OF OUR HOLY FATHER BASIL, ARCHBISHOP OF CÆSAREA IN CAPPADOCIA, HOMILY ON FASTING I
A 1. "Sound," he says, "in the beginning of the month, the trumpet at the notable day of your festival." This command is prophetic. Moreover, the festival which precedes these days proclaims to us much more clearly than any vocal trumpet or musical instrument the readings of the Scriptures. For from Isaiah we have learned the grace of fasting, who, just as he turned away from the Judaic mode of fasting, so showed us the true fast: "You do not fast for lites and contentions, but loosen every bond of iniquity." And the Lord says: "Do not be sad, but wash your face and anoint your head." Let us therefore be disposed in our minds as we have been taught, and let us not receive the coming days in a sad, but in a cheerful spirit, as befits the saints. No one is crowned with a dejected mind; no one who grieves sets up a trophy. B Do not be sad while you are being healed. It would be absurd not to rejoice for the health of the soul, and rather to grieve at the change of food, and to appear as those who attribute more to the pleasure of the belly than to the care of the mind. For the delight of satiety stays in the belly; but fasting lifts up its gain to the soul. Be of cheerful mind, for what is given to you by the physician...
A is a drug efficacious for abolishing sin. For just as the worms which breed in the intestines of children are driven out by certain very sharp and bitter drugs, so fasting, when it enters the soul, destroys sin that lies in the depths, and it is truly worthy of this name.
2. The Word calls you to mysteries. B "He who anointed, has anointed; he who washed, has washed." Transfer the precept to the inner members. Wash the soul of sins. Anoint your head with holy ointment so that you may become a partaker of Christ, and thus approach fasting. Do not obscure your face as the hypocrites do. A face is obscured when the internal disposition is hidden by an artificial appearance in external guise, as if covered by the veil of a lie. A hypocrite is one who in the theater puts on the mask of another; being a slave, he often takes on that of a master, and being a private citizen, that of a king. Thus also in this life, as if on the stage of their own lives, the many play a theatrical part, bearing one thing in their hearts and showing another on the surface to men. Do not, therefore, obscure your face. As you are, such appear. Do not transform C yourself into a gloomy and morose state, hunting for the glory that comes from seeming to be continent and temperate. For neither is there any benefit in a good work if a trumpet sounds before it, nor is there any gain in fasting if it is done for public display. For things that are done for show do not extend their fruit into the world to come, but end in the praise and commendation of men. Therefore, run cheerfully to the gift of fasting. Fasting is an ancient gift, not one that grows old or ages, but one that is always renewed and flourishes in its prime.
3. Do you think that I am counting the antiquity of fasting from the law? Fasting is even older than the law. If you wait a little, you will find the truth of the word. Do not think that the day of atonement, which was ordained for Israel in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, is the beginning of fasting. Come hither, and walking through history, search out its antiquity. For the discovery is not new; the legacy of the fathers is a treasure. Everything that is distinguished by antiquity is venerable. Revere the gray hairs of fasting. D
A It is the same age as humanity; fasting was ordained in paradise. Adam received the first commandment: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat." And that "you shall not eat" is a law of fasting and abstinence. If Eve had fasted from the tree, we would not now have need of this fasting. For they that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. We were wounded through sin; let us be healed through repentance; but repentance without fasting is idle and unfruitful. "Cursed is the ground; it shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you." You were commanded to live in sorrow, not to indulge in luxuries. Through fasting, make satisfaction to God. Nay, even life in paradise itself is an image of fasting, not only because man, using a way of life common to the angels, was rendered similar to them in that he was content with little; but also because all things which human invention discovered later B were not yet devised by those dwelling in paradise: not yet the drinking of wine, not yet the slaughter of flocks, not yet all other things which disturb the human mind.
