal origin – meat, milk, eggs – and replacing them with vegetarian food for a time. The Romanian people called fasting, as total refraining from food and drink for one, two, three or several days, black fasting namely no eating and no drinking from the sunset till sunset. This is a very severe fasting which has been practiced in the Church since her beginning. In our monasteries, this sever fasting is practiced, in general, during the first week of the Lent – the first four days – and then during the Holy Week, or Week of the Holy Passions, before Easter, according to one’s abilities. But this black fasting is not compulsory, but optional, for those willing to do it”, the Patriarch of Romania said.
Religious fasting is more than being vegetarian
The Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church has also shown that refraining from animal products does not mean fasting in itself: “Vegetal food during the Lent has a deep rich meaning. The vegetal aliments create a mood favouring prayer and vigil, while the animal products related to blood and fat slacken the body or stir up selfish passions in it. Moreover, the products coming from plants gathered more light through photosynthesis. In this sense, we nourish ourselves with the solar light assimilated in plants when we consume vegetal food. Thus, this light of the plants becomes the symbol of the grace light from the Holy Scriptures and prayers, namely the light of the Lent. In fact, to be vegetarian has become a habit today, not so much for religious reasons as for medical ones. (...) However, the religious fasting is much more than being vegetarian. Refraining from animal products does not mean fasting in itself, namely you can be fed up with vegetal products, but if we triple the vegetal products we reach saturation and so, we cannot speak of fasting any more, but only of changing the dishes. In some countries Orthodox in their majority, because food of animal origin is not allowed, some cuisines specialised in very delicious vegetal dishes, so that they are wished more than the food prepared out of meat, eggs and milk.”
Fasting is not only material, but also spiritual
Fasting is not only material, but also spiritual, namely the fasting of the eyes, mouth, heart, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel underlined: “The Holy Fathers urge us: not only your mouth, eyes, ears, legs, hands should fast, but also all the parts of your body through abstention from sins. Thus, we fast while refraining from food and sins: refraining from bad thoughts, words, deeds; all this should be included in fasting. Eyes are fasting when you do not look at things and persons with passion. Hands are fasting when you are pure and not greedy. Thus, it is not only refraining from meat, or changing the dish, but also changing the behaviour.”
“Whoever is fasting without having mercy is doing it only to get rich”
His Beatitude has also shown in his speech that changing the food and the way of eating it should bring about the changing of our attitudes too: “Thus, we learn from the prophets that the fasting days were not pleasant to God unless the one who was fasting felt mercy for the poor, or if he oppressed them, or did not help them. So, Saint John Chrysostom, one of the great fathers of the Church says in this sense: “Whoever is fasting without having mercy is doing it only to get rich”, namely, as we say, he is gathering food supplies. Saint John Chrysostom also says that the prayer is flying to heaven if it is accompanied by fasting and mercy”.
Whenever the gifts are used forgetting about the Giver, the world becomes a wall between us and God
The Patriarch of Romania explained that sin is forgetting about God and excessive joining of the human to the material world through his senses.
“When sinning, man forgets about God-the-Giver. Sin is forgetting about God and excessive joining of the human to the material world through his senses, as if the material world were the only ultimate reality. The world is made so as to be a window to God, and if we thank Him for the gifts received from Him, they become a sort of stair and window to God. We see the Giver through His gifts, and we see the Artist through his work. But when the gifts are used forgetting about the Giver, the world becomes an idol, a wall between us and God, as well as the necropolis of our spiritual death”, His Beatitude said.
Fasting is an exercise by which we establish the priorities in our life and get freedom
“The Holy Fathers say that the lack of passion and getting rid of the selfish passions are the signs of freedom, as fasting is a medicine, a treatment, a school, an exercise, a training by which we establish the priorities in our life and get freedom. But how can we know all this? We know it seeing how Jesus Christ, our Lord, rejected the temptations during the 40 fasting days spent in the desert. This part of the temptation in the desert is not only the experience of Jesus Christ, our Lord, but also the experience of the temptation of the entire humankind by the devil, beginning with the Old Adam. But Christ, the New Adam, corrects the first Adam, through this experience of His, and shows what the true freedom is compared to the temptation of pleasures, wealth and self affirmation”, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel also said.
We fast to spiritually love better God and our fellow beings – this is the meaning of fasting
Whenever we reject the temptation of sins and of the selfish passions, we can be free to do good deeds, pleasant to God and to the humans, His Beatitude also showed. “Thus, we fast to spiritually better love God and our fellow beings. This is the meaning of fasting. But how is the love for God really shown, without remaining only a simple declaration? It is shown through the fact that we do want to pray and read the Holy Scriptures more. That is because there is food out of the light of the Holy Scriptures, the same as there is food out of aliments. Origen said during the first Christian centuries that the same as we feed ourselves out of the cup of the bread and wine which are the Body and Blood of the Saviour, so we communicate ourselves of Him and of the lecture of the Holy Scriptures, spiritually assimilating the words of the Holy Scriptures as we would do with some seeds that we would eat. When a person is in love with another person he/she reads over and over again the letter received from the person loved. When we are in love with God whom we love because He loved us first and because we want to do His will, we read His letters to us, namely the Holy Scriptures and the Writings of the Holy Fathers, who are God’s friends”.
The liturgical answers were given by “Nicolae Lungu” chorus of the Romanian Patriarchate and by “Tronos” psalmic group of the Patriarchal Cathedral.
The Great Canon is celebrated in the Orthodox Church during the first week of the Lent and at the Matins on the Thursday of the fifth week. The purpose of this canon, written by Saint Andrew the Cretan (+ cca 740 AD), is to remind us our state of sinfulness, the need to call the name of Jesus Christ into our heart and the importance of repentance in our life.