4. Since we have not fasted, we have been cast out of paradise; let us fast, therefore, that we may return to it. Do you not see how Lazarus entered paradise through fasting? Do not imitate the disobedience of Eve; do not again admit the serpent into your counsel, proposing food for the sake of pampering the flesh. Do not make excuses of bodily infirmity and weakness. For you are not offering these excuses to me, but to Him who knows. C You say (tell me) you cannot fast; but are you able to be stuffed all your life and to crush your body under the weight of the food you eat? And yet I know that physicians are accustomed to prescribe for the sick not a variety of foods, but lack of food and abstinence. How then, when you are able to do the latter, do you excuse yourself that you cannot do the former? Which is easier for the stomach: to pass the night with a light diet, or to lie down burdened by an abundance of food—or rather, not even to lie down, but to turn hither and thither, groaning and creaking? Unless, perhaps, you will say that which shipmasters claim: that it is easier to save a ship laden with cargo than one that is lighter and more unencumbered. For the one weighed down by the magnitude of its burden is sunk even by a small wave that assails it; D on the contrary, the one that has a moderate and modest cargo easily surmounts the waves, because nothing prevents it from riding high above them. In the same way, human bodies, burdened by constant overeating, easily become submerged by diseases; but those that use light and simple nourishment, both avoid the evil expected from sickness
and disperse the present ailment like a rising whirlwind. Clearly, according to your opinion, it would be more laborious to be at rest than to run, and to be idle than to struggle, since you judge it more appropriate for the infirm to be filled with delicacies than to use A a sparing and light diet. For that power which provides for the living creature digests a temperate and sparing diet with no trouble, and turns it into the substance of the body which is nourished; but that same power, when it has embraced lavish and various foods, and is then not equal to digesting them entirely, produces diverse kinds of diseases.
5. Let our discourse now proceed to the history, running through the antiquity of fasting, and how all the saints observed fasting, as if it were an inheritance handed down from their ancestors, and transmitted it by fathers to their children; whence also this possession has reached us in a certain perpetual series of succession. There was no wine in paradise, there was no slaughter of animals, no eating of flesh. After B the flood came wine; after the flood, "Eat all things as the green herb" (Gen. IX, 3). After perfection was despaired of, then at last the power to use these things was granted. Furthermore, that there was no experience of wine at that time is proved by Noah, who did not know the use of wine. For it had not yet crept into human life, nor was it yet worn smooth by the use of mortals. And so, since he had neither seen anyone else drinking, nor had he himself experienced it, he fell incautiously into the harm that is accustomed to be brought by wine. For Noah planted a vineyard, and drank of the fruit, and was inebriated; not because he was a drunkard, but because he did C not know the measure of partaking. Thus, the invention of wine drinking is more recent than paradise, and to such a degree is the dignity of fasting ancient. Moreover, we know that Moses also, through fasting, approached the mountain (Exod. XXIV, 18). For he would not have dared to touch the smoking summit, nor would he have ventured to enter into the cloud, unless he had been armed with fasting. Through fasting he received the law written by the finger of God on the tablets. And on high, indeed, fasting was the procurer of the giving of the law, but below, gluttony maddened them to idolatry. "For the people sat to eat and drink, and rose up to play" (Exod. XXXII, 6). The forty D days of the servant's fasting and praying were rendered useless by one bout of drunkenness. For the tablets which fasting had obtained, written by the finger of God, drunkenness shattered, since the prophet judged that a drunken populace was not worthy to receive the law from God. In a single moment of time, by gluttony, that people who had been taught by God through the greatest miracles, slipped down into the idol-mania of the Egyptians. Set both alongside each other: how fasting leads to God,
and how luxury takes away salvation. Descend, and proceed by the way you began to the lower matters.
6. Did Esau have anything that stained him, and did he make a slave of his brother? Was it not one meal for the sake of which he sold his birthright? And as for Samuel, did not prayer joined with fasting give him to his mother? What made the mighty hero Samson invincible? Was it not fasting, with which he was conceived in his mother’s womb? B Fasting brought him forth; fasting nursed him like a nurse; fasting brought him to man’s estate, that fasting which the angel prescribed to his mother: "Whatever proceeds from the vine, let her not eat, and wine and strong drink let her not drink." Fasting begets prophets, strengthens the mighty; fasting makes lawgivers wise, it is a good guardian of the soul, a reliable housemate for the body, an armor for those fighting bravely, a training ground for athletes. It repels temptations, it anoints for piety, it is the home-companion of sobriety, the creator of chastity. It acts bravely in wars, and in peace it teaches quiet. It sanctifies the Nazarene, it perfects the priest. For it is not possible to dare to approach the holy ministry without fasting, not only in the mystical and true worship of these present times, but also in that which was performed in types according to the Law. This made Elijah a spectator of that great spectacle; C for having cleansed his soul with a fast of forty days, only then in the cave that is in Horeb was he deemed worthy—as much as it is possible for a man to see—to see the Lord. Fasting, he rendered the widow her son, having become strong against death itself through fasting. A voice proceeding from the mouth of one fasting shut up heaven to the lawless people for three years and six months. For in order to soften the indomitable heart of that stiff-necked people, he chose to condemn even himself to the same calamity. For this reason, "The Lord lives," he said, "if there shall be water upon the earth, except by my mouth." And he brought upon all the people a fast through famine, so that he might correct the wickedness arisen from delicacies and a dissolute life. Again, what was the manner of life of Elisha? How did he enjoy hospitality with the Shunammite? D How did he himself receive the prophets? Did not wild herbs and a little bit of flour fulfill the gift of hospitality? At which time, although gourds had been taken, those who had tasted them were in danger of dying, had not the prayer of the faster dimmed the poison. And, to speak simply, you would find that all the saints used fasting as their guide in all things.
A There is a certain substance of body which they call asbestos, which is unwasting in fire; when it is placed in a flame, it seems to be set on fire, but when it is taken out of the fire, it becomes cleaner, as if it had been brightened by water. Such were the bodies of those three children in Babylon, having the nature of asbestos through fasting. For within the great flame of the furnace, they appeared to be as superior to the harm and injury of the fire as if they were by nature made of gold. Indeed, they were shown to be stronger than gold, for the fire did not melt them, but kept them whole and unharmed. Yet there is nothing that could have withstood that flame, which naphtha, pitch, and vine-twigs fed in such a way that it was spread to forty-nine cubits, and consumed many of the Chaldeans who were B around it. The children, therefore, entered that conflagration with fasting and trampled upon it, breathing a light and dewy air within such intense fire. For the fire did not even dare to touch their hairs, because they were nurtured by fasting.
7. Daniel, that man of desires, who ate no bread for three weeks and drank no water, even taught the lions to fast when he was sent down into the den. C For the lions could not fasten their teeth upon him, just as if he had been made of stone, or brass, or some other harder material. Thus, fasting, like a tempering of iron, had hardened the body of the man and rendered it insuperable to the lions; for they did not open their mouths against the saint. Fasting quenched the power of fire, and stopped the mouths of lions. Fasting sends prayer up to heaven, serving as a wing for it on its upward journey. Fasting is the increase of households, the mother of health, the pedagogue of youth, the adornment of the old, a good companion for travelers, and a safe housemate for those who dwell together. A husband does not suspect that plots are being laid against his marriage when he sees his wife living with fasting. D A wife does not waste away with jealousy, seeing her husband embrace fasting. Who has diminished his own estate through fasting? Tell me.
A Review your household goods today, and then count them again; nothing will be missing because of the fast in your domestic affairs. No animal laments death; nowhere is there blood, nowhere is a sentence pronounced by the inexorable belly against living creatures. The knife of the cooks is stilled; the table is satisfied with what grows spontaneously. The Sabbath was given to the Jews, that, as it says, your beast of burden and your servant might rest. Let fasting be a rest from the constant labors for the domestics who serve you throughout the whole year. Give your cook a respite and a delay; allow the steward of your table to be idle; stay the hand of the cupbearer; let the one who is skilled in the varieties of pastries be at rest for a time. Let the house, too, at last be quiet from countless disturbances, from smoke, from the smell of baking, and from those who run up and down, serving the belly as if it were an implacable mistress. B Indeed, even tax collectors grant their subjects a little freedom. Let the belly also grant some respite to the mouth; let it strike a five-day truce with us—it who is otherwise always demanding and never ceases, it who receives today and forgets tomorrow. When it is filled, it philosophizes about temperance; when it has been relieved, it forgets those doctrines.
8. Fasting does not know the nature of usury; the table of one who fasts does not choke the orphan or the son of the faster with ancestral debts, which coil themselves around like serpents. Moreover, fasting is also a cause of joy. For just as thirst makes drink pleasant, and as hunger, having gone before, makes the table sweet, so too does fasting season and sweeten the enjoyment of foods. C For by placing itself in the middle and interrupting the continuous use of delicacies, it will make the reception of them pleasant to you, because it has been intermittent. Therefore, if you wish to prepare for yourself a pleasant table, admit the vicissitude that comes from fasting. But you, because you are too addicted to delicacies, unwittingly render your delights insipid, and for the love of pleasure, you put pleasure to flight. For nothing is so desirable that you do not hold it in loathing if you enjoy it continually. But those things which are had rarely, we enjoy avidly. D Thus also God, who created us, provided that His gifts might retain their grace among us by the very variety and vicissitude of life. Do you not see that the sun is more cheerful after the night? And that...
health is more desirable after the experience of contrary things? Therefore, also a table A is more graceful after fasting; this is true both for the rich and those who enjoy delicacies, and equally so for those who are frugal and whose diet is simple and improvised.
9. Let the example of the rich man make you fearful. He whom a life spent in luxury delivered to the fire. For it was not because of an injustice, but because of a life of softness that he was accused, and he was being roasted in the flame of the furnace. Therefore, that we may quench that fire, water is necessary. Fasting is not only useful for the future, but it is also more conducive to the flesh itself. For bodily conditions in the extreme often possess reversals and changes, with nature failing and being unable to bear the burden of such well-being. See to it, that you who now reject water do not later B crave a drop of water, just as that rich man did. No one has ever become drunk on water. No one’s head has ever ached because burdened by water. No one has needed the feet of others while living on a water-drinking regimen. No one’s feet have been bound, no one’s hands have become useless, by being watered with water. For the ailment of digestion, which necessarily accompanies those living in luxury, produces sharp diseases in the body. The color of one who is fasting is venerable, not blooming with an immodest flush, but adorned with a sober pallor; the eye is calm, the gait measured, the countenance thoughtful, not insulted by unrestrained laughter, the speech C balanced, the heart pure. Remember those saints from of old, of whom the world was not worthy. Who went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, oppressed, afflicted; imitate their manner of life, if you seek to obtain their portion. What was it that brought Lazarus rest in the bosom of Abraham? Was it not fasting? And the life of John was one continuous fast; he had neither bed nor table, nor arable land, nor an ox for plowing, nor grain, nor a baker, nor any other thing pertaining to life. For this reason, "Among those born of women there has not arisen one greater than John the Baptist." As for Paul, D fasting, among his other praises, which he recounted in his boastings concerning his afflictions, led him up to the third heaven.
Moreover, the chief point among the things we have spoken is this: our Lord did not first expose the flesh which He had taken on for our sake to the assaults of the devil until He had first fortified it with fasting, both instructing us to anoint and exercise ourselves with fasts for the struggles in temptations, and also by hunger as it were giving an opportunity for the adversary to approach. For He was inaccessible to him because of the height of His divinity, had He not, through hunger, descended to the human level. Yet, as He returned to the heavens, He...
tasted food, A to prove the nature and reality of the body that had risen. But as for you, will you never stop stuffing yourself beyond measure and burdening your body with flesh? And when your soul is wasting away from hunger and starvation, will you have no regard for the saving and life-giving doctrines? Are you ignorant that, just as in a battle array drawn up on both sides, the one who brings reinforcements to the other side causes the other to be defeated, in the same way, he who sides with the flesh fights against the spirit, and he who goes over to the spirit brings the flesh into subjection? For these things are opposed to one another. So, if you wish to make your mind strong, tame your flesh through fasting. This is what the Apostle says: "That as much as the outer man is decaying, so much is the inner man being renewed." And this as well: "When I am weak, then I am strong." will you not despise these foods which perish? Will you not be seized by the desire for that table in the kingdom of heaven, which you are in every way preparing for yourself here by fasting? Are you ignorant that, by the intemperance of gluttony, you are preparing for yourself a fat torturer, a worm? For who, amidst splendid banquets and continuous luxuries, was ever granted any participation in a spiritual gift? Moses, in order to receive the second law, had need of a second fast. Had not even the brute animals fasted together with the Ninevites, they would not have escaped the threat of destruction. B Whose corpses fell in the desert? Was it not of those who demanded the eating of meat? Those people, as long as they were content with manna and the water flowing from the rock, were overcoming the Egyptians and were making their way through the sea. There was not a feeble one among their tribes. But after they remembered the flesh-pots of Egypt and turned back in their desires to Egypt, they did not see the promised land. Do you not fear this example? Do you not shudder at gluttony, lest it perhaps exclude you from the good things we hope for? Why, not even that wise Daniel would have seen the visions if fasting had not made his soul clearer. For from heavy food, as it were, sooty fumes are sent up, acting like a thick cloud and cutting off the illuminations of the Holy Spirit C that occur in the mind. And if there is any food of angels, it is bread, as the prophet says: "Man ate the bread of angels"—not meat, not wine, nor those things that are the object of pursuit for the slaves of the belly. Fasting is a weapon against the army of the demons. For this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting. And the benefits from fasting are so many; the...
satiety of pleasure, however, is the beginning of insolence A. For immediately along with luxury and drunkenness and all kinds of seasoned delicacies, every form of beastly wantonness rushes in. Hence men become like horses, crazed for females because of the goad that arises in the soul from luxury. Among the drunken, the order of nature is reversed; in the male they seek the female, and in the female the male. Fasting also teaches moderation and temperance in the use of marriage; and by chastising the excessive use of pleasures—even those permitted by law—it produces a harmonious leisure, so that they may persevere in prayer B.
10. Do not, however, measure the benefit of fasting merely by abstaining from food. For true fasting is alienation from evils. "Loose every bond of iniquity; forgive your neighbor the trouble caused you; forgive him his debts. Do not fast for lawsuits and quarrels." You do not eat meat, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine, but you do not refrain from 55 insults. You wait for the evening to take food, but you spend the day in the courts. "Woe to those who are drunk, but not from wine." Anger is a drunkenness of the soul, making it senseless just like wine. Grief is also a drunkenness, submerging the mind. Fear is another drunkenness, when it occurs where it ought not 56; for it says, "Deliver my soul from the fear of the enemy." In short, any passion that displaces the soul from its proper state may justly be called drunkenness. Consider for me the man who is angry—how drunk he is with that passion! He is not master of himself; he does not know himself; he does not know those who are present. Just as in a night battle, he strikes all, he bumps into everyone he meets; he speaks intemperately, he is hard to hold back, he rails, he strikes, he threatens, he swears, he cries out, he is torn asunder. C Flee from this drunkenness, and do not accept the one that comes from wine either. Do not let heavy drinking forestall your water-drinking 57. Let not drunkenness initiate you into fasting. There is no entrance into fasting through drunkenness; just as there is no access to justice through fraud, nor to chastity through wantonness, nor, to sum it up, through wickedness to virtue. There is another door to fasting. Drunkenness leads to wantonness; frugality leads to fasting. The athlete D exercises before the contest. Do not, as one parrying the days, nor as one practicing sophistry with the Lawgiver, store up the debauchery of the five days beforehand. For it is useless to...
A exhaust yourself, when you do not alleviate your need. That storehouse is untrustworthy; you are pouring into a perforated jar. For the wine flows out, running its own way, but the sin remains. A servant flees from a master who strikes him; do you remain in the house with one who strikes your head every day? The best measure for the use of wine is the need of the body. If you go beyond these bounds, tomorrow you will come suffering from a heavy head, yawning, dizzy, smelling of rotted wine; everything will seem to you to be carried around, everything to be spinning. For drunkenness brings on sleep, the brother of death, and makes wakefulness like unto dreams.
11. B Or are you ignorant whom you are about to receive into your guest-quarters? Surely Him who promised us: "I and the Father will come, and we will make our abode with him" (John xiv, 23). Why, then, do you take a head start with drunkenness, and shut the entrance against the Master? Why do you urge the enemy to occupy your strongholds first? Drunkenness does not receive the Lord; drunkenness drives away the Holy Spirit. For smoke drives away bees, but gluttony drives away spiritual gifts. Fasting is the ornament of the city, the stability of the marketplace, the peace of homes, the salvation of possessions. Do you wish to see its dignity? Compare for me the evening of this day with the evening of tomorrow, and you will see the city transformed from tumult and storm into deep tranquility. I pray that this present day may be like tomorrow in holiness and gravity, and that tomorrow may not fall short of today in cheerfulness! C But may the Lord, who led us to this recurrence of time, grant us, like contestants, that in this commencement of struggles we may demonstrate a firm and constant temperance, and reach the day which is the arbiter of crowns, so that we may now remember the salutary passion, and in the world to come may enjoy the reward for the things we have done in this life, being stored up in the just judgment of Christ Himself, for to Him is the glory D for ever. Amen.